Loader Exegesis
William Loader
Advent 2: 7 December 2 Peter 3:8-15a
The letter addresses what the passing of two millennia no longer sees as a problem. Clearly many expected divine intervention, the day of the Lord, within their lifetime or soon thereafter. This was the case with Paul. It hasn't happened; and it hadn't happened by the early second century when this letter was probably penned. Such intense hope has lapsed. Occasionally people have stoked the expectations. There have been the speculations at the turn of the millennia and many others at other times. Our author, writing with claims to be or represent Peter, himself, urges caution.
It is interesting both to observe the tradition with which he works and to see what he does with it. The idea of a future day of the Lord remains. It was after all fundamental, had its roots in Old Testament hope (although Amos warned that unless things changed people should not really look forward to it at all!), and appears to have been central in Jesus' message, despite the attempts from time to time to rescue Jesus from such an embarrassment. It was part of their world. It is as little part of ours as belief in a flat world or a demon based cosmology is. What do we then do? Join the scoffers whom the letter confronts?
Notions of a final conflagration were by no means confined to Jewish speculation. From a totally different perspective we can probably affirm something like this - in millions of years time; or in the case of a nuclear holocaust. But such parallels should not invite regression into a flurry of future prediction based on 'Bible prophecy'. Theirs was conceived differently and seen as a divine initiative, not as a terrorist strike or a consequence of the planet's overheating.
The author's retreat from the speculative, points to useful possibilities for us. He focuses not on the event but on God and God's time. While at one level this will have been a rationalization for the delay, it also shifts attention to what we can know - or at least trust. This return then leads to an assertion about God's being: God does not want people to perish. This is a move - not taken very far - but a step which has the potential to unravel some of the speculation and the notion, crudely put, that God will finally want to destroy all who do not repent or punish them eternally. The author does not go that far, but it is significant that this catches his attention.
He then resorts to the suddenness argument: beware it can come at any time - a bit hard for us to sustain. The attention then turns back to appropriate behavior. It goes beyond a scared waiting, to an eagerness which feels more like hoping for a fulfillment of something good rather than for something bad. The hope then shifts to a new heaven and a new earth - which might look like a simple replacement theory, but the key vestige of good news is in the assertion that the new reality will be a place of righteousness or justice. The hope for transformation, which winds up in desperate thought to a pitch where the old melts and there is something totally new, is born ultimately in the pain of injustice, one's own or that of others. It is as though flamboyant images of dramatic conflagration are the verbal arm waving of people in crisis reaching out for liberation. Of course, this is only half true. The author writes reflectively and people in those days took such images more literally. We can nevertheless link arms with people in such plight. It is the original context of our whole movement. We are to belong to those who yearn for justice, even if our poetry is less dramatic and expectations more measured.
The purity and godliness espoused in this letter may have a strongly moral quality and focus on piety. For us such purity and godliness has to be transposed into singleness of endeavor and solidarity with God's action and promise that there can be peace and there can be justice in this world - within people and among them. Part of our task is to transpose the eagerness and urgency from the cosmological speculation to the register of human need and the state of the present world and its future.
Gospel: Advent 2: 7 December Mark 1:1-8
William Loader
Advent 1: 30 November 1 Corinthians
1:3-9
Paul’s letters are highly stylized, much more so than the
minimal conventions which frame our correspondence of ‘Dear Sir’ and ‘Yours
sincerely’ or the equivalent. ‘Grace and peace’ is a variant of the written,
‘hello’, in which we catch echoes of the Greek, ‘Greetings;’ and the Hebrew,
‘Shalom/Peace’. Even the report of praying or giving thanks for the recipients’
well being belongs to a standard form. Nevertheless Paul shows himself as one
who fills conventions with substance and what at first might look only like
polite rhetoric has spice.
As the rhetoric frames Paul’s opening comments, so the
theology of grace embedded in it provides the context of Paul’s concerns,
indeed, his way of relating to those to whom he writes. Within that context and
framework Paul affirms the grace given the Corinthians. What he means by this
grace is spelled out in what follows. Grace is more than kind attitude. It is a
way of describing God’s engagement with people and the effects it produces. So
Paul highlights the way the Corinthians responded to the message or testimony of
the gospel which he had addressed to them: they are able to articulate their
faith and they have a deepened understanding or wisdom. In fact Paul suggests
that they have all they need: they lack nothing, but then comes a slight turn:
ultimately it will be Christ who will really put them on a firm footing when he
comes and God is the one we need to rely on ultimately. God is the one who
really constitutes the community as a community of Christ, a Christian
community. It began with God through Paul and it ends with God.
As we read on into the letter we can see that Paul knows what
he is about to write. Far from being polite generalities, the opening words we
find in 1:3-9 have direct relevance to some of the major issues. For while it is
true they are good at talking about their faith and pursuing wisdom, they are
also distracted by a sense of their own importance and their own rhetoric. Not
so subtly Paul is targeting the self sufficiency of at least some Corinthians
who think they have arrived and who have become the source of division.
He confronts such arrogance with the traditional future expectation. That future expectation implies: we have not arrived; we are still on the journey. We haven’t got it all; there’s still a lot of growing and learning to do; it’s not only OK not to have arrived, but it is of the essence of being human Whether we share Paul’s form of future expectation or not, the life of faith for Paul is about an openness to God’s goodness (grace) which leaves plenty of room – for God, for others and for ourselves. Paul is prying open a closeness which ultimately leaves little room for God, for others, for ourselves – even though no one would doubt it is intensively religious. One of the things love does is free us from the obsession that we have to have arrived or have the answers to everything to be people of value. Such people are a pain to themselves and to others. Paul sets the parameters well, including an implied reminder that they should also still listen to him. After all, he got them started!
Gospel: Advent 1: 30 November Mark 13:24-37
William Loader
Christ the King: 23 November Ephesians 1:15-23
What appears to be a letter to the Ephesians by Paul may well be something of a more general kind composed in this format. In any case it is dense with allusions to Paul's ideas as well as developing particular slants of its own. Its lack of particular attachment to a context gives it a general character and wide application, as key themes receive attention which are applicable to all.
It is designed as a source of teaching for Gentile believers and identifies key foundations for their faith. Its language tumbles to excess with nouns piled up which fall forward, as it were, in overbalance to make its point. When we pick ourselves up from the ocean floor having surfed across so many "of"s, which kind translators often try to disguise, we find that important things have been said.
The first two verses are simple enough and follow the traditional pattern of beginning letters with assurances of interest in or prayer or thanksgiving for the recipients, but then the wave builds and in 1:17-19 we are scrambling to keep upright as words tumble and rumble. Basically the prayer is that the Gentile believers will understand what their hope is and how powerful God can be in their lives.
If we let the thoughts run up onto the sand, we can see that it is reassuring to tell people via a prayer what you wish for them and want them to know. Whatever it may take, ensuring we have a sound foundation of hope is a key to life. Hope occupies the God-spot in our lives, just as God occupies the hope-spot. It gives us a sense that life is worth going on. Notice that the wisdom about this is not expansive knowledge or speculation about what it might turn out to be in detail. There is nothing of that. The hope is totally focused on God - so the details can be left. It is not a hope we control by having knowledge about it. It is rich; it is glorious; it is, in fact, God's being. It is not to be commodified into a package and put on the greed-shelf of spiritual consumerism.
In the Greek our whole passage is really one single sentence. So when the prayer also expresses the wish that we may know the power that this unleashes in us in 1:19, it simply continues in 1:20 with the relative pronoun, "which". The power which we experience is the power "which" elevated the dead and rejected Christ. So we can surf down the sentence a good while longer with its twists and turns.
In 1:20-22 the passage uses a string of ideas we find elsewhere, for instance in 1 Peter 3:18-22 and Hebrews 1-2. They include: God raised Christ from the dead; God seated him at his right hand (using the imagery of royal coronation from Psalm 110:1); God subjected powers (including angels) to him; God subjected everything to him (using imagery from Psalm 8:6). Colossians which Ephesians uses extensively employed many of these ideas. Paul uses them in 1 Corinthians 15 and, partly, in Romans 8:34. In other words the passage uses a sequence of ideas designed to tell us about God's response to human rejecting of Jesus. It is language from the sphere of kings and coronations (as is the word, "Messiah", Christ, which means Anointed).
Where people had rejected Jesus in the worst possible way, God affirmed him in the best possible way - at least within the prevailing value system of the day. The message is clear. God does not abandon the one who loves. The powers that destroy do not have the last word. Love overcomes hate. God took Jesus home and celebrated him. The same God and the same hope is the life force of believers. It could just be wishful thinking. It can never quite escape the charge that it is wilful defiance of what appears to be reality. Faith understands that and needs to recognise that it is often wilful defiance in the name of love. Christ's hope and ours belong inextricably together.
The connection between God's affirmation of the rejected Jesus and ourselves comes through very strongly in the last two verses. It is not just that our fate may mirror his. It is not just about affirming a principle of hope and its power in our lives. Rather what happened with Christ was the beginning of something which reaches out and encompasses others and brings together into a network of people who share the same source of energy. Borrowing from an idea developed in new ways in Colossians, Ephesians speaks of Christ becoming the head of an expanding body into which we are incorporated. Paul's image of the body for the local congregation now becomes the basis for understanding how all believers belong together.
It is interesting to examine the language used of mission. Here the central term is filling. May the earth be filled with the glory of God! Such thoughts will have inspired this new image of what God is doing through Christ: filling the world with grace and doing so by filling the world with the community of faith and life.
It is also a very dangerous image when given definitive status and not allowed to blow away in the wind as good images must to uncover the truth. The church has not shown itself to be good news when it has seen its role as filling the universe and controlling it. It slips off its board in the turbulence when it forgets its fallibility and need to see to balance. Nevertheless, the image can inspire. Far from being an ever expanding hand reaching out to grab, manipulate and control, it can understand as its authority the engagement in bringing transforming grace and hope, both of which carry their own authentication and infallibility.
Christ the king is also an image which has both cursed and blessed the world. It is at its most powerful when captured in the vision of a thorn-crowned figure on the throne of a cross. The power of which Ephesians speaks is not a power to undo that image and replace it, but to affirm it. And such abundant love needs to reach every shore.
Gospel: Christ the King: 23 November Matthew 25:31-46
William Loader
Pentecost 27: 16 November 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Paul continues to use traditional imagery, as he had in 4:13-18, and, again, we find ourselves in a strange world. It made sense for Paul to warn about the possible sudden return of Christ, like a thief in the night (5:2). He was expecting it during his lifetime. One never knows when contractions will start (5:3). One never knows when the day of the Lord will come. We no longer live on the edge of our seats in this regard. 2000 years is too long a time.
Nevertheless we can find meaning in Paul's words of comfort and encouragement in other ways. Again Paul is employing popular categories when he contrasts light and darkness, day and night, wakefulness and sleep, sobriety and being drunk. This can be reduced a crude self-congratulatory "us" and "them" contrast. Paul's wider perspective shows that he is not at all happy to run off with a saved clique and condemn the rest of the world. His life mission is to reach out in love to all. Rather Paul is wanting to reinforce the identity of the Thessalonians, to help them see a contrast implicit in that contrast which should sustain them.
