"The Necessary Knowledge" (1 Cor 8:1-13)

Two Different Kinds of Knowledge

My sister-in-law, Erin, worked at a Lifeway bookstore in Denver, Colorado, when she was in high school. One year, a local church was hosting a famous Christian singer for a concert. There’s a good chance that if I said his name, you’d know whom I was talking about.

Anyway, Erin, her brother, and several other Lifeway employees had been enlisted as stagehands for the concert. They were thrilled at the prospect of being so close to this celebrity and brought posters with them from the store to ask him to autograph. They were almost starstruck. They knew all about this singer. They knew the words to his songs. They knew the stories of his life—at least the stories he’d shared in songs and interviews. They knew quite a lot about him.

But as they would discover on the night of the concert, they did not know him.

Which is to say, they had no relationship with him and actually had not an inkling of who he was as a person. Before I continue, I should qualify what I’m about to say with the acknowledgement that this singer must have been in the middle of a grueling tour and who knows what else was going on in his life. But what Erin and her colleagues discovered that night was a man very different from the gentle and yearning persona of the albums they’d listened to. He was frequently barking demands at his assistant. He did not even acknowledge them as he absentmindedly signed their poster, except to ask for a bottle of water. Needless to say, they went away from the concert that night disenchanted….

In some languages, there are two different verbs for the verb “to know.” One verb is for intellectual knowledge, knowing about something. The other verb is for relational knowledge, which is actually knowing someone through experience. For example, you might know who Chip and Joanna Gaines are, which is to say, you might know about them. But that would be different than knowing them. Than actually seeing them outside or beyond the confines of their expertly crafted brand and knowing something about their hearts, their genuine hopes or fears, joys or sorrows. (As it happens, my brother served a church just a block away from their studio in Waco, Texas, and he says they had a reputation for being genuinely lovely people.)

Knowledge Versus Love

Today’s scripture gives us a snapshot of an ancient dilemma. In Corinth and elsewhere in Rome, it was common for banquets and other civic gatherings to be hosted at the local temple, and the meat served there would be from the recent sacrifices to the local gods. As you can imagine, this puts Christ-followers in an awkward position. Let’s say you get an invitation from some friends to attend a wedding or a funeral or a baby shower. If you go, you may find yourself offered meat that has been sacrificed to gods you don’t believe in. Do you eat it?

Clearly some Corinthians are eating the meat. Paul gives voice to their reasoning in today’s scripture. “No idol in the world really exists,” they say (1 Cor 8:4). “There is no God but one” (1 Cor 8:4). In other words, they know better. They know that these meat sacrifices are ultimately meaningless; they are offered up to gods who don’t exist. As they see it, the meat is not defiled. So why let it go to waste?

What fascinates me is that Paul never says whether they are right or whether they are wrong. Because, for Paul, the real issue is not who is right or who is wrong. In fact, what concerns Paul is this very attitude of determining rightness and wrongness. Immediately after introducing his topic—“now concerning food sacrificed to idols” (1 Cor 8:1)—he launches into what seems an entirely different discussion: knowledge and love. He presents them as opposites. He says our faith is not aimed at knowledge, at knowing what’s right. It is aimed instead at love, at building up.

To make his point, Paul says that “the necessary knowledge” is not actually about anything we claim to know, but rather about living in God’s love and being known by God (cf. 1 Cor 8:2-3). I think back to the two verbs for “to know,” one about intellectual knowledge and being right, the other about relational knowledge and being connected. And I think Paul is saying that, if we want to talk about knowledge as a good thing, then we should be talking about the second kind, the knowledge of love, the knowledge of a person through relationship and care.

Of Rights and Responsibility

If we went through today’s scripture and put quotation marks around the word “knowledge” every time it appears, I think we would hear Paul’s tone voice even more clearly. Generally, he refers to knowledge not as a good thing, but as a dangerous thing, as an attitude or way of living that may in fact do great harm to others. “By your ‘knowledge’ those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed,” he says (1 Cor 8:11). In other words, when you eat food sacrificed to idols, there are other Christ-followers who have grown up in this culture of idols, and they will be confused by your actions. They will think, perhaps, that you are acknowledging other gods and that they might do so too and that Christ is not the sole way and truth and life—and so “by your ‘knowledge’ those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed.”

