Feb 14: From "Carnal Lusts" to Being One in the Body of Christ

This Sunday, Feb 14, we will move from the 1928 prayer that formed our series on carnal lusts to a look at Romans 12, Paul's statements about what it means to be one in the body of Christ. For the past three sessions, we have explored  what blocks us from this oneness, and this Sunday, we will look at, specifically, Romans 12: 5-8:

Romans 12: 5-8  NRSV
5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

We will look at various translation of this passages, concentrating specifically on how we "are members one of another," as we explore the unity in our diverse gifts that Paul talks about in this passage.

Jan 31: "Carnal Lusts": Lust and Greed

God punishes us best by giving us too much of what we want most.  J. Swift

      Sunday's interesting discussion centered first on lust and then on greed, challenging and uncomfortable topics in our lives. We thought about lust in the ways it separates sex from love and how it manifests a certain giving into temptation that leads us to the immediate  fulfillment of bodily desires, such that the fulfillment becomes our God. In our first session in this series, we also talked about the etymology of lust--that, in fact, it originally meant robust health--a lusty baby for, example, or the title of Van Gogh's autobiography, Lust for Life.  but clearly, it has been associated with licentiousness from early biblical translations.
     As we moved to our discussion of greed, we once again came back around to the very center of our discussion of carnal lusts: Greed manifests itself, someone said, when owning things becomes more important than God. We spoke of gambling, for example (and that would include buying lottery tickets and possibly playing the stock market,  as, in our rector's words:

A misappropriation of hope.

Someone asked this question:

Is it greedy to want more money so that you can give away more money?

And this one:

Is it greedy if you're not hurting anyone else by what you're taking?

And then the quote from Michael Douglas's character in Wallstreet:

Greed is good!  

We discussed the  theory (and rejected it) that a limited amount of greed IS good because people are motivated to invent things out of their desire to get rich.

We brought up the parable of the three servants and the one who did not invest the master's money, but rather hid it. Parables, of course, are complex and many-layered. We cannot assume, can we, that God expects monetary reward for his servants' (that would be Christians) "investments."

Adult Christian Ed continues on Feb 14, with a look at Romans 12: how are we to be, then, God's hands and feet?