Pentecost 10

William Loader

Pentecost 10: 1 August Colossians 3:1-11

The author has finished his warnings about misleading influences and turns now to exhortations. The reference in 3:1 to being raised with Christ recalls the allusion to baptism 2:11-12. The emphasis now is not on the defeat of powers, but on the positive. The hearers are to set their minds on what lies above. In a scale of values where above is superior to below, the author pictures Christ as above. He employs language familiar to us from the creed: Christ sits at God's right hand. This has its origin in Ps 110:1 in God's word to the king at his coronation. Christians acclaimed Jesus as the new anointed king and so pictured him as seated as the royal messiah at God's right hand. This is an assertion of faith, that Christ, all that he was and is, reflects God and represents God, so that the call to the Colossians is nothing less than to focus on God, to let God be God in their lives.

Setting one's focus on something creates its own dynamic, like when two people set their hearts on a marriage. Many actions follow from that single goal, most of them spontaneous and all of them motivated by this single aim. In the same way, to set one's focus on God, is to create a dynamic with consequences which touch every part of life. There is an element of the automatic, but there is also the need to keep focused. The writer is aware of this and therefore gives this exhortation. We need, he is arguing, to be what we have become, to realise our potential. Turning to Christ meant changing our focus, indeed, changing the goal or God of our lives. That meant dying to the old life and beginning anew (3:3). The newness is not as simple as a new resolution. It is a new relationship. It actually means finding ourselves in a new space: inside or within the body and being of Christ which seeks to reach out with love into the world. One day that will become plain for all to see: the author means the climax of history when, he believes, Christ will return (3:4). In the meantime it is still reality, but hidden. There is almost a sense of security in the statement that we are hidden in Christ.

3:5 turns to the logical consequences of beginning this new life: the old must die. Beside the elements which naturally cease to matter as we change our focus and change what matters to us, there is still the need to give attention to well grooved habits and behaviours which conflict with the new life. At the head of the list is sexual immorality. It often got top billing because it was seen as a major problem in the pagan world. It also headed the list of the ethical commandments in the Greek version of the ten commandments. One might even interpret all the vices mentioned in 3:5 as related to abuse of sexuality except the last: greed. It is striking that the author describes it as idolatry. Putting oneself first is idolatry. If God is the God of compassion and not the God who gives me what I want all the time, this makes good sense.

3:6-7 reminds the Colossians that they once participated in the pagan culture of greed and abuse, but no longer. 3:8 repeats a list of evils to be set aside. Here the focus is on negative attitudes towards other people (incompatible with a God who is compassionate - but not with a god who is happy to destroy and despise others). Respect and love towards others has to be fundamental to the Christian life because it is fundamental to God's being from the beginning. Straight and honest open communication (3:9) is also a way of showing regard for others. People need reminding about these things, because many things block what can otherwise be a dynamic process of change. There are still deep grooves and powerful systems of thought to which people can be captive, even without knowing it. Spiritual growth means allowing oneself to become more and more transformed and conformed to the one who is now the focus of our loyalty and love.

3:9-10 return to language used about baptism. A few weeks ago we found the same images in Galatians 3:26-28. It speaks of shedding on old garment and putting on a new one. The new garment is a new being. This is not, however, just a statement about my individual new being, but about Christ as the new being. As in Galatians, we have the image of baptism as the time when we put on Christ. It is a different image for saying what the author describes in 3:1 as our being hidden in Christ. We allow Christ and so, God, to envelop us, to be the space in which we find our life and being. This new being is nothing other than what we were made to be in the first place: bearing the image of God (3:10). So the vision is not about some religious experience which takes us away from our humanity, but about our humanity becoming full alive because it has now found its way back to what it was meant to be in the first place.

As in Galatians, so here we read of unity of diverse people. There the list included male and female. Here those elements are missing. Instead the focus is on different nationalities and cultures, but also still on slaves and free. Perhaps people were finding the notion of male and female in Christ too controversial to handle, especially in the light of the problems which had arisen in Corinth and possibly elsewhere where some were demanding that sexual differentiation be denied altogether. Colossians will go on to make statements about each which have retreated from the equality which Galatians apparently assumes. But at least among those mentioned there is a unity to be celebrated in diversity. It fits the emphasis in the letter on the Colossians as former Gentiles who should not allow themselves to be forced into particular observances of Law before they can become acceptable before God and certain angels.

