I CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 1 - 5

Paul was the first to preach the Gospel where
Corinth beside the sea laid her sins bare.
Aquilla and Priscilla came to share
His love and faith upon the silver stair.
The second journey found the city bright
To cover sinfulness from all men's sight,
The most debauched of all cities in right,
No wonder those who sought Your faithful son
In that town did the evil things they've done.
The trend of wicked men around the house
Leaves spots upon the character of spouse
And all within. Beloved, I turn with plea
That I too live in Corinthian glee,
And must find refuge in this Pauline fun.



1 Paul, called to be a messenger
Of Jesus Christ through God’s will’s stir,
And Sosthenes our brother too,
2 To the group of called out ones true
Of God which is at Corinth’s town,
To those of sanctified renown
In Christ Jesus, who are called saints,
With everyone without restraints
Everywhere who call on the name
Of Jesus Christ our Lord of fame,
Both theirs and ours: 3 Grace be to you
And peace from God our Father too
And the Lord Jesus Christ who’s true.

Now Paul I know, and Jesus Christ I know,
But Sosthenes is unknown in my show,
Unless he’s one mentioned in Acts eighteen.
I’m glad he sends me greetings kind and keen.
If he’s a brother and a saint I guess
He also must call on the name’s address
Of Jesus Christ our Lord. I too do so
In this age of faith’s darkened afterglow
That jangles in the din of saintless tone.
My hymn’s to call his name as I’ve been shown.
It’s that according to Sosthenes and
Paul that makes saints on Corinth’s sunny strand.
Beloved, I accept grace and peace from You
And from the Lord Jesus Christ in Your crew.  

4 I thank my God always for you,
For the grace of God given you
By Christ Jesus, 5 you were enriched
In everything by him unhitched
In everything you say and know,
6 Even as Christ affirmed was sure
In you, 7 so that you lacked no gift,
Awaiting eagerly the drift
Of the appearing of our Lord
Jesus Christ, 8 who will without sword
Also confirm you to the end,
That you may be blameless a friend
In our Lord Jesus Christ’s last day.
9 God’s faithful, by whom in the way
You were called into fellowship
Of His Son, Jesus Christ our skip.

Beloved, Paul thanks for those he’s writing to,
Folk invisible, no longer in view.
As I look at the multitude of trees
From my window seat where one rarely sees
A passer-by, and then I’m often hidden,
I also thank for unseen humans bidden.
Divinity found in Your Christ glows yet
In the face and form human where You set
Your word and grace in every hearer of
Paul’s preaching and my comments on his love.
You’re faithful and call into fellowship
With the Skipper Jesus, his hand on hip,
And so the hermitage becomes a church,
Though only peopled by the fir and birch.

Who lack no gift no doubt await the time
When Your Son Jesus might appear in rhyme
Or in the loving heart, or in the cloud
To be seen by the belligerent crowd.
But some of us have little gift to show,
We only on the sidelines cheer the row
Of football players rushing at the foe.
May Your Christ to ungifted also come
To affirm grace at least to tidy sum.
I see myself without wealth, without fame
And without anything to make a claim.
And yet, Beloved, Your word burns in my heart
That I too might have with Your Son a part
At his appearing at the end or start.

10 Now I plead with you, brothers, by
The name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
That you all speak the same (or try),
And there be no divisions spliced
Among you, but that you be joined
Perfectly together and coined
In the same mind and in the same
Judgement. 11 For it is set in claim
To me concerning you, my brothers,
By those of Chloe’s household and others,
That you are full of arguments.
12 Now I say this, each one with sense
Says “I am of Paul,” or “I’m of
Apollos,” or “For Cephas’ love,”
Or “I am of Christ.” 13 Is Christ rent?
Was Paul crucified for you sent?
Or were you baptised in the name
Of Paul so you could bear his fame?