It is not difficult to find matches for the metaphors of sleep and drunkenness in today's world. It is important to recognise the intoxicating effects of modern western society, in particular. We can be swept up into behaviours, attitudes, values systems and politics which are destructive for ourselves and others, without knowing it. Paul encourages us to stand back and recognise differences. There were pressures in his day as there are in ours. People need to keep just as awake today as they needed to then, perhaps even more so, because we are being constantly bombarded and manipulated by subtle strategies of persuasion, "spin" of all kinds, including political "spin".
In 5:8 Paul uses a military metaphor drawn from Isaiah 59:17 and better known from Eph 6:14-17, where it has been further elaborated. Here in 5:8 the armor is defensive: protection for the chest and a helmet. Military metaphors can be dangerous. They invite notions of domination and power and frequently use language of aggression. Here the focus is defense. Paul uses the familiar trio, faith, love, and hope. These are not innocent virtues, but robust stances which enable people to live in a way that resists the pressure to conform to what the powerful want and to stand out against abuse in solidarity with the abused and violated.
Ultimately the contrasts which Paul draws are not narrow and sectarian nor focused on heaven and eternal damnation (though Paul alludes to such ideas in 5:9), but between sharing the life of God, made known in Christ and dynamically present in the Spirit, on the one hand, and living according to the gods and priorities of greed and power, on the other. It is faith in the one who gave his life for others, who embodied love, and so gave people hope, which defines this new existence. So in 5:10 Paul takes us back again to Christ and returns to the thought of 4:17. Our future is in solidarity with Christ and that is also our hope - to live now and then with him.
It is a pity that people make a paragraph break between 5:11 and what follows. In 5:11 Paul, ever with a sense for the present implications of faith statements, encourages the Thessalonians to mutual support. On the ground, that really matters. Not much hope grows where not much love flows and love needs to flow through people. Paul understands this life of faith, hope, and love as one lived in community where the processes of change and renewal are generated through real experiences. 5:12, then, moves even further into practicalities. Support people in leadership. That was as important then as it is now. Paul knows that they can become vulnerable. They are human. They need loving, too. And sometimes, then, as now, they probably needed to be persuaded to heighten their level of self-loving and caring. Intentional care of this kind is the presupposition for what Paul goes on to say in 5:13: Be at peace with each other.
Paul moves toward the conclusion of his letter with a fine exhortation about pastoral care in 5:14-24. Warning the idle (5:14) always recalls for me a word of dismissal which I once saw printed in an ordination liturgy where the spell check had no qualms about leaving "idol" in the text. Warn the idol indeed! At least Paul in our passage brings to our awareness that the issue of idolatry is far from irrelevant for our times, even if the imminence of the day of the Lord is not. These days the idols have major corporate sponsorship and represent powerful vested interests, but from much of Christianity there is little about which they need to be warned. Paul believes Christians should not be so drowsy and drunk, but be asserting the radical new way of faith and love and hope. His world needed it and so does ours.
William Loader
Pentecost 26: 9 November 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
The Christians at Thessalonica have been worrying Paul. He is writing after he has heard from Timothy that they have kept their faith despite facing persecution (3:1-10). His concern to address the issue of what happens to people who have died may reflect awareness that in the persecution some had lost their lives, although Paul does not say so directly. He does, in any case, want to offer words of hope and for this he passes on what appears to be early Christian tradition about Christ's return (4:16-17).
It is an extraordinary statement. Paul paints a picture of Christ returning with a loud shout, an archangel's call, and a trumpet sound. Possibly the image means that Christ does all three: shouts, speaks like an archangel and makes a blast on a trumpet. Paul would have been aware he was using imagery. Trumpets accompanied important events, especially festivals, and marked beginnings and endings. It was also common to imagine divine figures making themselves known with loud shouts, especially in the wider religious world of the time.
This colorful or perhaps, better, noisy spectacle serves another interest. Paul is underlining his belief that ultimately Christ will come to receive and care for his own. They will not be abandoned. Staying within Paul's framework of thought we can see that here, as in 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul develops similar imagery, Paul expects to be among those still alive when Christ returns. So he imagines a sequence of events. The dead will be brought to life. Then those, like himself, who are still alive, will be caught up into the air and then both, the resurrected ones and those still alive will be taken off to be with Jesus.
In 1 Corinthians he defends his belief in future resurrection by explaining that it must not to be taken too literally. He is not talking about flesh and blood bodies, but about transformed bodies. People will be embodied but in a different order of reality. Such ideas have their roots in texts like Daniel 12 which picture the future for the righteous in a way that makes them seem like stars. It was common to believe that they would be embodied like angels. The preview of the climax of history which we call the transfiguration has Christ, therefore, transformed into this new order of shining reality. Handel has immortalized the passage from 1 Corinthians 15, which speaks of the trumpet sounding and our being changed.
It is hard to make much sense of such a passage today. We no longer believe the earth is flat or like a saucer; nor do we believe in an imminent return of Jesus, let alone in a form that would match Paul's imagery in any literal sense. Paul was wrong in his expectations. He died. 2000 years have passed. We now smile at the hundreds of attempts to revive belief in Christ's imminent return, even if we don't want to be labeled "scoffers" (see 2 Peter). It would be easy to walk away from such beliefs altogether. Is this the only way?
At a very basic level we might identify with Paul's faith in the following terms. He looks at uncertainty and adversity. He believes in hope. He embraces the imagery and poetry of his day. He probably did not have a clear definition of where the imagery stopped and where the reality started. In any case we would draw it somewhat differently. His hope was, as it were, held in solution in a beaker of swirling imagination using standard ingredients. In all of this he was conveying the confidence that all does not end in oblivion and certainly not in hopelessness. Ultimately that hope does not depend on images or sequences or explanations about how, but on the nature of God.
Even in the movie clip which Paul runs for us, the end is about hope in presence. Being present with Christ and this only has meaning in the context of the presence of God. In one sense, far from having a book of details, we have just one detail: God. But this detail has the contours we have seen in Christ and the story of his resurrection is the primary symbol of meaning that both declares him affirmed by God and presents a story which encourages us to hope beyond death and whatever else confronts us of such proportions. Thus Paul opens the door to his statements of hope by talking about Christ in 4:15. Christ provides an impetus for hope because we identify in him the contours of God as a God of love.
Even when we live with healthy agnosticism about the future, including post mortem survival, our faith remains grounded in the being of God, whatever that will mean and there we also believe we meet the one whom we see in the refracted symbols of Christ's impact and that one meets us. There are dreams and visions and colours splashed about the screen of our imagination, but it is not science and it is not knowledge. It is important not to believe the poetry; otherwise it loses its power. It finds its power when we live with hope and a sense of worth and do so with and for others.
There is a pastoral trap in the opening verse of our passage which if misread or misheard will inspire people to guilt about grief. "People who have hope do not grieve" - really? The text is talking about being able to grieve - with hope and not hopelessness. Hope does not mean we do not suffer loss, do not deeply miss loved ones, do not go through patches of Gethsemane or even sit sometimes like Job. But it is important to deal with the pastoral trap, because some people are waiting to "beat themselves up" and others have suffered much through naive notions about "happy" Christians. We need to be able to face pain, ours and that of the world. We are not good news for ourselves or for our world when we live in an artificially trumped up denial and this is even worse when it governs our politicians. Ultimately Paul's life shows that he's not holding his breath to get out of here, but that he has identified with the one who entered life's pain fully and gave his life - and found his life - for the benefit of all.
Gospel Pentecost 26: 9 November Matthew 25:1-13
William Loader
Pentecost 25: 2 November 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
The sensitivities continue in Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. It would be interesting to know how much they knew. Paul keeps referring to it. "As you know" comes again in 2:11. From what we know we can sense what Paul is probably doing. People at Corinth and elsewhere criticized Paul for working to earn his keep instead of obeying Jesus' command to let himself be funded and resourced like a proper apostle by those who he served (most graphically evident in 2 Cor 10-13). The snipers could point to disobedience - but then Paul never treated the words of scripture nor the words of Jesus in such an inflexible way. They could also accuse him of failure to trust God. There was more: it was as offensive not to receive hospitality as it was not to give it. Paul was dishonoring the people whom he served. Worse still, some suggested it was all a sham. Paul did collect money everywhere. What did he do with it!?
Little wonder that Paul wants to head off with the Thessalonians any such accusations. It is serious. So in 2:10 Paul uses the language of an oath to swear by God that his behavior was above reproof. If a few verses earlier he uses the image of mothering, here he uses the image of fathering. He is making the point that his ministry comes from love, not from self interest. They should recognize that this was the reason why he worked on the side. Compassion calls for flexibility, not playing it by the rules and protecting one's rights and status.
We might imagine Paul sitting down regularly with his congregations to ensure issues are clear and people know where he stands, what he is doing and why. He cannot do that. He is too far away. But his commitment to people means he makes the effort to communicate. Paul does not model the ministry of a loner or martyr or depressive who withdraws and blames. Ongoing open communication is essential in ministry. We are the beneficiaries through his letters.
When in 2:13 Paul's turns to thanksgiving, it is also his attempt to have them join him. It is also how he often began his letters, with praise meant to endear. It can be slightly manipulative, but there is no reason to doubt Paul's genuineness despite the obvious agenda of endearment. Our passage stops short of further attempts on Paul's part to build solidarity in verses which have been quite dangerous and, for some, encouraged anti-Semitism. While opposition from fellow citizens is a common experience for many in Christian congregations of Paul's day, he extends the solidarity to a sense of oneness with Christ being killed by his fellow Jews (2:14-16).
Paul's language is unfortunate and reflects, or perhaps only generates, negative Jewish stereotypes about Jews as the enemies of humanity. Paul would be the first to counter abuse of his statements. His attack is not on Jews as a people. He is one of them and proud of it. Then those who killed were not all Jews, nor even all Judeans, but only some and certainly not without Roman collaboration who actually carried out the execution. Still, Paul bears resentment and seems happy to see them suffer at the time of writing, a regrettable slip from the logic of his gospel.
I suspect that the motivation for such resentment has less to do with the history of Jesus and his countryman and more to do with Paul's own anger about the Christian Jews, including those from Judea, who have been hounding him. In that conflict, as in most conflicts, there are positives and negatives on both sides. The Christianity of New Testament times is far from a model to be emulated, but it is one from which we can learn.
