Fr Matthew Reese

Alleluia.
Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; *
therefore let us keep the feast,
Not with old leaven,
neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, *
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Alleluia.

Dear Friends in Christ,

When I turned to this morning’s second lesson (1 Corinthians 5:1-8), I was pleased to come across this beautiful and well-worn passage.

Saint Paul’s wonderful culinary metaphor here is full of such richness: we have the reference to the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, the suggestion of the Eucharistic meal, the notion of the old leaven—that false leaven of malice and wickedness—being superseded by the bread of sincerity and truth.

Whole tomes could be—indeed, have been—written about the significance of bread in Scripture!

This passage is etched into my own memory because it forms a part of the Pascha Nostrum, the Easter Anthem that we read at every Morning Prayer for the great 50 Days of Easter.

The anthem is a cento of three different passages of Scripture (1 Corinthians and Romans) that temporarily takes the place of the Venite (Psalm 95) or the Jubilate Deo (Psalm 100).

In Paul’s letter, these few verses are sandwiched between an admonishment that sexual immorality defiles the Church, and his specific exhortation that such immorality must be judged, individually.

(In a similar theme, this afternoon’s Gospel lesson, from Matthew, is Jesus’s condemnation of divorce—a topic that this 400-word reflection cannot possibly hope to do justice. We must save that for another day.)

Though the scriptural context is quite narrow—Paul is speaking about a single Christian believer in Corinth who “is living with his father’s wife”—this verse has such enormous ramifications beyond that.

What does it mean to be “made new” in Christ? Can we trade in our old ways of doing, our old habits, our old prejudices, our old malice, for sincerity and truth?

Are we really ready to come to the banquet of the Lamb?

Are we really ready to let ourselves be transformed by Christ?

It is no accident that we ask ourselves this question, again and again, for the 50 Days of Easter.

I certainly struggle with the enormity of this ask. But the task of Christian discipleship need not always be so daunting.

The first step, Saint Paul tells us, is just to lay aside malice, just to strive for sincerity. May God help us to do so, day by day.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew