Lectionary Reflection for Lent 3C on 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

A TOUGH TEXT

If you’re a preacher, I’m guessing that you probably chose not to base your sermon for Lent 3C on the epistle reading from the Revised Common Lectionary. This would be a good week to host a guest preacher and invite them to choose their own theme and text or, failing that, to use one of the other readings.

This section of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians seems to contradict everything Lent has been teaching us so far. In place of the challenging but inclusive and gracious invitations we’ve been exploring, we now have a pericope that, on the surface, seems to support everything that the empathy-hating fundamentalists preach. In thirteen short verses, the apostle seems to paint a picture of God as violent, unforgiving, and lacking in compassion—much like some believers who love to quote passages like this as a warning to those who dare to disagree with them.

But before we skip over these words, let’s remember that there is always more going on in the Scriptures than a simple reading that imposes our culture on Paul’s argument.

A TEXT WITHOUT CONTEXT IS A PRETEXT

In a church that my wife once pastored, there was a wise and gentle man who frequently reminded us that “A text without context is a pretext.” In the case of this week’s epistle, the context is not just what goes before and comes after the reading, but also where the reading fits into the Lectionary.

Lectionary Context

The Gospel reading from Luke 13:1-9 has a similar feel to this part of Paul’s letter. In that reading, some members of a crowd to whom Jesus is preaching ask him whether people who died in two tragic incidents were being punished for their sin. Jesus’ response is firstly, to give a clear “No” and then to call his listeners to change their hearts and lives. As I explored in my article based on that reading, Jesus was challenging the crowd—and us—to upgrade their operating system; to discard their judgemental assumptions and perspectives and embrace the wholly different way of being that he called God’s reign.

When we place Paul’s words alongside Jesus’, we realise that his purpose was the same. The only difference is that Paul didn’t wait for someone in the church to ask him the questions. He went back into the Hebrew Scriptures and let them create the opportunity for him to share his message.

What Comes Before

When we turn back to what comes before these verses, we see Paul addressing the lack of love in the Corinthian church. He confronted how they had ignored Jesus’ way of love and he called them to be considerate, selfless, and sacrificial as they related to one another. To strengthen his point, he used himself as an example, noting how he had not lorded it over the believers but had become “all things to all people” (9:22) in service of them. Everything he did was for the sake of the Gospel, and he disciplined himself to ensure that he stayed faithful to the cause of Christ.

What Comes After

From 1 Corinthians 10:14-11:1, the apostle then urged the Corinthians to stay away from the worship of false gods and to avoid knowingly eating meat sacrificed to idols so that they would not offend others. He concluded this section by encouraging the believers to follow his example as he followed Christ’s. He then moves into his teachings about being considerate and fair to one another in worship, at the Lord’s table, and in the use of spiritual gifts, including his famous poem about love (See my article here).

When we bring together the various contextual elements of this pericope, it becomes clear that Paul is not invoking an Old Testament God of wrath to terrify the Corinthian Christians into obedience. Rather he is warning them of the painful and destructive consequences of failing to follow Jesus in the way of love, compassion, empathy, and consideration.

ANCESTRAL EXAMPLES

It is noteworthy that, in calling the Gentile Christians in Corinth to lives of love and mutual consideration, Paul used examples of “our ancestors” from the Hebrew Exodus story. As Arminta Fox points out, in doing so, Paul emphasised the inclusivity of the Christ-following community which embraced both Jew and Gentile.¹ These ancestors were all “baptised into Moses” (into the life, way, and community which God established through Moses) and they all “ate the same spiritual food” and drank “the same spiritual water” from the rock, which Paul identifies as Christ (in keeping with Hebrew tradition that Wisdom directed the Exodus).² These images imply that the Corinthians, like these ancestors, have been completely included and initiated into God’s sacred community.

On the surface, the religious memories Paul chose all depict a wrathful God punishing the community for specific law-breaking sins. But there is a deeper connection in these stories: they are all about worshipping idols or questioning the ways of God. In context we can see that for Paul, idolatry amounts to rejecting God’s ways of love and kindness in favour of selfishly satisfying personal “cravings” (v.6). It is important here to remember that Paul is building towards his poetic call to love as the primary Christian virtue.