1 Co 7:29-31

26 January 2003

“A Time to End, a Time to Begin”

            The place:  San Diego.  The time:  eleven hours from now.  The situation:  two minutes left in Super Bowl 37.  It’s been a hard-fought game, one which will no doubt be remembered as one of the best-ever Super Bowls.  Ricky Williams has run for over 200 yards.  Quarterback Jay Fiedler shows no sign of the injury that kept him out of six games this year.  The Dolphins need only a field goal to guarantee their first Super Bowl win since beating Minnesota in 1974.

            Okay, I know, time to wake up!  I know the AFC is represented by the Oakland Raiders in tonight’s game—a team, by the way, which was defeated in December by Miami!  I could be very bitter and rancorous over the way my team blew its chances to get into the playoffs, but it is, after all, just a game.  Still, there are people who feel differently!

            There are those who need to pull their heads out of the huddle, so to speak, and take a look at what really matters.  Just as it’s a sign of sanity to remember that football is just a game, it’s also important to remember that life itself is a game.  I say that with care, because I don’t want to give the impression that life is frivolous.

            If the Biblical image of God’s people as sojourners, as travelers, is true, then there’s always something (or someone) that deserves even greater devotion and loyalty than what we see before us.  That implies no disrespect—if that were true, we wouldn’t be playing by the rules, so to speak!

            In 1 Corinthians, Paul is helping the church to understand that beyond some very important questions are even greater realities.  And some of those questions are things like leadership in the church and taking people to court.

            In chapter 7, Paul starts talking about marital status.  The whole thing gets kicked off in verse 1 by something the Corinthian believers have mentioned to the apostle.  It concerns a spiritual ideal that many of them hold to be true, namely, “It is well for a man not to touch a woman.”  You remember last week when I said something about humor in the Bible?  Well, if I didn’t know better, I’d figure Paul is getting ready to deliver a punch line!

            What Paul really does is to present what he sees as a balanced understanding of singleness and marriage.  “To the unmarried and widows” his advice is that it’s “well for them to remain unmarried as I am” (v. 8).  That’s led many to think Paul was either never married, or he was a widower.  Still, he makes allowances for those who wish to get married.  He sums up his argument in verse 17 by saying, “let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you.”

            As we come to today’s epistle reading, his tone becomes more urgent.  We get the sense that something really big is about go down.  Earlier, verse 26 mentioned “the impending crisis.”  Several ideas have been expressed as to what Paul means when he says, “the appointed time has grown short” (v. 29).  The most likely scenario is his expectation of the soon return of Jesus, the second Advent of Christ.  Lots of people in the early church believed that the Lord would return during their lifetime.

            Still, that business about “the impending crisis” also suggests that persecution by the enemies of the church is increasing.  It seems like things are falling apart, just in time for the Lord to return and set things right.  With everything getting crazy, even desperate, the apostle steps up with some really strong words.

            His counsel?  “Let even those who have wives be as though they had none” (v. 29).  Some husbands would have no trouble with that one!  Paul continues his list of “as though”s:  “those who mourn as though they were not mourning,” “those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing,” and “those who buy as though they had no possessions” (v. 30).

            What is this?  Is Paul asking the Corinthians to live in denial—to pretend that all these things aren’t so?  He completes his list with this:  “those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it” (v. 31).  It kind of sounds like life as a game.  The Roman philosopher Seneca, who lived at the same time as Paul, said something similar about worldly possessions:  “Let us use them, let us not boast of them:  and let us use them sparingly, as a loan deposited with us, which will soon depart.”[1]

            What the apostle is talking about in our scripture reading is the spiritual discipline and spiritual reality known as detachment.  Paul’s seemingly nonsensical statements are warnings issued to the Corinthians—and to us.  Don’t lose yourself in the world.  Beware giving undue emphasis to this life’s entanglements.

            And again I’ll admit, that’s dangerous advice, because it’s easy to take it the wrong way.  It’s easy to conclude that what we do doesn’t really matter.  It’s easy to fall prey to the sin of sloth.  (I’m becoming more and more convinced that sloth is the trickiest of the seven deadly sins!)

