Wednesday • 5/26/2021
Wednesday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 3)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; Deuteronomy 4:25–31; 2 Corinthians 1:23–2:17; Luke 15:1–2,11–32

Comments on Luke 15:1–2,11–32 from DDD 11/12/2020: https://tinyurl.com/ua8jw847

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians demands a slow read, but it pays extraordinary dividends with close attention. Here in this letter is the closest thing the Bible ever gives us to a manual of leadership. Three features of today’s passage in 2 Corinthians are worth lingering over.

First, biblical leadership is exercised from alongside, not from above. Paul says that he writes to the Corinthians not as a domineering overlord, but as a companion (ouk … kurieuein, … alla sunergoi esmen—2 Corinthians 1:24). We all know what it feels like to have someone stand over us with scowling face, wagging a finger at us. That’s not Paul. That’s not Paul because that’s not Jesus, and Paul is all about Jesus. Like his Master, Paul served alongside his congregants. He did not impose authority upon them in “lordly” fashion (thus the “kurieu-“ in “domineering”). He was “with” them—thus, the Latin com- in “companion,” and the Greek sun- in sunergoi.

I hope we’ve known spiritual leaders who know how to stand next to us and lead the way by pointing out a path that we can travel together. That’s what Paul is doing in this letter about leadership.

Second, biblical leadership is exercised through tears. It’s likely that the disciplinary situation in Corinth that had led Paul to write an earlier tearful letter had to do with the man who was in an inappropriate relationship with his stepmother in 1 Corinthians 5: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife” (1 Corinthians 5:1). Not only had many Christians in Corinth thought that this practice was perfectly consistent with their faith, they even thought their perspective was enlightened, liberated, and progressive: “And you are proud! (1 Corinthians 5:2, NET).”

From a biblical point of view, and in classical Christian ethical thinking, our sex lives are not our own private exclusive domain. Our sex lives are, in the first place, God’s; in intimacy as in anything else we either honor him or dishonor him. Second, our sex lives are either community-building or community-destroying. Fidelity and good boundaries create harmony and trust, while infidelity and boundary-violation bring disharmony and mistrust. Finally, our sex lives are a potential source of intimate joy and mutual pleasure where intimacy, joy, and mutuality are unclouded by guilt or by a transgressive spirit.

At the same time, these matters are deeply personal, and seem like they should be private. It can feel inappropriately meddlesome to have someone presume to call your sexual practices into question. As spiritual father of the church of Corinth, Paul must have had a lot of credibility. But still, the Corinthians needed to see (even through the indirect medium of a letter) the tears that accompanied his words of correction. They needed to know it cost Paul not to be with them as he gave them space to sort out truth from error. They needed to know that he was willing to be painfully distant for the sake, eventually, of long-term joy and fellowship. For his intervention not to be maladroit meddlesomeness, they needed his tears.

Third, biblical leadership is exercised from behind Christ’s chariot of triumph. And so, Paul wants the Corinthians to know that he speaks only as one who has died in Christ. He speaks only as a willing captive in Christ’s triumphal procession. He speaks only as one who, like the defeated enemy of a mighty general or emperor, is humiliated and mocked and scorned on the way to death in the coliseum. He only speaks “from behind the chariot.” Paul trusts his readers to recognize the fragrance of life in the death he had died in yielding to Christ’s imperium. It was only this way that they could smell the sweetness of their own death to ego, to a sense of superiority, to pride in personal independence.

May we respond joyfully to the claims of the Christ who came to be with us, who woos us with his own tears, and who won his own triumph by yielding first to the ignominy of the Cross.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: The Apostle Paul, Rembrandt , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons