Paul's Second Letter To the Corinthians Communio inter sanctis Part I Chapter 1: We live for each other. Verses 1-7: The holy ones share in the lives of each other. The help that we have from God is the privilege of sharing toogether in the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Each of us shares a little bit of the full life of Jesus, with some of the suffering, some of the death, and some of the glory. Didn't Jesus say he had come so that we might have life in fullness? The gift is not a one-sided life, a caricature of living, but it is a life characterized by the full experience of living. Jesus' life included deep friendships, terrible enmity, utter rejection, and final triumph; we too can hope for friends, enemies, rejection, and victory. All of us, who are counted holy because of our sharing in the holiness of Christ, share together with each other in Christ's life. Comfort and endurance is given purpose in community as we share them with our sisters and brothers. Suffering is sanctified by being merged into Christ's own sufferings. Whenever we are troubled and in pain, we share in the work by which Christ made the fullness of life available to our children, our friends, our family, our neighbors, and to ourselves. Whenever our confidence is restored or our life is seen to be united with God's power, we become a beacon of hope for the other saints who are sharing this life with us. Verses 8-11: We share our life in God. We share in Christ's life when we rely on God's power rather than our own. It is a gift to be given such burdens that we cannot pretend to carry them ourselves. Even Paul the apostle found himself relying on his own resources instead of God, but God allowed Paul to face the judgement of death. God alone raises the dead to life. Faced with a death warrant, there is no one else to turn to. We who are baptized into the death of Christ share in Jesus' death and also share in the promise of his resurrection. In this death and in this hope, in our friendship with God and through our prayers and the unity of the body of Christ, all of us share in the death warrants against each other. Equally, we all share in the life which is rescued and saved from death. Verses 12-24: Our imperfect sharing is founded on perfection. We do not share God's mind so perfectly that we always anticipate God's own way. A plan of action which is adopted with the best intentions may later prove itself to be ill-advised. Such plan ought to be discarded and replaced by another. Changing our plans may cause misunderstanding and disappointment to those who replied on the original plan. Changing a plan may seem inconstant, but it is more consistent to be true to the good intention than to follow a plan that will not accomplish the work. Chapter 2: Our lives live in others. Verses 1-11: We have the ability to build each other up. Making people unhappy brings nothing good, it can only increase unhappiness. There is not even the satisfaction of creating some sort of equality in pain, for the pain we inflict on another brings us down with it. On the other hand, the joy we bring others draws us up with them in a general increase of happiness. In this life full of false starts and mistaken plans, we will always have broken relationships and discouraged people. We are not able to avoid these things, but we can overcome them with forgiveness and reassurance. Human action communicates itself among any people who touch each other. Our forgiving and encouraging spreads to the whole community and increases pardon and courage far more than our individual actions alone can account for. This is true for secular people as well as for Christians, but for us, who are united by Christ's presence with us and by sharing in Christ's love for each of us, this multiplication is stronger than for people whose community arises only from geography or commerce. Verses 12-17: God uses our lives to build the kingdom. God's action communicates itself more powerfully than our human actions. God's action reaches beyond the people who are tied closely to us; God's action is so pervading that it seeps into closed minds like a odor seeps into closed rooms. It is God's pleasure to use our lives to carry this activity into the world. Our lives are burned up like the incense in order to create the fragrance by which God's power reaches the people. We may be led from place to place or from job to job, we may have no more freedom of action than captive slaves paraded in a foreign city for the glory of a conquering general. But the general who has captured us is Christ and the victories which Christ wins are shared with us. Chapter 3: We are servants with power. Verses 1-6: God provides us with the ability to serve. Christ's agents do not rely on credentials or ordinances for our authority. In fact, we have no authority to be attested by testimonials or legal instruments. All of the authority and power exercised on behalf of the work of Christ is Christ's own authority living in us. The ability to do the work is God's ability planted in our lives; our letter of reference is the Spirit of God which is alive in the lives of those whom we have touched. God is a living God. God's spirit lives and causes us to live. The life of God is our life and our work, our ability and our final grade. Verses 7-18: We are invited into the presence of God. God's power is glorious whenever it is seen. God's presence is so powerful that it imprints itself on a human face to remain visible long afterward. Now God puts forth something unheard of: Now God's own spirit will live within us and God's presence will be with us and imprint itself on our lives. This is what is new in the new covenant, that God will live so closely with us that the presence and the power of God can be read in our attitudes and our actions. God's power shines not only in our faces but in our whole lives. God's power is glorious whenever it is seen. When God's power is not seen, it is because a heart is covered over with preconceptions, prejudices, and false expectations. We humans are often blind to anything which we do