1 Corinthians 10:1-13
A couple of weeks ago we looked at the Jesus’s testing in the wilderness and found that the temptations offered to Jesus are of the of the same type that caused a trap to spring on Adam and Eve, and how we are tempted by these very same things.
Last week in a terrific Archbishop’s sermon, Jeremy spoke of the notion that Lent is the time of waiting for the new creation t be raised – yet we, as Jesus himself did, need to live for a time in Good Friday – we cannot rush the work of God.
The Apostle Paul wrote about this often. Paul vowed to not preach anything but Christ crucified. Lent is a time when we sit with the truth of Christ walking to Jerusalem to die for the sins of the world.
For all of us who like Adam and Eve, became trapped.
Which is why, in the lead up to the crucifixion we seek holiness through prayer and self-examination and times of being still. Ps 46 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Today as we continue in this season of self-examination we look to Paul and his letter to the church in Corinth. It very much follows this theme that the things that separate us from God are common to all humanity.
Paul begins today reading in exactly this vein by saying this common sin has also caused God’s chosen people, the Jews, to be disciplined severely and to beware of the pride of a Christian fellowship (also the people of God), thinking they are standing when really they are sinking.
To remind the readers of this letter, (which today is us), where God’s people (then and now and to come) come from, Paul, like many of the Psalmists, begins by going back to the story of the Exodus – God’s great liberation of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery and coming out of slavery into the promised land.
If that sounds familiar, it is of course the central theme of every act and scene in this Divine and Holy Drama of the coming of the Kingdom of God – for us, achingly slowly.
Liberation from slavery and death and how we are to live after escaping this slavery as we make our way to the promised land. This is clearly our story too as Christians.
Paul makes the point that it is Christians who are the true Passover People, the true Exodus people, and Jesus is the true sacrificial, Passover lamb. He now takes this further by stressing four elements in the first 5 verses; cloud, the sea, the food and the drink.
Now by the cloud the Hebrews were led through the wilderness during the day and by a pillar of fire at night. It led them to the Red Sea. They passed through these “waters of death” into the promise of life.
Cloud and Fire in both the OT and the NT nearly always represent God. Think the mountain of transfiguration when God speaks from the cloud. Pentecost when God the Holy Spirt alights on people’s heads in tongues of fire. One of the names of God in the OT is, “An all-consuming Fire.”
If that is so, then we can easily see that Paul is reminding us that this is still God’s way. We are led by God (the cloud) through the saving work of the Holy Spirit (the fire) through the waters of death (the red sea) into new life, just as the Lamb of God was brought through death into life.
We call this baptism. Paul says the Hebrews were baptised into Moses as a symbol of our later baptism into Jesus Christ.
In the same way that the food and the drink miraculously provided by God to the Hebrews in the wilderness; that is the Manna renewed every morning and the rock that gushed forth water at Meribah, sustain us now in what we call Holy Communion.
Paul calls the rock that sustained the Hebrews in the wildness “Christ,” just in case they missed what he meant!
Paul writes that despite this God was displeased with nearly all of them and they didn’t make it to the promised land. Now when we take our place in this Holy and divine drama, Paul is saying, don’t make the same mistakes they did. BEWARE!
Paul has a very high view of what Anglicans call the two sacraments – Baptism and Holy Communion. In fact our celebration of Holy Communion comes pretty much word for word from Paul that he writes in the very next chapter (11:23-26) of this first letter to the Corinthians.
Beware Christians, Paul is saying, just because you are baptised and share in the life and death of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, doesn’t automatically bring our salvation. The sacraments are not magic.
They are in fact privileges that can bring us into the very closet communion with God; they also bring great responsibilities.
We have to be fair dinkum about our relationship with Jesus Christ and our relationships with each other and our neighbour.
Paul then starts to talk about some behaviours that trap us and betray our hearts. He often talks about this from different angles, and during Lent I think it appropriate to see what he means here.
Now Paul is not at all advocating a sort of legalism that forbids this and allows that. Having said that, some rules though provide the scaffolding of faith and just can’t be broken. The first commandment is the one - Do not worship idols!
Paul means something deeper to us here. He is saying beware of desires of the heart that well up and cause us to reach out to objects or things or relationships or websites or lifestyles that actually mirror and copy forces and powers other than the one true God made know to the whole world in Jesus Christ.
This is what Paul means by idolatry. We seek to constantly purity our hearts and our minds and keep them set apart for God, and God alone. To be Holy.
It is at the very moment, Paul says, that an unholy heart may tell you that you are “standing,” that you just might be heading for a very bad fall. This is very stern stuff from Paul, but he finishes today’s reading with some wonderful news.
Now I say this a lot, but if ever words needed to be engraved in our hearts and minds in big bright letters, it is GOD IS FAITHFUL! He won’t let us ever be tried beyond our limits if we remain faithful to him, he will always provide a way out.
Let’s remember that always dear friends, at our bleakest moment, let’s always remember.
We do this, as Isaiah says, by seeking the Lord every day, rejoicing that he can be found this day, and that he is so very near to us. When we do that that Lord fills us with such gracious reassurance about the puny power of sin and the majestic power of The Lord God Almighty.
The Lord reassures us that his ways are so much higher and purer than ours. These are the Lord’s ways:
Light is more powerful than darkness.
Truth is stronger than falsehood.
There is more grace in God’s heart than sin in our hearts.
There’s more power in the Holy Spirit to make us aware of our sin, than there is power in any evil to tempt us to sin.
There is more power in one drop of the shed blood of the Lord Jesus to cleanse our hearts from sin than there is in the accumulated dirt of all of humankind’s sin since Adam and Eve. (Source: Catholic meditation, author unknown)
Let me pray … Create in us a clean heart O Lord and renew an upright spirit within us. Amen.