He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful in you. For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.  Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in  faith.  Test yourselves.  Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—2 Corinthians 13

 

 The Corinthian letters are perhaps Paul at his most personal and most exasperated.  It apparently took only 6 chapters to untangle the mess in Galatia. But Paul works through four intense letters, at a minimum, with the Corinthians.

So, by the time we arrive at these verses in 2 Corinthians 10-13, probably even Paul was  running out of things to say.  In the end, it was all coming down to what the Corinthians themselves were deciding about Paul, about all that he had done and said, and ultimately, what they think about the person at the center of all this: Jesus Christ.

And in that way, it seems to me that this is indeed a good Lenten text for us to live with, as intensely as we ourselves can, for these next few weeks. 

Because Lent, it seems to me, is a time to dig through our lives to find what it is that really is at the center of them, to find where our lives really are rooted.  Lent is like burning off, raking off the stubble and chaff each spring to see what has still been growing in us, even in winter.

And, if anyone had reason to tell a group of people to get their act together it was Paul, and if ever there was a bunch of Christians who needed to hear it, it was the Corinthians.  So, to me it is all the more instructive what Paul says and what he tells them to hear, above all else. 

“Take a look again at Jesus Christ and decide what you think about him.  No, his life is not what you would choose if you want to make yourself the center of everything.   And no, it is not a life you would choose as the most important life of all, if your goal is money, or selfish power, or adoration, or high position.  No, being a Christian, in its most unadulterated form, does not offer any of those things.” 

The problem for the Corinthians is that they DO want those things, and they are seeing that Christianity, especially as Paul preached it, doesn’t do those things very well. 

But Paul doesn’t have another Jesus to offer them, another Gospel as a more attractive option. It comes down to what we each decide, in big and small ways, in short-term and long-term ways, about the one person, Jesus Christ. 

Not even Paul thinks he can substitute his significant communication skills for the Corinthians’ searching of their own hearts and minds about what is or will be the touchstone story of their lives. 

It comes down to a  human being looking at the  story of Jesus of Nazareth, listening to it as a message about God— how this God has chosen to relate to human beings, embodied in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And at the core of it all is a deep mercy—grace—that welcomes and calls us home to relationships of mercy, justice and love with God and with each other. And that God has proclaimed this story the final and true future of all that exists.  So much so, that humans can live lives courageously and openly, tenaciously trusting in God’s own love.  We indeed won’t have promises of self-centered power or money or easy lives, but we do have a promise that living by faith in Jesus Christ brings true hope and peace to a world of people in deep need of them. Each one finds a whole new life opening in front of them because they dare, at the very center of their lives, to trust in the God of love and grace among us all in the person of Jesus the Christ.  R