I doubt, Beloved, Paul meant that all should think
And be alike in choice of food and drink.
If that were so, then Pepsi’d be on brink
Of destitution or then otherwise
The only thing to taste in all men’s eyes.
No, Paul was talking of sects’ evil power
To divide Your image in humans sour.
Paul and Apollos, Cephas and Your Christ
Were all men agreed on the gospel priced.
I’ve lived to learn opinions stated fast
Will get a man more enemies at last.
Teach me, Beloved, to know what’s true and then
What’s needed to state to suspicious men.
The label divides, but faith’s anchor’s cast.

I wonder how poor Chloe felt to find
That Paul revealed her tattling out her mind
To Paul as soon as any back was turned.
She may have written an epistle burned
And did not think her neighbours might have learned
That she was who let kitten out of pouch.
I’d think after this she’d take careful vouch
Of what she told to whom. I’d think she would.
But that’s not how folk function, though they should.
She probably lived on to bear a tale
Or two to the enjoyment of the ale.
Beloved, bridle my tongue before the church,
Before the neighbour, let me not besmirch
The guilty or the guiltless from my perch.

14 I thank God that I baptised none
Of you except Crispus and one
Gaius, 15 lest anyone should say
I’d baptised in my name and way.
16 I also baptised the household
Of Stephanas. Besides all told,
I don’t know whom I baptised cold.

I too have baptised some, like Paul a few,
And like him I still hope that they are true
To You, Beloved, and not to any name
That may be cause upon them to their shame
Or any man or angel’s lasting fame.
The holy Qur’an says that You indeed
Are the best of baptisers in Your creed.
Baptise me, my Beloved, today again
In secret or before the eyes of men,
Not of the water only, but the power
Of purifying spirit in an hour.
Who is not pure within by Your fell grace
No matter how he washes dirty face
Will come before You at last in disgrace.

17 For Christ did not send me to put
People under water a foot,
But to preach the gospel, and not
With wisdom of words, lest the plot
Of Christ’s cross lose at once what’s sought.
18 The message of the cross is just
Foolishness to perishing dust,
But to us who are being saved
It is God’s power and what we craved.

Paul talks about the cross though he was not
There to see if the deed was really wrought.
But that is not the question that I sought.
I don’t care what happened so long ago,
But what happens now in this fatal show.
Who think to crucify a man that’s caught
Somewhere in Middle East will cure what ails
The world and humankind, will live to learn
That killing people does not solve concern.
It’s God’s power in the stories and commands
That brings the gospel peace to human lands
And hearts and makes men’s action turn to good.
Beloved, teach me to see things as I should
And not preach or whistle here in the wood.

19 For it is written, “I’ll destroy
The wisdom that the wise employ,
And bring to nothing what the bright
Have in their understanding’s sight.”
20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe?
Where’s this age’s disputer bribe?
Has not God made craft of this world
A foolish thing when it’s unfurled?
21 For since, in God’s wisdom, the world
Through wisdom did not know God, it
Pleased God through foolishness, though fit,
Of preaching to save those who sit
In faith. 22 For Jews request a sign,
And Greeks seek after wisdom’s wine,
23 But we preach Christ was crucified,
To Jews a stumbling block to hide
And to the Greeks a foolishness,
24 But to those who are called address,
Both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power
Of God and God’s wisdom this hour.

Indeed, that’s just what I was saying here.
Focusing on a cross that did appear
Two thousand years ago is just nonsense.
But Christ’s power to save from sin in the tents
Of wickedness is what I want to grab.
His spirit fills the law’s commands once drab
With power and life to live the victory.
And so I flee for peace to You who stand
Above the universe to give command,
To give the loving spirit and the will
To crucify the ego and stand still.
Who daily died gave us Your dying word
That comes again to bring life to the stirred.
Beloved, let me live to live and not kill.

25 Because the foolishness of God
Is wiser than men on the sod,
And the weakness of God is yet
Stronger than what men want to bet.
26 Brothers, you see your calling, that
Not many wise by standard at
Public opinion, and few great
And noble are called to the gate.

