1 Corinthians 7:20-35 (29-31)
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 21, 2018
William G. Carter
The first issue today is deciding where to begin the
reading in chapter seven. The lectionary
reading says verses 29 to 31, but those are the concluding verses of a
paragraph. The paragraph begins with the words, “Now concerning virgins,” and
I’m not sure we want to begin there. So we back it up for verses to verse 21,
and discover Paul is talking about slavery. Well, that’s a little awkward. And
then if we back it up one more verse, to verse 20, we discover that is really
the theme verse. So let us attend to the reading:
Let each of you
remain in the condition in which you were called.
Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it.
Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more
than ever. For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a
freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a
slave of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become
slaves of human masters. In
whatever condition you were called, brothers and sisters, there remain with
God.
Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I
give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I
think that, in view of the impending
crisis, it is well for you to remain as you are. Are you bound
to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a
wife. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries,
she does not sin. Yet those who marry will experience distress in this life,
and I would spare you that. I mean, brothers and sisters, the
appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be
as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were
not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and
those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who
deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is
passing away.
I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is
anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but
the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his
wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and
the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy
in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the
world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but
to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord.
I wonder if Paul ever dreamed that his correspondence would
end up in the Bible. He traveled around the Mediterranean world, preaching the
Gospel and planting congregations. After he Paul would start a church in a
major city, give them the basic teaching, get them up and running, and then
move on. Sometime later they tracked him down to ask, “Hey, what about this?” Sometimes
we forget that Paul wrote his letters to offer practical advice
It was inevitable he would go to Corinth. Corinth was a
port city in Greece, not far from Athens. Paul struck up a friendship with a
married couple, Priscilla and Aquila, two exiles from Rome who were ordered to
leave because they were Jews. They worked together. Paul preached in the
synagogue each Sabbath, declaring that the Messiah had come, and it was Jesus.
It went well, then it didn’t go well, and Paul moved on. He was there for a
year and a half. He left behind a congregation that got a new preacher, but
that preacher didn’t have all the answers.
When Paul was among them, they heard him preach about the
end of the world. It was an idea right out of the Jewish scriptures. The Day of
the Lord will come. God will appear as the final judge. All the world’s wrongs
will be righted. Every human tear will be wiped away. Every human institution
will come to an end, and the faithful will greet the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s
going to come in the twinkling of an eye. It can happen at any moment. Keep
your lamps trimmed and burning. Watch for the Lord. Do his work while you wait.
This is what Paul preached. Then off he went, floating across the sea.
To the Corinthians, that was good news. They lived in the
afterglow of that sermon. And then, one of the Corinthians ambled up to another
in coffee hour on week. He said, “You know, Demetrius, I’m still remembering
everything Paul preached to us. He said the Lord will come at any time. But here’s
my issue. I’m engaged to get married next month to my fiancé Junias. If Jesus
is coming back at any moment, do you think we should go ahead with the
wedding?”
Demetrius looked at him, and said, “Andronicus, what do
you mean?”
Andronicus took a swig of his coffee and said, “Well, I
was thinking. If the Lord is at hand, why get marred? Why spend all that money
on a priest, a caterer, florist, and a band if the end of the world is near?
For that matter, why get married at all? It seems like marriage is an earthly
institution, not a heavenly one. What do you think?”
What do we think, indeed? I’ll bet some of us haven’t
thought about that. At a Christian wedding, the couple says “until death do us
part.” We can assume “death” includes the end of the world. In heaven, every
married person becomes a free agent once again, just like all the single people.
Presumably all of us will be too busy singing in the choir to be married up
there. At least, that’s always been the New Testament view.
One time, some people tried to trick Jesus on just this
issue. They asked him about a hypothetical woman who kept being married after
one husband after another died. “In the resurrection,” they cajoled him, “whose
wife will she be?” Or to put it in a first-century context, whose piece of
property will she be? Jesus gave a heavenly answer: the resurrection is so much
more than what we know down here. In this age, some people marry; in that age,
the coming age, God’s ways are so far beyond human institutions such as
marriage. (Mark 12:18-27)
Now, the Mormon Church sees it differently. The Mormons
believe that if you get married down here, you will still be married up there.
When a divorced woman heard that, she said, “I knew there was a good reason why
I’m not a Mormon.”
Well, back to Corinth: Marriage, Singleness, and the End
of the World – those were some of the hot topics at the Corinthian coffee hour.
Demetrius and Andronicus, our hypothetical Christians, wanted to know. As best
we can tell, that’s why Paul wrote this section of the letter – to answer their
concerns.
