Fellow Christians,                                                                                                                                                                                                        Today I’m going where anyone with a lick of common sense would just stay quiet. These are my recent reflections on Scriptures:

 Romans 13:13-14  “…let us live honorably, … not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in in quarreling and jealousy.  Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires,  

Good old Paul is still trying to shape us all up. He says not only no quarreling, but also to make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

Well, pooh! I don’t drink, I stopped smoking, and as an eighty-five-year-old widow, licentiousness isn’t much of an option. During Covid I went on a low carb diet, so I even had to give up my addiction to jelly doughnuts. And to make it worse, quarantining gave me a lot of time to pray and reflect on my attitude toward those I strongly disagree with.

Do any of you find it as hard as I do, to give up feeling you’re right and that anyone who disagrees with you is not only wrong, wrong, wrong, but “BAD to the Bone?”  I never before admitted even to myself how addicted I am to thinking that I am not only right, but also feeling that being right makes me good.                                                                                                                                                                                                     I suspect that’s the definition of self-righteousness, which makes me nervous.

Being convinced we know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth not only claims we are infallible and equal to God, but it ends up making our quarreling push each other into extremes until we all become blind to the need to work together for good.  We are like the blind men who each felt just one different part of an elephant and thought that was how the whole elephant was. 

Even old self-righteous Paul admits we all see through the glass darkly. So, Christians beware! The worst sin is pride because we are blind to it in ourselves.

 And in Matthew 24:36-44 Jesus warns us, we may be called to account at any moment, at work, at a party, or even in our snug beds tonight. “Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

This is a poem I wrote years ago when preparing a sermon for an ecumenical worship service for Directors of Religious education. I was reflecting on Paul’s description of us as the different parts of the Body of Christ.

The Broken Body

Reflecting on the Body,/ you the hand, I the foot/ Christ the head, perhaps the heart/, someone else the hidden part,/ I let the Scriptures/ flood my mind with images./ Then suddenly one image/ is so harshly real, I gasp aloud./ I see a person staggering/ and stumbling toward me,/ arms flailing, head jerking/ back and forth in spasms,/ body parts all pulling/ different ways./ This then, reality:/ Christ’s earthly body now./ Lord, forgive us!