Gospel Pentecost 25: 2 November Matthew 23:1-12
William Loader
Pentecost 24: 26 October 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Our passage begins with another, "you know", which we have seen comes frequently in the letter. Two more follow in our short passage (2:2; 2:5). It is an appeal both to what the Thessalonians knew and what Paul felt they ought to know and bear in mind. Why do this? We have to read between the lines, but Paul is obviously very keen to make these points and it has to do with his relationship with them. Thus Paul reminds them that he was not on a preaching tour to make money for himself. It cost him something. Had he not been genuine, he would have given up long ago. Paul is not prepared to surrender to those who want to belittle him and therefore his gospel. Paul is not prepared to compromise to avoid conflict on what really matters. Paul does not espouse the philosophy of peace at all costs.
We see further hints of his opposition in 2:3-4. It appears that some have been saying that he plays games, disregards spiritual purity and peddles wrong ideas. From other conflicts which Paul has we may suspect that the opposition comes from other Christian Jews who feel that he has abandoned the true Christian faith. That probably includes the accusation that he disregards biblical concerns about holiness and purity. In Galatians, too, he mentions the assertion that he is just out to please people. Behind this is the accusation that Paul ignores scripture's requirements to make it easier for Gentiles to fit in, not only by dropping the biblical command of circumcision but by saying that believers are no longer under the scripture (the Law).
For his opponents this is outrageous and infringes God's rights. How can anyone set aside scripture for the sake of making people feel at home? Paul, of course, sees it differently, arguing that all barriers to inclusiveness and compassion must be torn down. One of his protégés who wrote Ephesians even describes the scriptures (the Law) as a wall of enmity which must be dismantled (2:14-15). Paul sees this not as disrespect for the scriptures but as a way of reading them which does justice to what they are truly about. The issues which plagued Paul still plague the church today.
Paul is wanting to ensure the Thessalonians do not succumb to these people who want to undermine him. After all, it is not just a personal matter of his apostleship (2:7). It is about the heart of the gospel. The heart of that gospel is compassion and Paul reminds them that this actually characterised the way he related to them in the first place (2:5-8). He was not on a power trip. He was certainly not trying to make money for himself (2:5) - although his commitment to making a collection for the Christians in Judea always left him open to the accusation that this was a smokescreen for his own gain. Paul was intent on pleasing only God (2:6) and being one with God's compassion which is the heart of the gospel. He even uses the language of an oath to underline this reality (2:5), because he is confident about his accountability to God.
Paul's alternative stance leads him to identify with female images of care (2:7). Like a nurse caring for children, so Paul approached the Thessalonians. Paul was not wanting to win or to count or to master them. He crosses gender prejudices in his inclusiveness as he insists on consistency. His style of ministry was consistent with the gospel he preached. It was based not on coercion by biblical authority, but on biblical righteousness which as Paul understood it was intent to help people into a right relationship with God so that their lives would then become rightly oriented and their behaviour rightly expressed, measured by love. It made his opponents fear - for themselves and ultimately for God, whom they sought to defend by denouncing Paul. It was a tragedy already symbolised earlier in the event of the cross, but which perpetuates discrimination and destructiveness in the name of the gospel, as people fear a gospel of love and replace it by a message of fear and control.
Gospel Pentecost 24: 26 October Matthew 22:34-46
William Loader
Pentecost 23: 19 October 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Paul begins his letter to the Christians at Thessalonika (modern day, Salonika) very positively. He has heard news from Timothy (3:6) who has reported that all is well with this new community of faith. They have apparently been subject to adversity and have held firm. They also seem to have stayed with Paul's approach to the gospel and not wavered. The words, "you know", occur frequently in the letter. The effect Paul seems to be trying to produce is to underline and reinforce what they know (or should know if any of them doubt!). So Paul is wanting to consolidate what seems to be a stable community.
Paul is also concerned about the relationship between himself and his team and the community. So he reminds them of the founding visit. It is interesting to see him stressing the miraculous side of his visit (1:5). That will later turn around against him when opponents accuse him of being deficient in this regard or not as impressive - as we see in the later parts of 2 Corinthians. Even here one suspects that Paul is being very sensitive to potential rivals. A little later on he will reassure the Thessalonians that he does not use manipulative or exploitative methods (2:1-8). The first two chapters are entirely taken up with Paul's efforts to consolidate and to present himself in good terms. There was obviously a potential problem. So he is both relieved at Timothy's news and still somewhat anxious.
Paul wants them to model themselves on him. He also praises them as models for people in the region. They have made an impact. It is impressive. Paul does not want to see all this contaminated by invasions from outside, especially from preachers who turn the Christian gospel into a set of laws and justify doing so by appealing to the authority of scripture as happened in Galatia. Let people rejoice in the gospel of grace and goodness! Religion can be so destructive to faith when it comes out of fear and the desire to control.
Our final two verses give a brief summary of what Paul achieved. The Thessalonians abandoned idolatry and turned to the living God. Simple as it may sound, it represented an assertion of God's generosity beyond the traditional bounds. It would have infuriated some contemporaries of Paul, who would have taken Paul to task for not handling the matter in conformity with scripture which in Genesis 17 clearly demands circumcision. We know little of the religion of the Thessalonians. Were they bound in superstition? Did they particularly suffer through it? All we know is that they turned away and accepted what Paul would have presented as an offer of God's love. That is to be celebrated.
The simplicity of the conversion finds expression also in the final verse of our passage. It almost sounds too simple. What was the purpose of the conversion? To wait for Jesus to come again and for rescue from God's anger. Perhaps Paul's preaching did reduce the gospel to a simple message: believe in Jesus and be saved from God's anger! It certainly leaves a lot out and raises serious questions. Perhaps we already see this in what Paul goes on to say later. Some seem to believe that Christian life is a matter of lazing around waiting for future deliverance - or, at most, trying to save others. Paul turns the focus to practical things like the need to work and to watch how one lives in the present.
On the other hand these verses do give a reduced version of the gospel. It is so reduced as to distort the focus of the good news and should probably not be treated as an adequate summary. It is after all just an aspect of what Paul is saying and emphasizes a change of direction. If we invited the Paul we know from the other letters to expand the outline, we would begin hearing about who this Jesus is whom they await and what his vision for the future was about. We would begin to see that God's anger is not about being peeved or temperamental but at least in part can be seen as a mechanism of self harm which people bring on themselves. We would also hear that the living God is indeed alive and active through the Spirit and through the living Christ building community and bringing liberation and wholeness in the here and now.
William Loader
Pentecost 22: 12 October Philippians 4:1-9
Our passage begins with some concrete personal references. Paul has enjoyed shared leadership with women. Gender is not an issue as it would become later where such leadership became a male preserve. Rather his concern is about how they relate to each other - that they find their common bond in Christ and let that determine all else. 4:3 lets us know about other fellow workers. Paul deals with relations among fellow "staff" by doing theology and pointing to the foundation of spirituality. This then introduces his famous words about rejoicing.
The word, "rejoice", is also the word commonly used to conclude letters and could be translated here: "farewell!" There is no doubt: Paul wishes them well and, whether this comes under the influence of the formal ending of the letter or not, Paul wants them to be in positive spirits. Do we need to be told that it is a good thing to be elated, to be glad and happy? Some, who see Christianity as something dour and serious, need to hear it.
In some forms of Christian culture the worry about control and balance has been such an emphasis that anything like joy which is spontaneous is embarrassing. Such people find it much easier to express joy with a heavily structured sphere of discourse, such as in the words of a hymn. Paul is surprisingly strong in his affirmation and expression of emotions. In his day it ran against the grain of those popular philosophers, like the Stoics, who cautioned restraint in all matters regarding feeling as a way of lowering one's vulnerability to bad experiences.
Why do we leave joy to those who compose songs which make happiness sound like pastry and conjure a false image of a "victorious" life of constant highs? Joy need not be something superficial. Sometimes our distaste for excesses leads to a neglect of this very vital human experience. People need to know about joy just as much as they need to know about pain. We have similar mechanisms for avoiding both and for leaving the field to shallow renderings.
Paul's "always" is not a quantitative assertion of the kind that implies joy in every moment. Joy is never alone. Its companions are pain and fear. At times Paul's letters display more of some than the other. Paul's sense of joy is not the absence of pain or fear, but the presence of Christ, in whom he places his hope and trust. The deep human need to belong, the joy of belonging, is met for Paul in Christ. That unity takes him into pain and death, and, as he often emphasises, leads him over and over again on a journey from death to life, from pain to joy. Sometimes his joy stays alight as a flickering flame amid an oppressive darkness of criticism and downright hate. But it remains and can flare into brightness at relief and change.
What brings it to burn brightly is the knowledge that here and there love breaks through, people are rescued from the negative effects of religion, pagan, Jewish and Christian, and are set free to be loving people. For Paul joy and love belong closely together. For he rejoices at the truth (see 1 Cor 13:6). Here in 4:5 that means he wants the Philippians to let their goodness, their gentleness shine. The focus is outward. For the Lord in whom he wants them to rejoice is the one whose life reached out.
Paul is expecting that Jesus would return soon to this world: "The Lord is near" (4:5). That sounds unreal for us, because we look back over 2000 years and it hasn't happened. It is interesting that Paul does not say this in order to appeal to some spiritually self-interested strategies which people should undertake to make themselves safe. On the contrary, Christ's future coming like his past coming issues in a single invitation: to live in his life in the present.
The exhortation not to worry is interesting, coming from Paul. It hardly means, don't have serious thoughts or don't be anxious. Just look at many of Paul's letters and you will see how involved he was and often how worried he was about what was happening to the people of his churches. It was a quite a burden, as he reminds us in 2 Cor 11:28 (where he uses the same word, "worry"). So Paul is hardly peddling a lifestyle option of the unengaged life of serenity. His spirituality is quite the opposite. But part of his joy is that it keeps him from total despair, the kind of worry that becomes obsessive and self-destructive. An openness to God in prayer keeps him centred - just as it kept Jesus centred in Gethsemane.
When Paul speaks about "peace" in 4:7, we know he is not talking about that favourite religious pastime of learning to be still and happy and finding oneness beyond this world and its uncertainties. When he speaks of this peace keeping people's hearts and minds, he is almost saying: this will keep you sane! It is neither a disengaged serenity nor an intellectually worked out, solution-focused state of having answers to all the problems. Rather it is a peace that goes beyond the repose of rational resolution and cannot really be achieved by it. Ultimately it is the peace of or from God. That sense of the presence of God, the awareness of oneness with the compassionate one who is engaged "up to the neck" in life, is bigger than our imaginations and our solutions. Paradoxically the love which makes itself vulnerable, the joy which both flares and flickers, and the peace which gives no rest as long as there is injustice and need, all belong together inseparably as the fruit of the spirit. As Paul writes to the Galatians, "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace..."
The positive focus continues in 4:8-9. It again becomes personal as in 4:2-3. Here Paul refers to his own teaching and example. Again Paul integrates theology and practice. Paul is not just advocating the power of positive thinking. This is about more than technique and persuasion. It is about filling one's mind with what Paul sees as the signs of God's life - not so that will feel good, but because this is another way of filling oneself with God's life and so allowing God's life to flow through us to the world around us. This kind of grounded spirituality lies behind Paul's understanding of peace and, ultimately, also of joy.