To say that "Christ is all and in all" is cryptic. We might say he is all that matters. It is also saying that he dwells in all. The preceding image said all dwell in him. These are only images, but they emphasise intimate belonging. Christian faith is not about a religious adventure on the side of daily life, but about a total orientation of one's being in which, through Christ, God is back being God for us, and we are back to being human in the way we were made to be. The reference to "all" may also have a much wider focus: all people and all of creation. That is at least the goal of this love which flows from the heart of God and that needs to be the goal of that love in and through our lives as well, so that no one is beyond it and no part of creation beyond our care and concern.

Gospel: Pentecost 10: 1 August Luke 12:13-21

Pentecost 9

William Loader

Pentecost 9: 25 July Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)

Already Colossians 1 gives emphasis to the reliability of the gospel hope. The people at Colossae should not let themselves be bothered by those Christians suggesting otherwise. In Colossians 2 the danger is named, although without telling us all we would want to know. If we take our passage as a whole and include the verses in brackets we can see that these people are concerned about observances in relation to food, drink, festivals, new moons, and sabbaths (2:16). They are also concerned with heavenly powers and authorities, including some kind of veneration of angels and mystical connection with them (2:18). The allusion to spiritual circumcision in 2:11 suggests that this was also one of their concerns. This looks very much like we are dealing with a form of Jewish Christianity which still upholds the Law and insists that Gentiles observe it.

The link between the Law and angels is traditional. Already Paul alludes to the role of angels in the giving of the Law to assert its inferiority (Gal 3:19), but mostly the angelic connection was meant to emphasise the opposite: its authority (Acts 7:38; Heb 2:3). Something rather unusual appears to be playing a role. These angels are deemed so significant that failure to uphold their Law has the potential to block one's path to God. What is being played out here in a spatial sense is not very different from what Paul had to confront in relation to the Galatians. Here it seems as though salvation is pictured vertically as ascent to God via a series of steps. At the lower steps of the journey one has to show one has observed the Law, then one comes via Christ to God. In its horizontal form it says: a right relationship with God is possible only if one adheres to the Law.

One common bone of contention was circumcision. The Bible reports God's instructions to Abraham and to Israel to circumcise Gentiles who join the people (Genesis 17). Those whom we might see as fundamentalist in their approach to scriptures were doubtless arguing that it was as simple as this: do we obey God's word or not? For the troublemakers at Colossae any refusal to keep the whole Law offends the heavenly angels who passed the Law on to Moses and blocks future hope. This combination of Law and reverence for the angels explains why the writer keeps alluding to these two aspects.

Thus in 2:6-7 he urges the Colossians to stick with the gospel they first heard. They should beware of these other teachings which claim they are representing the divine order of God's law, the fundamental structure of reality (2:8). "Elements of the world", a term which also occurs in Galatians, may well be a reference to the angelic spirits. It can also mean something like rudimentary principles. The two meanings come together if we think of the angels representing and administering the basic order of the universe, according to these people. It was their rather speculative way of speaking about the Law.

2:9 shows what is at stake. Does the power and authority lie with these spirits or totally with Christ? 1:19 asserted that God's fullness dwells in Christ. 2:9 repeats this. That fullness of God dwells in Christ in such a way as to create a huge body of life and influence into which we are incorporated. There is no half-way house or foyer run by angels where we first have to pass a preliminary examination. We are complete, have all we need, in this new body (2:10). This Christ is the head both of the body and also of all subordinate powers, including those to whom the troublemakers give such deference. Again the conclusion is clear: so you can trust the message of God's free grace in Christ and stop worrying about these other teachings. They have no validity.

The writers presses the point further by reminding the Colossians again (as he had in 2:6-7) of their conversion, which included their baptism. Their baptism was the only circumcision they needed. What was stripped off was not a piece of foreskin, but a lifestyle, an old "body", that is, a set of influences to which they turned their backs (2:11). Their baptism represented their joining with Christ and the event of his death and resurrection, so that as he died and rose, so they died to their old lives and rose to a new life, incorporated into Christ's risen body and being (2:12). That major transition included the forgiveness of their sins. This was a key element of liberating them from the old lifestyle in which they were spiritually dead.

