“God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:13b

This entire text is difficult to hear. I’m willing to wager that most preachers are like me, reluctant to take on a text like this for comment before a captive Sunday congregation, as it draws on an ancient text of the Hebrew Scriptures portraying God dealing out death and sickness as punishments for misbehavior. Episcopalians are not known for threatening congregations with a god of vengeance, and for that I thank God.

I have four hundred words available to me here, and so I’ll dispense with the harder stuff and get to my point, which is that Paul is here exhorting the believers in Corinth to a life of sacrificial love.

This text in a larger context shows us Paul teaching the Corinthian congregation that participation in the Eucharist obligates them to imitate the self-giving of Christ toward them, giving themselves to others in love and service. This letter to them begins with Paul pointing out how badly their practice falls short of this standard and calls them to this high standard. And let’s take his point. Who really wants to live in a world without sacrificial love?
Comedian Stephen Colbert recently summarized this essential Christian teaching. Having put his guest Dua Lipa on the spot to reverse roles with him, she responded brilliantly with a question to him:

Dua Lipa: Does your faith and your comedy ever overlap? And does one ever win out?

Colbert’s response included this statement:

Stephen Colbert: I’m a Christian and a Catholic and that’s always connected to the idea of love and sacrifice being always related, and giving yourselves to other people, and that death is not defeat if you can see where I’m getting at there.

Here is the interview if anyone wants to see it:

The essential truth of Christian faith is that God in Christ gives God’s own self to us in love and sacrifice. This gift of God is for the greatest sinner as well as the greatest saint. God always approaches us in mercy, evoking our response of love and gratitude and our willingness to give ourselves to others.

Christian life is a life of spiritual and moral challenge therefore, since sacrificing for others and loving others is hard. It will put us to the test. So I find comfort in Paul’s reminder that God is faithful to us, and will patiently assist our growth along this path.

Holy One, in Christ you have made it clear that there is no one beyond the reach of your love, and you ask me to walk in the way of his sacrificial love. That’s hard, O God, on some days more than others. Sometimes other folks irritate me, and there are times when I’ve been hurt. Help me to acknowledge that others may feel the same way about me. Help me on those days when it’s the hardest, and help me to trust that you’re always giving me the chance to try again. Amen.
-Fr. Jonathan Weldon

“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 he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:12-13

So writes a man who suffered beatings, imprisonment, stoning, and who finally, the tradition has it, was beheaded in Rome. And to think that I sometimes imagine that I’ve got problems! Thank you, St. Paul. You’re giving us a good reality warning. It’s helpful to hear that the testing that overtakes me – well, there’s really nothing new here, it’s common to everyone. The truth is that, like St. Paul, the person reading this and I are among the beloved of God, yes, sure, but that doesn’t mean we’re living in our childhood happy-ending stories. Paul tells us that God “will not let us be tested beyond our strength.” How is that accomplished? Not by making the problems go away, but by providing us “the way out…so that you may be able to endure it.” “Endure it?” Not fix it? That’s it? That’s our happy outcome?

No, that’s not all there is to it. We’re human, and all the range of sorrows and joys and pains and glories of life are common to us, and to everyone we know. Thank God that, as we people are the way we are, it’s a very good thing that God is the way God is.

Good Lord, bless us with the awareness of your presence with us, through all the vicissitudes of the life with which you have gifted us. Amen.
-Tom Worrell

“We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did…” – 1 Corinthians 10:9

“We must not put Christ to the test…”. As if we could. The Devil sure didn’t get very far with Jesus out in the wilderness — and it feels like we’re all out in the wilderness these days. Nevertheless, I always find Paul’s message to the Christians of Corinth to be especially calming and hopeful: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing, he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

Lord, we ask that you save us from the time of trial, but we know that you will give us what we need to endure when that time comes — and it comes for us all. We have no need to test your faithfulness. Amen.
-Michael Boss

“…stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.” – Philippians 4:1

In the first century, St. Paul exhorted his brothers and sisters in Philippi to press on towards the prize of eternal life in Christ; to hold fast to what they had gained, urging them not to be undone by internal squabbling or external pressures. In the 21st century, these same urgings play out in a world beleaguered by a pandemic and fractious politics.

St. Paul encouraged the Philippians to observe and imitate those who live true to Christ’s teachings. Today we might call that being counter-cultural. It does take patience to wait on the Lord, and it’s tempting to grab onto the seemingly quick, simple, righteous solutions vociferously propounded by wannabe dictators. But we are citizens of heaven first, looking to Christ as our savior. Our faith isn’t in earthly power, wealth, or possessions, but only in the power of God.