Gospel Pentecost 22: 12 October Matthew 22:1-14
William Loader
Pentecost 21: 5 October Philippians 3:4b-14
Just two verses earlier Paul had warned about "the dogs" and "the circumcision". The target of his attack is not so much Jews as Jewish Christians, who dispute Paul's legitimacy and object to his attitude to scripture. They demanded that scripture and its commands were infallible and saw Paul as watering down God's word in the interests of winning people to his way. It was cheap evangelism, selling the gospel short. Paul, for his part, saw such fundamentalism as one of the very things which stood in the way of true faith and from which people needed to be liberated. Paul is not always exemplary in his handling of such conflicts. They generated a lot of heat, both in his day and in the ministry of Jesus - just as they often do in the church today. Calling people names does not usually bring progress.
So we are meeting the passionate Paul. What he is passionate and positive about comes to the fore in our passage. First he asserts that, if he must, he can match their claims (3:4-6). He is all that they boast about, a true Jew, a true Israelite. Their admiration for zeal needs to acknowledge that his zeal was exemplary! Then comes the twist: zeal, yes, but that was a zeal which attacked Christ and his church. On their terms he was blameless, because he was a blameless observer of all the commandments. Can one be a blameless devotee of scripture and at the same time an enemy of Christ? Paul would say a very definite: yes! Fanatical devotion which loses perspective and blindly follows beliefs and maxims, even when they are scriptural, is so often dangerous, because it justifies hate and in the name of God perpetuates violence. Such violence is as much present in Christianity as it is in other religions - wherever human worth and dignity is given second place to a notion of God's laws, wherever people think that people were made for the sabbath not the sabbath for people. As soon as people imagine that God has other priorities than love and compassion, such as self aggrandisement and self absorption, then matching behaviour will follow - in religious people and in their leaders.
Paul describes a reversal of values. He is not abandoning scripture, let alone abandoning God, but he is abandoning a theology based on seeking to please God by zealous protection of divine laws. He is abandoning a theology which sees God as obsessed with his own laws and preoccupied with becoming angry and offended when things are not done in exactly the prescribed way. Such theology is a projection of human egotism. In Christ he has found an understanding and embodiment of God which says that God's being is characterised by love and generosity which is pained and angered by human sin and harm and seeks to reconcile people from their estrangement and their captivity - including their captivity to religion.
Without throwing away his own religion Paul, nevertheless, throws away a theology which had made him important and given him great status. In its place he embraces Christ and Christ's way. But this is more than just a change of values. It is also a deeply spiritual and personal change which affects Paul at the heart of his being and changes his future forever. One could read this as the exchange of one fanaticism for another. We could see Paul as now blindly following Christ. The passage could then read as little more than the self indulgence of a new kind of fanaticism in which Paul is totally focused on the rewards and prizes of his resurrection. Such fanaticism does occur from time to time, in every age, and is not better than his fanatical espousal of the Law.
Fortunately we know enough about Paul to recognise that this is far from a religious ego-trip. Paul's desire to live in conformity to Christ expresses his conviction that God was in Christ doing the work of reconciling, as we saw last week in 2 Cor 5:19. The sharing of that life includes the vision of resurrection and hope. It also consists of engagement in mission and ministry, compassion and reaching out, as God in Christ reaches out. That can include suffering, if that is what this solidarity demands, but it is not the blind suffering of the fanatic, but, as he expresses it elsewhere, the travail so that something new may be born, the pain entailed in enabling more and more people to experience God's generosity. This means going all the way with Christ, through pain and suffering if need be and beyond that ultimately into hope.
Paul refuses to claim he has graduated or has arrived (3:12-14). He taunts some of the Corinthians who seem to think they have arrived (1 Cor 4:8) and doubtless here, too, he has in mind the same kind of arrogance. Paul sees no need to claim the power which might come with such a status. His ministry does not depend for its effectiveness on a kind of spiritual invincibility or perfection. Such constructions which preachers can make for themselves or others can make for them are powerful tools and for many very persuasive. But they are an abuse of power and a return to the very stance on which Paul has turned his back. Not the power of demand and law, but the invitation of love and relationship sets people free. No one said the latter would achieve a greater numerical following. Often the reverse is the case.
Paul is not seduced by such opportunities to become a god. He does not lose focus. Employing the common metaphor of the race, he asserts that he keeps his eye on the goal. The high calling may be a calling to join Christ on high. Or it may be a calling that comes from on high. Either way the prize is not a thing but a relationship with God and Christ. Slippage is possible here; we could easily become captive to the image and convert Paul's words into self indulgence again. Of course, Paul really is acting in his own self interest and doing what he wants to do and wants us to do the same. He really wants us to find our ministries and our lives by finding ourselves engaged in the life of God. He wants the Philippians to be imitators of him in this (3:17). But for Paul what one needs and what fulfils come together as one with what God needs and what fulfils God. That is nothing other than communion and engagement with one who loves. In this we reach our goal, God's goal, and through our oneness engage in God's goal that love and peace and goodness may fill the whole creation
Gospel Pentecost 21: 5 October Matthew 21:33-46
William Loader
Pentecost 20: 28 September Philippians 2:1-13
This passage contains one of the most well known texts of the New Testament: 2:5-11. The latter can easily stand on its own, as it does in our lectionary at Passion/Palm Sunday.. Much of it may well have stood on its own even before Paul came to write it into his letter. It uses language which is distinctive and plays with ideas which are special. It is worth nevertheless approaching it through the letter so that we can grasp what Paul saw in it in the first place and so read it within its broader context of 2:1-13.
2:5 is an obvious starting point, but its meaning is less obvious than appears. It could simply mean: 'be like Jesus!' But it may be saying more. It could be saying: let the mindset of Christ be yours as you draw your life from him or live 'in him'. Certainly elsewhere Paul usually goes one step further than holding Christ (or himself) up as an example to be followed. He usually includes the notion that there is an inner dynamic which helps make this possible. This is most evident in the verses which follow this passage, where we read: 'work out your own salvation, because it is God who is at work in you' (2:12-13).
The mindset of Christ is evident in his story. While the main point of the story line is clear, there are many details which are not. Being in the form of God may allude to Adam being in God's image. It would be a way of speaking about Jesus as a human being. While Adam relished the chance to eat of the fruit to be like God (equal to God?), Jesus did not. Instead he emptied himself. A quite different interpretation sees being 'in the form of God' as a reference to Jesus existing as a heavenly being like an angel (or even in intimate association with God - perhaps even as part of God's being as later Christianity would assert). Then the temptation would be either to emulate rebellious angels who want to usurp God's role (and who in legend were cast out of heaven) or to hold onto a status in God (reflecting later assumptions). Is equality with God understood as something Jesus once had or as something he might have wanted to achieve and chose not to? I find the latter more persuasive.
However one might understand 2:6, the import of 2:7 and the major focus of the passage, is Jesus' decision to embrace becoming a lowly human being. The language used in 2:7 is so strong it may suggest that 'being in the form of God' of 2:6 is the opposite of 'being in the form of a slave'/'coming to be in the likeness of human beings'/ 'being found to be like a human being in his structure of being'. This is why so many see 'being in the form of God' as being something other than human and something more than Adam (although there were speculations about a higher Adam). The emptying must mean giving something up. It recalls Paul's version of the story of Jesus in 2 Cor 8:9 where he writes of Jesus: 'though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor'.
It is not easy to know exactly what this story was meaning, nor to know how Paul understood it, when it spoke of changed forms of being. What is clear however is a choice. Jesus chose to obey what God wanted. That entailed his entering into solidarity with human beings and becoming fully one of them. We might speculate about what he gave up. It was certainly not the consciousness of who he was as a deciding person. He knew what he was doing. His choice was to abandon an option which was directed towards what some would have seen as self-advancement. Nothing indicates that, had he gone with that option, it would have worked for him. He chose to align himself with the divine will and that meant willingness to go the whole way in solidarity with human beings. Here we have to read between the lines about the purpose of such an act. Read in the context of Paul's writings, it would have been above all to face death on the cross for us, for sins. Some wonder if the reference to the cross is Paul's addition. Maybe the tradition spoke simply of faithfulness in doing God's will right through to the point of death. However we understand the exact intent, there is little doubt that it is reporting an initiative based on the will to bring about change for human beings. It was an initiative of love. It was both Jesus' story but in part also God's story, showing us God's agenda.
2:9 brings us another contrast. Matching 2:8 which spoke of Jesus making himself lowly, 2:9 speaks of God exalting Jesus. This is a commentary on the resurrection which sees it as an act of God which vindicates and rewards Jesus. People regularly misunderstand the statement about the name in 2:9-10. It is not the name, 'Jesus'. Rather Jesus receives a name. That name is none other than the name which is above all other names: the unspoken name of God, represented by the word, 'Lord'. 2:11 also makes that clear. Everyone will acclaim Jesus Christ with his new name: 'Lord'. It is a way of saying that Jesus really does reveal God and the way God is. Bearing someone's name was like bearing their responsibility and being recognised as able to represent them. In Judaism angels could sometimes be given Yahweh's name.
At one level we have a story with a twist. Jesus did not chance his arm to try to usurp God. Instead he chose to do what God wanted. As a reward for that God actually gave him what he had originally contemplated and had rejected as an option: he was called 'Lord' (or God). We could then trivialise it into a piece of common wisdom. Don't be too ambitious about promotion. Do your job and see: you'll get there. It is possible to reduce the passage to an account of Jesus' cv. As such it becomes a piece of divine, self indulgent PR. But this skews its function. Paul is using it to expound an attitude. That attitude is not about how to get promoted, but about what the will of God is and what Jesus was doing. Paul would not be imagining that the act of lowliness was just one of those things Jesus had to go through to get to the top, but something paradigmatic. It said something about the heart of Jesus and the heart of God. He is 'Lord' now not because he has left all that behind, but because God names him as representing the way of divine being. It is in that sense even paradoxical to speak of exaltation and enthronement. Elsewhere we see that paradox expressed in an enthronement of Jesus on a cross with a crown of thorns.
Paul uses this traditional account of the story because he wants to evoke greater generosity and self-giving among the Philippians, as 2:1-4 shows. Already to this point in the letter he lets it show that he is far from happy with some Christians who are showing the opposite attitude and creating rivalries and divisions (see 1:15-18); so he calls for solidarity and community (1:27; 2:1-4). Paul reads his own life constantly in the light of the story of Jesus (1:20-26). He wants them to read theirs similarly. The great treasure of this passage is that it challenges us to do the same. It is, however, easily subverted into an opposite attitude, a paradigm for success and power
Gospel Pentecost 20: 28 September Matthew 21:23-32
William Loader
Pentecost 19: 21 September Philippians 1:21-30
Paul is writing to the Christians at Philippi from a situation of imprisonment. They know about this. Paul is not engaging in pious speculation when he contemplates his options. He faces real danger. In that danger he knows death means he goes to be with Christ, even if that may be in a state of rest until Christ returns according to his usual pattern of imagining the future. He sees himself more likely not to face death and in that he thinks less of his personal survival and more of what it can mean for others, including the people at Philippi.