The writer uses the word, trespasses or transgressions, in 2:13. That was a term commonly used where people were thinking of breaking laws. The writer is giving some validity to parts of the Law, probably the mainly ethical parts rather than the ones now being insisted upon. 2:14 suggests that such transgressions warranted a charge sheet which could be brought against the hearers. Nothing suggests such a charge sheet would have been invalid or irrelevant. In a graphic image 2:14 suggests that the charge sheet no longer applies because God took it away and nailed it to the cross. This reflects the common interpretation of Christ's death as an atoning act, on the basis of which God forgives sins. It is an image, but always in danger of being pressed too literally, as if God nailed Jesus instead of nailing us and without doing so could never have forgiven us.

Even more strange is the image in 2:15. He describes the act of atonement as something in which God stripped the powers and authorities. This relates to the act of forgiveness. Where people have assurance of forgiveness these powers no longer hold sway. Their power is broken. They are left naked. They are defeated. We might transpose these thoughts into a different key. Freedom from guilt frees us from destructive forces which hold us in captivity. As we allow ourselves to be loved, we can dismiss the fears and anxieties which plagued us about our worth and which made us so busy trying to be good. In fact it is not really our initiative but God's. Love creates possibilities. The author celebrates this in what might seem as something of mythological flourish. It is certainly a mixing of images (nailing, stripping, triumphing).

The troublemakers might well agree that Christ's death brought forgiveness of sins - past sins. They would insist that the Law remains valid. Now as Christians we are to obey the biblical law all the more. Many Christians still understand Christian life in this way, but, frequently without much consistency, exempt themselves from some biblical laws while insisting on others. There have been many Christian heroes of sabbath observance, or its equivalent, Sunday observance. Our author sees matters differently. Christ's death not only achieved forgiveness of sins. It also liberated us from the Law with its particular demands. In this Paul and author are one (if they are not one literally).

2:16-19 (and 20-23) show that the author rejects the validity of the Law's demands. Christian ethics comes not from the Law (2:17), but from living as part of the body of Christ, being dynamically connected to its life (2:19). It is not that the writer denies the Law ever had validity. Somewhat like Paul in Galatians 3 the author acknowledges the Law had a role once - after all the charges which Christ wiped off by his death were valid and were based on the old Law. The Law was a kind of shadow of the real thing which has now come (2:17 - a very similar thought to what we find in Hebrews and John). But now all that matters is the body of Christ (2:17). So those powers which had their authority in association with the Law have that authority no longer. 2:20 is more confrontational suggesting that some Colossians had succumbed to the troublemakers. They had become obsessed with a series of "don't"s (2:21). These were human traditions (2:22, a term used also in 2:8 and echoing Mark 7, which also disparages such laws).

Colossians works on a broad canvas. We are dealing with what makes best sense of the universe. Its unity and peace is at stake. The energy which pours into it is none other than God's compassion. Ask the author about it and he will point to Christ and his death. That life liberates people from sin and frees them from all the powers to which they had surrendered themselves. Only one power matters and that is God, as we know God in Christ. Christ's body given for the world becomes a microcosm of God's life now seeking to incorporate all things into this body of love. The meaning of life is to be engaged in that life and love. All ethics flow from that, not from biblical law and its human interpreters. The challenge is not to justify ourselves against elaborate demands, but to engage in filling the earth with the glory of God. That challenge both sets our religious self-obsessions at rest and sends us to confront within ourselves and our world the possibilities of freedom and the forces which deny it.

Gospel: Pentecost 9: 25 July Luke 11:1-13

Pentecost 8

William Loader

Pentecost 8: 18 July Colossians 1:15-28

Opinion is divided about whether this is Paul's own letter or one written by someone who reveres him greatly and writes in his name. In any case the writer has been underlining the hope in which the Colossian Christians may have confidence. It is not under threat, as alleged by some intruders who appear to imposing special requirements and speaking of respect towards other heavenly powers beside Christ. The ideas seem to reflect a form of Jewish Christian belief according to which one must meet the requirements of these heavenly angels who have laid down certain rules, probably a variant form of retaining obedience to the biblical law.

