Tuesday

4/3/2023

Lectio Divina is a way of reading and reflecting on the scriptures. As a way of reading together, even though we are separate, consider setting aside fifteen minutes at noon. You're also welcome to post a comment on this blog, something meaningful or significant that comes to you.

Read through the text three times. If possible, read the text aloud. After each reading, use the prompts below to shape your reflections.

1 Corninthians 1.18-31

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Prompts:

(Read verse first time through)
1. What word or phrase stands out to you from the reading?

(Read verse second time through)
2. What invitation or challenge do you find in the reading?

(Read verse third time through)
3. What are you grateful for?

Closing
Between the words,
beneath the words,
beyond the words,
may God meet you
in the places
where words cannot go.
Jan Richardson (Voices Together 990)

3 Comments

Norma Noordijk

4/4/2023 09:17:51 am

1. Shaming

2.Challenge: The attitude that our group is better or closer to God than any other group.

3. LOVE

James Newcomer

4/4/2023 12:38:27 pm

1. The denigration of knowledge and wisdom as though it were a stumbling block to faith. The discoveries of quantum physics leads me to believe that the supernatural is a human construct.

2. Although it is a call for hope for the poor and uneducated once literacy raises to the level of reading the Bible it becomes a challenge to align the Old Testament God and Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount.

3. That the message of the "Red Letter" Jesus, by itself, has powered a faith so strong that people organize around it to create community and strive to live out the Sermon on the Mount regardless to the veracity of the founding authority.

Blessings to All.

Kim Brandt

4/4/2023 06:22:46 pm

1. "For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength."

2. Wisdom is foundationally good, based on the Hebrew Scriptures, and also the Christian Scriptures, yet it pales in comparison to knowing God in Jesus. I can ponder the sources of wisdom and weight that which comes from the humble, and especially Jesus, over what I get from the rest of the world, without disrespecting that wisdom. Also, it's okay to look foolish, or feel foolish, for doing good.

3. The mercy of God.

READING THE SCRIPTURES TOGETHER IN HOLY WEEK

Tuesday

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