While food sacrificed to idols is an ancient and distant concern, seemingly unrelated to anything we experience, Paul’s underlying point is perhaps more pertinent than ever. For Paul, “knowledge” is an attitude of rightness that destroys community. Does that resonate? In this upcoming election year, our world will be flooded with declarations and debates and denunciations that are all based on “knowledge”—on this attitude of rightness. I am treading lightly here. (Please know that, from what I say, you can take what sounds true and helpful and leave the rest.) Our culture has become especially individualistic and consumeristic, and the sacred value that guides it is a person’s “rights.” Which is to say, the right to live the way we want (as long as we’re not hurting others): the right to buy what we want, to have the health care that we want, to drive what we want, to build the kind of house that we want, and so on. The American dream is an individual’s dream, underwritten by rights that are almost completely unrestricted.

It’s not a bad dream as far as it goes. It’s just that, for Jesus, for Paul, it goes nowhere near far enough. It is not the kingdom of which Jesus dreamed; it is not the kingdom that Paul proclaims in today’s passage. In the kingdom of God, the sacred value is not rights but responsibility. The sacred value is not being right but being in relationship. The “necessary knowledge” (and here I hear Paul through gritted teeth, saying “If we must use the word ‘knowledge’ then let’s use it this way”)—the “necessary knowledge” is not knowing about things but knowing people through encounter and through a spirit of care.

Bearing Hope in a Polarized World

Paul doesn’t issue the Corinthians a verdict on who is right and who is wrong. He redirects them from their preoccupation with rights and back to their responsibility for their neighbor. “Take care,” he says, “that this liberty of yours”—that is, this right to eat whatever you want—“does not somehow become a stumbling block” to others (1 Cor 8:9). And he models the way that he espouses, as he gives up his own right, saying, “If food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat” (1 Cor 8:13).

Today’s scripture strikes me as precious instruction for us who live in what seems an increasingly polarized world. I’ve read reports that the polarization in our society is actually more emotional than ideological. That is, people are increasingly coming to see their opponents not as having different perspectives but as simply untrustworthy and unlikable. It’s not that they disagree with them. It’s that they dislike them. Needless to say, this is not “the necessary knowledge.”

But as a follower of Christ, I can bear light in the dark. I can declare the good news of a different world, the kingdom, in deed and in word. And today’s scripture is a helpful reminder for how I might do that. The question that should motivate me in my life with others is not, “Am I right?” but, “Am I in relationship?” The “necessary knowledge” is not knowing the facts, but knowing and caring for the heart of the other.

An inspiring motto that circulated among the earliest Christ-followers in northern Africa was this: “We do not speak great things but live them.”[1] The fragrant aroma of Christ in our world is not what we know but how we live. Early Christ-followers made a name for themselves not based on a leader or agenda that would employ the force of law to protect their interests, but based on the way they cared for others. How in plagues they took in the sick rather than kicking them out onto the street. How they offered burials for the poor who could not afford them. How they conducted themselves patiently in business transactions, not bringing suit against their business associates. Their spirit was not a defensive one, but rather a sacrificial one. They had no power to protect, only love to share. Their knowledge was “the necessary knowledge,” the knowledge of their neighbor and their neighbor’s heart and need.

This year of the election is, as Jesus might have put it, a plentiful harvest. It is a special opportunity to show how we are different, to show the hope we have in Christ who knows and loves us all.

As our ancestors in northern Africa said nearly two thousand years ago, so may we be able to say: “We do not speak great things but live them.”

Prayer

Loving God,
Whose care we know in Christ
Who died for us all—
Help us to unlearn
Habits of rightness,
Attitudes of knowledge and control
…
That we might take on the easy yoke
Of Christ’s gentle and humble heart,
And that our care for others
Might bear witness to your life-changing love.
In Christ, who builds up others: Amen.

 

---

[1] Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2016), 14.

Living "As If" (1 Cor 7:29-31)

Turning Down the Invitation

It was the weekend, and one of the town’s most respected businessmen was hosting a lavish dinner. Toward the middle of the meal, the conversation turned religious. One man, who was a little less polished than most of the guests, began to talk about respect. He said that in the kingdom of God respect would look different than it looks in our world. The poor and the helpless, who are typically either ignored or treated with condescending pity, would have the most respect, he said.

Some people winced, finding the sentiment a bit dreamy and improper for such a gathering. A few others, however, seemed inspired. One man, moved with feeling, spoke up and said, “Yes! How great will heaven be!” (cf. Luke 14:15).