This context partly explains the first five verses of our passage which hail Christ's superiority over all. The words here were probably not composed for this occasion but are or include a quotation from existing material which may have been used as a hymn in worship. It is rich in imagery and careful patterns, indicating a poetic work in the broadest sense. There are two parts. It begins by speaking of Christ in relation to creation. Then half way through 1:18 it changes its focus to the resurrected Christ and what he has done. There is some matching between the two parts.

The two parts reflect two important strands which helped people think about Christ. One very early interpretation of the resurrection was that in raising Jesus from the dead, God was enthroning or appointing him as the Messiah, the Christ. Many Jews looked forward to the coming of such a liberator. Christians were rather daring in calling Jesus, the Christ, because the term had some political, even military associations, which did not fit Jesus well and so needed reinterpretation. Anyone called a Messiah was likely to be lumped in with other subversives of various kinds. The story of Jesus' death shows this clearly: he is crucified along with two revolutionaries; he is treated as roughly the equivalent of Barabbas; he is accused of wanting to be a Messiah, a "king of the Jews".

As Christianity spread beyond the world of Jewish hopes, the acclamation of Jesus as the Christ became more an acclamation that God had made Jesus king in a much broader sense. Christians began to declare that Jesus will be lord of all. He will unite all people, indeed, everything in one single realm of God's goodness. We see this way of thinking in this "hymn" in 1:18. "Who is the power or rule or beginning (arche)": this means God has enthroned him, but the word, arche, also means "beginning". This association of ideas is present in the next phrase: "the firstborn from the dead". It means, he was the first to be raised from the dead and also that he is God's firstborn son. Traditionally, the firstborn inherited the major power in a household. The word, "firstborn", also appears in the first part: he is "the firstborn of creation". The rest of 1:18 underlines the meaning: "so that he might become the first or leading person among all people and things".

In other words, the old messianic hope has now been transformed, so that it affirms Christ's resurrection as the moment when something new began: Christ was raised from the dead, the first of many to come, but as the first he is also the leader and will bring about the rule or kingdom of God throughout the whole created order of things. 1:19 shows that this was not just because he was the first to be raised, but rather because God's fullness chose to live in him. That makes a huge difference. On that basis he will seek to bring about peace in the entire universe: peace with God and peace among all peoples and things. All this is possible because of his death, which our author sees as the critical moment when the problems which blocked peace were dealt with. We shall return to that.

A second strand of reflection about Christ derived from Jews who had long speculated that wisdom was not only an attribute of God, but could be seen as God's companion from the beginning of creation. We find such thought first expressed in Proverbs 8:22-31. When Christians tried to explain the present status of Christ with God, it struck them that they were really saying things about him which they used to say about Wisdom. Just as the Messiah was God's son, so wisdom could be seen as God's child, God's firstborn. Applied to Jesus, they acclaimed that Jesus, like Wisdom (sometimes described as God's Word) was in the beginning with God, God's firstborn, reflecting God's very being, active in creation and now the means by which God held things together and through which God would bring everything into unity. This fitted so well that people said Jesus was not just like Wisdom and the Word, but he was Wisdom or the Word. We may be more familiar with this though from the opening of John's gospel: "In the beginning was the Word", but here we have it in Col 1:15-18. It also appears in Hebrews 1:1-3.

In our passage Jesus is hailed as the image of God, the firstborn of creation, and the agent and sustainer of creation. We might see this as rather typical of the high flying language of hymns and poetry without much concrete relevance, but for the Colossians, bothered by the suggestion that all kinds of spiritual powers had to be negotiated before one was acceptable, these words have direct relevance. Put simply, if Christ created whatever such powers there are, then they must be inferior to him and as long as we have a relationship with him, we need not be bothered by their power. This is a rather complicated way of applying the insight: God's grace is enough. We don't need to embark on heroic journeys of achievement to make ourselves acceptable to God. We can stop that religious enterprise, start trusting, and be free to live life for ourselves, for others and for God.

The writer - and perhaps the source he is quoting - also mentions the church (1:18). This is far from an afterthought. The big vision is that the church is the name for what Christ created at his resurrection. It is wherever God's goodness comes to rule. Perhaps inspired by Paul's image of the church as a body, the author envisages Christ's influence as being like a huge expanding body which incorporates all who become part of it. The ultimate dream and conviction is that one day this body will come to include absolutely everything in one single unity.

