Epiphany Reflections – Clanging Gongs Edition
(A reflection on the upcoming Sunday’s lectionary, January 31)
Psalm 71 and 1st Corinthians 13
Our passage this week from 1st Corinthians is a sacred text. Not in the holy, reverent way, but in the don’t touch that text way. It is the wedding text, mostly because it is a great reflection of the give and take of love in a relationship. But it is so much more…
The Iglesia Presbiteriana knows that the bible is often most powerful when it is read outside of its normal environment. When it is read not from the high pulpit in the church, but rather read in a farmer’s small house, or in the street at a protest against violence against women, or at a Christmas party with tons of screaming kids -that’s when you hear the the bible saying things you don’t hear in church.
Below, the text of 1st Corinthians 13 is placed beside a glimpse of the reality of violence in Colombia. What is love when it lives next to violence? How are we patient and kind amidst the destruction of life on an enormous scale? How is one to live as a full human when faced with raw inhumanity?
And in the passage from the psalms, we find answers that people here offer to these questions:
In you, O Lord, I take my refuge.
Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress.
For you, O Lord, are my hope.
The psalms don’t take away any of the pain or anger or bitterness of life, but they do give one company in those feelings. Through them we know that we are not alone; not the only ones with our eyes toward God as everything else around us seems focused on death, destruction, and denial.
God – Be with me this week, as I seek to see your world as you would have it, rather than as it is. Give me strength and courage and wisdom, and yes, most of all, love, to be who you created me to be. My praise is continually of you. Amen
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
13:1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Psalm 71:1-6
71:1 In you, O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.
In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me.
Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.
Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.
For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth.
Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.
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That is a truly insightful and inspirational juxtaposition. I am going to try to print it to take to Sunday school class. We are reading “Facing Your Giants”, and this will very apropos.