The first man smiled and said, “Yes. How great it is…for those who receive it.”

He went on to tell a story. “Imagine,” he said, “that the kingdom of God is like a lavish dinner. Like the one we’re having right now. The host”—and here he nods to the respected businessman hosting the dinner—“sends out invitations. But he is quickly disappointed. One friend says, ‘I’ve just acquired a new piece of land, and I need to go and see it.’ Another says, ‘I just bought some new equipment, and I have to try it out.’ A third says, ‘I just got married! Sorry, I can’t make it.’” The storyteller stopped abruptly. Apparently his tale was done.

Everyone in the room looked quizzically at the man, unsure of his point. To their blank stares and furrowed brows, he explained, “The kingdom of God is great indeed…but how often we turn down the invitation!”^[1]

The Kingdom’s Scandal

You probably have picked up by now that this paraphrased dinner party story is in fact from scripture, from Luke’s account of a certain Pharisee’s sabbath meal (Luke 14:1-24). I share it because I wonder if it is not also in the back of Paul’s mind when he writes to the Corinthians and issues them a similarly baffling teaching.

Paul encourages the Corinthians to live as if they were not attached to their spouses and loved ones, or to their work and accomplishments, or to their property and wealth. His words are scandalizing, striking at all the respectable bonds that hold society together: family, work, possessions. On second glance, however, these are precisely the attachment that Jesus addresses in his parable. In his parable of the dinner banquet, people miss out on the kingdom not because they’re evil and engrossed in all sorts of wicked behavior, but because they’re respectable and care more for their present attachments—possessions, work, family—than they do for God’s incoming kingdom.

There’s a clue in Paul’s language, however, that may help us to digest his message, which otherwise seems a bit hard to swallow. Five times in three verses, he repeats the phrase “as though.” For example, “Let even those who have wives be as though they had none” (1 Cor 7:29). Now Paul is clearly not calling for divorce or for the dissolution of the family. Elsewhere he acknowledges the value of married couples in the church. What he’s calling for is a change of mind, a change of attitude. Or what we might call repentance—not in the hand-wringing, guilty sense that we often attribute to the word, but in its literal sense of having a new or different mind.

Living Ourselves Into a New Way of Thinking

I’ve heard it said that, contrary to popular belief, we do not think ourselves into new ways of living. Rather, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. In other words, we do not simply decide to change the way we think. Our thought patterns are much too engrained and resistant to change. They’re second nature, like our breathing. It is only after we start to behave differently, that our thinking and our beliefs will follow suit.

The recovery community has demonstrated this truth better than any other place I know. In recovery, people who have trouble accepting the idea of God or even of a “Higher Power” are invited just to live “as if” there were a God who cared for them. To live “as if” is a gentle way of learning trust. The more we act “as if,” the more we see how our experience bears out the truth that we were hesitant to accept. For an addict, this might mean that living as if God cared for them and others results in experiences that show the goodness and beauty of care. They discover the little joys of life, like getting a full night’s rest or being clean and feeling good about it or looking into another person’s eyes and feeling seen. They begin to believe that there really is a higher power of care, and that trusting in its provision and guidance really does result in a better life.

I don’t know if recovery got this tool from the Bible, but I’m nearly certain that Paul is espousing the same practice in today’s scripture. His living “as if” is not meant as a literal and stringent rule. He’s not calling for couples to divorce or families to dissolve or workers to down their tools. Rather, his “as if” is meant as a sort of holy experiment. His “as if” is meant as a tool, as a sort of crowbar to pry open our lives to the kingdom of God. He’s not against families or friends or the fruits of our labor. He’s against those things being the end of our story. His invitation is to begin living as if the present order of life did not have the final word. As if our family or clan or political party were not the only people who matter, because everyone is a child of God. As if possessions were provisional and not permanent, because everything belongs to God and is meant for the good of all. As if achievements and losses were not the defining moments of our lives, because God’s love is steadfast and the true mark of our value.

In short, Paul’s inviting the Corinthians to begin living “as if” the kingdom of God were already here.

As If the Kingdom Were Already Here

We often talk about the kingdom of God as though it were a future event, a reality that will be visited on us later and from the outside, that will come with overwhelming force and establish itself once and for all.

One day God will wave the wand and everything will be better.

