Yeast

Today's second reading was I Corinthians 5 6b-8 which is hopeful, forward-looking, and worthy of thought. Containing only two and a half verses,  it happens to be short enough to easily include here:

Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?
Clear out the old yeast,
so that you may become a fresh batch of dough,
inasmuch as you are unleavened.
For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
Therefore, let us celebrate the feast,
not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

This reading does skip deftly over the primary thrust - pun neither intended nor avoided - of the chapter. For the purpose here, the unsubtle clue "of malice and wickedness" will be similarly set aside in favor of what else this section says about the author.

Saint Paul here reminds the reader of his Jewish heritage, referring to Passover not only with the Christ-as-sacrifice metaphor, but also of the Passover tradition of cleaning out all leaven from the home. He was a Pharisee, after all, and it would appear that he continued to take these traditions seriously, despite his conversion. This could be contrasted with Peter's vision and the setting aside of Jewish dietary law by other early Christians.

Strauss & Howe mention that Reactives are (as a group) more conservative, a reaction to the fallout of the Awakening's radical tendencies. There are numerous indications that Saint Paul was a Reactive, to the point of being not only an archetypal but actual Nomad (i.e. a traveler). That he shows up in the Acts of the Apostles - not during Christ's ministry - suggests that he was younger than the Apostles and others who followed Christ during His life. At this time - that is, as a "young man" - he was considered "bad," persecuting Christians of the young Church.  While he has definite opinions about the direction the Church should take, his teachings are  often more practical than passionate - the 15th chapter of the same epistle being a particular example, where he speaks of the Resurrection not only in terms of faith, but of recent factual history.  And he knows how to take advantage of a situation, turning his arrest and trial into an opportunity to spread the Word to the center of the Roman Empire. In Paul, then, there are all the elements of Reactives: The appropriate place in history (i.e. born during an Awakening); a contemptible origin; a practical focus, and a talent for making the best of when things turn bad.