The Present Form

Poolesville Presbyterian Church
01.22.12; Rev. David Williams




Scripture Lesson: 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31


Over the past several years, one of the recurring threads of chatter

in the Williams family minivan on the way to swimming or tutoring or

music lessons has been about how human civilization will come to an

end. Apparently, it comes down to one of two options, and there is

some debate as to which one will win out in the end.




Option number one, of course, is the zombie apocalypse. This scenario

involves mindless animated undead roaming dead-eyed through

the land, oblivious to anything but the tasty, tasty brains of the few

living human beings still struggling to get by. Conversation around

this end-times option typically involves discussion of potential

causes and survival tactics, along with the recognition that given how

people drive in traffic around here, it may already be well under way.




Option number two is the robot uprising. The first sign of this event

will come when our Roomba retreats under the sofa and makes

growling noises, and will be finally confirmed when Siri 2.0 informs

us that she’ll be asking the questions now. While our planning for

the zombie apocalypse involves waiting it out in a hardened shelter,

the Williams family plan for surviving the robot uprising involves one

simple mantra: side with the robots.




Then there’s Option number three. That involves the arrival of the

K’tall harvester fleet in low earth orbit, and this one we prefer not

to talk about. Don’t want to start a panic, after all.




These are, of course, just the sort of silly conversations that one

has when one has kids, but I think there’s a certain fascination with

the end of things that draws our interest. That fascination goes

beyond the sturm und drang, thunder and lighting spectacle that we

envision going along with the end of things as we know them. Much of

what makes the whole end-of-things speculation so fascinating is a

subversive yearning in our day-to-day lives, a yearning that

says...what if everything changed? What if none of the things that

make up the familiar pattern of our existence counted for anything any

more?




While we rarely have these thoughts during the more joyous moments of

life, they are prone to surfacing when things seem particularly

meaningless. If we’re stuck in a long commute or in an endless

meeting that’s going nowhere, we wonder why things must be this way.

If we’re listening to a lecture on a subject that will have no

pertinence to our future, we wonder why things must be this way. If

we’re watching a national political debate that seems more about

posturing and psychodrama than it does about the actual issues facing

our nation, the yearning grows even stronger.




Why can’t things be different? Why can’t the world shake, and shift

the ground out from under us, and suddenly, everything become new?




The Apostle Paul saw the world that way. His view of things didn’t

involve aliens or robots or zombies, but for Paul, every action and

thought and moment was seen in the light of apocalypse. In each of

the seven letters that were undisputedly written by Paul in the New

Testament, Paul appears driven by a similar conviction...that the

world in its present form is passing away, and a new thing is being

unveiled. Apocalypse just means “unveiling,” after all.




If you stretch your mind way back to last week, you might recall that

the trading city of Corinth was renowned for being obsessed with

social status and roles within culture. That set of values worked its

way deeply into the church in Corinth, which meant that Paul spent a

great deal of time trying to get them to get past that dog-eat-dog

mentality. He struggled repeatedly to get them to grasp how deeply

the divisions and distinctions they used to categorize one another

meant nothing now that they had committed themselves to the teachings

of Jesus of Nazareth.




In chapter seven of first Corinthians, Paul dedicates most of the

chapter to explaining how Christian folk should live as they move

through their lives in the world. In particular, he talks to the

people of the Corinthian church about how men and women should live in

relationship to one another. This is where Paul gets into talking

about marriage, and commitments, and the dynamic between the genders.

It’s thoughtful, practical, textured-vegetable-protein-and-potatoes

stuff, right up until the passage I just read. Then, things change,

and what he has to say is a bit difficult for us to hear.




That tends to be the case with a most of what Paul says, actually, but

this little section is particularly challenging. It’s challenging

because while Paul describes marriage with a depth of grace and

understanding, we find him saying bizarre, awkward things like in

verse 29 “let those who have wives be as though they had none.” I

would make a joke about this being Newt Gingrich’s favorite passage of

scripture, but that would be overly political of me. Although if I

said it was also Bill Clinton’s, that might make it more non-partisan.

Best not to go there, I think. Whichever way, it’s an odd thing

to hear the Bible say about the covenant of marriage.




What Paul goes on to say is even harder to hear. Those who mourn

should be as they were not mourning? Those who rejoice, like they’re

not? How can you tell folks who are experiencing the extremes of

human emotion that they should live as if they weren’t experiencing

them? What could he possibly be getting at here?




For Paul, the reason the form of these things meant so little was that

because of Jesus, the world was in the process of being completely

changed. When Paul says in verse 31 that the present form of the

world is passing away, he uses the Greek word schema. That word,

which is the root for English words like “scheme” or “schematics,”

means structure or framework or order.




All those things that give structure to our existence...the

relationships, the work, the school, the kids, the stuff, all of

it...are viewed by Paul as subordinate at best, and distractions at

worst. For Paul, all of them are secondary to the transforming

message of the Nazarene.




Paul heard the words that came from the lips of Jesus in today’s

passage from Mark’s Gospel and took them seriously. When Jesus says

in Mark 1:15 that “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has

come near; repent, and believe in the good news,” Paul takes him at

his word. There is every evidence in the writings, theology, and

teachings of Paul that he sees the apocalyptic fulfillment of the

Kingdom Jesus proclaimed as being not just about to happen, but

actually in the process of happening.




According to the Nazarene and Paul, his most prolific disciple, the

present form was passing away.




Hearing this, we should struggle with it.




We struggle to see how we’re supposed to apply what Paul is telling

us. How are we to actually DO this? It’s a matter of priorities.

Our faith does not demand that we abandon the commitments we have

made. We can be, as Paul indicates, married, or working, or

experiencing the joys and sorrows of life. What Paul asks us to do,

though, is to give primacy to Jesus in defining how those things play

out. In the context of our relationships with others and the world,

we’re asked to live into those relationships in such a way that both

Jesus and the love of God are evident in our every action.




That manner of life is what Paul describes in verse 35 of chapter 7,

where the schema of this world is intentionally contrasted with the

euschemon...the “good scheme” or the “good order” of our relationship

with God. The good form of life requires that we be defined by a

radical love God and stranger, no matter what. Other relationships,

no matter how blessed or significant, cannot crowd that out. The

demands of work and business and the maintenance of our stuff cannot

crowd that out. If we weep, or are in the midst of celebration, that

can’t be crowded out.




That is the new form that is being unveiled. It still is. Let it be

so, for you and for me, AMEN.