This is Holy Week and I am attempting to write my review of
lesson 4 of the Presbyterian Women’ Bible study, Reconciling Paul with the week’s somberness and final celebration as
my focus.
In lesson 4, "Carrying in Our Bodies Jesus' Acts of Healing, Reconciliation, and Love," the text, 2 Corinthians 4:7-5:10 carries
the events of Holy Week, the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ, into
the lives of individual believers as well as the whole church. While Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty,
the author of the lesson, focuses on that part of the text which speaks of
Christ’s suffering and death there is no mention of resurrection. One is left with advocacy for the oppressed
which is good but not the final blessed outcome of the gospel.
As Hinson-Hasty shows Paul speaks of carrying about in his
body the death of Jesus. However, in
order to do justice to that statement the text surrounding it is needed. This isn't just about death; it is about resurrection, not an abstract idea of
eternality but real bodily resurrection.
But we
have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the
power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but
not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed; always
carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also
may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus sake, so that the
life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us,
but life in you. (4:7-18)
Jesus’ life given to the believer is real life based on the
fact that a bodily resurrected Jesus sees and guides the Christian through the
Holy Spirit and makes himself known in the midst of trials. And as Colin Kruse points
out in his Tyndale commentary on 2
Corinthians the being delivered over to death and carrying about in the body
the dying of Jesus is not “a mystical” statement, but a reality of the suffering
of Paul and his companions. Nor is the
life of the resurrected Jesus mystical, but is truly “manifested in his body.”
Kruse writes:
Thus the one who proclaims the crucified
and risen Lord finds that what is proclaimed in his message is also exemplified
in his life. On one hand he is daily subject to forces which lead to death, but
on the other hand he is continually upheld, caused to triumph, and made to be
more than a conqueror by the experience of the risen life of Jesus in his
mortal body (cf. Rom. 8:35-39; 2 Cor.
1:8-10; 2:14; Phil. 3:10; 4:1213).
Hinson-Hasty focuses the idea of God’s power in bodies to marginalized bodies and how God’s power overcame the marginalization. She writes:
Understanding the body in this
context [the way some bodies were marginalized in ancient Rome and its many
conquered lands] punctuates the radicalness of Paul’s use of the metaphor “treasures
in clay jars.” When Paul claims that God is made manifest in a weak,
earthenware vessel, he directly challenges the dominant hierarchical scale upon
which people in his culture judged and valued different bodies.
So her focus is on such groups as women and slaves but this
misses the point. Paul isn’t here
pointing to only the oppressed; he is referring to all bodies. Human bodies (which
include the soul) are like earthen vessels. We are all prone to crack and break;
we are all sinners, rich and powerful, poor and marginalized. And it is those
who have Christ who have the treasure of God found in Jesus Christ. His glory
shines through the broken vessels spreading to others with the life that
belongs to God.
And this is not possible without the resurrection a
Christian reality that Hinson-Hasty never addresses in this study. There are
hints but one is reminded of a sixties song that speaks of Jesus but never
quite passes by his death.
Hinson-Hasty writes:
For Paul, God’s power is best
exemplified in the crucified body of the Jewish Jesus. The broken Jesus still
remained a treasure and overcame defeat, even in the death dealt to him by the
most powerful empire of his time. By using the metaphor of “treasure in clay
jars” to describe the body of the community, Paul associates the power of the
community of faith in acts that make the strong weak and the weak strong.
Speaking of Gnosticism, Hinson-Hasty wants to emphasis that
Paul is not “saying that we can or even should try to escape from our bodies.”
This is true but it misses the promise of God of our own bodily resurrection
when we shall be like our Lord. But here
the author attempts to clarify the future and make way for better things—and yet
she leaves the reader without hope:
Paul says that the realization
of God’s redemptive future will be embodied, realized in fragile bodies, even
if in an imperfect way.
The community of believers
gathered at Corinth had realized and embodied some of Jesus’ teachings and yet
there were more to be realized. Both Paul and the Corinthian church were living
within the boundaries established by Greco-Roman culture, but they were growing
beyond the limitations that their culture imposed on them.
Hinson-Hasty’s view of the Christian’s future is entirely
materialistic and progressive. While it contains the promise of good deeds
which she will later connect to those Christians who rightly stood for equality
in South Africa, it nevertheless leaves death and sin unconquered.
Jesus Christ, lived, died and rose again. The Christian
carries that death in his body too often suffering as Christ suffered. But the
Christian also carries the life of Christ infusing God’s world with the love of
Jesus.
Picture by Stephen Larson
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