The Hidden Darkness of Our Hearts
Epistle Reading: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
For Sunday, February 27, 2011 Year A - Epiphany 8
The Carnival Lady cries: Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up and see the fantastical Christ. Yes, don’t be afraid to walk into the tent of mysteries…right next to the tattooed lady and the sword swallower. Step right up and experience mysteries beyond your comprehension.
It seems like being a steward of the mysteries can feel perilously close to being a carnival barker. Mystery is not something we’ve done well in mainline Protestantism, choosing instead to focus on the minutia of doctrine, morality or piety. But mystery? Not so much. So we tend to stick to the knowable, the certain and the explainable.
A Freudian Slip of the Eye
Yet when I read this text from 1 Corinthians this week I experienced something that felt like a bit of a mystery to me: I misread a single word 3 or 4 times before realizing it. I had to read and re-read it to make sure my eyes weren’t playing a trick on me. And that word is commendation.
Like a visual Freudian slip I read commendation as condemnation. But given the context in which the word commendation is found this is perhaps not so mysterious at all: “…do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive commendation from God.”
Heart of Darkness
Why did I read commendation as condemnation? Why is it that within a text dealing with judgment − both ours and God’s − someone would so readily assume condemnation and not commendation? Of course one reason is that, for me anyhow, when the words “judgment,” “hidden,” “darkness,” and “heart” appear together the next logical thought is not a personal commendation for myself; it is surely condemnation. The hidden darkness in my heart (and there is plenty to go around and for everyone to have seconds) deserves judgment to be sure. But that is NOT what we see here.
Perhaps it’s not so mysterious, given the Gospel, that God would commend resistance against rushing to judgment. However, the rationale for that restraint in 1 Corinthians 4:5 reeks of mystery. Here we find a God knows more about our deep, dark, hearts then we do. And yet, God’s full disclosure about our purposes and the purposes of others is what leads to the text’s oh so unexpected twist.
The Hardest Question
What I find disturbing here is this: While the judgment of God is surly multivalent, do we fail to be stewards of the mystery of Christ when we miss the ways in which God’s judgment is actually forgiveness and mercy? Can the throne of judgment possibly be a rough-hewn cross from which the judgment decreed is the eternally valid statement “Father forgive them for they know not what they do?” And if so, why is it so easy for us to assume that the term “God’s judgment” always means condemnation and not commendation?
Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber is the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. She is the author of
Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television
(Seabury, 2008) and blogs at www.sarcasticlutheran.com and Jim Wallis' www.GodsPolitics.com. Nobody really believes she’s an ordained pastor in the ELCA. Maybe it’s the sleeve tattoos or the fact that she swears like a truck driver. Either way…she’s fine with it. Nadia lives in Denver with her family of four.