Paul braves the wealthy and takes refuge in
The poor and lowly, humble without sin.
He did not know that times were changing and
That soon the rabble crowd in every land
Would be disposed to faith in what was said
By high and mighty on the tv spread.
The wealthy are as frequent now as then
To scratch the world for profit from all men,
But now the poor, unlike the Russian serf,
Is likely to protect the wealthy turf,
And lift a cry for freedom and for power
Despite the biting of the scorpion hour.
The lowly and the weak are gullible
Now that the world of knowledge has come full.

27 But God has chosen foolish things
Of the world to put to shame wings
Of the wise, and God’s chosen weak
Things of the world to put to shame
The things which are mighty for fame,
28 And the base things of the world and
The things despised in every land
God has chosen, and the things which
Are not, to bring into the ditch
The things that are, 29 that no flesh should
Glory in His presence or could.
30 But of Him you’re in Jesus Christ,
Who became for us wisdom sliced
From God, and righteousness and yet
Sanctification until set
Redemption 31 that, as it is writ
“He who glories, let him be fit
To glory in YHWH’s benefit.”

I don’t know where Paul gets it that the weak
In the world show how kings who’re at their peek
Fail in their work and love in what they seek.
It seems to me the Church has wedded throne
And both fulfil one power and chew one bone.
It may be in Corinth those called apart
To praise Your name were poor and weak to start,
But life’s a game that changes with the round
Of seasons and brings new crops to the ground.
There’s flesh a-plenty now that glories and
That claims both You and Paul from where they stand.
Give me the hopeless poverty that fired
Paul to speak to the soon game and retired.
Then I shall be, Beloved, at last unmired.


1 And I, brothers, when I arrived
At your place, not with speech contrived
In wisdom did I speak to you
The testimony of God true.
2 For I firmly decided that
I’d not show any where you sat
But Jesus Christ the crucified.
3 And I was in weakness and in
Fear and in much trembling for sin
With you. 4 And my speech and my preaching
Was not with fair words of man’s teaching,
But showing of the spirit and
The power of spirit in my hand,
5 That your faith should not stand on sod
Of men’s wisdom, but power of God.

Paul knew both Greek mythology and word
Of the Rabbinic verdicts when he stirred
A student at Gamaliel’s bare feet.
No other human wisdom was his treat.
He looked to the events of cross and rood
As power of God most manifest and crude,
And thus he brought not words but power of God
To set folks apart from peas in the pod.
Beloved, I also come to You alone
And turn my back on royal church and throne,
The verdict of the Rabbi and the dream
Of Greek mythology, chocolate and cream.
Let my faith turn to You and let my doubt
Shut every priest and priestcraft’s wailings out.

6 And yet we speak a wisdom sought
Among the perfect ones and taught,
But not the wisdom of this world,
Nor of the princes it uncurled,
Both of which only come to nought.
7 But we speak of God’s wisdom in
A secret, the hidden within
God’s ordaining before the world
Unto our glory once unfurled
8 Which none of this world’s rulers knew,
For if they had had but a view,
They would not have nailed to the cross
The Lord of glory to their loss.

The secret hidden from the depths of time
Within Your bosom is a word sublime
That You in giving life and love to men
Gave of Yourself to live in each again.
To kill another human being who
Is aware of being I is to do
Of all sins greatest, for it must erase
Your image shining on the human face.
Beloved each man has choice in this dark vale
Either to crucify You at the pale
Or crucify the ego that would rise
Against the other in blindness of eyes.
All men who do not see You in the other
Slay Lords of glory, every son of mother.

9 But as it’s written, “Eye has not
Seen, nor ear heard, neither have got
Into the heart of man, the things
That God’s prepared for those heart-strings
That love Him in their earthly plot.”

