Did you follow that letter from Paul? Those words can sometimes go in one ear and out the other, so I’m going to share Eugene Peterson’s translation, which is slightly more contemporary language, as he tries to get at the heart of what the biblical text is really saying...
Staying at Our Post
6:1 Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us. 6:2 God reminds us, I heard your call in the nick of time; The day you needed me, I was there to help. 6:3 Don’t put it off; don’t frustrate God’s work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we’re doing. 6:4 Our work as God’s servants gets validated-or not-in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; 6:5 when we’re beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; 6:6 with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; 6:7 when we’re telling the truth, and when God’s showing his power; when we’re doing our best setting things right; 6:8 when we’re praised, and when we’re blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; 6:9 ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; 6:10 immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.
6:11 Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. 6:12 We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. 6:13 I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!
Perhaps there’s no better time to hear that from Paul than this week, after the violence in South Carolina. (And of course that’s not the only place where violence and terror occurs.)
Can we remain in scripture when tragedy strikes, when controversy and politics overwhelms our news waves? Can we stay faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, even and especially when it seems that the world is spiraling into hopelessness? I mean, the shooter was a member of an ELCA congregation! He was praying in the church before he committed this act of terrifying violence! When Lutherans are killing other Christians (as they have in other parts of history too), is it tempting to want to throw in the towel on this whole church-God-hope-resurrection thing? Or can we still heed Paul’s powerful words: “Open up your lives, open up your hearts. Live expansively and openly.” Everything in me this week is crying out shut down, not open up. I’ve been literally sick to my stomach. Headache pounding. Watching the news, hearing about all the racism in our nation that’s gone once again -- as our presiding bishop imaged it -- from “simmering” just beneath the surface to “boiling over into violence.”
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| AP PHOTO: Worshippers embrace following a group prayer across the street from the scene of a shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, June 17, 2015. |
Don’t squander God’s grace, Paul reminds us. You know that grace is offered to us freely even when racism is boiling over into violence, right?! That’s not pie-in-the-sky, that’s deeply enfleshed, incarnated love even and especially here and now. Grace is still here...but it’s not a possession. (“gift”? of grace) It’s something that we steward. Don’t squander it, Paul says. Just as we steward money, time -- How shall we steward God’s grace, especially in the midst of what’s happening all around us? Spend some time this week thinking and praying about how you might steward God’s grace. Stewarding -- whether we’re talking about money, time, talents or grace -- always seems to have something to do with sharing.
We’ve got to figure out how to talk about racism -- our own racism, our own prejudices and fears. I think we all have them, if we’re honest. I think we have to come to terms with the anger and the hatred that can reside in our own hearts, even if we’re not pulling triggers at people who are different. The demonic isn’t a single person, upon whom we can heap evil. The demonic can take up residence in any one of our hearts, and cause us to shut down, to turn inward (as Luther said).
“Open your heart” is a counter to that. Maybe we call it “gracism” -- this open heart, open lives business. Gracism confronts and overcomes racism, and the many other sins of our world, not through our own doing, but only with God. Hope confronts and overcomes despair. Courage confronts and overcomes fear and hatred. Paul invites us, Jesus invites us to have courage. “Do not fear, peace be still, know that God is God.”
But you know what gets in the way of trusting all that...hope overcoming despair, life overcoming death? Our hardships. The pain in our own lives, the losses, the tragedies, the sicknesses, the fears. They stand in the way of trusting God’s goodness.
Paul lists his hardships too, to let us know that we’re not alone. Scholars refer to these long lists that Paul gives (imprisonments, beatings, shipwrecks, general anxiety) as his “hardship catalogue”. What’s in my/your hardship catalogue? Troubles at home, troubles at work, troubles in your extended family, or with your children, or with your health? If you had to catalogue your hardships, how long would your list be?
And it gets in the way of trusting God’s goodness. Our hardships can certainly help us squander God’s grace.
“Why do bad things happen to good people?” is still a question we ask. It’s kind of the question, isn’t it? We’re asking it this week. We ask it when our loved one gets a terrible diagnosis. Why God? Why do bad things happen to good people?
But it was pointed out to me recently, while studying this text, that “WDBTHTGP” is our question. It was never Paul’s.
For Paul, challenges, tragedies, terrors, all the hardships we face and try to endure are occasions to trust in the “one who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:13). Pain and sorrow in our lives and in our world are times for us to rehearse what we say and sing and confess Sunday after Sunday. That’s why, I think we have to keep “practicing, rehearsing” Sunday after Sunday. Can we cling to God’s amazing grace even in the most horrific of circumstances, and even with our hardship catalogues?
Because God’s amazing grace clings to us, sisters and brothers in Christ. It’s still here. Offered freely. Even as we grieve. Even as we don’t quite know how to pray in the face of these tragedies. The Lord of all hopefulness isn’t going anywhere.
Author/pastor/spiritual mentor Henri Nowen talks about a near death experience he had -- a car accident, where the doctor told him that he was quickly dying due to internal bleeding. He didn’t think it was that bad, but suddenly he had to come to terms with what we all will one day face: And he writes this: [p. 108, Spiritual Formation]
Let us pray: In the face of death and sin all around us, even within us, give us open hearts, open lives. Give us hope. AMEN.
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