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1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Lent 3C
It’s likely that nearly all of us have heard Christians say something like, “God never gives us more than we can handle.” Because the people who say this generally have a lot to “handle,” I’m reluctant to confront them on it. But I’m always tempted to ask them, “Where exactly does God make that promise?”…
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Epiphany 7C
It may be a good thing that the Epistolary Lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday comes up only about “once in a blue moon.” Its sections of 1 Corinthians 15 contain, after all, what N.T. Wright, to whose book, Paul for Everyone: I Corinthians, (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2003) I owe great deal…
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Epiphany 6C
Few things are sadder than the sight of people who place their hopes in something that can’t deliver that for which they hope. Think, for example, about the sad specter of people lined up to buy lottery tickets, pinning their hopes for wealth on a generally worthless piece of paper. Or think about terminally ill…
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Epiphany 5C
In the Epistolary Lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday Paul describes his theology of the resurrection. Yet he insists that the Corinthians’ confusion about it isn’t just one among many problems that he’s already addressed. Lack of clarity about the resurrection isn’t like confusion about, for example, sexuality, food offered to idols and lawsuits…
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Epiphany 4C
In the more than twenty years that I’ve ministered with and to the church I currently serve, I’ve never preached on 1 Corinthians 13. Now I remember why. Not only is it so lovely that it nearly defies description. It’s also like a figurative lit stick of dynamite. So I take comfort in the assertion…
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Epiphany 3C
When asked to define “church,” at least some people answer by talking about a place like a building, an event like a worship service, or even a kind of organization that people join. But when Paul defines “church,” he speaks of a living organism into which God’s children are born again, by God’s grace. He…
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Epiphany 2C
God’s adopted sons and daughters generally like being related to Christ. Through him, after all, we receive not only the gift of salvation, but also eternal life. On top of that, we don’t have to deal with our brother Christ face to face. So he doesn’t get on our nerves by doing things like hanging…
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Easter Day B
OK, lots to say about these verses but to start: What do you mean, Paul, that Jesus appeared post-Easter to 500 people at once? When in the world did THAT pretty big event happen but that is referenced nowhere else in the Bible except in passing right here in 1 Corinthians 15? How did Luke…
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Lent 3B
Are there any other passages that sum up Lent better than these words from Paul? As I have noted before, this is like drinking from the proverbial fire hose. In verse after verse Paul scales ever higher theological heights and ever grander rhetorical flourishes as he stares, mouth agape, at the mysteries of God that…
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Epiphany 5B
It is not too difficult to take Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 9 and interpret them in a quite uncharitable way. Because on the face of it, one could allege that Paul here presents himself as human Jell-O, as a chameleon, as a glad-hander who will say or do anything to ingratiate himself to whomever…
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