Thursday • 5/27/2021
Thursday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 3)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Deuteronomy 4:32–40; 2 Corinthians 3:1–18; Luke 16:1–9

Comments on Luke 16:1–9 from DDD 11/13/2020: https://tinyurl.com/3aky47vn

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)

Among the readings on this Thursday of the first week “After Pentecost” it is Paul’s reflections in 2 Corinthians that will receive our attention. An amazing freedom takes hold of our lives when we learn that our prime value comes from the Lord himself, not from external measures such as certificates of authority (degrees, letters, pedigrees). There’s a newfound liberty as we experience the transforming work of the living God coursing through us. 

First, living with and without credentials. “Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all…” (2 Corinthians 3:1b). It’s hard to believe that after all that Paul and the Corinthians have been through together (read Acts 18 and 1 Corinthians when you get a chance!), some people are asking questions like, “Who stands behind this guy? What credentials does he bring? Why should we give him any more credence than anybody else?” Really? Paul is their father in the faith (1 Corinthians 4:15)! In human terms, he’s the only reason most of them are followers of Christ in the first place. 

And it’s not like Paul couldn’t drop names if he were so inclined. After all, he tells the Galatians that apostolic notables Peter and John, the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church, support him (see Galatians 1–2). Later in this very letter Paul says he’ll compare résumés with anybody! “Indeed you should have been the ones commending me, for I am not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing” (2 Corinthians 12:11). “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,” he reminds the Philippians, “I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:4b–6). And though Paul would never write about such things himself, Luke tells us Paul was educated by Gamaliel in Jerusalem, one of the chief rabbis of his day; he was born a Roman citizen; and, in addition, he was a citizen of his provincial city of Tarsus in Asia Minor (Acts 16:37; 212:39; 22:3,25).

But all of that—all of it—is beside the point for Paul. And it should be for the Corinthians as well. They know firsthand his love for them and the new life in Jesus that has come to them through him. Paul’s appeal is the power of life-on-life ministry. That’s a hard lesson that too many diploma- and credential-obsessed people have to learn. That’s good news, conversely, for those of us who feel under-qualified for tasks the Lord calls us to. When he’s supporting us, when he gives us the strength to love, and when he creates results we could never dream of producing ourselves, we can be confident that we are certainly credentialed enough! 

Second, an old covenant and a new covenant. “For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory!” (2 Corinthians 3:9). Despite appearances, Paul is not writing off his heritage in today’s reading from 2 Corinthians. Instead, he notes that God’s law-covenant (the Ten Commandments) was transitional, not permanent. That covenant could demand change from us, but it could not transform us. The Ten Commandments prepared us for a covenant in which our hearts themselves would become the repository of the law. They would become places where we would want, and be able, to love God—and our neighbor well. They would become places where righteousness would take hold of us and reshape us after the image of God’s Son. Where righteousness would become ours, first by the Father’s initial declaration of our justification, then by the Spirit’s gradual transformation of us in sanctification, and ultimately by our definitive glorification when Jesus returns to raise us from the dead. 

Third, the Spirit gives liberty. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Learning a piece on the piano is an awkward and lengthy process for me. I have to pore over the notes on the page, find a good recording so I can hear what it is supposed to sound like, and then laboriously acquaint my fingers with where they are supposed to go to make the notes happen. Over and over, I mechanically make my fingers do what the notes say to do, and I try to feel what the recordings make me feel when I listen to them. For the longest time, my playing feels stiff, stilted, frustrating, confining — not musical at all. At some point, though, it’s as though the music descends, takes over, and flows through me. That’s when there’s liberty, when the music descends and begins to flow. 

It is not unlike what Paul is talking about. Underneath all our striving and effort to get life right, we must learn to rely on the visitation of the Spirit of Christ, transforming our offering into heaven’s music. We are called to put ourselves where Christ shows up: where we inhabit his Word as best we can, lift our hearts and voices in song and prayer, reach out our hands to receive the Bread and the Wine, and yield to his promptings for actions of love and mercy and justice. And somehow the life-giving Spirit comes, Christ indwells us more deeply, and his life flows out from lives that have become just that much more transformed into his own likeness. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Saint Paul. Detail of the mosaic in Arian Baptistery. Ravenna, Italy. Ввласенко, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons