One Body with Many Members (1 Corinthians 12:12-31)

“Because this act was done by this one, there and then, acts of reconciliation are more than an attempt to create reality by establishing imagined communities which offer a different sort of social space from that of the world’s routine violence.  Human acts of reconciliation are in accordance with the structure of reality which God in Christ creates and to the existence of which the gospel testifies; and therefore they are acts which tend toward the true end of creation which God’s reconciling act establishes once and for all in Christ’s person and work.”

— John Webster

Spiritual Gifts (1 Corinthians 12:1-11)

“Paul’s emphasis on unity-in-diversity is grounded in the nature of the one God, who is holy Trinity. … Paul sees all persons of the Trinity as involved fully in creation, redemption, and salvation. All gifts come ultimately from God the originating and loving Father, but God gives them through Jesus Christ as Mediator, and they are appropriated by the enabling work of the Holy Spirit.”

— Anthony Thiselton

The Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:17-34)

“Q. 172. May one who doubts of his being in Christ, or of his due preparation, come to the Lord’s supper?

A. One who doubts of his being in Christ, or of his due preparation to the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, may have true interest in Christ, though he be not yet assured thereof; and in God’s account has it, if he be duly affected with the apprehension of the want of it, and unfeignedly desires to be found in Christ, and to depart from iniquity: in which case (because promises are made, and this sacrament is appointed, for the relief even of weak and doubting Christians) he is to bewail his unbelief, and labor to have his doubts resolved; and, so doing, he may and ought to come to the Lord’s supper, that he may be further strengthened.”

— Westminster Larger Catechism

Receiving the Gift of Sexual Difference (1 Corinthians 11:2-16)

“The justice behind God’s creation of male and female and his arrangement of the different roles he chose for them may not always be apparent to us. Why one and not the other? But should we expect our finitude to understand the infinite, omnipotent, wise, good, lovely, gracious justice of God? Perhaps some inkling resides in the dance of the sexes, by which we reveal truth about the inner life of the triune God. The rest is clothed in mystery, to which we yield, with full confidence that it is meant for our good.”

— Kathy Keller

Peace Be With You (John 20:19-31)

“‘We do not know… how can we know the way?’
Courageous master of the awkward question,
You spoke the words the others dared not say
And cut through their evasion and abstraction.
Oh doubting Thomas, father of my faith,
You put your finger on the nub of things
We cannot love some disembodied wraith,
But flesh and blood must be our king of kings.
Your teaching is to touch, embrace, anoint,
Feel after Him and find Him in the flesh.
Because He loved your awkward counter-point
The Word has heard and granted you your wish.
Oh place my hands with yours, help me divine
The wounded God whose wounds are healing mine.”

—Malcolm Guite