Indeed, Beloved, Your art’s beyond my ken,
And even what I see, I look again
And find my heart knows not the half, no not
Beginning of the glories You have wrought.
So how can I whose blindness cannot show
The here and now, begin to find the glow
Of things yet unheard and unspoken that
Shall come on the horizon’s habitat?
Beloved, though in You I move, have my being,
All that You are and do’s beyond my seeing
But in the barest hint of power and line.
Your colours reach beyond my spectrum’s wine.
Yet what You have prepared by me I take
And from its greatness my own smallness make.

10 But to us God’s revealed as much
By His spirit, for spirit’s such
To search all things, even the deep
Thing of Ælohim and the steep.

Though my senses and wisdom cannot find
The limits of Your arches and Your mind,
You live to bend to earth and in that bending
Reveal the glories of heavens unending.
Your breezes blow upon the putrid still
Of my depths and with perfumes my airs fill,
And send the wavelets of my turtle pond
To move caressing the shore’s fern and frond.
The truth of ocean’s depths, its currents sealed,
Is in my way to born tadpole revealed.
Beloved, the microcosmos of my cramped
And humbled soul is sprinkled and come damped
With the winds of Yourself that You bestow
Upon the darkened depths found here below.

11 For who knows human things but what
Human spirit that’s in him caught?
So divine things no man can know,
But only God’s spirit can show.

Since my life teaches me that I don’t know
Even myself in all the pageant show
Of living creatures on the vernal sand,
How can such a one ever understand
The divine things beyond the cloud and skin?
My ignorance is surely not a sin.
But that’s not what You said through Paul’s insight.
You said only a man can know men right.
I see myself go wrong in knowing me,
And every other go wrong in the spree
Of vain attempting some psychology.
Don’t You agree, Beloved, the Feudian scope
Is a one-sided way of seeing hope?
Sight, might, and right’s a fatal trinity.

12 Now we’ve received, not the world’s mind,
But the spirit which is the kind
Of God, so we might know the things
That God has freely given us wings.
13 Which things too we speak, not in words
Which human wisdom makes like curds,
But which the holy spirit shows
Comparing spirit’s things with those.
14 But natural man does not receive
The things of God’s spirit to grieve,
For they are foolishness to him,
And neither can he know them dim,
Because they are by spirit seen.
15 But one who’s spiritual can judge
All things, yet he himself won’t budge
Before any man worth his fudge.
16 For “who knows YHWH’s mind so he might
Instruct Him?” But we do delight
In the mind of Christ for the right.

It’s small comfort to flee to mind of Christ
Since human mind can never be sufficed
For viewing Your mind in its entity.
Though Christ may well reveal Your mind freely,
The fatal flaw is that the spirit’s free
To budge and wail with winds of every kind
Of thought that makes humanity one blind.
If Christ is Christ, then he’s embodiment
Of the divine word that was one time sent
To Adam, Noah, Abraham and cast
On Sinai for a covenant to last.
I too delight in what Christ must have heard
From his own mother’s lips when undeterred
She sang the Torah notes sweet like a bird.


1 And I, brothers, could not speak to
You as to the spiritual few,
But as to carnal, as to babes
In Christ and without astrolabes.
2 I have fed you with milk, and not
With meat, since till now you were not
Able, nor are you even yet.
3 For you are carnal, since where set
Envy, strife, and divisions met,
Are you not carnal, walk as men?
4 For while one says and says again
“I am of Paul” another’s word
“I’m of Apollos” undeterred,
Are you not carnal and absurd?

Carnal, Beloved, has to do with bare meat,
As chile con carne’s a thing we eat.
So why then are the folk yet on their milk
Who do not eat meat or such other ilk
Called carnal by Paul, while the meaty diet
Is recommended by him without riot?
Forgive my jokes, Beloved, I understand
The carnal here means envy, strife and band
Of divisions across the faithful land.
I guess I’m carnal more than most since I
Do not fit in a single sect to vie,
But here alone stand before spirit’s wind
To listen to the message if I’ve sinned.
I lift a prayer toward the empty sky.