But what if God has already waved the wand (so to speak)? Could you believe it? Could you live “as if” it were true?

Jesus himself declares that the kingdom of God is among us, within us (Luke 17:21).

And the way that Jesus talks about the kingdom suggests that, at this point, it’s not up to God as much as it to us. It is up to us whether we decide to live in it. He compares the kingdom to something we receive, as a child receives the love of a parent and all the gifts a parent gives (Mark 10:15). He compares the kingdom to a place we enter (e.g., Matt 7:21), as though we had received an invitation to a banquet and accepted it (cf. Luke 14:15-24). He compares the kingdom to a seed that is carefully tended to and that grows (cf. Mark 4:26-27).

A common denominator in all these metaphors is that the kingdom of God happens not by force but by acceptance. Not by grasping but by letting go and opening up. It is never a matter of our being in control, but it is always a matter of our living faithfully—“as if” God’s care were real.

An Opening Up

Today’s gospel text in the lectionary is the famous beginning of Jesus’ ministry, when he calls the fishermen to become disciples and they leave behind their nets and their father. It is a dramatic image, and in our either-or way of thinking, it seems to suggest the disciples have renounced their work and rejected their family. But—and this is just my interpretation—I don’t think Christ was calling them to reject these things any more than Paul was calling for divorce. I think our faith and the kingdom of God ultimately entail not a rejection but an opening up. For the disciples, their story suddenly expanded beyond a fishing net, beyond the roof under which they grew up. Their story suddenly enlarged to include the concerns of not only their Jewish brothers and sisters but also Samaritans and Roman soldiers and lepers and gentiles and Canaanite women and destitute widows and little children. The kingdom of God was much bigger than the world they had previously inhabited.

What about us, I wonder. I feel that today’s scripture is too powerful and far-ranging to be reduced to a few routine prescriptions, so I’d prefer to leave it open-ended and to leave you with the question: What would it look like for you to live as if the kingdom of God were here? How might it affect your relationships and how you see other people? How might it affect your finances and how you handle your possessions? How might it affect your politics and how you live in a world of competing interests? How might it affect your mortality and how you relate to the reality of death?

It might be hard to believe that the kingdom of God is already here. Paul understands this difficulty, I’m sure of it. He asks us not to feel it entirely, or to be convicted of it, but simply to give it a shot. To live “as if.” And maybe we’ll be surprised with the results.

Prayer

Holy God,
Whose love is the end of the world
And the beginning of the kingdom—
Loosen our grip on the things, the people, the ideas
That hold us back from the grandeur
Of your kingdom
…
Give us the courage
To give your kingdom a try,
To live “as if” and to discover the truth.
In Christ, who shows us the way: Amen.

---

^[1] A paraphrase of Luke 14:1-24.

Where God Happens (1 Cor 6:12-20)

Destined for Destruction

I’ve noticed a certain pattern in my life. When something is nearing the end of its existence—it could be anything, a shirt, a car, a couch—I tend to care for it less.

I worry less about getting the stain out of an old shirt because what’s the point? It’ll be transformed into a wash rag or thrown out with the trash soon enough.

I neglect to get an old car washed or to clean its interior because what’s the point? It’ll be beyond repair soon enough.

The couch that sits right now in my living room, which is already a hand-me-down, is currently being torn to shreds by two cats who have yet to learn it is not a scratching post. But I’m not too fussed about it because what’s the point? It was already on its final leg before the cats took to it.

A Discardable Body and an Eternal Soul

Today’s scripture is like the fossil of a conversation. If you look at the insert in your bulletin, you’ll notice the use of quotation marks in verses twelve and thirteen. The original texts did not make use of quotation marks, but readers have long recognized that Paul is playing out an imaginary conversation with his Corinthian audience.

Apparently, he has heard them saying, “All things are lawful for me” (6:12), as a rationale for self-indulgent behavior, for doing whatever they want. Where they got this idea is uncertain. It could have been from Paul himself, who elsewhere declares, “Christ has set us free!” (Gal 5:1). Perhaps the Corinthians confused the freedom of Christ, which is a freedom to live well in any circumstance, with a license to do whatever one wanted.