When COVID first hit, our own Fr. Paul encouraged us to keep in touch with one another, wash our hands, wear masks, stay strong, stay church; we’ll get through this together. That was certainly what I needed to hear at the time. Now those words have become second nature as we continue to live a more active, but still altered life in the time of COVID.

I believe we can wait actively, as it were, by supporting and encouraging one another in our spiritual formation, in our various ministries, small groups, classes, communal worship, and, as St Paul says elsewhere, by praying without ceasing. I can also use whatever time, talent, or treasure I may have to do some good in the larger world in some way. All of this will be transformed by Christ to do God’s work in the world, and this gives me the strength and hope for a better day.

Gracious God, help me to live according to the example of Jesus, staying strong in my walk with Him, trusting only in the power of your grace. Amen.
-Carol Treston

“He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.” – Philippians 3:21

Yesterday Sharon and I did our walk down to Bellingham Bay, through Boulevard Park, and the over-water walkway to Taylor Dock. Ascending the dock toward 10th Street, I noticed a woman sitting alone on one of the benches, eyes fixed on the view of sea and islands before her. As we passed, I noticed the vertical lines in her chin; the wrinkles that come with age and was reminded that I’m entering the phase of life she is in. I felt within a sense of the fleeting nature of my life in this realm, and again I had to contemplate how I really feel about this reality.

Paul’s description of “the body of our humiliation” catches my attention. In David Bentley Hart’s translation of this text, he uses the word “abjectness” here. In any case, it means the body in which we experience low estate. Advancing age brings with it a sense of being in a low estate, with the aches and pains and diminishing strength that are characteristic of our latter years. In my own experience of a heart failure diagnosis and subsequent treatment, this has become more personal for me.

This text is full of mystery for me. Paul apparently thought Christ’s return was imminent. Our perspective is necessarily different than his on that score. His description of the transformation of our bodies into the likeness of Christ’s resurrected body is likewise mysterious. After all, Paul never in his writings precisely defines what he means by this glorified body.

As a priest, I’ve had the immense privilege of accompanying many on their path to dying and presiding over their burial services. On each occasion, I’ve drawn on my trust that this mystery of which Paul writes signifies something real, even though it is beyond my ability to comprehend. That trust has enabled me to affirm the church’s message that death is not defeat. The divine energies that showed Christ as risen, that came together to form us in our mother’s womb, are the energies that keep us in the larger life of God beyond all imagining.

I go on trusting, and glad for every day of health and strength I can enjoy.

O God, as my days increase and the horizon of time in this life draws nearer, help me to accept gracefully various weaknesses of the body over which I have no control. Center my heart and fix my mind on my true home, which is your dominion that is both here and in the life to come. Plant my feet on the firm ground of your love, which you bear for all people. Enable my hand to grasp the hand you have extended to us through Jesus your Holy Child, and give me always the desire to desire what he desires. Amen.
-Fr. Jonathan Weldon

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.” –Philippians 3:20-21

I think one of the best examples of a horrible situation being transformed into something amazing is that of St. Patrick.
Born to Roman parents, he was kidnapped and taken to Ireland as a slave. His captivity lasted six years, and he escaped after having a dream in which God told him to head for the coast. Some sailors were there and took him back to Britain. After some time had passed, he had a vision in which a man handed him a letter called “The Voice of the Irish”. The man in his vision begged him to come and walk among the Irish once more. Patrick listened, did seminary studies, was ordained, and headed to the land where he once was a slave. He preached in Ireland for 40 years, and he is credited with converting the entire nation, one kingdom at a time. He used everyday things to explain complex theological ideas (example: using a shamrock to explain the Trinity), and the rite he started (Celtic) lasted 200 years until the Synod of Whitby.

Western civilization owes a debt of gratitude to him as some of the monasteries founded by some of his converts became places where many manuscripts from antiquity were copied and preserved as mainland Europe was in a state of flux following the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire. Thomas Cahill wrote a book on the subject (How the Irish Saved Civilization), and I had the blessing to see one of those manuscripts, the Book of Kells, in the library at Trinity College when I was in Ireland 24 years ago. In the case of the Book of Kells, it is an illuminated manuscript, which means that it is also beautifully illustrated and as much of an art piece as it is a book. All of this was possible because of God calling one man who chose to return to the place where he had been a slave and working in the heart of that man to bring the Light of Christ to the people there. Our God is amazing.

Almighty God, you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses: Grant that we, encouraged by the good example of your servant St. Patrick, may persevere in running the race that is set before us, until at last we may with him attain to your eternal joy; through Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP, p.250)
-Jen McCabe