These are grand thoughts. They are easily open to abuse. Some have seen the church as destined to control all political power on earth as part of this vision, often with disastrous consequences. But if we allow the abstractions of the poetry to settle and see beneath and beyond them, the vision is really about God's love through Christ filling the universe, an echo of the notion that the earth shall be filled with the glory of God. It is a vision of reconciliation with God and among people. It also invites us to include in this the whole creation. It is also very confronting of any and all powers which set themselves up as above love and above God, including both political powers and our own inner regimes of religiosity.

1:21-23 comes back to the concrete reality of the Colossians. They are Gentiles. God has reconciled them. The message of Christ's coming and death is that love is as much there for them as it was for the Jews. 1:23 encourages them again not to be rattled by those who want to impose restrictions on them. Such people may even have been among those who equated Wisdom with the biblical Law and sought to reinforce its demands that way as well. Our writer makes it clear: Christ is God's wisdom and word, and that wisdom and word is about a loving relationship which will bear the fruits of love, not about a system of obligation which will command them.

1:24-29 presents Paul and his special role. It is a kind of reinforcement of what has been said and a reaffirmation of Paul's key role and so of the authority of the letter. Within it we hear further reflection on what in many circles was controversial: the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God. It had always been God's plan, but had only come to light recently through Christ (1:25-26). The goal was: "Christ in you", Gentiles, too! This is for you "the hope of glory" (1:27). Perhaps some Christian Jews still resisted the idea or, more likely, were insisting that these Gentiles must keep the whole Law. Not so, according to Paul and not so, according to this writer. The goal is mature human beings and this will be achieved through people having an ongoing relationship with the God of love through Christ (1:28), not through imposing restrictions on them.

This is a big expansive vision which needs a big expansive interpretation if it is not to collapse into religious imperialism, especially in our context when we are able to be much more aware than this writer of the complexities of different cultures and different religious traditions. Our visions of unity will want to affirm diversity, but not at the cost of injustice. Ultimately love and peace identify the goal and determine the strategy. They also authenticate what we do, whatever labels we may claim. They will also confront whatever undermines love and peace. To affirm the love and peace which we see in Christ will make us generous enough to see them wherever they are embodied, with familiar labels or not, and will make us courageous to recognise their absence, even where we might most expect them.

Gospel: Pentecost 8: 18 July Luke 10:38-42

Pentecost 7

William Loader

Pentecost 7: 11 July Colossians 1:1-14

Colossians belongs to a few letters attributed to Paul about which there are doubts. The doubts are not that these are forgeries, but rather that they may come under the category of letters written by someone else in the name of the apostle in order to convey what he would have said. The practice was not uncommon, often done out of reverence and respect. It could even go so far as the writer imagining what Paul may want to convey about his own personal situation, as happens in Colossians. Such letters also belong to the treasury of early Christian writings because they reflect the wisdom of the early period and have their own inspirational quality.

The letter follows a standard format, common to Paul's letters and generally characteristic of letters of the time. A greeting takes the form: Sender to Recipients, Greetings! Thus here we have Paul and Timothy to .. at Colossae, grace and peace! More reflective hearers may well have thought about the words "grace and peace". Others might have heard them as little more than, "Hello!" What follows in 1:3-8 also follows a standard pattern. It was customary to give thanks to the gods for the recipients and assure them of prayers. Within this standard pattern we see particular concerns. The author gives thanks for the community's coming to faith at the hands of Epaphras.

The rather elaborate reference to their faith emphasises some other elements which were deemed foundational to a Christian response. They have not only come to faith in Christ (1:4), but they have also become characterised by love towards "the saints", which may simply mean other Christians, but could mean Jewish Christians in particular. 1:5 emphasises hope. Later we hear that this hope was being unsettled by some who were making it depend on fulfilling certain rites and rules. "Truth" appears twice in this context (1:5 and 1:6) because the intrusion of mistaken ideas is part of what has been unsettling the community. The writer is wanting to say that grace, shown through Christ, is enough. The words are encouraging and complimentary, acknowledging both the coming to faith and its growth, so that they can see themselves as part of something which is expanding in the world of their time. The mention of Epaphras might indicate that he is the real author of the writing who is using this to underline his belonging with Paul, but this is speculation.

