We have this treasure in earthen vessels.
Is the Church a response to treasure? I have heard some say that the Church belongs to God and that Christ died for the Church. Both are true but neither is complete. We should not make this particular distinction between Church and world. ‘The earth is the Lord’s and everything that is in it’ (including human religious structures) and ‘Christ died for the world’ are both more complete statements – the first from the Psalms and the second from the Gospel (John 3:16).
The Church is a witness in the world for the world, i.e., not only for its own sake, just as Israel was and is a witness in the world for the world’s sake. The people of God, the chosen ‘vessels’, have a responsibility to all in whom the treasure of life is found. This ‘all’ includes all flesh – all humanity – all creation. Here there is distinction but not exclusion. It is also true that the world can correct the Church. God is not confined to the chosen people. It is the same God who is recorded as saying: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.
Treasure – then what is the treasure? It is both the gift of life and the gift of the Spirit. Humans have responded to the gift with religion. This liturgical, mysterious, worship or fear has a long and tortuous history. In some ways one could look upon the theology as reflecting the anthropology of the ‘believers’. Their assessment of their humanity is revealed by what they say about their God.
So look at the text of 2 Corinthians 4 in this context. What does it tell us about Paul’s history and anthropology? What is he telling us about God and God’s gift?
For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. … it is all for your sake, … preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison …
In the previous chapter of the letter Paul has contrasted the revelation to ‘us’ and that given to Moses. Within a few short verses he has linked the inheritance of the Law and the Prophets to the reality known to ‘them’ in Christ. His appeal to the Hebrew Scriptures is important. Without those Scriptures, he would have no language for the treasure he is alluding to – however we are to interpret this word. In the passage above, he also appeals to the original creation narrative as part of his imagery. This is leading him to the new creation motif to come in chapter 5.
We have to ask who he means by the use of first person plural. Is he referring only to himself and Timothy as the authors of the letter, or is he including the Corinthians as receiving the treasure also? The letter is ambiguous. Paul switches from plural to singular more than once in the first four chapters and he contrasts groups of people in their apprehension of the realities he is describing. In this essay, I make the assumption that Paul and Timothy are inclusive in this passage, and also distinguishing themselves from the recipients in some phrases. This is how language works in everyday life.
About Paul’s history: he is thoroughly immersed in the Hebrew Scriptures and uses them to make his appeal to a rag-tag congregation. There is a certain amount of ironic rebuke in his distinction between himself and Timothy, and the Corinthians. Who gets death and who gets life? In all this he is playing on the life that comes from the death of Jesus. Something in his history causes him to focus on this message alone and to indicate its present and ultimate goodness. It is both worth living for and worth risking persecutions and death. The message conveys a treasure – can language work this way too?
Imprecise and ambiguous language, no single statement complete – yet it can convey meaning and invite both faith and action. Perhaps it is our most dangerous possession.
About God’s gift: here we do not have much information except that it is defined as light shining in ‘their’ hearts giving a knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Jesus Christ. The use of face contrasts with Moses who put a veil over his face to hide the fading. Paul claims the glory of the new covenant does not fade but increases from glory to glory. (3:13). He also identifies the gift with the guarantee of the Spirit (5:5). I wonder if we can safely put more flesh on this light.
Some scholars – many in fact – consider that 2 Corinthians as we have it is comprised of more than one letter. It has a surprising coherence but also an apparent gaping hole between chapter 6 verses 13 and 14. The verses that follow have been used as an excuse for separation where in other places we are encouraged to unity. The tension between present and future is also evident in chapter 5 and would make one think that the treasure is not to be counted on in this life. These considerations if taken at full value will encourage otherworldliness and a separation that is potentially destructive – and this is in the midst of an otherwise encouraging letter that is meant to build confidence. (See chapter 1 with its repetitive theme of comfort - strength - temple building.)
The way forward seems both constructive and destructive at the same time. Paul’s words will lead to sectarianism and ultimately an established Church that uses power to suppress argument and is not at all true to the death of Jesus, who was killed in the human sense largely because of political and religious expediency. Paul will end up building the very institution that he wishes to avoid imitating (Galatians 2:18).