But it is the next quotation that reveals what’s really going on. It reveals the roots of the Corinthians’ mistaken thinking. It shows the logic that fuels their self-indulgence. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other” (6:13). In other words, this body is destined for destruction. It’s discardable. It’s a temporary shell, a sinful thing we’re burdened with in this life. When we die, we will finally be shed of our body, and our soul will depart to live forever in the spirit realm with God. “Therefore”—the Corinthians reason—”what difference does it make what we eat? How we eat? Or”—as we see later in the passage—“whom we join with sexually? This body is destined for destruction anyway.”

Does this idea of a discardable body and an eternal soul sound familiar? It does to me. As I grew up, I learned this idea about God and ultimate reality not only at church but in the wider world. I can still see Looney Tunes characters comically flying off a cliff and dying and their souls departing their body and floating up to some spiritual realm in the clouds. The irony is that, while this idea has found a home in the Christian religious imagination, it does not come from the Bible. It comes from ancient Greek thought, from philosophers like Plato, who thought that the material world was flawed and imperfect and temporary in contrast to the perfect and eternal world of the spirit.

God Don’t Make No Junk

Paul is sometimes portrayed as a bit of a prude, a person who’s uncomfortable with the body and all its messiness. But I would like to suggest the opposite, that Paul is in fact a champion and celebrant of the body. Not in a shallow, if-it-feels-good-do-it kind of way. But in a God-don’t-make-no-junk kind of way. Paul had a firm foundation in the Jewish scriptures. He knew that when God created the world and humanity from the murky chaos of the deep, God saw that it was good, very good (Gen 1). So Paul responds to the Corinthians’ idea of a discardable body by saying, “The body is meant…for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (6:13). In other words, the body is good. If God meant it, then it is good.

In case there is any doubt about this, Paul points toward Christ and the resurrection. “God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power” (1:14). All of which is to say, the body is not destined for destruction. It is not a discardable shell. On the contrary, the body is how God’s Spirit becomes real (which is what we see in the incarnation); and the body is how God’s Spirit will endure and redeem everything (which is what we see in the resurrection).

The body is where God happens. God happened in the body of Jesus. God happened in birth and growth and touch and embrace and eating together. And when the cross seemed to put an end to this, God showed that actually the end was a new beginning. There is always more life. In the body. As Paul repeats across his letters, “We are now the body of Christ.” 

Our Bodies Matter

Paul is not a prude about bodies. He is a proud apologist for them. He thinks bodies matter more than we know. What we do with our bodies matters. It either bears fruit or contributes to decay.

Now, to be clear, Paul is not being a health nut here. He’s not saying, “Eat the healthiest food and work out every day and keep your body in pristine condition.” There are many people who say this but with self-oriented motives, such as living as long as possible or attracting as much attention as possible.

What orients Paul’s glorification of the body is not the self but God and the common good. “All things are lawful,” the Corinthians are saying, but Paul responds, “Not all things are beneficial” (6:12)—or as he says elsewhere in the same letter, “Not all things build up” (10:23). “All things are lawful,” the Corinthians are saying, but Paul responds, “I will not be dominated by anything”—which is to say, we can become slaves through our bodies to all sorts of pursuits and behaviors and idols, including the body itself. If I’m honest with myself, I can usually determine a healthy thought or behavior by asking the simple question, “Does it build up? Does it bear fruit—for myself and ultimately for others?” If it does not, if it isolates me spiritually from others or myself, if it makes me less available to God and the world, then chances are that I am in danger of becoming enslaved—“dominated by” the thought or the behavior.

Revealing Christ in Our Bodies

It is easy to read today’s scripture in a moralizing way, as though Paul were just saying, “Don’t have sex outside of marriage,” and “Don’t let your appetites rule you.” But reading in this moralizing tone would risk not only cultivating a culture of judgment and shame, but also missing the deeper point, which is radically affirming. Our bodies are good. Our bodies are not destined for destruction but for abundant life. Our bodies are where God happens in the world. The ultimate point is not what our bodies can’t (or shouldn’t) do, but what they can do.

Our bodies can smile and cry and embrace. Our bodies can walk and visit and sit together. Our bodies can eat and drink and enjoy life together. Our bodies can do all the things Jesus did that showed God’s love.

In this season of Epiphany, we celebrate not only how Jesus was revealed in the world two thousand years ago, but how Christ is revealed in us today. Today’s scripture invites us to reflect on the distinctive posture that Christ bore in the world, and that we might bear too. Christ did not regard the world as destined for destruction. He did not preach the good news of a fairy world in the future. Christ regarded the world and the people in it as infinitely valuable, worthy of care, worthy of touch and healing and hope.