1:9-14 continues the traditional thanksgiving which belonged to the standard letter form, but tells us more about what will later emerge as a key theme. Against the claims of intruders who unsettle their faith with new theories and demands, the writer prays that they may have wisdom. It is rather wordy, but the goal is clear. The author prays that they may have knowledge and strength to hold fast against the dangers. He also wants them to be relieved of the stress and anxiety which these troubles have brought so that can have joy and thanksgiving (1:12) . This is about a sense of peace. It depends on believing in God as the one who alone holds the future and makes a place of belonging for us.

The issue of belonging uses imagery of inheritance. Will there be a place for us? For us it may widen to a fundamental question of belonging and worth, and we may hear the strains of the West Side Story's song: "There's a place for us". Beyond existential language it is also the language of Israel's tradition. Colossians is written to Gentile Christians and its author is alluding here to the fact that there is a place for us Gentiles among the holy ones of Israel. We find similar language in Acts 20:32. In 1:13 this place of light is contrasted with darkness. Coming to faith means moving from a system of authority and power which is destructive into a new realm or kingdom where Christ rules and where Christ's rule is characterised by love. For the author a major component of that liberation (church word: redemption) is forgiveness of sins.

This needs to be set against the backdrop of what is bothering the community. Some are saying that God's love is not so free, but depends on religious rites and achievements which must be performed if we are to be sure of getting past the powers which hold sway in this universe. The result can be religious preoccupation with our own destiny. We can become busy trying to justify ourselves. We can do that by performing religious rites or doing many other things "religiously". We can even make ourselves busy with overwork (even with church work!) to achieve that sense of being valued and ultimately coming through and finding a place of worth. Colossians is acclaiming a generous love which says: stop all this and believe in grace! You don't have to become religious in this way. On the contrary, you can be liberated from such religion to be free to respond to God and others and yourselves with joy!

Gospel: Pentecost 7: 11 July Luke 10:25-37

Pentecost 6

William Loader

Pentecost 6: 4 July Galatians 6:(1-6) 7-16

Only one thing matters for Paul. That is the cross of Christ (6:14). For Paul it represents the major change in his orientation. As a result of its message he ceased to be what he once was, and he changed to become a person living entirely from the generosity (grace) of God. Paul makes this claim in his closing comments in the letter. Notice what precedes and what follows. In 6:11 it looks like Paul has taken up the pen himself from the scribe who was taking his dictation. He draws the Galatians attention to his own large letters (possibly reflecting problems with sight) but then moves straight to the point of the letter: don't let yourselves be bothered by those who want you to circumcised! They are doing so, he alleges, because it protects them against Jews who would otherwise persecute them (6:12-13). This is an interesting observation. Paul clearly sees more operating here than simply different beliefs. These missionaries, he alleges, are really acting in their own interests. Their fundamentalist stance also has a social explanation - as it often has.

Thus Paul's enthusiasm and interest lies completely elsewhere. It is neither in self-preservation nor in fundamentalism, but in the gospel of the cross which declares that God's love reaches out to all people without discrimination and seeks to bring them to renewal. New creation is the goal. Paul will have been familiar with visionary hopes of a new heaven and a new earth at the climax of history when God is expected to bring history to its end. Here, as in 2 Cor 5:17, he focuses on that new creation happening already in people's lives. That is really all that matters. For that purpose it is irrelevant whether one is circumcised or not (6:15). Paul is claiming some parts of scripture are of greater importance than others, even to the extent that some parts can be set aside as no longer relevant. For Paul, God's focus is not rules but relationships. People matter most. As Jesus once said, according to Mark 2:27, "The sabbath was made for people not people for the sabbath".

In 6:16 Paul subtly repeats one of his major concerns. He wants peace both for Gentiles and for Israel. He wants their wholeness. He has not betrayed his people. Nor will he betray the Gentiles. The way to peace is love and this is an ongoing reality, a pattern or principle to live by. His concern about peace echoes his concern earlier in the letter where he expresses great frustration at the divisions which the Christian intruders have caused in his Galatian congregations.

