Ordinary Time

February 18, 2022

Scripture Reading:
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

The ability to dispel fear is one of the greatest attributes needed in our world today and Paul gives it his best shot in 1 Corinthians 15. I could not help, as I read this, to think how much energy we burn every day over things of little consequence of which we often have no control while overlooking the world in front of us where we see many wrongs we do have the ability to right but are not willing to make the investment of time and energy necessary to make the changes needed,  and are very hard to actualize. We have needed to rewrite the statutes and policies that control immigration for decades. Three differing issues must be addressed: What is our stand on caring for refugees, who do we want to welcome as persons wanting to and how do we process workers who want to retain their current citizenship but what to work here and not become a citizen. Policies on each should be relatively easy to develop and implement. The rules are not the problem, our prejudices and greed are. One segment of our society very much wants the undocumented to work for them for they can pay them below minimum wage and not provide the benefits required by our government. That is neither fair to US citizens who need jobs nor to the undocumented who need adequate incomes to live.

That is just one example, there are many others. We will never be able to rewrite the out-of-date statutes and rules until we the people reexamine our understanding of what it means to welcome the stranger. Instead of doing the soul searching necessary to understand that concept, we build walls, real and imaginary, to protect ourselves from having to face the real issues. We cannot serve God and wealth* both.

Prayer: Lord, enable us to see the fruits that come with welcoming the stranger. Amen.

*See Matthew 6:24

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.