TO PRESERVE LIFE, NOT TO DESTROY IT
The community of Corinth has problems not only of unity but, as an important pagan port city, it is also easy-going on morality. Paul reminds them that this is intolerable in Christians. They are now identified with Christ and should have become new.
It is strange how, as we read in the gospel, faithful, practicing religious people, like the scribes and Pharisees – the regular churchgoers of their day – were a big obstacle to the work of Jesus. They are upset and angry because Jesus cures a man with a withered hand on the day of the Lord. Jesus came to do good and to preserve life, as he said, to carry out a mission of love and life, and these cannot be adequately expressed in laws and commands. We may and should do good also on Sundays!
First Reading: 1 Corinthians 5:1-8
I also received a report of scandalous sex within your church family, a kind that wouldn’t be tolerated even outside the church: One of your men is sleeping with his stepmother. And you’re so above it all that it doesn’t even faze you! Shouldn’t this break your hearts? Shouldn’t it bring you to your knees in tears? Shouldn’t this person and his conduct be confronted and dealt with?
I’ll tell you what I would do. Even though I’m not there in person, consider me right there with you, because I can fully see what’s going on. I’m telling you that this is wrong. You must not simply look the other way and hope it goes away on its own. Bring it out in the open and deal with it in the authority of Jesus our Master. Assemble the community—I’ll be present in spirit with you and our Master Jesus will be present in power. Hold this man’s conduct up to public scrutiny. Let him defend it if he can! But if he can’t, then out with him! It will be totally devastating to him, of course, and embarrassing to you. But better devastation and embarrassment than damnation. You want him on his feet and forgiven before the Master on the Day of Judgment.
Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me. You pass it off as a small thing, but it’s anything but that. Yeast, too, is a “small thing,” but it works its way through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast. So get rid of this “yeast.” Our true identity is flat and plain, not puffed up with the wrong kind of ingredient. The Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has already been sacrificed for the Passover meal, and we are the Unraised Bread part of the Feast. So let’s live out our part in the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread—simple, genuine, unpretentious.
Gospel: Luke 6:6-11
On another Sabbath he went to the meeting place and taught. There was a man there with a crippled right hand. The religion scholars and Pharisees had their eye on Jesus to see if he would heal the man, hoping to catch him in a Sabbath infraction. He knew what they were up to and spoke to the man with the crippled hand: “Get up and stand here before us.” He did.
Then Jesus addressed them, “Let me ask you something: What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?”
He looked around, looked each one in the eye. He said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” He held it out—it was as good as new! They were beside themselves with anger, and started plotting how they might get even with him.
Prayer
God our Father,
we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ.
He went around doing good
and no law made by human beings could keep him
from carrying out his mission of life and love.
Let your Spirit enlighten us
to understand his mentality
and to give first place to what is important,
that we may live by the law of love
of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Video available at: bibleclaret.org