To receive the gift requires our destruction. Do not go out and destroy yourself. Our destruction is accomplished in a legal and metaphoric way in the death of Jesus. So we can now live for him who was raised from the dead – but we cannot do this without having conformed our lives to the meaning of our baptism – a baptism into his death. And it is impossible to do this without faith in his life – i.e. his ability to give us the Spirit now. And it will not do to imagine that we have this knowledge without, in actuality, receiving the gift from God. I regret that I have to leave this in a subjective tension – but the objective reality is apprehended within us as subjects and is beyond the definition of words though not beyond their creative potential. I.e. my language can invite, but not coerce.
Within the Church, we have witnessed a superfluity of coercion over the years. We must stand against this – and in so doing will find ourselves standing against the very crucible that informed us of our life. It is a terrible tension.
My own history bears this out. I learned within the Church (many denominations, some ultra-separatist, some inclusive) and from its message the reality of the death of Jesus for me. I was astonished and remain astonished at the gift. What does this say for my anthropology? I venture that the human in his and her body is much greater and more beautiful than we dare imagine. This beauty I have known through faith. Because I learned it through faith in the death of Jesus for me, I express it in those terms that are available to me through the Scriptures. It is not my imagination only, but my words are not always acceptable even to those who share supposedly faith in the same source. And of course, my words are not easy for those outside the tradition to understand.
In a few words: God is love. If you in your theology or human actions find yourself preaching vengeance, exclusion, condemnation, or actions that protect yourself and your tradition at the expense of another, then you are not acting in love and there is a risk that you have never known it. And I include the potential that Biblical writers also may be guilty of not writing in love. They must be judged by their own standards and our own reading of them must be judged by the same love. (If you read Revelation carefully, you will see it is a meditation on the vengeance of a Lamb! - not of armies of destroying soldiers - the sword kills by the Word in order to make alive in Love.)
Our vengeance – or failure to love, comes from what Scripture calls sin. Sin is not a particular act but the breaking of a relationship. You know it was sin when the relationship is restored. (See John 15:7-11). Prior to restoration, you may not know sin except in your own fear. Restoration comes not by conforming to a law but by the grace of forgiveness and repentance. These things restore the life that the law destroys. The earthly Church has used law to enforce behaviour without understanding the depths of its own message. Though law can be holy, it cannot bring life. If it could, then the death of Christ would have been for nothing.
The life of one who is called Christian comes through Christ, and the life he gives through the Spirit. It does not come through conformity to a law, or through believing a set of propositions about God or about behaviour. These things have convinced me that in the current disputes and positioning over same-sex persons, no one is obliged to reject tenderness expressed in a mutually mature consensual relationship. Equally, no one is obliged to accept such relationships. My experience in Christ tells me that God affirms our sexuality in whatever form it manifests itself and that we are responsible to God for our actions – which due to the power in us and on us, we must exercise with a maturity and respect that is not easily won but which can be won by the power inherent in the death of Jesus for us.
I have largely concentrated on Paul in this essay. The message I have formed is consistent with his writing from his earliest epistle. The Lord is an avenger in all these things. (1 Thessalonians 4) The message is consistent with the Gospels also and with the Tanakh - but both must be read with the ear of faith not the eye of judgment. You are welcome to judge of course - but in the Spirit - not in the flesh (i.e. by the Law).
Moses, the giver of the Law, died on Mt Nebo. According to Deuteronomy 32, he was in full health and potency at the age of 120 – and no one knew where his burial place was. As Law, he was not allowed into the Promised Land. He also had struck the rock twice (Numbers 20)– no one needs to die in Christ more than once. Nevertheless, the next mountain Moses appears on in the Scripture is the mount of transfiguration. May we, who have died to the Law that we might be married to the one who was raised from the dead (Romans 7), also achieve this gift of life by the Spirit both in the present world and in the world to come.