not expect to see - and who would expect to see the almighty God living among us? Only those who have already seen God in Jesus Christ, living among us. God's power is glorious whenever it is seen, and God's glory is powerful to change us. Every experience changes us. Every discovery changes our expectations; every new expectation changes our ability to see. Every glimpse of God present among us frees us a little from the blindness which comes from our refusal to see God. Chapter 4: Faith brings realistic confidence. Verse 1: God's work is a gift of confidence. Any work at all helps us to focus our lives, to organize our days, and to provide a standard by which we can know that we are useful and our lives worthwile. If we had merely made up something to do, to occupy our time, we might lose heart knowing that our efforts have no important purpose. If someone else gives us work to do, it may do nothing but prop up that person's vanity. Such work does little to keep us from being discouraged with life. Our work is from God; we know that it is useful and we can be sure that God will make it effective. Therefore we have confidence and do not become disheartened. Verses 1-9: Living in God's presence is living in the sunshine. When dawn first comes on a clear morning, the shadows begin to change into understandable images of trees and rocks and walls. The sunlight allows us to know more accurately what is around us. We are able to move more confidently and work more easily. The awareness of God's presence with us also allows us to know life more accurately and because of this we act with confidence. People who are not confident try to hide their words and actions in confusing shadows. All of us have been caught saying and doing foolish things which can't stand up to scrutiny. Then we want to change the subject or make up a story that will confuse the situation. In that way, our foolishness is lost in a maze of unrealated thoughts. People who are confident about what they are trying to do have no need for such dissembling. To the extent that God's splendor has illuminated our lives, we have that confidence. To the extent that we are united with God's purposes, we want to live a simple, straightforward life. We don't want our lives to confuse anybody about anything, but on the contrary we want everyone to see life clearly as if everything were in the sunshine. Verses 7-12: God's presence shines in our whole lives. The light of God's presence shines into every aspect of our existence. Not everything is changed, but everything is transformed. The rock remains a rock when the sunlight touches it, but it no longer has to be a stumbling stone because it is seen for what it is. Verses 10-18: Understanding is illuminated by faith. The people who are now sharing in the living and dying of Jesus are confident of sharing in Jesus' total triumph. We find that our lives are bound more and more closely to Jesus, and we find no evidence that we will, or even could, ever be separated. On the contrary, the union of the lives of the most holy among us with Christ gives every evidence of being indissoluable. As for ourselves, we find both that Jesus has become our friend and also that Christ's people are friends to us, bound ever more closely to us. Not only do we share a friendship with Christian neighbors, but Christ's people from far away and from long ago also share their lives and confidence with us. Because of this we are confident that we hold the same membership in Christ's body as they do and we may hope for the same indissoluable union with Jesus and with all of his people. In view of such confidence, we understand the relative significance of daily events differently. The good things of life are seen to be only pieces or intimations of the good that is to come; the unhappy things are known to be temporary and certain to disappear. A person without faith cannot understand life this way; a person without faith can only take into account those things which are apparent to human experience. We who have faith consider what is apparent to everyone but we also consider God's promise for the future. Chapter 5: We have a new family and a new home. Verses 1-10: God provides us with a true home. The language of home is both poetic and real. People who do not live in nomads' tents can still understand that metaphor of transitory existence. Similarly, our lives often carry a sense of alienation not unlike being far from home. This is poetry which conveys real truth about our human lives, truth which is confirmed not only by other Christian people but by worldly people as well. Home is a place to live, but by extension it means also the relationships with others which we often form at home. The deeper and more important meaning of home is the proper and right relationship which we have there. God offers us a real home in this deeper sense. Now we have only a shadow of this home, just as we are able to carry a feeling of our earthly homes with us when we travel far away. Our earthly homes, however, seldom last even for this temporary life. We are most often leaving our homes behind. The home God provides is not temporary, and throughout this life we are always approaching it. We are always coming home to our home with God. Then how can we be content to remain here in this tent? Would we not be happier to hurry home to our God and our family in Christ than to stay here in a dwelling that is not our real home and which can only become more worn and tattered the longer we stay? We remain because it is right for us to stay here and to live fully the life which God provides us. How could we be happy at home if we have upset the right relationships that make it our home? It is God's pleasure to provide a home for us which we could never earn for ourselves and we have God's own promise that our home will be waiting for us. It is our desire to be pleasing to a father who makes such a promise to us. Verses 9-11: We understand the fear of the Lord. God has promised a place for us; we don't fear being cast out. God is merciful; we don't fear being condemned for our own weakness. God has been faithful to us; we do not fear a fickle change of heart. We do not fear because God has chosen faithfulness and mercy. True fear of the Lord is a true knowledge of what God is able to do and a perpetual amazement at how God has chosen to use this power. From such knowledge grows the conviction that no response is a fair return for choices that God has made to our benefit. What can we want except to make our benefactor happy? We did not earn God's action and we can never pay for the benefit we receive. What is possible for us except to do our best to make God happy? This is all we have to offer; this is all we dare to want to do. Our fear of the Lord is that we will fail in this one thing. Our fear is that God, who so much wants to accept us and whom we so much want to please, will not be pleased with us. But what a strange fear we have! For we fear no one except a God who has become our friend. Verses 11-21: God provides us with a true family. In Jesus, all our relationships are changed. Without Jesus, we can live for ourselves and our own pleasures. Without Jesus, we might be able to love another for their own sake, even accepting injury to ourselves in order to benfit the one we love. With Jesus, life is given over completely to the one whose death has brought us into God's family. We live only for him. We live only for Jesus. He lives only for us. We love God and want to please God. God loves us and all our neighbors and will be pleased when we love them as well. Such love is a circle dance, each dancer yielding in turn to the next. Jesus gave up his place and his life so that I might have a place in the good order of life, and so I too must yield my place to the person next to me. I want to yield my place; then I can take my rightful place and all of us can be at home in the family of God. Verses 13-17: We understand how God organized the world. Is this dance of love reasonable? Does it make sense and explain how the world works? If this metaphor makes sense of how to live, then it helps you to come closer to God and to be joined more tightly with all the people of God. If it does not, it is because God's action in the world is so far beyond human expectation that we always fail to grasp it completely. Chapter 6: God's gift calls for a response. Verses 1-2: We must open ourselves to the gift God gives. God has acted in our favor. Our complaint has already been heard. The barrier which stood between us and God has been removed. Now if we continue to complain, what have we gained from God's action? It would be as though we had been knocking at a door. When the door is opened, should we still stand outside? Should we put a piece of wood over the open doorway so that we can continue to knock? When the door stands open we should go inside. God's house is a house of action and those who go inside are expected to work. But we go inside as friends of God and we work together with God. This is different from wage labor because we are working with our friend to achieve our common goal. This is different from a joint project with human friends because this friend is God, whose projects always succeed in the end. Verse 3-10: We conduct ourselves as God's fellow workers. Working with God does not make us immune from hunger, sinus infections, back-stabbing associates, debts, unemployment, corrupt or lazy bureaucrats, or from any of the other troubles that might plague our lives. If anything, our association with God may bring us into more danger of these difficulties. On the other hand, our work with God may inspire people to praise us or to reward us when they see the good we are able to do - or when, seeing that we can't be stopped, they want to buy us off. Working together with God gives us the certainty that neither troubles nor honors are the last word on our efforts. We know that the judgements other people make about us, about our lives and our work, are not reliable. We give no weight to these opinions, but concentrate on our role in helping God with the work at hand. The work that we are engaged in is the work of bringing the whole of creation together in Christ. That is why we rely on love, truth, patience, and rectitude as our tools; these are things which bring people together in lasting ways. Using these tools in cooperation with God binds people to God, to God's people, and to all that God has created. Verses 11-13: We are open to each other. We are God's fellow workers, so we are fellow workers with each other. When we all name God our Father, we name each other members of the family. If the barrier which stood between each of us and God is gone, then the barrier between me and you is gone as well, or at least it has been circumvented and made ineffective. Our response to God's gift is to work together with God and with each otehr in doing God's work. Verses 14-18: We ourselves are tied to God alone. We are God's fellow workers, and therefore we ought never to let ourselves be fellow workers with God's enemies. If we are to be God's family, we can't be the devil's children. Judging others is not part of the work given to us. The instructions to leave and to be separate are only a preamble to the command to come home and to join God's family. We are not set up as judges, but neither are we called to compromise our rightful place in God's family. Chapter 7: Sharing among the holy people. Verses 1-4: We share holiness, friendship, and joy. We are the holy children whom God has adopted. We share first of all God's acceptance, God's promise, and God's care for us. All of our sharing is founded on the gift that God has already shared. Next we share a common response to God's gift. We share our desire to be completely dedicated to God. We share each other. As we are all family and fellow workers, our lives are intertwined forever. It is right that we should take pride in each other because we have become family by God's action. What is more, we are family forever, tied to each other forever, because we share our lives through God. Verses 5-12: We share sadness that turns to gladness. God is able to take