"I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind.
To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion." 1 Corinthians 7:7-9
Kind of a weird text to wander to in the Advent season, but not any weirder than many you'll hear in church or in your devotional reading these days.
Paul is writing to the Corinthians who have asked him advice--"Dear Abby" style--on how to order their relationships as Christians. And the advice he gives is...well, weird. He apparently thinks that celibacy (his own lifestyle) is ideal if you can hack it, but if it's too distracting, to go ahead and get married. He goes on to say that those who are married should probably stay married, even if they're married to unbelievers, which apparently was a point of some controversy in the community.
So what's going on here? Why celibacy? Why marriage? What's Paul's reasoning? Well, it has to do with a certain internal logic to what might be called "Christianity, Phase I": the first generation or so of believers in Jesus. And the internal logic went something like this: "What is the point of complicating your life, when our Lord could return at any moment?" Why get married if you have no idea how long it will last? On the other hand, why stay single if it'll just distract you from what you need to focus on in these last days? And for that matter, why separate from a spouse or partner when you don't have to? In short, why make any change at all? The general state of mind for Paul seemed to be, "to prepare for Christ's return, keep your lives AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE."
Now, "Christianity, Phase I" obviously didn't last long. The whole reason we even have the gospels, and that they date from a full generation or so after the events they describe, is that until that point, folks didn't see the point of writing it down! Why waste the time on stuff like that when a new age is just around the corner? Want to know what Jesus was like? Go ask Peter! Go ask John! Ask Mary Magdalene! But, as these first witnesses began to die off, as people began to doubt their own assumption that Jesus' return would happen in their own lifetime, some stuff had to be recorded and codified. Some structure had to be set up, in the event that the present age hangs on for a while.
We are now roughly 1900 years into "Christianity, Phase II." We are no longer flying by the seat of our collective pants. For better or worse, we now have structures in place to help people hear the story of Jesus. Those structures are in constant need of reform, we have them. You do still sometimes hear people talking about celibacy as one option, for those especially called to it, but you generally hear Paul's advice taken with a grain of salt, because, with all the seismic changes that happened in his own age, how could he have known that this thing called the cosmos was going to roll on for another two millennia?
But I wonder if there isn't still something to the spirit of Paul's words: keep your lives as simple as possible. If you're called to it, get married. Start a family. If you're not, don't. By all means, don't distract yourself from the work of a disciple, by trying to fit into a cookie cutter lifestyle dictated by somebody else. For goodness' sake, life is already complicated, and life as a person of faith even more so, without all the extra obligations and responsibilities others heap on us, and we heap on ourselves, for no good reason.
We no longer operate on the assumption that Jesus will return in our lifetimes, but part of Advent is remembering that he could. And sadly, just like clockwork, this message comes at the single most complicated time of year for us, in just about every aspect of our lives. It's a tangled mess of obligations and responsibilities, professional and personal. the run-up to Christmas is our culture's chosen time to write letters to people you neither hear from nor contact at any time in the rest of the year, to socialize with coworkers in ways that are not expected at any other time of year, to volunteer your time for good causes that you tend to forget about during the rest of the year, to have all your friends and family over whom you don't see during the rest of the year, to travel all over creation, to spend money you don't have at an even greater pace than usual, and in the midst of it all, to make sure people know you're enjoying every minute of it. And as much as any one of those things, or even a more manageable combination of them, might bring you joy, when it all comes together at the same time, it gets...well, complicated. More complicated than it needs to be.
So that's why I love coming to Church in Advent. I know, I know, it's one more thing on the to-do list. But it's literally the one place in my life where it's not Christmas yet. It's a place where the priority is just to be with God, to be hopeful, and to know that something better than the world we know is coming. It's a place that helps us simplify. It's a place that reminds us that even if Jesus doesn't return tomorrow, our lives are short, and it's important to ask: "If this were my last day, is this how I'd want to have spent it?" The web of obligations that we get stuck in need not reach there. In there, it's about God's promise: all will be well, and it's not your job to make it well. God is on the job already.
So, I invite you to take a little break from Christmas this year. Join us for worship.
