Year C. Third Sunday in Lent March 18, 2001
1 Corinthians 10: 1-13
Heavenly Father empower us to learn from the mistakes of others, as well as our own. Amen. 1 Corinthians 10: 1-13
Title: “Learning from the mistakes of others, as well as from our own”
Paul warns the Corinthians against over-confidence by drawing a parallel between what the Israelites experienced in the desert and their own contemporary experience. He treats the passage through the Red Sea as if it were a virtual anticipated. Baptism and the manna and water from the rock as though they were virtually the Eucharist anticipated. Their experience provides a model, paradigm, type, pattern, analogy for the present. What happened to them can happen to the Corinthians if they presume that the effect of the sacraments is automatic, allowing them to sin and yet remain saved. For Paul faith is a perpetually renewed decision. The sacraments are vehicles to express that faith, not guarantees or substitutes of faith.
In verse one, “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea.” For Paul the Gentile Christians were so completely integrated into the people of God that they now shared a common ancestry with the Jews.
In verse two, “and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” Here Paul is using Christian Baptism as the analogue. He would say Christians are baptized into Christ. By analogy he is saying the Jews were related to Moses in an analogous way. Clearly, they were not “baptized.” They went through the Red Sea “dry-shod,” never touching the water and the cloud was above them. They did not enter into it. Nonetheless, the analogy is valid. Under Moses’ leadership they were destined, by God’s desire and protection, for the Promised Land, just as Christ leads those related to him, baptized into him, into heaven. While all Israelites underwent “baptism,” only two, Caleb and Joshua, of the original wilderness generation lived long enough to enter the Promised Land.
In verse three, “and all ate the same spiritual food.” “Spiritual food” and “spiritual drink” were Christian terms, well known, to refer to the Eucharist. Paul applies those terms to Old Testament realities that he sees as functioning for the Israelites in ways similar to the way Christian sacraments function for Christians. Like the material bread and wine of the Eucharist, the material elements-manna and water from the rock- signified “spiritual,” in the sense of more than material, realities.
In verse four, “and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” Because Moses fetches water from the rock of Meribah at both the beginning Exodus 17: 1-7 and toward the end Numbers 20: 2-13 of the wilderness wanderings, a Jewish legend grew up that the rock traveled with them and supplied them with water. Paul does not endorse this extra-scriptural fancy, but he does say that Christ, in some anticipated fashion that he does not elaborate on, accompanied God’s people as a spiritual source of nourishment throughout the desert. Many think that the statement “the rock was the Christ” is a later gloss, an insert by someone copying the letter. While this would make the interpretation easier, there is no clear evidence that it was not placed there by Paul. It was a basic Christian teaching that Christ, but not Jesus, was always present in the world from Creation. See John 1: 1-18.
In verse five, “Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.” In fact, the entire generation of twenty-year-olds and up who came out of Egypt, except for Caleb and Joshua, all perished in the desert. Paul means to say that they sinned and their “sacraments” did not protect them or exonerate them from responsibility for their actions. Nor will the Christian sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist be able to override or trump willful serious sin for the Christian.
In verse six, “Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.” We should not press Paul’s language too much. He is not maintaining that the only reason things happened in the past is for our present edification. They happened to and for that generation. Yet, one of the reasons they were written down and passed on was that we might be spared making the same mistakes. Scripture contains examples, paradigms, models, analogies, metaphors whereby we can look at our experiences and compare and contrast them with the patterns discerned in Scripture in order to align our behavior and attitudes according to the light they shed and standards they illustrate.
So that we might not desire evil things, as they did: Paul is suggesting that some Corinthians are involved in evil without recognizing it. If they would see the pattern in the example he is using they might see the light and change their position and behavior. Baptism and Eucharist alone, unaided by moral integrity, will not work.
In verses seven to ten, “The desire for evil things” is broken down by Paul into four specific sins: idolatry verse seven, immorality verse eight, testing God verse nine, and grumbling verse ten. The “sacraments” of the Old Testament did not protect the Israelites from the consequences of their misdeeds. Nor will Christian Baptism or Eucharist.
In verse ten, “And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.” At first blush grumbling does not seem to be on a par with the other three sins. Yet, it was a constant feature of the desert Israelites’ life. They complained that the water was wet and the rock was hard. They missed the food in Egypt even though they ate it in slavery. They could not be satisfied. All the sins mentioned have one thing in common: control. They wanted control of their lives, so they worshipped gods whom they could control, engaged in sexual conduct the outcome of which was predictable and controllable. They challenged God to get control over him and the grumbled when things did not go their way.
In verse eleven, “These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.” Paul returns to the point he made in verse six.
In verse twelve, “So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” Here is the warning against over-confidence. The line between confidence and over-confidence may be hard to draw in theory, but Paul, himself, was a fine example of being confident without being overly so. He was saved, but knew the final judgment and full salvation were in his future just as surely as Christ was in his present.
In verse thirteen, “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.” Paul does not want to leave the impression that the Christian is on his or her own, even though the sacraments are not automatic shields against temptation or sin.
Paul gives us a fine lesson in how to meditate on Scripture. He saw in the stories of the desert wanderings parallels for his own day and life. He superimposed on what happened to the Israelites in the desert what was happening to Christians in Corinth. That enabled him to see parallels between Christian Baptism and Eucharist and their functional equivalents in the desert experience of the Israelites. He reasoned that if all but two perished, despite the experience of virtual sacraments, then the power of these sacraments was not automatic. They were not magical rites operating independent of faith and fidelity. Then he reasoned that the same is true of Christian Sacraments and the same thing will happen to those Christians who are baptized in name but do not live out its meaning. Paul looked at his present situation with the light of the word of God and the word of God in the light of his situation. That turned the written record of revelation into the living Spirit of revelation and spoke to Paul in the present, inspired him and he wrote. Now what he wrote is part of the record of revelation and we are challenged to use it as our light for our time.