This is all part of relationship-building with them. Paul is sensitive about the relationship and wants them to know he cares about them. It was a standard part of letters to assure the recipient of your concern and love for them. Relationships matter. It was also a standard part of ancient letters to speak about the hope of coming to make a visit. Paul follows this pattern. But Paul is not indulging in mere formalities.
In 1:27 he then turns to explicit instruction. Here we get to the real concerns. Paul is concerned about unity. For him part of conducting oneself in a worthy manner as a Christian is to seek to maintain unity. This does not mean unity at all costs. Paul is very clear elsewhere and in this letter that unity has its basis in Christ and in understanding Christ as a manifestation of God's goodness and generosity which is radically inclusive in its scope and does not discriminate against people on the basis of such things as circumcision.
1:28 tells us more. There is opposition. Possibly this means opposition from authorities in much the same way as Paul faces such opposition to the extent of imprisonment. His fellow Jews may well have a hand in it because they see him as betraying his people. They would have no interest in defending him against the charge of trouble making. It makes one also wonder whether such opponents also include the Jewish Christians who see Paul as a renegade. Probably they did.
Elsewhere in the letter it is clear that he is very unhappy about what he labels sham preachers, including those who take what we might see as a fundamentalist line of insisting that circumcision is in the Bible and therefore must be imposed on people because obedience to what is written is the foundation of their faith. In 1:15-17 Paul writes with generosity, but probably much pain about such preachers. They are "Christians". They contribute to his imprisonment (1:17). 3:2 uses much sharper language. 3:18-19 even describes them as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Paul does not want his Philippian congregation to succumb to such pressures. But he knows the dangers. The alliance of fundamentalist-type Christianity and political powers is very dangerous. The imprisonment to which it leads these days has less to do with being put in jail (though that is certainly the fate of some who protest) and more to do with being captive to the spirit of the age, frequently sweetened by a triumphant nationalism. Being Christian then comes to mean supporting one world power against others and tragically shifts our loyalty and priority from the poor to protecting our own self interests. We must not be seen to "betray our great people". Paul faced that accusation but had the courage to put love and compassion for all peoples first and to face the consequences.
Gospel Pentecost 19: 21 September Matthew 20:1-16
William Loader
Pentecost 18: 14 September Romans 14:1-12
Paul wades into controversy. Some believed very firmly that they should not eat meat. The issue was not vegetarianism in the interest of animals, but fear that meat might be contaminated since much of what was for sale would have been slaughtered by cult personnel belonging to pagan temples. One might imagine that converts from paganism to Judaism would have seen this as fundamental to their identity. They would have seen it as impossible to contemplate eating meat. Many would feel very strongly and Paul implies that some would have condemned those who did eat meat. We cannot tolerate being in a church where meat eating is tolerated, we might hear them saying. It would recall the intensity with which some issues are debated today.
Just as serious would have been those who looked down their noses at those who abstained. Even Paul's designation of them as "weak" would probably not have been seen as complimentary. They are like fundamentalists, stuck in literalism, unwilling to see beyond the surface of things, one might hear them saying. Abusive and judgmental statements can be so destructive of community. Paul obviously sides with the "strong", who were probably radical Christian Jews like himself, but he is not willing to take a divisive stance towards "the weak". He wants both groups to accept their differences and live with difference in dignity. This was a big ask in his day as it is in ours.
There were also disputes about days. This may well include Jewish feast days and perhaps even the sabbath. Paul has made it clear elsewhere that he now sits very loosely to special days. He belongs to many of his day, pagan, Jewish and Christian, who had moved away from revering sacred times and sacred spaces. It was an intellectual trend, not unrelated to the shift from concern with cult to concern with ethics which we see in the great religions in the 6th century and thereabouts (e.g.: in Israel's prophets). It came about in part as people travelled and saw different practices and realised that they were outward manifestations of something less tangible. Such experiences relativised the particular observances and shifted the focus to what lay behind them and what they had at that level in common. It was very easy, then, to ridicule those who kept strict observances about these things. They are primitive, one might hear them say. Paul does not go down that track. He has a concern and respect for people. We, today, might recognise beyond such different stances different stages of faith development or personality types, though that, too, may (and probably should) imply serious value judgements about the directions of growth and the nature of maturity.
Paul shifts the focus from honouring or dishonouring scruples, including those enshrined in scripture. Instead he puts Christ at the centre. Christ "rules" - to use a popular modern term. Christ is the point of unity. Paul's Christ is not standing there with a rule book ticking boxes, but with the marks of the cross and the mind of compassion. Love for people, valuing them, transcends differences on things like food and observance of days. It will even lead Paul to suggest compromise which will favour the "weak", not offending them (14:13-23); although that should not be taken as a general rule. Paul was quite prepared to offend those who insisted on circumcision, for instance.
Paul's flexibility is rooted in his vision of Christ. He sees himself and all Christians as being answerable to that - indeed answerable to God. For him some central things are not negotiable, namely who Christ is and his radical offer of God's grace. Beyond that Paul has the freedom to be flexible, even with scripture. It was maddening for those who identified the not negotiable not just with the being of God and Christ but also with the scripture where they could get a handle on God and God's will. For such people flexibility was a big ask, as it is today for people who want to see the Bible as an authority in this more literal sense. One should not expect them to be flexible on issues such as gender and the like.
It is very easy for those with a more focused not negotiable space to be flexible. Such people are often very intolerant of those with a broader base. Ultimately these two types can live together only with some compromise. Christianity in Paul's day was far from exemplary in how to handle such conflict. The opponents of both Paul and Jesus were clearly on the side of those who insisted on a controllable base of non negotiability, namely the scripture. Somewhere there is a point where Christ's centrality and centrality of grace beyond and beneath scripture is strong enough to hold such diversity together. Sometimes it has been so submerged that conflict and division is inevitable - even hate and alienation. The piety of such literalism slips off from the continuum of making grace foundational and concrete law takes over. But just as easily those who reject such a stance can slip off the other end and lose contact with the grace which keeps open in love towards those who make themselves opponents and enemies. Paul helps us find the centre.
I imagine some in Rome would have loved Paul's words; others would have no room for them. Little has changed.
Gospel Pentecost 18: 14 September Matthew 18:21-35
William Loader
Pentecost 17: 7 September Romans 13:8-14
Paul has just been offering instruction about how one should respect to civil authorities. He even has a sense that secular institutions are also part of God's will and plan. We should pay taxes. Perhaps behind Paul's advice in 13:1-7 is a sense of the need for order in society. He does not allow his spirituality to be confined to just the church community or just to "spiritual matters". Responsible citizenship is important. Paul has learned well from his teachers. Among them there were likely to be those who stood under the influence of Stoic thought which placed great weight on order. It appealed to Jews who were also concerned to perceive God's order or law in every part of life.
Having just asserted such conformity, Paul shows in 13:8 that his starting point is something more than a concern for order. Already in 13:5 he tries to move people beyond conformity through fear. In 13:8 he moves us beyond laws and commandments to attitude and behaviour based in love. That is the heart of his gospel and it also informs how he sees behaviour. Paul goes beyond the "oughts" of obligation which we might owe others (13:8). Approaching others with love and respect is the foundation. Stand on that foundation and you will fulfil and more than fulfil the Law. Paul had already made that point in 8:1-4. Love is more than an ideal. It is a fruit of the Spirit. It is the outworking of allowing oneself to be loved and of the process of liberation which that initiates, freeing us from our fears and guilt and preoccupation with ourselves so that we are available for life and love with others.
In 13:9 Paul is not suggesting we return to the ten commandments and try to make them the basis of our living. Rather he means: when you allow love to be the centre of your being (being loved and expressing that love to others) then you cover all such commandments. As Paul explains in 13:10, such love is not going to act destructively towards another human being. Love fulfils the law not in the analytical sense that one could find that love informs each of the commandments of the Law, and this is why one should try to keep every one of them. Rather, life lived the Christ way sets up a dynamic which produces behaviour which meets and more than meets what the Law requires.
This does not sound convincing for those who are concerned with every command of the Law. They would soon notice that Paul was being selective. He was prepared to drop some commands, including circumcision, food laws, laws about special days, and so on. Paul's choice is not arbitrary. But he does have a value system which deems commandments relevant primarily on the basis of whether they conform to the love he sees in Christ. But even then he argues that it does not make sense to try to live by the commandments which he accepts as good. Rather we need to live from a relationship of love. That was the point of Romans 7. Then everything else will fall into place. We will more than fulfil the law.
It is an interesting ethical move and very helpful in discussing new issues in our own day. Paul would keep taking us to what this love and respect for people - which we have experienced and which we want to express - would want to say. He would not take us to laws or even sets of ideals, although he assumes that love will know what is good for people.
In 13:11-14 Paul changes gear, drifting into what seems to be traditional language perhaps derived from someone's preaching in the context of baptism. The nearness of the end, that is, the day of resurrection stimulates Paul to extra emphasis. For us such exhortations are rather limp after 2000 years. We can, however, understand the images. In joining Christ we have turned towards the light and away from the darkness. Paul is thinking in terms of power systems. We have deliberately incorporated ourselves into an alternative power system from the one which dominates much of human society. The notion of a power system is also reflected in the military metaphor - we join a new legion. It also suggests discipline and effort. Paul was never so naive as to believe that the process of liberation and love happened automatically in people. It was a process easily foiled and subverted. People need to remain focused.
Listing loose living, drunkenness, sexual immorality and excess as signs of the self indulgent life was common. Notice that Paul ends the list with divisiveness and infighting. That is a little closer to home for those who will be listening to his letter. In the next chapters he will address causes of division and suggest ways to handle them. Generally he is contrasting two different lifestyles characteristic of the two different power systems. One follows the desires of the flesh (13:14). Here we should not misunderstand Paul. He is not objecting to our natural hunger nor to sexual desire. He is objecting to when these take over to the extent that we exploit others and do harm to ourselves. When we reduce our lives to only that level of gratification we not only miss out too much; we are also bound to live abusively towards others and ourselves.
In other words, he is contrasting the love system with the non-love system. His way of putting it in 13:14 also stems from one image used of baptism: we put on Christ. We clothe ourselves with Christ. We immerse ourselves in the life which flows in his being which is the life of God and we allow that life to express itself through us. For in fact to do so is to find ourselves and be in touch with our own depths. Paul knows that such spirituality bears fruit which shows itself in lives of compassion and caring and generosity, because that is how God is.
Gospel Pentecost 17: 7 September Matthew 18:15-18
William Loader
Pentecost 16: 31 August Romans 12:9-21
Paul has just challenged the Roman Christians to see themselves as the body of Christ. Individuals are like members of that single body. Each member has a part to play. There is no room for rivalry and also no need for it, because our confidence rests not on making ourselves better than others but in believing the gospel: that God values each one of us. God's righteousness or goodness is the foundation of our faith and our being.
