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1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Epiphany 4B
A few years back a colleague of mine was a pastor in the Greater Toronto Area. The Lectionary called for a sermon on 1 Corinthians 8 and so my friend did his level best to translate these ancient words into a contemporary setting. Mostly he worked hard to take the “food sacrificed to idols” line…
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Epiphany 3B
In Ron Chernow’s new biography of Ulysses S. Grant, we read that in the early days running up to the full outbreak of the Civil War, enthusiasm for the war ran high on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Both sides saw the cause as one of justice. Both sides fervently believed in their cause. …
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Epiphany 2B
In Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, at one point someone observes a husband and wife stealing coy glances at each other over dinner and just generally displaying their love. This leads one character to utter the wryly cynical observation, “The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is…
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Advent 1B
The theologian Robert Jenson passed away recently. “Jens” as he was known had the ability to see through to the core of many theological and historical matters. He once made a curious point in the course of a seminar I attended one week. Jens said that in history, the Christian Church has, of course, found…
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
Pentecost A
When you see a gift in action, it can be a wonder to behold. Think of the gift of administration, for instance. When I think of this, several people come to mind, including someone I once knew who I will call Ellen. Ellen worked for an organization that often required her at any given moment…
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Epiphany 7A
The wonder of grace. That is what this brief passage is all about. At the end of these verses Paul once again loops back to previously sounded themes about the wisdom of the world versus the apparent foolishness of the cross. He also hits for a third time the silliness of the Corinthians in balkanizing…
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Epiphany 6A
“We have the mind of Christ.” That was Paul’s amazing, lyric, profound final word in what we now call 1 Corinthians 2. It is this mindset alone, Paul claims, that allows us to see in the cross of Christ something other than a complete and senseless dead end. The cross is wisdom, not folly, but…
1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)
Epiphany 5A
Already on the first pages of J.K. Rowling’s first “Harry Potter” book we knew she was going to come up with a whole little universe of wild and funny things. The first such gadget we encounter is Dumbledore’s “deluminator.” It was the opposite of a cigarette lighter—you did not use the deluminator to light a…
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Epiphany 4A
Drinking from the proverbial fire hose, that’s what these verses from 1 Corinthians are like. 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 all coalesce around the cross of Jesus Christ. Few passages in Scripture so swiftly…
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Epiphany 3A
In the previous sermon commentary on the first 9 verses of 1 Corinthians 1, I riffed on Tom Long’s suggestion that Paul wrote those opening verses with tongue firmly embedded in cheek. He praises the Corinthians for the very things Paul knows full well they were in deep trouble over. He names as would-be compliments…
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