Sixth Sunday after Epiphany – C3

Years C
1 Corinthians 15:12-20

If I proclaim there are WMDs in Iraq, how can some of you say there isn't?
If there aren't WMDs, then democracy is futile and we are controlled by terrorists.
In fact there are WMDs.

There is a vast gap between a proclamation and an experience. This difference is not notable for the one doing the proclaiming, but is for the one being proclaimed to.

We struggle to put our experiences into words that they might be approximately received by others, but ultimately we trust that we might make glancing contact with their experience and our imaginations might, together, be set loose to find more meaning in our experiences than we have heretofore found.

So it is that we find some proclamations to be more fruitful than others. Condemnatory proclamations generally are short-lived (though never short enough, for even one proclaimed off their experience is sufficient to slow the world). Imaginative proclamations have a much longer shelf life (though they too often take a long while to be recognized).

A proclamation of imagination that goes beyond our usual limit of death is a fruitful one. It is too bad that it is often delivered as a condemnation of another's current limit. How might you imaginatively proclaim resurrection without the use of consigning those who are not at that point to un-resurrected states?

= = = = = = =

faith in resurrection
opens our senses to its presence
sharpens our language of argument
grounds our institutionalization of same

hope of resurrection
sets us up for disappointment
causes tentativeness in the present
cuts us loose from action

love with resurrection
moves us toward a preferred future
softens our response to others
deepens our experience of time