The apostle wishes that his...
Illustration
Object:
The apostle wishes that his friends in Corinth would not be "lacking in any spiritual gift."
The ritual of Christmas gift-giving, so recently past, bears but little resemblance to the
sort of gifts Paul has in mind.
On "Black Friday" in Orlando, Florida, some years back, customers in a national discount-chain store got into a brawl over laptop computers. A video clip looped endlessly on the 24-hour news channels: two men tackling another man and pulling him to the ground, because he had cut ahead of them in line. "It was absolute pandemonium in there," said one observer. "They were throwing these laptops twenty feet into the air, and people were collapsing on each other to grab them."
What would Jesus make of such a scene? Imagine him standing off to one side, in that store. What sort of expression would he have on his face, knowing that all that brawling was set off by his birthday? That's why those shoppers were doing it, wasn't it -- because they wanted to be first in line to honor Jesus' birth?
Of course, it wasn't. Sadly, the sort of holiday that issues in department-store riots has long since lost any resemblance to the celebration of the Messiah's birth.
In the words of novelist Wendell Berry, "the industrial economy's most marketed commodity is satisfaction, and this commodity, which is repeatedly promised, bought, and paid for, is never delivered."
On "Black Friday" in Orlando, Florida, some years back, customers in a national discount-chain store got into a brawl over laptop computers. A video clip looped endlessly on the 24-hour news channels: two men tackling another man and pulling him to the ground, because he had cut ahead of them in line. "It was absolute pandemonium in there," said one observer. "They were throwing these laptops twenty feet into the air, and people were collapsing on each other to grab them."
What would Jesus make of such a scene? Imagine him standing off to one side, in that store. What sort of expression would he have on his face, knowing that all that brawling was set off by his birthday? That's why those shoppers were doing it, wasn't it -- because they wanted to be first in line to honor Jesus' birth?
Of course, it wasn't. Sadly, the sort of holiday that issues in department-store riots has long since lost any resemblance to the celebration of the Messiah's birth.
In the words of novelist Wendell Berry, "the industrial economy's most marketed commodity is satisfaction, and this commodity, which is repeatedly promised, bought, and paid for, is never delivered."
