Chances are that most of us look at ourselves in a bathroom mirror at least once or twice a day while we’re brushing our teeth or shaving. (Or maybe we try not to look very hard). If we drive anyplace, we use mirrors to avoid accidents. Some of us, I’m sure, carry mirrors around in purses or pockets. We might have decorative mirrors in our homes. Store displays abound in mirrors. Mirrors serve many purposes. For example, the James Webb telescope, blowing away our notions of the universe, depends upon mirrors. From the ridiculous to the sublime, mirrors abound among us.
It was not so in Paul’s world. In the first century, mirrors were made of highly polished brass, bronze or other metals, and too pricey for common folks. Wealthy homes might have one hanging on a wall. Wealthy women would use a handheld one for applying the cosmetics of the day. I suppose wealthy men fussed over their appearance as well. But the images mirrors reflected would have been less accurate and more hazy than most of today’s cheapest mirrors.
The reflection is quite poor. And so, as Paul is often translated, people looked into a mirror dimly. Other translations riff on the word “dimly:” we see a riddle or an enigma or a mystery. Even the best mirror reflects our world and ourselves very poorly. What we see mystifies and puzzles us. We don’t know that much about ourselves or the world as we see it reflected around us. And we know next to nothing about the ultimate realities of our nature or divine nature.
Paul wanted to remind the Corinthians of that. Those quarrelsome Corinthians, arguing about who was best and who ought to do what. Fussing about the right order of worship and how best to build a meeting agenda. Not so different than any other gathering of humans, really, much to Paul’s dismay.
So. Remember to love, he says.
So. Remember to be continue growing and maturing; don’t remain like children.
So. Remember we don’t truly understand anything; we see very poorly. Someday we will see fully. Face to face with ourselves. Face to face with others. Face to face with God.
…Today we remember many of those among us who have died, who have moved to the other side of this life. We cannot know for certain what lies there, what there is to be discovered. But we can rest in the faith that they dwell within the arms of the Eternal, that they have met God face to face, and that their awareness of life’s essence far exceeds ours.
Today we remember that even though our seeing is imperfect, we can seek to grow in our understanding. Even though the reality mirrored to us is a riddle, an enigma, a dim haze, we can continue to improve the image, clarify the mirror’s surface, polish it a bit. We can improve the images. We can shift our perceptions of ourselves, of others, of the Divine. Mirrors can be polished and improved.
If we love.
Paul looked toward a soon-to-arrive messianic age, an age of completeness, an age of the fulfillment of God’s promises and the coming of God’s reign. We still seek that reign among us, a reign in which love is all-embracing, as Amy-Jill Levine points out (The Jewish Annotated New Testament). To know love, to be love, to embrace love. That has been the work of the saints showing us the reign of God more fully. That is our work, as we seek to understand more clearly and to know the reign of God in this world as well as the next.
-Rev. Ruth Moerdyk
Scripture:1 Corinthians 13: 8-13