Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 20th February 2022
Lectionary Readings:
Genesis 43 v3-11,15; Psalm 37 v1-11, 39-40; 1 Corinthians 15 v35-38, 42-50; Luke 6 v27-38
Heavenly bodies.
In this week’s passage from his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul is doing his best to answer the questions put to him about life after death.
Paul was an intelligent man, his answers display his thorough knowledge of Jewish scripture, and information he had picked up from witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection appearances.
Paul trusted God and he believed that the God of Israel, the God of his ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was also the God of creation. God as the creator of all that is seen and unseen. Paul believed that nothing was impossible for God. God had raised Jesus to new life. Jesus, as the risen Christ, had revealed himself to Paul. Having experienced a radical transformation in his own life, he firmly believed that God could bring about transformation in this life and the next for us all.
Paul had not ‘seen’ the risen Christ when he encountered him on the road to Damascus. He had been blinded by a bright light and heard the voice of Jesus ask “Saul! Saul! Why are you so cruel to me?” (Acts 9 v4b). Three days later Paul (Saul) was given back his sight and received God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 9 v17,18).
Paul knew from witnesses that the resurrected Jesus was recognisable in his physical form but different in his abilities, such as being able to appear amongst the disciples inside a locked room.
Paul was aware that human bodies decay after death. He argues that just as a seed needs to die in the ground before sprouting forth new life, so we also will pass through death before starting a new life. (1 Corinthians 15 v36). Paul surmised that just as God had equipped us with a physical body fit for life on earth, God would also equip us with a new ‘body’ fit for eternal life.
Paul trusted God to look after him in this world and the next and he encourages us to do the same.
I’m sure that Paul would have endorsed these words from hymn writer Alan Gaunt:
(from Singing the Faith No 742 v1,4).
We trust the mighty love of God that wraps us round,
that loves us when we’re good or bad; love so profound
it still gives hope when death has struck and joy is drowned.
We trust the future, God to you: we pray that we
may grasp our full potential here and faithfully
go on to find earth’s love fulfilled eternally.
Bible quotations are taken from the Contemporary English Bible.