every circumstance and turn it to good use. Life is full of unhappiness. Christian life is full of unhappiness, quarrels, anxiety, uncertainty. We know enough of the first years of the church to known that this has been true from the very beginning. Human beings disagree with each other, condemn each other, go their separate ways. Each human being is subject to doubts, regrets, fears, and frustrations. This is how God made us. But God is able to turn these realities to good use. Regret acting alone does no good. Regret by itself is pain about actions that are past, about things that cannot be changed, events that are already dead. Regret acting together with faith becomes a useful tool which God is able to use to change hearts and behavior. Regret, pain, disagreement, or anything else we may experience in life becomes good insofar as it becomes useful in furthering the work of God. Verses 13-16: We share each other. As family and co-workers we believe in each other and hope for the best from each other. It is natural to praise friends to other friends who don't yet know them; we say, "You will like my friends. They have a great faith and friendship with God. They go out of their way to encourage each other and everyone with whom they work." Afterward, we wonder whether our love for our friends may have blinded us to their faults as we praised them - we all have faults, after all. How happy it makes us when our friends meet each other and say to us, "You were exactly right. Your friends are just as you described them. I am proud to be part of the same family with them." This is exactly the kind of boast that Jesus makes about us to the Father. Jesus says that we are good people, that we are his friends, loyal and faithful. How happy Jesus will be if his boast about us proves true! We do not want to embarass him after all he has done for us. Paul's Second Letter To the Corinthians Communio inter sanctis Part II Chapter 8: We can aid each other with gifts. Verses 1-15: Gifts of aid are an expression of mutual love. When we see others giving generously, especially others of God's family, we find an example on which to model our own actions. We might act like them simply from shame, because we know well enough how self-centered we ourselves are. It is better to see these generous people as members of our family whose efforts and interests we want to share and support. If we love someone, we will love what they love and share in what they do from love, no matter what our own inclinations might be otherwise. In this way, our love ties us first to those who have already been giving generously and then to those who are being aided by our gifts. Those whose generosity inspired us are joined to us in thanksgiving for our willingness to multiply the efforts which they already began. Those who receive the assistance may be grateful for the gifts, but they will be tied closer to us in God's love when they understand that the gifts were given out of the mutual love we share for all the members of God's family. We should always be anxious to receive gifts from each other which supply whatever we lack for doing the work of Christ. It is God's pleasure that we should share together in order to have what we need to carry out the work we were given. Therefore, we share what have. We search our lives to find what riches we possess so that we will be able to share our money or our discernment or our enthusiasm with our co-workers who have less money or poorer discernment or less confidence. Where we are in need, perhaps we are rich in need and can offer our need to our family as an opportunity to build up the strength of Christ's body by receiving what we lack. Verses 16-24: We give our gifts with care and respect. The way in which we offer what we have is a part of the gift that we make. The gift should be made humbly and even circumspectly, making certain at every step that it is done because of our love for Christ and for the family of which God has made us a part. Chapter 9: Our sharing binds us to God. Because we love God, we love what God loves and we want to share in the things that God does from love, no matter what our inclinations might otherwise be. Sharing our riches with the rest of God's family echoes God's own love. In this way, our love ties us first of all to God whose has already been giving generously. God's own acts of love inspire us to add to the good effects which they already produce. Therefore, we search our lives to find what riches God has given us. God makes us all rich so that we will be able to share generously, just as God is generous. We are not all rich in the same things; the essence of generosity is giving freely whatever we do have. Not only do our gifts supply what others lack; our gifts provide an occassion for them to give thanks and praise to God for the love which God shares with and through all of us who are part of God's family. Our gifts to others begin as gifts which God has given to us; we make these into gifts returned to God to assist in God's work of generosity toward others; they are turned into gifts of praise to God by those who receive them. Paul's Second Letter To the Corinthians Communio inter sanctis Part III Chapter 10: The difference between us and others is inward. Verses 1-11: Our motives differ more than our tasks. We who are the members of Christ's body have not ceased to be human; we still mislead ourselves and each other, we are still wrong-headed, we still live in the world, we still need to be called to account. Our leaders have the same needs to defend the church and to demand our loyalty as do the leaders of secular institutions. The authority Christ gives to the leaders of the church has a different purpose than that exercised in secular institutions. Our leaders, when they are true to their position, demand that we show loyalty not to themselves or to the organization but to Christ. All of us are dedicated to Christ and to Christ's work. Those who have the riches of authority in the church have received that authority as a gift which can be shared with others. Verses 12-18: We