5 Who then is Paul, Apollos who,
But ministers and by whom you
Believed clear-cut even as true
The Lord has given to every man?
6 I’ve planted, Apollos with can
Has watered, but God gave increase.
7 So then neither has he a fleece
Who planted anything, nor he
That watered, but God gave freely.
8 Now he that plants and he that waters
Are one, and all both sons and daughters
Shall receive of his own reward
According to his labour scored.
9 For we’re workers working with God,
And you are God’s pasture and sod,
God’s building beneath measure-rod.
10 According to the grace of God
Which is given to me to plod
As a wise master builder, I
Have laid the firm foundation by,
And some other builds on the place.
But let each one take heed in race
How he builds there, not to disgrace.

Paul’s one who plants in faith a firm foundation,
Apollos waters the stones for sensation,
But You, Beloved, are Master of the site,
Yours is the building and the bud in light.
Mine is to scratch grafitti on the wall
That You built up through Apollos and Paul.
I do not plant, water, increase or reap,
I only come to joke and laugh a heap,
And with the humbled stop perhaps to weep.
Though I add nothing to the edifice
Of faith, I pray my building’s not amiss.
Beloved, I do take heed to how I lay
A stanza and a verse in sinners’ way.
I do not come to You, Beloved, for pay.

11 For other foundation can none
Lay than what is laid under sun,
Which is Jesus Christ when all’s done.
12 Now if any man build upon
This foundation in gold at dawn,
Or silver, precious stones or wood,
Or hay or stubble as he could,
13 Every man’s work shall be made plain
For the day shall declare the gain,
Because it shall be seen by fire,
And fire shall try each man’s desire
Of work to see or to admire.
14 If any man’s work here abide
Which he has built and put inside,
He’ll have reward once he is tried.
15 If any man’s work shall be burned,
He’ll suffer loss for what he earned,
But he himself shall just be saved,
Yet so as by fire that he braved.

Beloved, be kind to those of us who bring
The stubble to Your temple while they sing
Who can, be kind to silent ones whose voice
Is not of the most lovely or the choice.
Some are gold and some are silver in worth,
And some are precious stones dug from the earth,
And some are fine wood, though combustible,
And some are merely stubble under wool.
Beloved, remember the Egyptian cross
That took the stubble for the people’s loss.
Sometimes the stubble is commodity
More valued than the gold for symmetry.
Since straw burns by the fire of trial set,
Beloved, reward my empty hand and debt.

16 Do you not know that you are set
As temple of God, where is met
God’s spirit living in you yet?
17 If anyone defiles the place
Of God’s temple, before His face
God shall destroy him from the race,
For God’s temple’s a holy place,
Which temple you are, don’t forget.

The temple Paul speaks of is not one built
Within the human heart of breath and silt.
It is the temple of those joined to be
Your worshippers in body faithfully.
Your spirit is not said to be within
The human heart for righteousness or sin,
But among those gathered once in Your name
To render You Your own without a claim.
Beloved, I do believe Your spirit rests
Within the burning love of human breasts.
But Paul does not say that here as he writes
To foster individual delights.
The you is plural and the “in” in Greek
Well means “among”. Your spirit thus I seek.

18 Let no man here deceive himself.
If anyone there on your shelf
Seems to be wise in this world’s claim,
Let him become a fool for fame,
That he may be wise in the game.
19 For this world’s wisdom’s foolishness
With God. For it’s written to bless,
“He takes the wise in their own coils.”
20 And once again, “The Lord knows toils
Of thought among the wise that they
Are vain and empty in their way.

St. Paul’s a victim too of his illusion,
For all wisdom that seems is but delusion.
Who studies anything knows well enough
The more one learns the more the going’s tough,
And what one knows is just a drop upon
The ocean of unknowing in the dawn.
But he’s right that the self-deceived will rise
To claim before the world that they are wise.
There are fools who do not know they are fools,
Who differ from the wise beside the pools
Of ignorance in that the wise alone
Know that their knowledge is a broken bone.
Beloved, bless me and Paul and everyone
Who knows he is a fool beneath the sun.

