In today’s First Reading Paul is lamenting that the Christians at Corinth are going to civil courts to resolve “domestic” disputes. Christians are called to be witnesses to love, especially with their fellow believers, and when they quarrel before an unevangelized public it makes the Gospel life they have committed to live ring hollow. The civil courts are unqualified to judge these disputes “in house” between believers because they haven’t experience the love they live in Christ.
Paul uses the striking example of the unjust becoming judges to make his point. Would you accept a death row inmate as a judge? Every Christian who has received baptism has become justified, become just, and that gives them an authority the unjust could never have with regard to Christians. This is not a cause for arrogance on the part of Christians, because, as Paul reminds us, before baptism we were all unjust as well and it is only by the Lord’s mercy that we have been rendered just again.
If we’re going to make a spectacle of ourselves with regard to one of our fellow believers, let’s make it a “spectacle” of the charity and mercy we show him, not another legal drama.
Readings: 1 Corinthians 6:1–11; Psalm 149:1b–6a, 9b; Luke 6:12–19. See also 2nd Week in Ordinary Time, Friday, 14th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday and Sts. Simon and Jude, Apostles.