What does it look like when people live on that basis? In our passage we see something of the answer. It could easily have come straight from a Jewish teaching manual of the time. There is nothing particularly Christian about it. It represents the best values Paul has learned and now sees as needing to characterise the community of faith. Notice the focus on genuineness and the priority of love. That is no empty commitment. It includes recognising what is not love, namely evil and resisting its sway. The good we are to hold close to is defined by love, not by a set of rules. It is not about not doing anything wrong, but about living from compassion.
Mutual love and honour or respect is fundamental to good community (12:10). There is no room for exploitation of any kind. Nor is there room for shaming behaviour. We are to be free from having to win (by making others into losers). Paul urges a positive attitude in 12:11. Some people need to hear that it is possible to choose depression and want to stay there. Depression is bad enough to have to cope within itself, so that there really is no value in choosing it if we can help it. For Paul this is less about rules of behaviour and more about choosing to believe in hope. Hopelessness can be a way of life frequently allied to the comfort of feeling one is a victim. There are enough genuine victims in our society. Where we can choose, we do not have to make ourselves victims. Instead Paul urges a stance which will hold us up even in situations of adversity (12:12). Paul knows that one of the secrets of the nourished life is the nourishment of prayer, time spent in the presence of God believing in grace.
Paul is not interesting in a self serving happy communities of people caring about each other. He widens the vision to include making contributions to people beyond our horizon (12:13). The word for making a contribution is a form of the word, koinonia, which means both fellowship and engagement with others out of common concern. Paul has been making great efforts to raise money for the saints in Judea. Paul cannot separate love from money. We need to love with all the resources we have. Otherwise love is not "genuine" (12:9). The outward looking focus comes to us also in the word about hospitality. In the ancient world it was absolutely vital that strangers, including visiting Christians, be welcomed and looked after. Paul knew this from his own experience. In today's world it has less to do with hosting visiting preachers and more to do with taking seriously the plight of refugees.
It is easy to curse those who oppose us. Bitterness so easily takes root where we collapse into feeling our value is threatened when people oppose us. It becomes even more subtle when we know they misunderstand or are being directly malicious. Violence has a way of sucking its victims into cycles of violence and making its own disciples. It can be hard keeping one's spirituality sufficiently centred not to drift into such eddies. To bless our enemies is not to condone their actions, but it is never to lose sight of their humanity and dignity as persons (12:14).
To rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep (12:15) can sound mercurial: we play games with ourselves and others. But Paul assumes we can be in a state of being where we can make room for people - in their sadness and in their gladness. We are not so preoccupied with ourselves that we cannot accept people where they are. 12:16 brings us back to the dangers of self preoccupation and the rat-race of worrying about ourselves. He is not suggesting we pretend we have no wisdom or play at being of no worth when we know we have worth. That is false humility and manipulative (it manouvres for a reward). Rather, let's have a realistic assessment of ourselves and come to terms with it.
In 12:17 we are back with conflict. Paul warns again against engaging in defensive and aggressive power struggles where we feel we must beat someone down if we are to make our way up. Pay-back may seem like a way of "getting even" but it is not a way of getting justice. Justice has to be more than arithmetic. Without reconciliation or acknowledged difference there can be no balance. Paul is also realistic. Peace is not always possible (12:18). We need to bear that in mind when Paul urges submission to the structures of authority in society in the next chapter. Sometimes it is not possible.
Paul ends the chapter with some typical wisdom of his time derived from Proverbs 23:21-22 (12:19-20). Unfortunately it is too close to vengeance. It seems to be saying: another way of getting back at people is to burn their consciences with hot coals by doing good to them and making them feel ashamed. That is simply self interest in disguise. Paul's use of the self-serving piece of secular wisdom goes beyond self-interest. He stays with the image of victory. You win a victory by overcoming evil with good. It is not another way of getting one's own back on people. Paul does not speak of evil persons in 12:21, but of evil, itself. Confront lovelessness with love, confront hate with grace. That only makes sense if the love is genuine. Such genuine love never writes people off, not even enemies. It is never sucked into revenge and the spirals of hate and violence. It breaks the cycle. This is more than a wise rule or even an ideal. For Paul it is part of living out of the gospel of grace. It is a fruit which the Spirit can reproduce in us if we let go of fear.
Gospel Pentecost 16: 31 August Matthew 16:21-28
William Loader
Pentecost 15: 24 August Romans 12:1-8
Paul is now shifting from his concern with complaints about his treatment of Israel. Though he struggled to get there, he ended up hailing God's goodness and saw no need to have explanations. He would leave the future to God. It is "mystery". His certainty is God's love. That is enough. Now he turns to the Roman congregations, probably house churches. They have to live together. What might that mean? There are problems which he will address. They include diversity of approaches to matters like food in the Gentile world.
But first he gives a general exhortation (12:1). He acts as a priest, at least in the sense of calling people to sacrifice. They are to offer themselves. It was not uncommon to use cultic imagery, to speak of the community or, among Christians, the church as a temple. The exhortation applies to all. It is a common starting point. Offering one's "body" fits the image of sacrifice, but Paul means the whole person, not body as opposed to soul. Notice his call is in response to what he sees as the heart of God: God's compassion or mercy.
Paul is doing more than focusing on a common goal or asserting a common value. He goes on to speak about how we shape our lives (12:2). Paul never saw being a Christian as a life membership on a roll somewhere. It was always entry into a relationship and growth in that relationship. Paul is always thinking about what shapes people's lives. It is another way of speaking of one's god. In his day - and certainly in ours - there are many people who count themselves as Christian, but are shaped by the prevailing values of those around them in a way that undoes anything that Christ might have wanted in their lives. They reflect particular national, political or social values, sometimes not even knowing they stand under such influence. They can even call some of these values "Christian". But there is no engagement with what is at the heart of Christ's message.
Paul knows about shaping. He urges the Romans to engage in a process whereby they are shaped not by the prevailing fashions of the age but by Christ. It is in that sense a counter cultural renewal to which he calls the Romans. The renewing of one's mind - stance, attitudes, orientation - is the basis not only for individual wholeness but also for a healthy community or congregation. Sets of rules imported from business schools about how congregations should run have their worth, but no sets of rules will work without a holistic approach which involves transformation. This is the same insight which grounds Paul's assertions that the Law (the commandments) is not very effective in changing people and tends to produce the opposite. His gospel instead speaks about a process of renewal which changes people's attitudes and from that process of transformation changed behaviour flows. It is relationship based, not rule based. Notice that Paul sees this as the basis for developing discernment about God's will. The focus is on goodness, on pleasing God (the God of grace) and on maturity. Translating teleios here as 'mature' (one of its common meanings) rather than 'perfect' makes much better sense in the context. Paul will appeal to such maturity in what follows.
Paul goes on to confront the malaise of communities and relationships: people who lack awareness of themselves, especially people who feel they must play power games and show themselves superior to others. This is one of the values of "this age" (12:1) - his and ours - against whose influence he warns. It teaches that my value must be measured over against others. To be a person of value I must be better than others. Others who are better than me are therefore potentially a threat. This is destructive of community and makes people obsessed with themselves. So Paul's words in 12:3 follow on well from his exhortation. Paul aims at maturity, based on believing the gospel of love and grace which sets people free from needing to achieve their self worth at the cost of others.
When we are free from the obsession with establishing our own importance we can then see ourselves for who we are. That includes identifying our gifts and abilities and understanding where they and we fit in. So Paul returns to the image of the congregation as a body in which all members belong together like different body parts (12:4-5). He had expounded it in detail in 1 Corinthians 12. Here he uses it again, citing a different range of gifts and abilities. I am sure Paul would be highly amused to see how some people have tried to make his illustrations in 12:6-8 into a rigid set of categories designed to label "spiritual gifts"! Paul is asking for a maturity that goes beyond such counting and classification and includes all that we bring and offer to God and to each other (to use the sacrifice image again).
Saved from ourselves, we can get on with the job, both as individuals and as a church. We do not have to be super people. Maturity is about knowing who we are, what our abilities are, and how to use them for the good. It is not about making a name for ourselves. Nor is it somehow about needing to make ourselves more than what we are or doing more than we are able to do, as though we refuse to accept our limitations (in ability, time and space). Believing in love is the key to all of this. Letting it sink in is at the core of the spiritual journey.
Gospel Pentecost 15: 24 August Matthew 16:13-20
William Loader
Pentecost 14: 17 August Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
This is the third time we dip into Paul's struggle with the objection that his gospel entails betraying his heritage and his nation. We take it up again at the point where he asks whether God has abandoned Israel (11:1). His answer is a resounding: no. But at first his answer is somewhat limited: he is an Israelite (11:1). He means: he has not been abandoned. Jews like himself who have responded to the gospel are a remnant of Israel who have listened to God. He goes on in 11:2b, beyond our passage, to cite the example of Elijah, who felt depressed because everyone had forsaken God (11:2b-3). This was not, in fact, so in Elijah's time, as Paul points out (11:4). In his day there are Jews like himself who have responded and are a remnant in the same way.
That, however, is only a partial answer. What irks his opponents - and apparently also unsettles Paul - is the notion that all the rest could be thought of as abandoned. We see hints of this already in his words in 11:2a: "God has not abandoned his people whom he foreknew". The words, "whom he foreknew", allude to God's choice of Israel. That is a major issue. Paul is not so much thinking legally as ethically. How can God choose people and then write them off? His answer about a remnant is not an adequate answer and he knows it. Nor really is his next argument in 11:11-24, which suggests God has been controlling what had happened, deliberately causing Israel to reject Christ, that is, hardening them, so that the gospel would go to the Gentiles. Paul is scraping the bottom of the barrel. It also gives him a chance to caution Gentiles in Rome not to become arrogant and for that he employs the image of the root stock and the graft. Paul's understanding of God leads him to try such explanations.
But ultimately what drives Paul's thought is less his theism and the need to rationalise events to show God is in control - after the holocaust that has become very problematic - but rather his notion of God as compassionate. It reminds us of Hosea 11: how can God give up Israel? There the image of the caring parent is used. Here, Paul reaches the climax of his struggle with the issue by asserting hope. He has no idea how - it is "a mystery" - but he insists: all Israel will be saved (11:25-26). It is a great pity that we skip these verses. Paul finds it hard to believe that God could ever write Israel off and he knows the answer is not really to say: well, Christian Jews only will be saved.
We see here an understanding of God that senses the incoherence between speaking of love and grace in the present and speaking of permanent rejection (and punishment) in the future. Christians have mostly lived with this incoherence and it helps explain the incoherence of much that Christians have done throughout history: espousing love and espousing hate simultaneously, even making it the basis for evangelism through threat and for atonement through seeing Jesus' death as the buying off of God's unrelenting hate (or rejection) by having it imposed only on Jesus. These are crude notions which have the effect of legitimising hate. Paul prises open new possibilities by suggesting God continues to be characterised by grace even into the future and so cannot abandon Israel, any more than a good parent would abandon a child.