If we move backwards into the passage - we started from the end deliberately - we find that Paul has a very grounded view about this peace. It is good to go right back to the bracketed verses. Things do go wrong in communities. When it happens, don't sweep it under the carpet or form cliques to gossip about it. Take action out of love for the person (6:1). Paul's gospel of love means that you deal with human beings in a loving and gentle manner. The goal is not to defend laws, but to restore people. It is not about arrogant self-assurance. We are all capable of doing wrong. Our approach is to be at the human level. That is why Paul reminds the Galatians to watch that they themselves are not tempted into doing wrong (6:1). Paul does not believe that we are ever exempt from such possibilities. 6:2 emphasises this mutuality and labels it fulfilment of the law of Christ. Perhaps he is thinking of Jesus' words about loving one another. Perhaps he has no texts in mind, but is reflecting what he has been saying in the previous chapter: there is a new dynamic at work which produces goodness if you allow it to work. It is Christ's law, much more effective than the Law of commandments.

6:3-5 puts this emphasis in a different way. We can stop playing games with ourselves and others by trying to be one-up on them. Our value no longer depends on winning, being better than someone else, putting others down directly or indirectly. If we attend to our own integrity and wholeness then we won't live in a way that depends on criticising others. For Paul it is about accountability. We carry our own burdens. We take responsibility for ourselves. Only when we do so will we be of much use in sharing the burdens of others. Paul never imagined that conversion suddenly made people good. His letters always imply that the potential of God's goodness in our lives to bring renewal can be thwarted by our choices. It is not that he brings a set of commandments in by the back door as if first love comes and then a pile of oughts and obligations. That is not how Paul sees it. Rather he keeps drawing attention to God's love and keeps encouraging his hearers to let love complete its work by removing the things that block its dynamic in our lives. Here it means abandoning a very common human game. It must be named to be disempowered and exposed for what it is, but not to be replaced by new oughts. Rather the way of love itself helps expose its poverty and enables us to live differently as we allow it to heal our being.

Paul has no qualms in addressing issues of money. In 6:6 he follows the normal pattern which applied in early Christian communities. Communities need to support teachers and preachers (even though in Corinth Paul decided to support himself - and caused much offence and frowns from those who treated such guidelines as rules!). Paul is not beyond addressing greed and anal behaviour with possessions. Love is also about how we handle our resources. It is as though Paul finds the need to help people make new grooves which are compatible with where the Spirit will want to flow in their lives. That means tilting people out of old grooves and worn ways in which they could easily remain stuck. That affects Christian communities. It affects resources for doing good. It ultimately affects how we see the world order and we shall never understand terrorism unless we have some idea of the inequality of access to the world's resources.

In 6:6 Paul has used a verb which belongs to the word stem from which we get koinonia. 1n 2 Cor 8 and 9 Paul will use it to describe the collection of money which he making for the poor in Judea. Here, too, it has a financial context. Ultimately, for Paul, love gets to the detail and teaches us what to do with it. It tilts us out of old grooves, whether they are habits of greed or biblically-sanctioned requirements such as the law about circumcising Gentiles. Thus Paul's understanding of peace and love is radical and confronting and always focused on life and renewal.

Gospel: Pentecost 6: 4 July Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Pentecost 5

William Loader

Pentecost 5: 27 June Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Paul needs to persuade the Galatians that those preachers who were telling them they should be circumcised and submit themselves to biblical law are wrong. There was nothing deficient with the way they came to faith. There would be no gain if they went along with such influences. In fact, there would be serious harm (5:2). They would be abandoning the truth about God and God's way of setting people right. Paul is very annoyed. In 5:12 he shows his frustrated anger: if they must mutilate someone, let them mutilate themselves!

From their point of view Paul's words would have been outrageous. Fancy describing God's instruction to Abraham and through him to Israel about circumcision of Gentiles as mutilation! Fancy referring to strict adherence to the Bible as slavery! Fancy comparing that slavery with the slavery they once had to pagan deities! Yet that is how Paul sees it. His call to freedom in 5:1 is a call to freedom from a certain style of religion which he believes misses the point and does harm rather than good - in the name of God and on the basis of the Bible.

Paul has just argued his point using another of his rather contrived biblical interpretations, where he equates Sarah and Hagar with freedom and slavery (4:21-31). His supporting arguments are not always convincing, but his overall emphasis is clear. Through Christ God offers a relationship without preconditions except that one remains in the relationship itself. There is no need to take on oneself the biblical law in addition . This does not mean that Paul has abandoned ethical values, although some of his opponents accuse him of just that. They could point to what was happening at Corinth in support of their views. Surely Paul's gospel of freedom created chaos at Corinth. If you want people to do what is right you must give them rules; they must know and keep the divine commandments, they argued. Paul disagrees, but he is sensitive to this criticism.