In a culture that all too commonly dismisses the things of this world as merely resources to be used and discarded, we might reveal Christ. We might reveal a different way. We might live as though everyone—and every thing—mattered.

Prayer

Creator God,
Who looks on us and the world
With deep satisfaction
And calls us, good, very good—
Restore in us a sense
Of the holiness of all things
…
That we might, through our care
For others and ourselves,
Reveal Christ
And glorify your goodness.
In Christ, our brother: Amen.

"The Mystery of Christ" (Eph 3:1-12)

“The Gospel of Cats”

(Sort Of)

Some say they were brought in to take care of the rats. Others say that they were already inhabitants of the land. But everyone who lives at the 180-year-old penitentiary in Santiago, Chile, can agree on this. The cats were there before them.

For a long time, they were ignored by the officials and the outside world, given free room and board at the prison if for no other reason than their help with the rodent population. But in the last decade or so, the cats have garnered extra attention for what might be called their spiritual effect on the prison environment. The prison’s warden, Colonel Helen González, who wears a tight bun, carries a billy club, and wanders the prison in combat boots, explains the difference that the cats make. “Prisons are hostile places. So of course, when you see there’s an animal giving affection and generating these positive feelings, it logically causes a change in behavior, a change in mindset.” Having the cats around, she says, “has changed the inmates’ mood, has regulated their behavior and has strengthened their sense of responsibility with their duties, especially caring for animals.”

Carlos Nuñez, a balding inmate who is serving a fourteen-year sentence for home burglary, describes this change as he points proudly to his two-year-old tabby friend, whom he has named Feita, or Ugly. “A cat makes you worry about it, feed it, take care of it, give it special attention. When we were outside and free, we never did this. We discovered it in here.”

I cannot help but smile at the mystery of this arrangement. Here, where men are forced to live behind bars, cats freely choose to dwell. Here, where society has cast its outlaws out of sight and out of mind, cats make their home and make these men their neighbors. And by all accounts, they are doing for these men what the justice system has not been able to do. In their patient, insistent presence, they are inviting the men to care for themselves and for others. They are teaching them the good news of care—quite a different story to the fear-ridden myth that these men have been taught by the world, namely that control is the only way they will ever meet their needs.

Another inmate, Reinaldo Rodriguez, serving a firearms charge until 2031, describes the gentle behavior of his black feline friend, Chillona: “Sometimes you’ll be depressed and it’s like she senses that you’re a bit down. She comes and glues herself to you. She’ll touch her face to yours.” Chillona lives with Reinaldo and the eight other inmates who are crammed into the same cell. Reinaldo says that, in the beginning, he and his cellmates used a bowl of water to lure Chillona out of hiding. “Little by little, she would approach us,” he says. “Now she’s the owner of this room. She’s the boss.” The cellmates argue with each other over whose bed is her favorite.[1]

Lest you hear this story as my partisan proclamation of the gospel of cats (which I admittedly do proclaim from time to time), I should add quickly that there are similar stories of rehabilitation all over the world, involving not just cats but man’s other best friend as well, dogs.

Welcomed by Outsiders

Today we are celebrating the beginning of the season of Epiphany. Epiphany literally means “appearance.” In the church, Epiphany is the season that immediately follows Christmas, and it tells the good news that Christ is not hidden under a bushel but rather “appears” to people like you and me, shining a light into the shadows of our lives. The traditional story told at Epiphany is the visit of the magi—wise men. In fact, some communities call Epiphany “Three Kings Day” in honor of the magi who bring three gifts and thus are sometimes identified as three persons.

The story of the magi reminds us of a mystery. Generally, when a new king or ruler is announced, there is a grand celebration and reception, and he is given honor by honorable people. But when Christ first appears to the world, it is outsiders who welcome him.

For the magi are Gentiles. They are men from the east. They are watchers of stars, which is perhaps to say that they are starry-eyed. They pay little attention to the ground, to the boundaries that powerful men draw on it, and instead they search the “boundless” sky (cf. Eph 3:8), knowing that God’s grace can appear anywhere. The magi are not the only outsiders to welcome Jesus. We already saw on Christmas day how Jesus was welcomed by a band of shepherds, who were social outsiders of their day—not really the sort of people you’d have over for dinner.