Our passage (11:28-32) brings these thoughts in summary. God's gifts (gifts of grace) and God's choice in love of a people must remain valid (11:29); not on legal grounds but on the grounds of God's being. God's compassion always has the last word according to Paul (11:30-31). Even when he embraces a belief in God as somehow in control of the fact that all disobey, the end game is love (11:32). What a wonderful vision: God wants to have compassion towards all people - and will! How appropriate then that he lifts us beyond reasoned reflection to doxology in 11:33-36, which, alas, fall outside our passage. In the end - in and through all there is God! And God, in the end, is the God of compassion!
Gospel Pentecost 14: 17 August Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
William Loader
Pentecost 13: 10 August Romans 10:5-15
Paul is midstream in explaining why his gospel does not amount to a betrayal of his own people, let alone scripture. In 10:1 he has reasserted his deep concern for his people. They remain on his heart. He has not simply abandoned his heritage; nor has he turned away from scripture. In 10:2 he acknowledges their zeal, but declares it misguided. The chief problem as he sees it in 10:3-4 is that they refuse to acknowledge God's new initiative through Christ for getting people into a right relationship (righteousness). The Law is no longer the way. The new initiative spells the end of following the biblical Law as a way of being liberated. Back in Roman 7 he has explained why: it does not work.
We pick his discussion up at the point where Paul uses scripture passages in order to bolster what he is saying. First Paul uses a seemingly harmless text from Lev 18:5, which insists that that people will live by doing the commandments (10:5). Paul has probably used this passage before in argument a number of times. We find him using it also in Galatians 3:12. Here and there "live" has come to mean not just live one's life, but find life in relationship with God, even eternal life. Paul disputes that such life can be found by keeping the commandments.
Instead, he insists that the new initiative creates something that really does produce right relationship and subsequent right behaviour. He assembles some more texts to support his view. He contrasts the old way with the new way by speaking of something more immediate. Combining two texts from Deuteronomy (9:4 and 30:12) he appeals to a new way of looking at things which does not see life as obeying an external law (10:6-8). Instead it comes through a relationship with Christ. This is slightly odd, because the second passage is making the point that God's commandment is not too hard. It is not out there, faraway - above us or below us - but close by, even within our being. Instead of applying this to the commandment, however, Paul applies it to Christ. Now he uses the language of the text to say: Christ is not a distant idea far away, but within us and this is what generates the change which produces goodness in us.
It is a double shift: the contrast (between a view of the commandments of God as external and the view that sees them as being able to be written on people's hearts) becomes in his hand a contrast between the Law and the new word given us in Christ. Perhaps if we pressed Paul, he would respond by saying that when the biblical passages speak of the commandments in this way, they are not really speaking about a set of laws, but something more direct and personal - which we now see in Christ.
Paul will not have been the first to make such a move. People spoke like this about wisdom. Where can you find it? Often they identified wisdom as the essence of God's will and God's law and so the heart of the commandments. Wisdom could come and dwell with people and in them. Others dreamed about a new covenant when the law would be fully internalised. For Paul this dream of wisdom and internalisation is the key to change in people. He identifies Christ as embodying such divine wisdom. Unlike his Jewish contemporaries, however, Paul does not equate God's wisdom with the commandments. They do not match. Some are irrelevant or have served their day and should be discarded. Others are still valid, but are not to be used as the basis for living. The basis for right living and right relationship (righteousness) is being at one with the word which dwells within - which, for him, is Christ.
In 10:9-10 he shifts naturally to how this happens. How does this intimate internalised word establish itself in us? Paul's answer is clear. It is a person: Christ, the risen Christ. To accept Christ as Lord, to represent God in us and to us, is the way to liberation. Paul is concerned about liberation (salvation) for life. In 10:11 he employs another favourite text, Isaiah 28:16, which he had earlier cited just a few verses earlier in 9:33. Paul applies its word about a stumbling stone to Christ to explain why most of his fellow Jews have been tripped up. Here he uses the second half of the citation to state that if we allow Christ into the central role in our lives we shall be confident about life.
In 10:12 he swings open the vision to include all peoples. Not only is he saying: this is the way to find right life. He is also saying: this is available for anyone without discrimination. Joel 3:5 is another favourite text. He weaves it in here, to emphasise that the life is available to "whoever calls on the name of the Lord". The few verses from 10:5-12 contain a number of scripture passages which had developed a life of their own in the hands of Paul and others as early Christians tried to explain themselves. Sometimes they are put to use in ways that match their original meaning. Sometimes they go far beyond it. Through it all we nevertheless see Paul advocating some central values. It is sometimes easier to identify him at that level than it is with his particular uses of biblical passages.
The final two verses of our passage are a rhetorical flourish of Paul's by which he brings attention back to his particular role. If the new initiative is to take effect, people need to call on the name of the Lord. To do that they need to believe. To believe they need to hear about it. To hear about it someone needs to tell them through preaching. For that to happen they must be sent. That is where Paul fits in. He has a commission to preach and - reading between the lines - we can hear him saying: and my mission and my preaching is legitimate! He includes himself among those to whom the famous words of Isaiah 52:7 applies. "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the one proclaiming good news, declaring to Zion: 'Your God reigns!'." We find this verse used at Qumran and early Christianity to speak of bearers of good tidings in God's final plan for history and for liberation. Paul has no hesitation in seeing his own ministry as a crucial part of God's plan.
This is not the easiest passage in Paul. He makes the same point more clearly elsewhere, but we can get his drift. Ultimately it is about a new way of relating to God based on a more internalised relationship. He had been arguing that in the previous chapters. Beside this he insists that it is available to all and that his ministry is part of God's initiative to make it accessible to all. His difficult explanations occur in the context of considerable tension, yet away from that tension his thought also has the seeds of finding much common ground with Judaism - and one might wonder also with other religious traditions - wherever people sense God as compassionate and liberating and not primarily as an external authority.
Gospel Pentecost 13: 10 August Matthew 14:22-33
William Loader
Pentecost 12: 3 August Romans 9:1-5
If we forget Paul's situation, it is easy to think that Romans 1-8 is the main substance of his letter to the Romans. After that it peters out. Such an assumption rightly notes the climax which Romans 8 brings: we can face the future with confidence. We look to the transformation of all people and the whole universe. Yet Paul's concerns cannot be divided up in that way. He has been under attack not only for setting the Law aside, but also for betraying his own people. How can he reduce Jew and Gentile to the same level as he does in Romans 2 and 3 without calling Israel's special place into question? This is behind the questions he poses to himself there: has the Jew no advantage? (3:1; 3:9).
Romans 9 is simply continuing his response. It is deeply personal because such accusations strike at the heart of what he considers precious. In our passage he declares himself. Far from now not caring for his own people any longer, he cares very deeply. 9:1 is fully taken up with trying to assure the Romans of his genuineness. Then in 9:2 he goes on to declare his deep personal involvement. He grieves for his people. 9:3 goes even further: he would be willing to be cursed if only it brought about their salvation. That is dramatic.
In 9:4-5 he focuses on their identity by listing all their blessings. He had begun to spell out such advantages in 3:2, even beginning what sounded like it would be a list by saying "first", but then never going further than that. Here he goes further. Here we finally get the list. As people of Israel they are God's adopted children. This assumes a special relationship, not shared in this way by others. The glory doubtless includes the benefits of experiencing God's glory. Covenants form an important part of the Genesis story. Paul is thinking particularly of those relating to Israel, such as the covenant with Abraham. The blessings also include the Law and (temple) worship which much of the Law regulates. The promises may include the covenant promises, but more than likely refer to the prophets. The focus then falls on "the fathers", especially the patriarchs, especially Moses and possibly David.
The special nature of Israel is marked not least by the fact that Jesus the Christ (Messiah) was one of them through physical descent. The passage ends with some ambiguity. Does it declare God forever blessed as a closing acclamation? Or is it making a claim that Jesus is God forever blessed? I think the former best fits Paul's pattern of thought elsewhere.
These are important assertions. Paul has neither abandoned his people nor does he espouse the view that they are just like any other people. He really does think they have had a special role. He really does value that. Christ's coming has not altered that fact. He would understand why we have a so-called Old Testament which we treasure. There is something special there (which does not mean we must disparage all other traditions). Paul has not swung into anti-semitism or changed into neutral as far as Israel is concerned.
It is interesting to observe what is happening here. Partly it is a rhetorical ploy on Paul's part to reassure and blunt the criticisms. One might imagine, however, that those listening to his letter might respond all the more vigorously: then why on earth are you teaching what you teach? On Paul's part it is, however, much more than a rhetorical ploy. Paul engages the issue and he takes other people seriously and wants people to know it. He is not one for short-cuts which could simply dismiss Israel. It belongs to his gospel to take people seriously. That includes Israel, even though many of its adherents are giving him a hard time.
There follows a series of arguments in which Paul tries to explain himself and his gospel and its implications for thinking about Israel. They are tortuous and uneven. Running through them is the assertion that Israel can get it wrong and for the most part has got it wrong about Jesus as it did about the prophets. God has been involved in the twists and turns of history. Paul seems shakiest in seeming to attribute Israel's failure to God's scheming. Sometimes it sounds like a common rationalisation of failure and disappointment. But Paul never surrenders the goodness (righteousness of God). It keeps reasserting itself, so that finally he almost gives up the explanations and simply asserts a mystery: God will never abandon Israel. How can you abandon your own? How can a parent give up on a child? Nor will God and nor does Paul. Paul's understanding of God is his ultimate answer - even when he is at a loss to know how it will all work out. He refuses to entertain the notion that God will write Israel off. That is very radical and Christians soon abandoned such daring. Thoroughgoing love is too hard to contemplate for so many - even today. We need people to write off - do we really?
Gospel Pentecost 12: 3 August Matthew 14:13-21
William Loader
Pentecost 11: 27 July Romans 8:26-39
Paul is in midstream as he looks to the future. He has just opened a vista of hope that looks to a transformed world both of people and of creation as a whole (8:18-25). In recent times the transformation and renewal of the whole creation takes on new dimensions of urgency as we face the impact of climate change and the way we manage our environment. Such issues claim central court in our reflections on spirituality and hope. Paul has already spoken of the Spirit (8:23). The Spirit yearns. It longs for change, for renewal, for birth of the new. Paul has not arrived. He is in the midst of the pain of change and hope. The Spirit helps us in our human frailty (8:26), not by offering shortcuts to success, but by praying with and for us. The Spirit, the life of God with and within us, is a longing and yearning Spirit. What a spirituality! We are caught up into the divine yearning for change far beyond what we can comprehend: we cannot capture it in words (8:26). Paul may have in mind ecstatic groaning, but this is far from a celebration of speaking in tongues. It is love's yearning which knows no bounds and cannot be captured in definition.