            It’s easy to misunderstand Paul due to the way he ends this passage.  He tells them to be this way because “the present form of this world is passing away.”  That’s a line that I’ve found fascinating since the first time I read it.

            It’s not the world itself that’s passing away; it’s “the present form.”  The Greek word is schma (schēma).  Other ways of putting it include “the outward appearance” or “the fashion” of this world.[2]  That is what’s temporary; that is what passes away.  (“Fashion” really captures the fleeting quality.  The fashion industry prides itself on being transitory:  “Please!  That is so last month!”)

            What we’re seeing in our scripture reading is a glimpse of Paul the mystic.  That’s another word that should be used carefully, since many people associate the word “mystic” with magic, or the occult.  It’s thought of as something spooooky.  When I was a kid, my favorite comic book was Dr. Strange:  Master of the Mystic Arts.

A mystic, properly understood, is one who has an experience of love and prayer with God that goes beyond human words and concepts.  There’s an immediacy, an awareness, that makes our everyday level of consciousness seem like deep sleep.  Paul hints at this in several places.  In Galatians 2:20, he says “it is Christ who lives in me,” and in Colossians 3:3, Paul speaks of life “hidden in Christ with God.”

            We can think of moments in life similar to this.  Sometimes basketball players and long-distance runners are said to be “in the zone” when, caught up in the intensity of the moment, they’re not aware of themselves.  Zen Buddhists speak of “no mind.”  It’s the place in which we forget ourselves, that is, we forget the self that we call “I.”  That self is hidden, and the true self emerges.

            Stay with me here.  Children tend to be much better at this, maybe because they aren’t trying to.  In childhood did you ever, maybe in the late afternoon, gaze at dust floating through the air, illuminated by beams of sunlight through a window?  Or maybe when the house was perfectly still, listen to someone turn the pages of a book?  Or listen to the sound of a flowing river?  For me, anyway, there were moments like that when time seemed to lose all meaning and I forgot everything except the…eternity that showed itself then and there.  (I did say it’s hard to put this stuff into words!)  It seems that, as we grow into adulthood, we lose that innate wisdom.

            Still, we have to remember that this deep love and experience of God isn’t something conjured up at will.  It is a gift.  But just like basketball players and long-distance runners who find themselves “in the zone,” preparation is necessary.  At times during his career, Michael Jordan has made playing basketball look effortless, but a lot of effort has gone into that effortlessness!

            One of the twentieth century’s best-known interpreters of the church’s mystical tradition, Thomas Merton, has spoken of this gift that we have a role in receiving—this way of fully living in the world as though we weren’t, to paraphrase St. Paul.[3]

Merton says, “When we consider the fidelity, the resoluteness, the determination to renounce all things for the love of God, without which we cannot pass over to the higher levels of purity and contemplation, we remain aghast [amazed, horrified] at our own weakness, our own poverty, our evasions, our infidelity, our hesitancy.  Our very weakness clouds our vision.  We are left helpless, knowing very well that we are asked to give up everything, yet not knowing how or where to begin.  In such a condition there is no use in forcing the issue.  Great patience and humility are needed, and humble prayer for light, courage and strength.”

How well I understand those words!  And that’s not an understanding that’s simply mental or intellectual.  Unfortunately, I’ve lived those words, as I suspect, have all of us.  As time goes on, we realize the ways we’ve been both blessing and curse; we see a lifetime of success and failure, of faithfulness and betrayal.

            But Merton continues, “If we resolutely face our cowardice and confess it to God, no doubt He will one day take pity on us, and show us the way to freedom in detachment.”  Our Lord wants to hear from us—better yet, to commune with us.  It takes more than an hour on Sunday morning to live that life.  It takes more than the occasional prayer.  It takes more than that for us to be disentangled from the trap, which is the present form of this world.

            The appointed time has grown short.  Now is the time to end, the time to begin.  It’s the time to end the old life, which is passing away.  It’s the time to begin the new life, to play the real game.

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