Word to the Wise
Tuesday, September 6, 2016 - Tuesday in the 23th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Cor 6:1-11 and Luke 6:12-19]Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites nor theives nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers wil inherit the Kingdom of God. That is what some of you used to be; but now you have had yourselves washed ,you were anctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. [1 Corinthians]
When I mentioned on Monday that Corinth could be like one long Bourbon Street in New Orleans, I wasn't kidding. Nor was St. Paul! He had some very colorful converts! "That is what some of you used to be!" In this part of the letter, he is scolding his new converts for suing one another and saying that they should be able to handle disputes among themselves in a peaceful way. Maybe they thought that is what they were doing since before their conversion they may have settled things violently! But "conversion" is more than switching one's religious affiliation (or gaining one where there was none). It involves a whole way of looking at life that impacts both the inside and the outside. [Mt. 23:26] Our conduct should be a reflection of our commitment. Otherwise we become like those folks who "sow wild oats during the week and go to church on Sunday to pray for crop failure."
One of the fundamental questions that St. Paul had to face was how to view the Christian life when either the "Law of Moses" or the law of the streets was no longer the structuring element of everyday life! How was a Christian supposed to know what he or she could or could not do? Paul certainly did not do away with the Ten Commandments, but those were not necessarily known well by his non-Jewish converts. Nor did he do away with the Roman law which governed everyday economic and legal life where he and most Christians lived. It took time for the "vacuum" to fill with Christian values and behaviors to take hold. He was not proposing some kind of moral anarchy.
Centuries later we are still wrestling with this question. The Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew is as close to a manual as we are likely to get from the gospels. I think revisiting this "manual" on a regular basis is a good place to start - Matthew 5-7, and then Matthew 25:31-45 to add motivation. AMEN
config
view
logs
4096.0 KB
103 ms
4