21 Therefore let no one take pride in
The human way to work in sin.
For all things are your own in bin.
22 Whether Paul or Apollo win,
Or Cephas, or the world, or life,
Or death or things present in strife,
Or things to come, all these are yours.
23 And you belong to Christ whose stores
Are God’s, the God whom Christ adores.

The four-tiered ownership of things is new
To perceptions decked out upon the few.
You are the One who owns Your Christ, and he
Owns all the people in Your armoury.
And we to whom Paul writes own everything
From life to death, the world and the striving
Of Paul and Cephas and Apollo set
For planting and cultivating us yet.
Beloved, hegemony’s a thing profound
For likes of me upon terrestrial ground,
And so I leave angelic choirs to You
And pray the spires resound upon their cue,
While I own naught at all, but am all owned
By You, Beloved, well-tuned and as well toned.


1 May people think of us as servants
Of Christ, and stewards in observance
Of God’s secrets.  2 Yet it’s required
That one be faithful once inspired.
3 But with me it’s a tiny thing
That I should be judged by your sting,
Or by human judgement at all,
Indeed, I save myself the call.

Paul claims he does not judge even himself.
Now that’s impossible for any man or elf.
All men judge others, not to speak of those
Who find themselves dressed up in women’s clothes.
All judge both consciously and without knowing,
And that’s not always in fact a bad showing.
If You, Beloved, judge humankind just by
The ten small words You once said on Sinai,
Then You judge less than anyone I know.
Most liberal of churches on the go
Put more pressure than that on every member,
And do so from New Year’s Day to December.
Judge not, not to be judged was Jesus’ word,
Thing far harder than what’s on Sinai heard.

4 For I know nothing by myself,
But that does not put me on shelf
Of the exonerated, but
He that judges me in the gut
Is the Lord.  5 So don’t judge a thing
Before the time of questioning,
Until the Lord come who will bring
To light the dark secrets in praise
Of God. 6 And these things, brothers, raise
I in a figure transferred to
Myself and Apollos in due
For your sakes, that you might learn well
In us not to think over spell
Of what is written, that no one
Of you be proudful when you’re done.

Beloved, I know of no church or its crew
Or even individual in stew
That does not go beyond the written word
Found in the Decalogue by beast and bird.
The human heart apparently cannot
Be satisfied with that wisdom You’ve wrought.
A poker club has more rules to be broken
Than those ten You gave once and for love’s token.
I flee the proudful, my Beloved, and stay
Within the limits of Your statutes’ way,
And touch the stony earth with head to pray
That You might guard me from going astray.
The proud find reason for dogma to speak,
But let me contemplate Your word and seek.

7 Who is it makes your difference?
And what have you got, pounds and pence,
That you did not receive? Now if
You did receive, that why stand stiff
In pride, as if you were the source?
8 Now you have plenty and of course
Are rich, you’ve reigned like kings without
Us, and I wish to God your clout
As kings were true that we also
Might reign ourselves and in your glow.

Is the question that St. Paul asks quite fair?
Indeed, if one must answer anywhere,
The fact is that created ones have got
Everything they have from the source and pot.
Does the fact that I am created mean
That I must be humble before the stream
Of all creation else? Beloved, I doubt,
I doubt the word of Paul with all his clout.
And yet, Beloved, I recognize the name,
Admitting that those people to their shame
Split up infinitives and without cause.
They deserved scolding from St. Paul in claws.
Preserve me. my Beloved from every sect,
From myself, from my foe, and the elect.

For I reckon God has set up
Us as apostles last in cup,
As it were appointed to death,
For we are made at every breath
A spectacle before the world
And angels, before men uncurled.  
10 We’re fools for Christ’s sake, but you are
Wise in Christ like a shining star,
We’re weak, but you are strong, you are
Honoured, but we’re despised afar.