As far as we know, Paul never married. Just as well, I
suppose; we can’t imagine who might ever want to married to him. But he did try
to answer as faithfully as he could. Three times, he gives the same advice:
“I’d suggest that you stay the way you are.” The return of Christ will sneak up
on us. It will break in like a thief in the night. His reasoning went like
this: don’t invest yourself in the present order when the end of all things is
at hand. Don’t spend a lot of energy building something that it not going to
last.
For Paul, his first impulse was to say, “Andronicus,
cancel the wedding. Jesus is returning at any moment.” If you are single, stay
the way you are. If you are married, remain married, but, well, on the other
hand, uh, well . . . and then his circuits begin to fizzle.
No sooner does Paul say all of this when he realizes he had
better qualify what he says. He remembers Junias with her dark pretty eyes, and
how she lights up with joy whenever Andronicus walks into the room. Surely he
cannot oppose a couple’s happiness, especially when we don’t really know when
Jesus will actually arrive. He remembers that couple, remembers how much they
love one another, and how can he speak against that?
Paul knows what all of us know. It takes a lot of energy
to be married. It’s not easy to love, much less to remain lovable. I still chuckle
over the television commercial. A wife is trying on a new outfit in front of a
mirror. She asks the fateful question, “Does this outfit make me look fat?”
Immediately he says, “Do you think I’m stupid?” Marriage has its share of
landmines. One false step and something could blow up.
But singleness is no piece of cake either. It’s different
for everybody. Some who are single are content to stay that way; any kind of
relationship would be a complication. Others grow weary of preparing meals for
one, and wish they had somebody with whom to share their lives. And then there
are those who become single, by divorce or death. That is hard too. Single
people misfire as much as married people do. There is no advantage to one
situation or another.
Maybe all of this begins to dawn on the apostle Paul as he’s
writing this letter. His reason is awkward. Hopefully, even though the ink was
already dry, he realizes he made an awkward move. Before he talks of marriage
in this chapter, he was talking about slavery. Marriage and Slavery. Oh – I
know, for a few of us, we might think, “What’s the difference?” But listen to
this: in this piece of his writing, Paul comes as close as he does anywhere of
pointing to a day when people will no longer be slaves to anybody else – the
day of the Lord is coming, he says. Christians are called to live as free
people. Speaking of the liberating love of Christ, Paul says, “You were bought
with a price; do not become slaves of human masters.”
Meanwhile the Corinthian church wanted to know: if we are
Christian, should we be married, or should we be single? Here is Paul’s best
answer: whatever sets you free. “The
present form of this world is passing away,” says Paul. “I want you to be free
from anxieties.” What he says to all married and single people is this: I want
you to be free to love and serve the Lord.
Whether single or married, that’s a central good issue for
all human relationships. Do our situations set us free to love God and neighbor,
or do they restrain us? Do they point us toward Christ, support our Christian
walk – or do they sidetrack us with lesser concerns?
A good marriage can be the smallest form of Christian
community. Two of God’s children work out their faith through the life that
they share. Every day there are opportunities for encouragement, trust, and
love. Everybody who has been married also knows it is the school for learning
patience and the workshop for practicing forgiveness. A good marriage is one
that brings out the best in each person. When it’s working well, two people become
better human beings. And there is nothing to build deeper intimacy than a faith
that is shared.
I’ll never forget bursting into my parents’ bedroom one
evening when I was a little kid. Yes, I should have knocked – there they were,
on their knees beside the bed, saying their prayers – and I heard them praying
for me. Of all the things I might have seen, that was so embarrassing, so
deeply personal. It left an impression I have never forgotten. They shared
Jesus in common. It shaped everything in their life together – and together
they were free to follow as his disciples.
Those who are single can also be free, in much the same
way. Some years ago, the writer Kathleen Norris spent extended time in some
Benedictine monasteries. She struck up a friendship with some nuns, and one day
she got up the courage to ask them about celibacy. Kathleen is a Presbyterian
like most of us, and she was always curious about nuns, but never knew how to
ask.
One nun said, “In my singleness, I learned to accept my
need for love, and my ability to love, as great gifts from God. And I decided
to express that love by remaining single in a monastery . . . My primary
relationship is with God. My vows were made to another person, the person of
Christ. All of my decisions about love had to be made in the light of that
person.”[1]
Norris discovered that the word that these single women
used to best describe their lives was “freedom.” They were free to keep their
energies focused on ministry and communal living. They were free to love many
people without being unfaithful to any of them. Another nun said it this way.
“We’re not making babies, but we can make relationships.” And they are
relationships where life is given as a gift to others.
We can be married, or we can be single – but the apostle
Paul invites us to this kind of freedom. Thanks to Jesus Christ, “the present
form of the world is passing away,” he reminds us. And in its place, he dreams
of a new creation that is completely filled with love for God and neighbor.
That is really the issue – and whether we are single or married, this
liberating love is the end and destiny of the entire Christian life
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment