Monday • 10/11/2021
Monday of the Twentieth Week After Pentecost (Proper 23)
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; Jeremiah 36:11–26; 1 Corinthians 13:1–13; Matthew 10:5–15
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)
“Love is patient.” Love doesn’t stand there tapping its toe with arms crossed, and saying, “Come on already!” Μακροθυμεῖ (makrothumei) is close to Exodus 34:6’s “slow to anger” (LXX, μακρόθυμος, makrothumos). Meaning: love isn’t quick on the trigger. Love’s on-ramp to anger is lllllloooonnnngggg.
“Love is kind.” χρηστεύεται (chresteuetai). To the Greek ear, this particular use of the root word “kind” (χρηστ-, chrest-) would have sounded like the making of a verb out of the title, “Christ.” Christ’s people act in ways that remind people of the One who brought kindness from heaven to earth.
Several interpretive issues in the excluded verses are still hotly disputed among scholars (especially, whether Paul is dealing with head coverings or hair styles). Part of the problem is that we don’t have the full conversation between Paul and his readers, nor are we able to recreate their social world as completely as we’d like.
Even so, there is one principle here that is important: men and women are redeemed as men and women, not as some sort of neutered third thing. There is a mutuality and complementarity between men and women that redemption does not erase, and that should be preserved in the way we present ourselves to God in worship. Paul explicitly commends the Corinthians for the fact that men and women are both praying and prophesying in church. That is huge, and it is a direct fulfillment of Joel’s promise from Yahweh: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Joel 2:28; quoted at Acts 2:17).
At the same time, even the angelic realm needs to see the distinction between men and women when we worship. Christ has healed the rift that Satan introduced between Adam and Eve in the Garden (“the woman whom thou gavest me to eat…”) by reconciling the sexes, not by obliterating what is distinctive about maleness and femaleness respectively. What’s different now, in Christ, is that public praying and prophesying is not a distinctively male activity. Paul praises the Corinthians in this regard.
At the Table, however, there is a distinction that is not to be tolerated: that between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Paul blasts the Corinthians because they “humiliate those who have nothing” by inviting them to the community meal late, after the “somebodies” have had their fill and gotten themselves good and drunk. The early “cool kids” get filet and cabernet; the late losers get soda and crackers (speaking metaphorically). In allowing this practice, the Corinthians contribute to the surrounding society’s division, instead of creating a new unity in Christ. They further the factionalism of the world, instead of forming the temple, the house of God’s dwelling (1 Corinthians 3:16). They dismember rather than re-member Christ’s very Body. And that’s a very, very bad thing. Paul won’t even call what they are doing “the Lord’s supper”: “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper” (1 Corinthians 11:20).
Fittingly, today’s readings conclude with the Healing of the Paralytic, a display of Jesus’s authority to forgive, and a brief glimpse of the glory he’s come to introduce us to. That same authority calls us to the kind of willing obedience Josiah offers Yahweh. And that same glory lies down the path of men and women as men and women joyfully offering prayers and prophecy in the assembly of the saints. It lies down the path of “haves” and “have nots” sharing Bread and Wine as equals at the Table of the Lord.
Collect for Proper 22: Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Image: Adapted from Nheyob, cropped by Tahc, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
