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Live
Letters Third Sunday in
Ordinary Time I Corinthians 7:29-31 |
The Catholic Telegraph
January 21, 2000In chapter 7 of this first letter to the Christians at Corinth, Paul begins to answer some questions that had come to him by letter from Corinth. The Corinthians wanted Paul’s advice about marriage and divorce and celibacy. In addition, they wanted to know whether it was permissible to take part in dinner parties where meat was served that had been sacrificed to idols. They may also have asked about problems they were having in their liturgical assemblies and about some matters relating to the resurrection of the dead. (These last two items are dealt with in the readings from First Corinthians that the Lectionary gives us for next year.)
As we read these, and other New Testament texts, it is important to be aware that, at this early period of the Church’s history, Christians generally believed that the second coming of Christ, the final and full realization of the kingdom, was imminent. It might come any day now. This assumption plays a large part in the letters to the Thessalonians, for example, but it is also at work in what Paul has to say to the Corinthians.
Our text for today comes toward the end of Paul’s treatment of marriage, virginity, and widowhood. He has been telling the Corinthians that there is no one best state of life that everybody has to adopt in order to be ready for Christ’s coming. They should answer God’s call where it finds them. Now he offers a bit of more general advice about appropriate Christian attitudes in a world still in transition toward the kingdom.
We don’t have much time, he says. The important thing is not whether we are married or not. The important thing is not emotional well-being or economic prosperity. The important thing is to be aware that our present world is provisional and that it is passing away to make room for a whole new kind of world that will be inaugurated when the Lord comes in glory.
The fact that Paul’s teaching to the Corinthians is based on a presumption that the second coming is very near, a presumption that the passage of time since then seems to have proved incorrect, does not mean that what he has to say is irrelevant to us. For one thing, the fact that the second coming did not occur in the middle of the first century does not mean that it will not occur at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Over and over again in the gospels Jesus tells His followers that the time of the coming of the Son of Man is unknown and that they are to be prepared for it at any moment, like servants awaiting their master’s surprise return. (Cf. Mt. 24.36-44; 25.13; Mk. 13.32; Lk. 12.40) Settling down in comfort because we think the Lord won’t be here for a while is simply not in accord with the teaching of Jesus.
But apart from the final coming of Jesus to take the whole world to Himself and remake it in glory, there is also the coming of Jesus at the end of our individual lives. None of us can guarantee that we will be around tomorrow, or an hour from now. We know this in theory, yet we sometimes act as if we had plenty of time at our disposal to arrange things as we wish, forgetting that the Master may come when we least expect Him.
Paul’s warning to the Corinthians, then, also applies to us: "The time is running out."
We need to be clear about what Paul is saying here. He is not saying that the quality of Christian marriage is unimportant or that God doesn’t care whether we are happy or sad here and now or that it doesn’t matter how we carry on our business affairs, or whether we work at all. He is not saying that we are supposed to disregard the circumstances in which we and others find ourselves in our day to day existence. After all, appropriate love of ourselves and care for our brothers and sisters and justice in our dealings with others are as much a part of Christian teaching as is the second coming. The point that Paul is making is that all this, important as it may be, is temporary and provisional. Our earthly life is not without significance, but its significance is relative.
This little reading invites us to examine our priorities, not just in theory but in practice. What aspects of our life seem to take up most of our attention? What are we willing to make sacrifices for? How much of our energies goes to making ourselves comfortable, physically, emotionally, socially? I am inclined to suspect that many of us pay lip service to the lordship of Jesus in our lives, but in practice we carry on as if the really important part were the things that Paul tells us not to be so concerned about.
Maybe the best thing that could happen to us as we read this bit of Paul’s live letter to the Corinthians would be a healthy discomfort as we realize that it is addressed to us.
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Conversation Questions.
What would I change in my life if I knew the world would end tomorrow?
What things are so important to me that their absence would render my life meaningless?
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