Reflections for the Third Sunday after Epiphany – January 21, 2024
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20
“From now on those with wives should live as though they had none” (1 Cor. 7:29).
What is it going on here? Is Paul, a busy body moralist, prescribing continence to the
men of troubled Corinth? Is h e trying to start an epidemic of sexual starvation? It is
hardly likely, for earlier in this very chapter he has resisted a false asceticism in which
the married are living apart from one another as they await “the End.” Carry on in your
chosen state, Paul says. Don’t disrupt the normal course just because you expect the
Lord to come in glory. But now, by contrast, his advice is that everyone should do all
that he or she does as if not.
Sentences before, he had written that to leave one’s wife is wrong and the maiden
proceeding to marriage is perfectly in order. Now a kind of psychic distance is
counseled — in marriage, in business, in the elementary human emotions. Yet the same
Paul who writes, “those who weep should live as if they were not weeping” will say in
Romans 12:15 “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Is he
counseling stoic behaviour to the emotional Corinthians and loosening up to the stoic
Romans? This does not seem to be the case, in today’s letter to Corinth at least. What
he is proposing is not a suppression of all tears and laughter, least of all sham
behaviour — acting one way while feeling another — but an approach to reality in the
midst of religious enthusiasm.
Paul himself taught these people while he was with them the doctrine of Christ’s return,
unusual for pagan Greeks, and in the interim their total possession by the Spirit. Now,
word reaches him that they wanted to interrupt all normalcy and live frenzied lives. It is
the threat of cultism, to use a modern term. He will have none of it. Alerted to their
outlook, Paul does not teach that marriage and family life and business are transient,
hence not to be taken seriously, but that all human institutions will shortly be
transformed. At the Lord’s coming people devote themselves entirely to him. The
apostle asks for a wholehearted anticipation of this now.
The modern advice that you get from bumper stickers and other profound sources is “If
it feels good do it.” Conflicting counsel says “Easy does it” which might be translated as
don’t do too much of it. The teachers in the New Testament say if it is good do it, it may
make you feel good. They never say if it feels good, don’t do it. In other words,
Christianity has no anti-pleasure principle. It has a pro non-self-destruction principle.
Getting in touch with your feelings is a splendid idea if you have been raised to
suppress them, or deny them. Inhibition or oppression can be a stunting of all that is
human. Many an adult nowadays comes to accept the reality of self through
psychological counseling or group therapy or some more modest but dependable
technique of self-awareness. It is a great good for those who come on it. They cannot
be thankful enough. They were full of foolish fears, a false self-image, a positive horror
of letting themselves go. Now with careful assistance, they have been, as it were, let of
prison. All of life looks different and they hope never to go back to the rigid, tension-filled
past. I think St. Paul would applaud these modern gains.
It is not uncommon these days to hear of someone who has had a religious upbringing,
or a more recent conversion, to which the person is being faithful. If the demands of the
religious tradition are sufficiently bizarre it passes without notice. That kind of thing can
be pigeon-holed and dismissed. But if it is a familiar tradition like being a faithful
Anglican or a Jew, the news is often not well received. I mean, “You can’t still be into
that! How can anybody believe in those silly old stories?” St. Paul would say, I think, “I
told you not to live your lives by myths and fables. How you ever got so confused in
Jewish America, or Anglican Toronto, or Catholic Quebec is more than I can figure out.
You’re as mixed up about religion as my nutty Corinthian crowd. I think you must never
have read my letters or taken the apostolic writings, or the books of Moses, very
seriously. You have worked up a mad scheme of repression, inhibition, and superstitious
fear and called it religion. Talk about cultism! No wonder you give up on what you call
religion as soon as you have a few mature thoughts. I would too!”
Jesus proclaims in Mark: “This is the time of fulfillment…Reform your lives and believe
in the gospel,” and “Come after me and I will make you fish for people.” That is a clear
call to discipleship. It is not confined to a certain few – Jesus’ intimates, early apostles,
leaders in the Church. All are called, and all are called to mutual concern. If you think
you have maturity in discipleship, do not hesitate to play the fisher. Expose the reality of
life in Christ you are experiencing. Instruct the ignorant. Counsel the doubtful. Help
bring an end to the myths and fables in Christian life. The reality of Christ relativizes all
that we think and do. It puts an end to the misconceptions, folkways, tired old tales
about what Christianity is. Let the real drive out the unreal. The fact destroys the fiction.
We are each other’s keeper; we are all called to fish for people. Let us act the role. We
live in Christ and speak of it to whoever asks or shows an interest. Then we leave the
outcome in God’s hands.
Kevin+
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