Day 80: Faith under Fire

The Letters of Peter, James, John and Jude are called by scholars the "catholic" epistles -- because they don't seem to be written to any one church (as Paul's letters were) but seemed meant to be shared among many churches.  So they are not known by who they are to, but by who (supposedly) wrote them.   I say supposedly because not all scholars are agreed that every one of these catholic epistles was written by the person to whom it is ascribed.

Aside:  the word catholic means "universal."

That being said, there does seem to be a theme for this short letter.  It is written to a church, or to churches, that are experiencing persecution.  So there is a combination of inspiration, encouragement and exhortation in this letter.  There's the wonderful image of the church as living stones, chosen, gathered up and built into a house by God.  Peter wants the people to remember that God first loved and chose them; this will help them to resist the temptations they encounter and the sufferings that they need to endure.  He identifies the people as strangers among people with different values than their own.  He encourages them to continue to live counter-cultural lives, resisting finery, and living simply.  Persecution and suffering naturally come to those who are faithful (look at Jesus, after all).

I have to admit some discomfort with some of the author's advice, especially his advice to slaves to obey their masters and just keep taking the abuse.  Although this was certainly written at a different time than ours, when the Roman empire did not take kindly to civil disobedience, these verses and others have been used to justify oppression and slavery.    And do we want to counsel women to put up with being beaten by abusive husbands, because suffering can be good for you?

We need to be careful how we read scripture.

Certainly there is truth here.  We can't avoid suffering in life.  And it's true that many have suffered for good cause, and that good has come out of it (I think of those who peacefully protested the Jim Crow laws in the south, and won civil rights for themselves by their faithful witness).

So the author writes to people who are experiencing suffering, and we can hold on to this:  suffering is not good, but when we encounter suffering in this life, it also does not that we have done wrong.  Sometimes it is a price we pay for doing the right thing.

Day 53: Wisdom and Foolishness, an Inside Look at a Real Congregation

I like the first letter to the Corinthians.  I think one of the reasons that I like it is that it's very clear, in this letter, that Paul knows these people, that Paul knows this congregation, and that he is responding to very specific issues that have arisen in the community.  Even though it's helpful to read background notes about the people in Corinth, you can figure out some of what is going on without doing any background reading, because you can just tell from the kinds of things Paul is talking about.  It's like reading other people's mail, something of course no one should do, but something perhaps we are tempted to do on occasion, just out of curiosity.

So, what's going on in Corinth?

People are fighting, for one thing.  People are playing  favorites, jockeying for position, saying "I'm a better Christian than you are because such-and-such baptized me."  There are factions based on leadership, and who is the best public speaker (possibly Apollos) or who is the best looking or who is the most "spiritual."

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

As the letter to the Corinthians goes on, we'll find out that the arguing and the factions and the one-upmanship is just the tip of the iceberg.  There many other things going on in Corinth.  It makes you wonder how Paul can keep his temper, because, one of the things people are questioning is whether Paul is such a great apostle after all.  They've had some flashier preachers come in since Paul left, and they've been wowing the crowds and telling them some different things....

All right, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Just for now, we're dealing with the church conflicts, and the arguing.

And Paul uses the occasion to do some great preaching about foolishness and wisdom, about how sometimes the things that look the most foolish are really wise (like the death of Jesus on the cross) and how sometimes the things that look wise to us are not worth the paper they are printed on.

Now while I am attracted to Paul's paradox about wisdom and foolishness, I need to say that I don't think Paul is advocating a sort of "know-nothing-ism."  I don't think that foolishness is the same as ignorance, or that he is advocating being stupid.  I think the wisdom that he is speaking of is a sort of "wisdom of the world", the sort of "if you are rich it must be because you are the smartest person in the world", or "the people who speak fluently are the ones we ought to trust" -- that sort of wisdom that looks at the surface of things and makes judgments.   If it is that sort of wisdom we are looking for, it certain is foolishness to follow Jesus, the one who was crucified, and everyone knows it.  We also believe that he was raised, but NOT everyone knows that.

In particular, Paul is interested in reminding them that when he came among them, all he preached and all he wanted them to know was "Christ crucified."  That was it.  No fancy words.  No secrets of the ages.  Just "Christ crucified", (not even Christ resurrected!) equally confounding to Jews and Gentiles, but powerful and wise to those who heard.

It makes me wonder, in church conflicts today, what would be the results if we began and ended with "Christ crucified."  If we decided to know nothing with each other but this:  "Christ and him crucified",  what would that mean?  If we looked at each other and saw people for whom Christ died, people in whom (by grace) Christ lives, what would that mean?

Would it make any difference?

Day 37: Servants and Martyrs

In this ideal church, now a controversy arises (so, congregational perfection has always been elusive).  There is suspicious between two groups of believers -- Greek-speaking Jewish Christians and Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians.  (Not to put too fine a point on it, they were not called "Christians" yet.  I believe they were called the followers of "the way.")

It seems that the Greek-speakers thought that their widows were not treated fairly in the distribution of goods.  So the church appointed seven men to be "Deacons", or servants, to make sure that everyone was treated fairly.

One of the men was Stephen.  (Another was Philip, but we will learn more about him, later.)

Seven could be just the literal number of men chosen to be deacons, but it's worth noting that seven is also a meaningful number -- often times the number seven signifies completeness.  So -- these seven men are deacons, which means they are servants.  But they are also forces to be reckoned with, as we will see, on at least two occasions.

Stephen rubbed people the wrong way.  He was bold about Jesus, and a lot of people were upset by the things he said.  If you really walking in the moccasins of the religious leaders, you might at least sympathize, as he was very critical of them.

So Stephen was asked to defend himself (you might have noticed that this happens rather regularly.)  He gives a summary of salvation history, starting with Abraham and ending with Jesus.  And he calls them stubborn and unrepentant, totally disobeying the Holy Spirit.

This makes the religious leaders even angrier.  So they stone him.

And, Stephens sees the heavens open up, and he sees the angels and the Son of man, and he says to those who are stoning him, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing?"

Who does this sound like to you?

The Acts of the apostles.