Paul On Sins Of Sex In A Wider Context or

Giving the Devil His Due

 

HAD A FEW minutes and if the damned power doesn't go off in this wind storm we're having, I decided to let Walter Brueggemann comment on Paul's thinking on sexual scandal among the early Christians:

Paul is confronted by a case of sexual misconduct about which the perpetrator brags. Paul has a vision of the gospel community as a fellowship that has purged from its midst such exploitative practices. Such misconduct is never an isolated act; it comes with a cluster of self-indulgent practices that are rooted in anxious greed that characteristically culminates in violence, These are the "desires of the flesh" to which Paul contrasts "the fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:16-26) . The arrogance about the affront makes clear that the community has compromised the norm that Paul champions and has arrived at a capacity for shamelessness in imitation of a larger society that traffics in shamelessness.

For the nature of the community, Paul utilizes the image of leaven. By this usage he recalls that it was unleavened bread that ancient Israel ate in its hasty departure from Egyptian slavery. The mention of the "paschal lamb" and the "festival" attest that the early church has departed the shameless habits of greed and exploitation that mark the empire of Egypt and belatedly the empire of Rome. The imagery is a reminder that the community gathered around Jesus is indeed an alternative community in which the conduct of its members matters for its testimony to the world. Clearly compromised conduct, when visible in the church, undermines the claim that the news that the church intends to perform for the world to see.

Given this exodus allusion, we may note the somewhat remote connection that the sons of Jacob must return and submit to Egyptian authority for the sake of food. Such bread, with old leaven, is seductive and may talk the community out of its vocation of holiness. 

 

See what I mean about a beginner like me needing to read commentaries by people who know what they're talking about?  I think Paul was a great and subtle theologian (he was a Pharisee, after all ) and what you get on first superficial reading is so inadequate that even if it matches the common sense meaning of it, that's no where near enough to know just what he's really saying.