The Folly of God

Today’s first reading from St. Paul is part of a cohesive thought that he has been building upon since the beginning of this 1st Letter to the Corinthians (which began with Friday’s readings and continues for about three weeks.) It all began after Paul left the Corinth community for new evangelizing opportunities. He received a letter from a believer named Chloe who reports problems in the community: there is quarreling in the community all carried on in the name of “wisdom” and some associated boasting about who possessed wisdom and the exact nature of the wisdom. Continue reading

Boundaries and Transitions

This coming Sunday we celebrate the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time in Lectionary Cycle B. After several weeks during which we took our Gospel readings from the Bread of Life Discourse in John, last week we returned to the Gospel of Mark. When we picked up again in the Gospel of Mark, we bypassed accounts of the death of John the Baptist, Jesus walking on the water, and the healing of the crowds in Gennesaret. Last week we picked up the story with Mark’s account of the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes. Given the conflict at the end of the Bread of Life Discourse, that was probably a good segue. Continue reading