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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
June 14, 2024
Feast of Basil of Caesarea
Reading: I Corinthians 2:6 -13
Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory and which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”— God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.
Meditation - Peter Vanderveen
I am often aghast at what others say, supposedly fully armed with the authority of the church. Most of the time, what is said is directly associated with claims to some kind of power – the power to determine many things about our own context and our own lives. These spokesmen are salesmen, selling their version of the wisdom of this age, using God’s name. And they are simply positioning themselves for their own gain in the temporal economy of our time. They are often the friends of politicians who like to make friends with religious leaders who will serve their aspirational ends. It has ever been so; and, notably, Paul did not fit into this group. In point of fact, Paul adamantly refused the role of mutually scratching the backs of those in power. Because of this, he was repeatedly imprisoned. Few of his readers now take this adequately into account when they read his letters.
I am often amazed at the sheer transparency of the manipulations of religious figures seeking greater public status and position. I’m amazed no less that this doesn’t serve to discredit them. Or, maybe, we’ve all become cynical enough to believe that this is simply how the world works. Or, maybe, we quietly admire those who have the gall to so flamboyantly pursue their own self-interests, regardless of whatever they do to get there. Nonetheless, Paul had none of it. He was clear in his own mind that all of this, as the “spirit of the world” will, at some time, perish.
There’s something particularly marked by Paul’s use of the term “mature.” It signals the difficulty of holding to the wisdom that God has revealed. It’s hard to realize and even more difficult to accept. It’s easily distorted and turned to other ends. It requires the kind of discernment that can, and must, deal, at length, with much complexity. Nothing about real faith can, then, be put on a bumper sticker or a banner or a flashing electric sign board. These either announce the wisdom of the world or reduce faith to banalities. Think of how many statements that, might otherwise have a place in faith, have become meaningless by having been made less than profoundly difficult.
The things that we have no interest in are the things we’d like to be easy. We can dismiss them then. For the things we’re interested in, complexity makes them all the more thrilling. We’ll gladly get deep in the weeds. Paul asks us, then, how interested we are in God, really.
Prayer
O God,
it is good to be alive and numbered with those whom you have made,
I thank you for the gift of life.
O God,
it is good to count in word and deed for ends beyond our own;
I thank you for your use of me if I have been of any service to your purposes.
O God,
it is good to rejoice and to be glad,
I thank you for each person, for each experience of life,
that has brought me happiness.
Miles Lowell Yates: Give Us Grace
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