The Spirit not only groans with us; it groans for us (8:26). There is a groaning in the heart of God. We become part of it. That is something ultimately and fundamentally positive. It is hope, whatever befalls us (8:28). It is probably God who works good out of all our experiences. One might want to surrender at this point to belief in a calculating plan which has set our destiny, but this would misread Paul. He is returning to his theme in Romans 5 and earlier in this chapter that suffering does not mean abandonment and failure (8:18). Quite the contrary, it means being engaged with God in the world.
8:29-30 might sound even more like a closed system, but Paul's focus seems to be not an exclusive system or a theory of why some respond and some do not, but rather a celebration of God's love from the beginning. Sometimes love's claims make outrageous statements which are true as celebration and doxology and become shaky if turned to the discourse of doctrine or definition. In the language of love we might affirm "you were meant for me from the beginning of time", whereas in our settled moments we realise we could probably have a good marriage with a number of people. Paul's focus is not exclusion, but the privilege of love and love's goal.
We are to become like Christ. In his letter to the Galatians Paul speaks of labouring like a women until Christ be formed or born among the Galatians (4:19). Here he looks to our becoming children of God with Christ as the firstborn from the dead, an echo of the tradition with which he began his letter (1:4). Becoming like Christ elsewhere means recovering the image of our humanity, which we lost through sin and alienation (3:23). Paul lets the rhythm flow, from our call to our glorification (8:29-30). That is a theme he introduced in 8:17. Glory is a way of speaking of God's being. In Christ it is as good as done and we look forward to being surrounded by God's goodness. That is our hope here and beyond.
Paul's rhetoric reaches great heights in the closing section of the chapter. Echoing the questions of Isaiah 50:8, Paul brings us into the courtroom and invites us to face reality and judge for ourselves. God is for us! That is the meaning of love! 8:32 celebrates that fact in Christ's death seen as God's giving. Christ's reward as God's Son, the first to rise from the dead, is just as much our reward. What is so rewarding? Sharing God's life in the here and now and in the future. That life is love. The reward is not a place or a gift or anything which would contradict its source: outgoing love. It does not consist in ceasing to love and finding selfish reward, but finding joy in God's life and in our own and that of others as we engage in God's generosity. In that we also find ourselves.
Paul knew about accusers. For him they are near at hand, not least the Christians who fear his radical gospel. But they can be further afield or can be our domesticated enemies within with whom we have contracted over years of experience to live and who become the basis of our balance or imbalance. It is like Paul invites us to call them up. Let them have their say. Bring on the therapy. Then let us hear the word of God. Picking up what was probably a very early image of Christ, Paul depicts Christ as the advocate for us in the heavenly court. The notion of a heavenly court appears to have been an ancient strategy in the shift from polytheism to monotheism. The gods are powers in Yahweh's council. Prophets have the gift of listening in. In the legend of Job the heavenly court hears the accuser (the Satan). Paul plays similarly, except that even in the heavenly court we can be assured that someone speaks up for us: Christ. Hebrews has a similar idea: he will intercede to help us when we face suffering so we will cope (4:14-16; 7:25). It is only in 1 John 2 that we have the idea that he also prays for our forgiveness. Paul is not focussing on forgiveness but on help and support.
The focus on suffering comes to expression so strongly in 8:35-37. Partly Paul is refuting accusations that if he were a true apostle he should show signs of blessing and victory. In the spiritual supermarket, Christian preaching which promises victorious living as freedom from troubles and guaranteed prosperity attracts the go-getters and fits more neatly into the goals of society at large. Paul rejects this both as criticism of himself and as a travesty of the gospel. It makes his words far more than just personal, relating to him. They become beacons to lead our way through the glitter of religious commerce. He is happy to speak of victory, but it consists in being like Christ: loving like him, suffering like him, and finally joining him also in the future. In this we are more than conquerors (8:37). Even in this statement he is not thinking about who might be conquered. Paul doesn't have to win by beating others. Love is against making others losers at our expense, even though that runs contrary to much common wisdom in his and our day.
Finally Paul's flourish in 8:38-39 is a wonderful assertion of love over against the competing and threatening powers which in their persuasiveness or power have the capacity to enslave us. Paul does not give us detailed predictions about the future. He doesn't have to have "knowledge-control", that is, answers which pretend to know the unknown. He doesn't have to pretend the powers don't exist or present no menace. Paul can face up to his own vulnerability without deceit and without magic. He does so simply because he is convinced that God, the God of Jesus is loving. That gets him through. Paul stakes everything on God's goodness. That is also the heart of the gospel which he preaches.
William Loader
Pentecost 10: 20 July Romans 8:12-25
This passage rounds off well to the theme with which Romans 5 began: hope. Partly the issue is personal: Paul's sufferings underlined that God was not blessing him and approving his gospel. A naive (but in part biblically supported) theology of success calls Paul's credentials into question. In response Paul refuses to descend like his later imitators to the blaming game and to name calling. Instead he goes back to the heart of the gospel as he understands it and mounts his case not really for himself - but for God! Paul does theology. We have the benefit in the passage of seeing how Paul, having dealt with the Law issue, turns to show how faith faces struggle. He knows he tells his own story but also addresses the story of many others, including those who will hear his letter read before them in Rome.
Our passage begins with echoes of the theme of Romans 6. Having been baptised, a celebration of our entry into the new life which God offers, we are to live that life. Baptism celebrated the receiving of the Spirit. We receive the Spirit so that we might walk with the Spirit. Last week we saw that Paul is setting in contrast two systems. One is based on following the inclinations of our personalities when they are living from fear and guilt and are self-obsessed ("the flesh"). In it we are caught into a syndrome of sin and fear and guilt and it spells death. The other is based on the liberating goodness of God which sets us free from our guilt, fear and even from shame, so that we become free to live for God, for others, and even for ourselves, in ways that are creative and, in turn, life giving for others.
Paul does not apparently have a list of church members. At least he does not do his counting by who once had a conversion or similar experience in the past. This became an obsession in the church in a form that left people with nowhere to go. I'm saved and going to heaven: why should I do more than enjoy the prospect? It's a cast iron guarantee! The earliest Christians really did not think like that. Here in 8:14 Paul has a much more dynamic description. Those who are children of God are those who are led by the Spirit. He does not mean people who pray and find parking spaces or who slip "the Lord's leading" into their sentences in the belief that they are so sure they know each step to take and the steps they take are always right. Being led means being moved or activated by the Spirit. Paul is still talking about the ongoing process in which the Spirit frees us to love and so more than fulfil what the Law intends.
By speaking of "children of God" Paul is using the language which meant so much to converts whose entry into Christ was celebrated by baptism. For many today the experience of coming to faith is gradual and baptism celebrated that at its (and our) infancy rather than in adulthood. This should not prevent us from grasping Paul's meaning and insight. Paul's point is precisely that being a child of God is not guaranteed by an occasion of ours from the past but by an ongoing relationship which continues in the present, a relationship which in that sense baptism (even in infancy) celebrates in advance. We spend our lives realising the potential it celebrates for us, entering more fully into the once for all story it depicts.
8:15 makes it clear that he is using the language of relationship. We are not in a relationship of slavery, but in one of freedom. We have been adopted into the family, itself, and have been made heirs (8:17). Like children who grow up in the household we address our father in intimate terms. Paul may be reflecting a widespread tradition in the beginnings of Christianity of retaining the Aramaic family address of children to fathers: "abba". It probably reflects Jesus' own tendency to do theology by pointing to what parents do when they operate rightly: they care, they confront, and they love.
Even self assurance is not based on fetching the certificate of membership or recalling an event of the the past, but a sense of oneness or otherwise with the being of God the Spirit moving within our lives (8:16). It is a sense of being together in ourselves, including God's presence within us, rather than counting up extraordinary experiences or measuring the depths of the mystical into which we can descend. Paul is always pragmatic. Love is the fruit of the Spirit - not hard to recognise. It grows where it has soil. It doesn't need specialists of intellect or charisma or achievement or meditation, as valuable as each can be. At most we may need specialist help to remove the clutter that blocks the light of love reaching deeply into our lives. It is just as likely to be found among the ordinary people going about their daily round as it is among those who know all about it.
Lack of assurance or false self-assurance plagues people at many levels and leads to compensatory behaviours that are frequently destructive to self and others. Paul is confident in love and assumes this is what God's goodness does for people. It frees people from their self-preoccupations. But of course others have a big investment in wanting to keep people back in their sense of inadequacy - including, alas, some in the name of Christ!
In 8:18 Paul takes off from present confidence to future hope - just as he did in 5:3-5. Adversity does not topple his confidence. He expects it. In 2 Corinthians and elsewhere he expounds this by pointing to Christ's suffering resurrection. Christ is the model. We live mainly on the cross side of his story, for even though we also have some of the new life now, the real change to resurrection lies in the future. Here Paul speaks of glory, a favourite image of God's presence and being. Paul's hope is not golden streets and shinier rewards, but God and God's presence.
In 8:19-24 Paul clearly moves beyond just his own situation in which some of his adversities come from his fellow believers. His grasp of God's goodness enables him to see "God-wide" into the broader context including both all humanity and all of creation. He is not a gnostic who can't wait to escape this evil material world. He is not a dualist who limits the focus of God's goodness to just some segments of creation. He is not one of those ancient and modern Christians who see salvation in terms of the salvation of souls. His passionate heart goes out to all creation. He looks to its renewal, its rebirth.
We might wonder at Paul's explanations. He sees it all as part of God's plan for the universe, while at the same time he clearly does not attribute destructiveness and failure to God's action. In his understanding the universe (much smaller of course than the way we see it and geocentric) is like a mother in the final stages of pregnancy. We all belong in this mother image. The Spirit also belongs. It is almost as though he sees the Spirit as the panting in the birth process, though that is my connection not his. The image is remarkable nevertheless. The Spirit - indeed God - is travailing with us for change.
The sense of solidarity is remarkable. The compassion knows no limits to its extent. The goodness which Paul celebrates as the good news is now fully universal. His mere hints send us out to look in awe and respect not only at all humanity but at all creation. Ignoring the plight of the world's eco-systems becomes impossible. Tossing off concerns about the environment is a gross outrage against God's goodness - against future generations, but more than that: against creation itself.
Paul's sense of hope is firmly rooted in present engagement with God's goodness in the world of people and of creation. His dreams envisage a renewal that will see us all (like creation as a whole) transformed into a new form of reality - raised in transformed bodies like Christ's resurrection body. That was a common belief of his time. He also envisaged that the cosmic re-birth would happen as early as his own lifetime. We find ourselves necessarily distanced from his times and his timing, but also from how he conceptualised the fulfilment. Our universe is larger than the one his generation envisaged by a factor of trillions and more. In this light we may be tempted to treat the passage as little more than a relic of a past hoper. It is that, but it is more. Our hope is perhaps more naked, but its central truth remains: in the end: God. But our engagement with God's goodness in the present usually lags far behind Paul's vision. Two millennia behind us, he walks far ahead of us and leads the way more than any other N