The mystery that outsiders should receive Christ when he appears to the world is compounded by the fact that many insiders, such as Herod and the leaders of Jerusalem, look toward Christ with fear and resistance, if for no other reason than that his arrival threatens the standing order of the day.

Christ Welcomes Outsiders

This mystery of Christ’s reception, this reversal of insiders and outsiders, is mirrored in Christ’s own embrace of the world. Christ certainly embraces the insiders of his day, as evidenced by his genuine care for Pharisees like Nicodemus and for the rich ruler. The mystery, however, according to Paul in today’s scripture, is that Christ shares this same embrace with outsiders, which is to say, Gentiles, non-Jews.

It may help to remember that the earliest Christian communities were primarily composed of Jewish people. Jesus himself was Jewish. His first followers assumed, quite naturally, that to become a follower of Christ, a person must first adopt the respectable beliefs and rituals of Jesus’ own religious tradition. In other words, an outsider must first undergo a cultural makeover and become an insider. Then they could be declared Christian.

But in today’s text, Paul proclaims the mystery that Gentiles—outsiders—are already “members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus” (Eph 3:6). No one would have believed it if the Spirit itself hadn’t made it abundantly clear, manifesting in Gentile Christ-followers who had not yet undergone any cultural makeover (cf. Eph 3:5; Acts 10:1-11:18; 15:1-29). This, Paul says, is the mystery of Christ. No social change is required in order to receive the welcome of Christ. Sure, changes may happen as a result of following Christ, but they are not conditions for receiving the primal embrace of Christ.

I think back to the gospels. How Jesus marvels at and praises the faith of the Roman centurion—who is about as outside as an outsider could get, a military figure of the oppressive occupation of Judea. How Jesus spends multiple days with the Samaritans in their own hometown, even though they are derided by many as Jewish “half-bloods.” How Jesus eats with tax collectors and women whose lives have been dragged down into desperate and hopeless circumstances.

For Paul, the mystery of Christ is that we keep finding him with outsiders—people we wouldn’t expect.

The Riches of Christ

I think back to those cats in Santiago. There is something of the mystery of Christ in them, is there not? While society fears these men and puts them behind bars, the cats draw no such boundaries and welcome them as neighbors. And while the world’s rejection of these men threatens to keep them imprisoned in patterns of shame and violence, the cats’ acceptance restores them to a way of care. The cats help to reveal the true nature of these men as children of God, blessed and bearing the very image of Love.

There’s a word that gets repeated in today’s scripture. “Rich.” First Paul talks about the “boundless riches of Christ” made evident in his embrace of people who have not undergone the cultural transformation expected of them (3:8). Then he declares that “through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities” (3:10).

For Paul, “rich” clearly does not mean having many things. Instead it seems to mean embracing many people. The “boundless riches of Christ” refers to his gracious welcome of everyone. And “the wisdom of God in its rich variety” is what the church makes known to the world when it reflects this same gracious welcome of Christ. In a different letter, Paul says, “Welcome one another…just as Christ has welcomed you” (Rom 15:7).

The Mystery of the Church

What becomes clear in Paul’s letters, what is good news for the world today, is that Epiphany is not just about the appearance of Christ in Jesus two thousand years ago, though of course that is crucial. Epiphany is also about the appearance of Christ in us who are his body. The church reflects to the world the mystery of Christ, the mystery of his boundless grace.

I don’t mean to be starry-eyed in my praise of those chummy cats in Chile. Certainly, criminal deeds that threaten the well-being of a community need a response that will ensure safety.

But if I am starry-eyed…then I hope maybe the example of the magi, who were starry-eyed before any of us, will invite us to stay a minute longer with this question: what does it mean for us, as the body of Christ, to live out the mystery of his boundless riches of grace? 

Prayer

Mysterious Christ,
Who eats with tax collectors and sinners,
Whose work is done by cats and dogs,
Who turns up where we wouldn’t expect—
Help us to know ever more deeply
Your embrace of us as fellow children of God
…
That we might share this embrace with others
And make known your mystery,
Your boundless riches of grace,
“The wisdom of God in its rich variety.” 

Amen.

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[1] Jack Nicas, “Cats Filled the Prison. Then the Inmates Fell in Love,” New York Times (online), December 31, 2023; accessed January 1, 2024; https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/31/world/americas/cat-prison-chile.html.