Does St. Paul feel despised that he is left
To the apostleship, friendless, bereft?
Then let him try the status of the poet
Who interprets his word and what’s below it.
He’d then see to be apostle among
Corinthians is better than unsung
Rhymer stranded upon a foreign shore.
Then he would stop his whining evermore.
Beloved, let me not whine like blessed St. Paul.
I live and breathe in the best horse’s stall,
And take my pleasure in the rain and sun
That streams upon my coat of white and dun,
And wonder what wind broke the alder down
That was between my window and the town.

11 Even to this very day we
Are hungry, thirsty, naked be,
And buffeted and have no place
We know of where we can take space.
12 We earn our bread by our own hands,
Reviled we bless, driven from lands
We’re patient with it. 13 When defamed
We appeal to the one who blamed,
We’re made as this world’s refuse and
The rubbish of all things in hand.
14 I don’t write this to shame your band,
But as loved children warn to stand.
For though you have ten thousand who
Teach you in Christ, fathers are few,
For in Christ Jesus I have spawned
You through the gospel when it dawned.
16 That’s why I beg you, follow me.

My bread’s been barely earned by my own hands,
And if my wife had not stepped in the bands
And made a buck or two, I’d have been lost
Among the poor majority and tossed.
Few men admit their fate, but it is true
The world has always been dependent too
On what the women did in toil and sale
Besides the running of the house and flail
Of children on the run and on the come.
St. Paul’s a man, so what does he know of
The labour for a pittance and for love?
Beloved, though I may seem to disdain Your
Apostles by my plaint on every score,
I still think his words worth a mountain more.

17 So that is why I’ve sent to You
Timothy who is my son true
Beloved and faithful in the Lord,
Who’ll bring you in remembrance’ ward
Of my ways, ways which are in Christ
And everywhere I’ve taught sufficed
To every group of called out ones.
18 Now some are proudful in their buns
As though I’d not appear to you.
19 But I’ll come soon into your view,
In sha Allah, and will know then
Not the speech that’s prideful of men,
But the power and authority.
20 For God’s kingdom’s not in the fee
Of word but in authority.
21 What do you want? Shall I come to
You with a stick or in love true,
And in spirit of meekness due?

The coming of Apostle Paul most sounds
Like threat with a big stick upon his rounds.
He sends in Timothy who will prepare
The way for what he claims that he will dare.
I like a man like Paul, one who knows well
What’s in the cast before he shows the spell.
I like a man like Timothy because
He knows two sides of life and both their laws.
Two heads are better than one like two legs
Are better than one or for hopping pegs.
Beloved, do you send to my heart a man
With a big stick or with love in the can?
In a meek spirit few go out today.
The preachers I’ve heard tend to flail and flay.

I know what Paul is talking of when he
Speaks of the prideful in their prideful glee.
I’ve caught a few of those who’re sure to be
Full of knowledge profound and repartee.
I’ve learned to deal with pride in self and other
By reference to the ten commandments, mother
Of wisdom that You’ve sprinkled on men’s hearts
At least since Sinai shoots out fiery darts.
Beloved, I have nothing to support pride
But that word of Yours on which I’ve relied.
The hand and tongue without that surely find
Enough to say and do, although they’re blind.
Pride falls before my eyes’ evaluation
As I see all planted by Sinai’s station.

See now, Beloved, the word that Paul writes here,
Ecclesia, or church, it would appear,
And yet the Grecian word means nothing like
A group of people gathered for the strike,
Or even less a building shaped in steeple.
The word’s no institution, not of people
Or stone or light, or music or of preaching,
Not of dogma, not even of right teaching.
The word means nothing more than called out ones,
Called out I guess of synagogue and sun’s
Temple to follow Your will alone and
Know the grace of Your Christ, and live to stand.
Call me out, my Beloved, and let me be
Yours alone and from all other bands free.