There are many baptized Lutheran Christians who believe they have gotten their Baptism shot and been inoculated. They also occasionally will get their booster shot and receive the Eucharist. They believe they are guaranteed heaven because they underwent the magical rites that made them forever saved no matter what they might do or not do. The fallacy of their argument is pretty obvious to all, possibly even to themselves. What is not so obvious is the Christian who wavers back and forth into that position. Consciously or unconsciously we can presume on the mercy of God. We can believe that God will forgive us no matter what and that it really matters not how we act. The sacraments are there for the asking and we will receive them when we feel like doing so. We will renew and strengthen our Baptism in the Sacrament of Reconciliation someday, when we are ready, and not when anyone tells us we should. We will celebrate the Eucharist when we have nothing better to do, and certainly not every week- that’s impossible. We expect God to be merciful to us at the drop of a hat, when we ask him, whenever that is. God is not to expect anything from us, however. This is a one-way relationship whereby, once I’m in, I set the rules-rules not for me but for God and then his Church and then other people and then all people. If anybody breaks these rules they will have to deal with me. I do not forgive as quickly and easily as God, so beware.
When we look at our own personal history of “receiving” the sacraments and our attitude towards them in the light of what Paul is saying, we can recognize some of the remarks in the former paragraph as true of us at least at times. Since the official sacraments of the church engage such powerful symbols and are so long-standing, now, and so public, and since their power comes from God, not us, we can easily remove our part, our participation, our response and responsibility, from the equation. When we do so we walk away from the celebration of the sacrament without the sacrament. All we got was the celebration. We take nothing of the Lord with us and that was the whole point of the exercise. The whole point is to be not only emotionally affected by the experience, but to be changed, to be effected by the Holy Spirit and be effective in both living in the experience ourselves and bringing others to that same experience. Jesus is the sacrament of God, the visible expression of God on earth and the church is the sacrament of Jesus. The sacraments guarantee encounters with Christ, and are the same experience in different forms and at different times in our lives. Indeed, every moment is potentially sacramental. Humans, be they the ministers or the recipients, cannot invalidate God’s powerful presence, simply because they do not do their part in the encounter. No human can prevent God from being there. However, that is not to say that humans cannot invalidate God’s intended effect upon them. That part God has left to human free will. As such, the sacraments are not automatic in their effect upon us unless we unite our will to God’s. This is Paul’s point here.
Learning from others can prevent us from making the same mistakes as they have made.
Learning from others includes learning from history; the “others” do not have to be alive at present in order to learn from them.
Those who do not learn from history condemn themselves to repeat it; there really are no new mistakes or sins.
Even the reception of the sacraments of the church cannot automatically prevent us from errors and sin if we choose to ignore the experience of others and of the past.
Sacraments: People will resolve to receive the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, more faithfully and frequently, and then become disappointed that they still continue to commit the same sins over and over again. They have put upon this sacrament a promise from God that God did not make. God promises to be with us always and he always is. Our express meetings with him in the sacraments of the church intensify our awareness of his presence. That intensification makes available to us more and more of his power, his grace, to change us. The sacraments provide us with the power, the energy, the grace, but they do not do the work for us. They make it possible to grow, to change, but not inevitable. To expect the sacraments of the church to do something they were not designed or given to do is a human error not a divine failure. That is not to say that we can change, change according to God’s plan for us, simply by human effort. We cannot. If we could, there would be no need for the sacraments of the church. When we arrive at our intended destination, say by driving our car, we might say upon arrival that we could not have gotten there if it were not for the car and the gas in it. By that we do not mean that the car drive itself or the gas drove the car. Yet, when we speak in religious language, we frequently say rather dumb things similar to crediting the gas or the car with this outcome, when in fact we mean they provided the necessary means, but we still had to do the work of driving. Sacraments are the necessary means to God, life with God, communication with him, forgiveness of our sins, but they are not the only element in the journey. And, of course, there are also those visible signs of the invisible presence and power of God that are not limited to the official sacraments of the church, signs open to all, be they of the faith or not, by which God reveals himself. Any experience or object is potentially a sacramental, not automatically so, when we look at it twice and see it in the light of eternity. Because the sacraments of the church do not automatically, in and of themselves, make us good or make us grow, does not mean we should discard them or bypass them. They are not optional. They are necessary, but the means nonetheless, not the ends, not the goals. The frequent and faithful reception of the sacraments of the church should not be a goal in our life, but a means, a graced means, in arriving at the goal.
Learning from History: Learning from the example of others who are alive and learning from those who are dead is really the same. Both are learning from “history,” for everything past, including what we have just read, is now “history.” There is written history, true, but that is only a very small part of history as such. While everything we think, feel, say or do is not written down, it is recorded, recorded and remembered by God. It matters to God because he loves each one of us intensely and immensely and he has shown himself to be interested in even the minutiae of our lives. He has so made us that we can learn. We are not programmed robots or living computers or puppets. We are his children and we learn mostly by example. Now, there is good example and bad example. Yet, even the bad example of others, or even our own bad example, can be turned into good examples, good examples, that is, of what not to do or not to do again. Thus, even the bad things that people do or that happen to people can become, for learners, disciples, good examples. That is what Paul is saying in this reading. We can learn from the mistakes of others, as well as from our own. If we do, we need not repeat them in our own lives. Amen.
