24th Week OT (F): 1 Cor 15.12-20 and Luke 8.1-3
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation
The Corinthians are causing trouble again. They’ve been spending way too much time listening to their philosophers—the ancient world’s version of some of our itchy-eared career theologians in the academy. Speculation is rife. There is a prevailing spirit of free-wheeling conjecture, a ubiquitous riffing on borrowed intellectual fantasies, stolen fragments of Greek myth, mathematical idolatry, appeals to demiurge hierarchies, and some pop-star adoration in the form of personality cults centered on charismatic figures willing to scratch all those itchy ears in exchange for a little attention. One result of all this imaginative intellectual doodling is a denial of the resurrection of the dead. Essentially, a denial of Christ’s resurrection and a rejection of Easter morning’s Empty Tomb. This denial, this rejection is not simply one reasonable theological conclusion among many reasonable conclusions. It is an emptying of the faith, a draining off of the Spirit, the murder of our life in Christ. It is a mortal wound to the Body, the Church.
How so? Paul makes two very practical observations about the absurdity of a Christian denying the resurrection. First, he says that this denial renders your faith vain. Quite literally, your trust in the promises of God is worthless, without hope. Second, the denial of the resurrection is a conclusive admission that you have been a false witness to God, that is, to say that Christ was not raised from the dead and to say that no one else will be raised either directly contradicts the content of our apostolic witness, our historic faith and serves as testimony against God. We are pitiable Christians indeed if we turn so easily from vowing ourselves in baptism to the life-long proclamation of the Empty Tomb to having our itchy ears scratched by the dirty fingernails of mythic conjecture and itinerant theological curiosities. Remove those attention-seeking fingers from your ears. Turn away.
Turn instead to the women who traveled with Jesus and the Twelve, those faithful women who “provided for [Jesus and the Twelve] out of their resources.” No doubt Luke is reporting a very mundane reality here. The women made sure the preachers had basic food, clothes, the stuff everyone needs to survive while traveling around. Their generosity to the preachers of the gospel is more than kindness, more than bigheartedness. They were the instruments of the Lord’s providence. They were how the Lord chose to provide for His Son and Son’s student-preachers. The women’s generosity, their open hands and open hearts were a holy preaching.
These women witness against the urbane Corinthian boredom with the central truth of our apostolic faith. Your witness, literally, your martyrdom, must be as open-handed, as open-hearted as the preaching of these women. Your witness to the core hope of our trust in God—that as Christ was raised from the dead so too will those who believe in him be raised—your witness to this Christian truth must be exceedingly generous, ridiculously rich and disproportionately extravagant. If we cannot or will not testify to this truth, then we testify against God and we publicly renounce our baptismal vows. Truly, then, we are forever dead.
Rather than preaching a faith informed by vacant, speculative curiosity or a faith that merely monitors the Spirit dissected and comfortably pinned to fashionable secular prejudices, preach Christ crucified and risen, Christ raised and ascended. From the abundance of your godly trust, the excessive stockpile of our Christian riches, preach the Risen Christ…and get those nasty unfaithful fingers out of your ears!
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory and Church of the Incarnation
The Corinthians are causing trouble again. They’ve been spending way too much time listening to their philosophers—the ancient world’s version of some of our itchy-eared career theologians in the academy. Speculation is rife. There is a prevailing spirit of free-wheeling conjecture, a ubiquitous riffing on borrowed intellectual fantasies, stolen fragments of Greek myth, mathematical idolatry, appeals to demiurge hierarchies, and some pop-star adoration in the form of personality cults centered on charismatic figures willing to scratch all those itchy ears in exchange for a little attention. One result of all this imaginative intellectual doodling is a denial of the resurrection of the dead. Essentially, a denial of Christ’s resurrection and a rejection of Easter morning’s Empty Tomb. This denial, this rejection is not simply one reasonable theological conclusion among many reasonable conclusions. It is an emptying of the faith, a draining off of the Spirit, the murder of our life in Christ. It is a mortal wound to the Body, the Church.
How so? Paul makes two very practical observations about the absurdity of a Christian denying the resurrection. First, he says that this denial renders your faith vain. Quite literally, your trust in the promises of God is worthless, without hope. Second, the denial of the resurrection is a conclusive admission that you have been a false witness to God, that is, to say that Christ was not raised from the dead and to say that no one else will be raised either directly contradicts the content of our apostolic witness, our historic faith and serves as testimony against God. We are pitiable Christians indeed if we turn so easily from vowing ourselves in baptism to the life-long proclamation of the Empty Tomb to having our itchy ears scratched by the dirty fingernails of mythic conjecture and itinerant theological curiosities. Remove those attention-seeking fingers from your ears. Turn away.
Turn instead to the women who traveled with Jesus and the Twelve, those faithful women who “provided for [Jesus and the Twelve] out of their resources.” No doubt Luke is reporting a very mundane reality here. The women made sure the preachers had basic food, clothes, the stuff everyone needs to survive while traveling around. Their generosity to the preachers of the gospel is more than kindness, more than bigheartedness. They were the instruments of the Lord’s providence. They were how the Lord chose to provide for His Son and Son’s student-preachers. The women’s generosity, their open hands and open hearts were a holy preaching.
These women witness against the urbane Corinthian boredom with the central truth of our apostolic faith. Your witness, literally, your martyrdom, must be as open-handed, as open-hearted as the preaching of these women. Your witness to the core hope of our trust in God—that as Christ was raised from the dead so too will those who believe in him be raised—your witness to this Christian truth must be exceedingly generous, ridiculously rich and disproportionately extravagant. If we cannot or will not testify to this truth, then we testify against God and we publicly renounce our baptismal vows. Truly, then, we are forever dead.
Rather than preaching a faith informed by vacant, speculative curiosity or a faith that merely monitors the Spirit dissected and comfortably pinned to fashionable secular prejudices, preach Christ crucified and risen, Christ raised and ascended. From the abundance of your godly trust, the excessive stockpile of our Christian riches, preach the Risen Christ…and get those nasty unfaithful fingers out of your ears!
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