Thursday • 2/29/2024 •
Thursday of 2 Lent, Year Two
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 71; Genesis 42:29–38; 1 Corinthians 6:12–20; Mark 4:21–34
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)
Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Thursday of the second week of Lent.
Negative Plus Positive
I perform better when I receive positive coaching rather than negative.
In basketball defense, I respond better to, “Stay on your toes,” than to, “Don’t play on your heels.”
For hitting a baseball, “See the ball, hit the ball,” produces better results than, “Don’t strike out!”
In Japanese swordsmanship, “Throw the tip of the sword like you were casting a fishing rod,” works, while, “Don’t try to muscle your cut,” doesn’t.
When it comes to the ethical life, too, I’m more, “Just do it!” than “Just say no!”
“Just say No!” It’s fascinating to watch Paul offer instruction that is both positive and negative. His negative instruction for sexuality is: “The body is not for fornication…” and “Shun fornication” (1 Corinthians 6:13c,18a). He means: Don’t have sex outside of marriage. It’s his way of saying, “Just say no!”
However, trying to “just say no!” can be as frustrating as trying not to play on my heels, trying not to be afraid to swing, and trying not to muscle my cut. It’s not that the “Don’t” instruction is wrong. It’s that I’m able to respond better to the vision offered by the positive coaching. Just trying not to do the wrong thing isn’t the same as doing the right thing. That approach can so tighten you up that you end up doing the opposite of what you want to do. The person you are guarding is past you before you realize it, the umpire is calling “Strike!” while you’re still worrying about your fear of missing the ball, and your sword blade weakly “thunks” the target because thinking about not muscling your cut has made you shorten your stroke … and you muscle it even harder.
Image: Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
When all you’re doing is trying to just say no!, you are liable to wind up in places you regret later. You’re liable to find yourself grumbling Paul’s words, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19). Often, the harder you just try to resist temptation, the more tempting temptation is!
“Just do it!” Now, if “Just say no!” were all that Paul said, it should absolutely be sufficient. However, I am grateful that Paul also offers several positive considerations, several points on the ethical “Just do it!”side of the equation.
He continues, “…but [the body is] for the Lord, and the Lord [is] for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13d). Just focusing on what we are not supposed to do with our bodies leads many people to think that the body is evil. That way of thinking leads them either to decide that what they do sexually is irrelevant to their spiritual life, or that they should abuse and punish their bodies (sometimes through sex). Instead, Paul wants us to understand that our bodies are so valuable that Christ gave his body to raise our body up and reconstitute it for an indestructible, everlasting existence: “God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power” (1 Corinthians 7:14). The Lord is not against our bodies, he is for them.
… you were bought with a price — 1 Corinthians 7:20a. It is because we are so profoundly loved that we can’t just do whatever we please with or to our bodies. Christ has purchased us — our whole being, body, soul, and spirit — out of the slave-market of sin at the staggering cost of his own precious blood. If we really understand this, we would not think of doing anything to demean, degrade, devalue, or defile our bodies. Sexual integrity is part of how we live for love of him. As in every other area of life, we live for him because he lives for us!
… your bodies are members of Christ — 1 Corinthians 7:15. There is an intimacy with Christ that is so deep that in some respects the slave-market image takes a subordinate place to the marriage image. Christ has wooed us as God wooed Israel, as Hosea wooed Gomer, as the Lover in Song of Songs wooed the Beloved. For as Paul puts it in Romans 7:4, “You have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to (i.e., be married to) another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.”
A sublime mystery lies in the fact that physical union and procreation between a man and a woman is a sacramental picture of a greater union and life-generation between Christ and his people. So sublime is that greater union that it can be experienced as much by God’s celibate saints as by his married saints — such is the testimony of generations of ascetics and faithful singles. Sexual faithfulness is part of how we live in union with him!
… your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit … glorify God in your body — 1 Corinthians 6:19b,20b. As wonderful as it is to contemplate the glory that will constitute our bodies when they are raised in power, there’s perhaps something even more wonderful about contemplating the fact that God’s glory has already taken up residence in us.
Paul says that our puny little bodies is where the Holy Spirit dwells. This Holy Spirit is the Shekinah glory cloud that inhabited Moses’s Tabernacle and led the children of Israel through the desert. It is the Shekinah glory cloud that so filled Solomon’s Temple at its dedication that everybody had to flee. This glory dwells in us! And the only place the world gets to see this glory in the present age is when it shines through lives that manifest God’s character of holiness, justice, mercy, grace, faithfulness, and love. Sexual purity is part of how we live to glorify God in our body!
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+