1 Cor. 6:12-20
For Sunday, January 14, 2018
Second Sunday After The Epiphany, Year B

We live in a culture that wants to elevate self as having the right to define it’s own reality.  The problem is that reality has already been taken by someone else.

Paul Gauguin, “The Yellow Christ” (Christ Jaune), 1889, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

One of the Lectionary readings this week is 1 Cor. 6 in which The Apostle Paul is challenging the Corinthian’s thinking on sexual identity.  How striking the parallels between the Corinthian’s thinking then and conventional cultural wisdom today.  We desperately want to define our own realities.

In Planned Parenthood versus Casey (1992) Justice Anthony Kennedy famously said,

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

Contrast this with what The Apostle Paul says about our human identity here in 1 Cor. 6:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? … For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

The reality is that we did not create ourselves nor do we have the right to create our own existence.  We can pursue this illusion in a desperate quest for freedom and autonomy yet true freedom will be found only when we embrace who we actually are: creations of God intended to be a temple for his Holy Spirit.

What does it mean for your reality this week that you have been bought with a price?  How would you most like to glorify God this week?