www.HopeandHelpCenter.org
Daily Lenten Meditation
By Ronald White
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.
Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, 'The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.' We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and s/he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing s/he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. NRSV
We who have journeyed through the Catholic, Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Missionary Baptist, A.M.E. or another conserving theological institution on our journey to Metropolitan Community Church will recognize and perhaps even resemble some of these admonitions. "Do not become idolaters!" Do not "indulge in sexual immorality!" Do not "put Christ to the test!" "If you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall!" Else, we may be "struck down in the wilderness" just like some of those Israelites who didn't make it to the Promised Land. Buck up, Christian! After all, "no testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone." Are you feeling a little "less than" you had hoped for when you decided to read your daily meditation for encouragement for your day?
Eeeyow. OK, eeeyow isn't a word; it's an exclamation of dismay that I felt when I read this passage and considered writing about it. If you are anything like me, you have spent one day too many in your lifetime feeling caught up short by what your previous church life and your judgmental Christian associates (note that I carefully did not call them "friends") have taught you about yourself and expected from you. If you don't remember the rhetoric, turn on just about any Christian radio or TV channel and spend a day listening. When I did that years ago, I asked myself "Where's the love?"
If you find yourself feeling a little troubled, perhaps even discouraged by myriad others passages like this one in the Bible, take heart. The problem isn't with you. The first problem is with the language in translation, with those who insist on taking the Bible as the literal word of God even though it has been rewritten first by hand for thousands of years and then with translators who have written and rewritten the Bible into dozens of English versions, each with their own politico-theological "spin." The second problem is the human beings who have over the centuries thrust themselves into church leadership positions, running their religious institutions based upon their own and their followers' strong need for concrete answers to questions which can at best be answered only ambiguously but which they dogmatically insist they have final answers to. If they would only begin with the most fundamental and profound question- who or what is God? - the impossibility of answering that question in any truly satisfying way would become their guidepost for accepting the relative ambiguity of the answers to many other of their profound questions. Instead, they cling to outdated and irrelevant historical thought, putting guilt, shame, and punishment on those who pose the questions and reject their neatly packaged answers. Like I said: the problem isn't you; it's them. Sad but true. But, Christianity is changing, awakening from a centuries long slumber. If you have trouble seeing it, look at our rapid growth at MCC. People like us are overjoyed to find a religious center that doesn't and leaders who don't judge us.
When I read the Bible or study Biblical literature, I cling to the unconditional love of God as Jesus pronounced it and as our pastors teach it: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." It is, Christ said, the highest commandment. My hope is bound up in the final, loving sentence of this passage: "God is faithful, and s/he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing' s/he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."
communications@mccgsl.org
No comments:
Post a Comment