1 It’s commonly said you maintain
Immorality in domain,
And such as is not even named
Among the Gentiles to be blamed,
That one should have his father’s wife.
2 And you are proud and without strife
With him that his deed might be shunned
Away from you among the stunned.
3 For truly I absent in flesh
But present in spirit and fresh
Have judged already as though I
Were right there with you for this guy
Who’s done such a deed on the sly.

It seems, Beloved, that Paul’s also appalled
At what a man did for lust and enthralled.
It’s always so, and everyone looks scant
At those whose lusts are different from the rant
Of the majority. In fact I plead
That all men are as guilty in the seed.
Who is there that does not act from his lust
In doing even what those think he must
Who bear the burden of society?
Beloved, let me act rather by the trust
That You assigned on Sinai’s colloquy,
And leave both scandalized remarks unsaid
As well as following lust to the bed.
Let each one have his legal partner free.

4 In name of our lord Jesus Christ,
When you come together enticed,
And my spirit, authority
Of our lord Jesus Christ in fee,
5 To hand over such a one to
Satan for slaying of flesh due,
That the spirit may be saved in
The day lord Jesus comes to win.

I’m not sure how the spirit can survive
Once taken into Satan’s great beehive,
And after once the flesh is torn apart
And all the bones are bleached by devilish art.
But I trust it is so. So I shall take
Repentance for the best way to the steak.
Today the Baptist church is not about
The sense of sin and sorrow for the rout,
But more to realize that You love us
With unconditional love’s blunderbuss.
I guess Corinth was modern Baptist crew
In accepting the fornicating few.

6 Your boasting’s not good, don’t you know
A little yeast makes the whole glow?
7 So put out the old yeast so you
May be a dough batch of the new,
As being without yeast to do.
For even our passover Christ
For us one time is sacrificed.
8 So now let us keep up the feast
Not with the old and spoiled yeast,
The yeast of malice, wickedness,
But with yeastless bread’s truthfulness.

Some think these words refer to Jesus dying
On the cross with the weight of sins a-lying
On forehead and on heart and reconciled
To making an atonement for the wild.
Indeed it is not so, instead the word
Is all about the yeastless bread interred
In passover loaf when the thing occurred
That Jesus lifted sop and dipped the curd
And with that sign sent Judas out and cursed.
The message is the thing we fear the worst:
To put a brother out of pew and state
Just because he approached unmarried mate.
Thank goodness there are still churches around
Where sinful membership can still be found.

O my Beloved, what mercy You give me
Who see the fatal yeast in every place
Where men may enter either face to face
Or in an unjust anonymity!
The fearful, lonely, love-spent heart is free
To cast its vile vituperation’s space
On every fleeting blossom, every race
From lady’s mantle and the greenery
Of broad-leaved plantain by the step and door.
I flee to You, Beloved, from every shore
Where such hypocrisy arises gaunt
To fool the living blind and stand and flaunt.
Beloved, Beloved, You are enough for me.

9 I wrote you one letter to say
Not to have fornicators stay
With you, 10 But I did not mean that
Not with any in this world sat
As fornicators, covetous,
Or extortioners or the muss
Idolaters make, for then you
Would have to leave the world in crew.

The truth is Paul does not say we must not
Carouse with fornicators on the spot
Of bar and dance-floor, since for that we would
Have to leave the town centre and for good.
No, he just does not want us to shake hands
With fornicators in the pews and stands
Of Your house under steeple and on Sunday.
Acceptance of the ill’s all right on Monday.
Beloved, forgive my cynical approach
To Paul and church and world, I don’t encroach
On Your authority nor on Your glory,
But with repentance come amend my story.
Let everyone look to his own expenses
And drop the holiness of false pretences.

AUTHOR: THOMAS G. MCELWAIN

Copyright © 2007 Adams & McElwain Publishers and Thomas McElwain First Published in two volumes, The Beloved and I 2005, and Led of the Beloved, 2006. Second Edition, 2010 Third and revised edition, 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this verse commentary on the sacred Scriptures may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from publisher.

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