measure success in different ways. The normal human method for self-evaluation is to first set up standards for ourselves and then compare ourselves to our own standards. Some of us habitually set standards for ourselves which are so high that we always fail to measure up. Others set our standards so low that we lose all humility. A few of us may at times compare ourselves reasonably to what we could become. The standard for ourselves as God's fellow-workers is the standard which God sets up for our work. The standard by which we should be proud or abashed is whether we have done the work we have been assigned. It doesn't really matter whether we ourselves would be happy with our own efforts; we aren't doing this work for ourselves. What matters is whether God approves. Chapter 11: This difference colors all our relationships. Verses 1-4: We fear for each other. When we love anyone, we are concerned for their future and we worry about their actions. Now, if we love them only for ourselves, we begrudge any time or attention that they give to anyone or anything besides ourselves. If we love them for themselves, rather than for us, we accept their interest in activities we don't enjoy and we may even encourage them to spend time with people we do not know; but we fret over their tendency to drift away from the best that we imagine for them. When we love people for the sake of God's love, the jealousy we feel is over their relationship with Christ. Verses 5-15: This difference can be misconstrued. Because we love others for the sake of God's love, we let ourselves seem to be inferior to everyone else. We do not intrude our own needs into the relationship that is growing between Christ and those we love. Giving up our own desires for those we love is the way we are able to share the riches of our inner natures. This kind of love is the best kind, but it can be twisted and misrepresented by those who do not share deeply in the life of Christ. Someone who chooses not to force his way into a position of power over other can be portrayed as a weakling who is unable wield authority. It is easy to overlook the power of Christ's self-abnegation so long as power is only understood as force. Verses 16-33: This inverse strength guarantees trouble. There is no reason that a Christian should expect an easy life. In the first place, we want the world to be better, and change is a threat to most people. We want the world to be obedient to Christ, which is to say that we want powerful leaders to be unseated. We advocate love and humility, which makes us look like weak fools to those who attained their position by deceit and force. We claim that love is power, which amounts to daring the powerful to test our claims. We are commanded to reach out to people, which requires us to be often exposed not only to the plots of evil people and the uncertainties of imperfect economies but also to the dangers of the natural world. On top of all this, our love itself binds us so tightly to others that their weakness becomes our weakness and their pain becomes our pain. What fool undertakes to become a nuisance to dangerous people, to set aside personal security, and to take on other people's troubles? Only such fools as we are, we who know that we have nothing of our own worth protecting and a patron whose power easily covers all the risk. Chapter 12: We promote the unity of God's family. Verses 1-10: The hope for unity supercedes personal reward. Some of us are given a vision of the third heaven, and some of us are allowed mystical union, and some of us are granted detailed instructions for our lives. We should not be surprised (though I often am surprised) at the number of Christians to whom God has spoken in a very direct way; nor should we be surprised (though I sometimes am surprised) by how little we talk about these experiences. Such gifts are small tastes of the banquet to which we are invited. When we are at our best, we respond to our glimpses into the banquet hall by hurrying back out into the world. Christ, who was at the banquet in the beginning, left it to invite us in. As Christ's fellow workers, it is only natural for us to do the same. The banquet excites our longing to share with the whole body of Christ; we want most of all to have all of the family present for the banquet that is being prepared. Verses 11-21: Our only fear is for the unity of the family. Christ left the banquet hall to seek us out and to invite us to join in the celebration. Jesus invited us, to come personally and to take part. We are treated as family, and now we are looking for other members of our family. Paying bus fare for a cousin who has a shortage of cash is not a profitable business transaction, but it is a way to make a successful family reunion. But what if the cousin spurns our offer? Or what if he cashes the ticket and gets drunk on the street corner? That cousin gives up the great banquet for a passing pleasure; this is a great loss to our cousin, and it hurts us who love him and want the best for him. That cousin has torn the fabric that makes us family; the rest of the family is not complete without his presence. Chapter 13: We can move forward toward the unity we desire. We stand for the truth, and we can't simply avoid the issue. The truth is that our family will sometimes be unpleasant. The truth is that we are sometimes unpleasant to our family. The truth is that we hurt ourselves and each other, and that we do it over and over again. The good news is that the same strength that overcame what seemed to be complete and total failure in Jesus' life is available to overcome the failure in our own life and in our sharing. When we look at our lives honestly and truthfully, we find that Christ is working in us and that we are working with him. We can strive toward that perfection which we can't achieve by ourselves. We can listen to the hopes of our family for us just as we can appeal to them to work with us. We can find how much we already agree with each other and we can remember that all of God's holy people are striving together with us. September-October 1996