In 5:13 he makes it very clear that freedom is not just release from something - in this case the demands of the Law - it is also freedom for something, namely a relationship with the God who loves. That has to mean that one also engages in such loving. When this happens we are more than fulfilling the requirements of the Law (5:13-14; if you forget all the ritual and other commandments, which Paul was quite happy to drop - others weren't!). Paul repeats and expands this argument in Romans 8:1-4. 5:15 comes from sarcasm and belongs, like Paul's outburst in 5:12, to his frustration.

This new lifestyle which has its base in a relationship with the God of compassion and goodness results in good living. But Christians, says Paul, still need to make this their focus. It is still possible to enter a relationship with God, but then abandon God's priorities and follow after selfish impulses at the expense of others. Just to follow one's impulses and to gratify one's own needs without regard for others is to live "according to the flesh". Not that our normal human impulses, whether sexual or for food or anything else, are wrong. They become wrong when they are handled in such a way that we do harm to others - and to ourselves.

Paul offers a list of the consequences, which probably matched many such lists of this day (5:19-21). Sexual immorality tops the agenda partly because in the Septuagint it was the first prohibition on the second table of the law (unlike in the Hebrew) and was a constant theme in describing the evils of the pagan world. But Paul goes beyond sexual immorality and beyond sins related directly to physical desires to include themes which are more directly relational or spiritual. People who live in this way are not heading for the kingdom of God. This was a standard assumption.

By contrast Paul then lists "fruit of the Spirit" (5:22-23). It is a wonderful image, perhaps deliberately chosen, for Paul is not wanting people to keep rules of goodness (such as we find in the biblical law). He wants people to change in themselves through their new relationship with God with the result that goodness is a consequence of their being. Goodness as it develops within generates goodness without. Love generates love. So Paul is arguing that a lifestyle lived on the basis of God's love declared in Christ will produce behaviours which flow from that relationship. It needs focus. That is why Paul urges the Galatians to keep focused on the relationship. The more they do, the more their lives will reflect the goodness and generosity they celebrate. They will not be loving because they know they ought to be loving, but because their being is undergoing change. There is nothing wrong with commanding people to love. Paul would say: it is just that it simply doesn't work most of the time, because there are things which block people from loving, and until they are dealt with the default position for them will be: not love (or love only by big effort).

In 5:23 Paul quips: there is no law against such goodness! He wants the Galatians to see that he is talking about something which goes beneath biblical laws and has more to do with underlying biblical laws or principles about how people change. His approach to scripture is nearly always designed to penetrate to its basic principles rather than parrot its rules (which he often sees as peripheral and sometimes no longer applicable). 5:24 reiterates the basis of the change. Those who have chosen to respond to God's offer of a relationship of love have turned their back on the way of self indulgence. Paul puts it more dramatically: they have crucified that old way. Thinking of believers as incorporated into Christ as their representative, Paul can declare that as Christ died, so we died. 5:25 then turns to resurrection: we now need to make sure we live out the new potential created by the new lifestyle. 5:26 returns almost to the sarcasm of 5:15. The Galatians must move away from the destructive and divisive influences which have come into their midst.

It bears reflection that Paul had to spend so much energy fending off Christians who were convinced they were right and he was wrong, and who appear to have put at the centre of their faith an obedience to what we would call a fundamentalist understanding of the scriptures' authority. Not all of his answers are convincing. He is however at his most convincing when he talks about what really changes people and what really matters most to God. It was a theological struggle and still is, but one which reaches right to the heart of what makes people whole. Religion can damage people. It can also make them well. Paul sees that clearly and is not willing to accommodate such abuse in the name of not rocking the boat.

Gospel: Pentecost 5: 27 June Luke 9:51-62

Pentecost 4

William Loader

Pentecost 4: 20 June Galatians 3:23-29

Paul's explanations here need to be seen against the problem he is facing. He is very concerned that Christian missionaries have come into Galatia telling the people in the churches which he founded that they must keep all the biblical laws pertaining to Gentiles (and for instance, undergo circumcision). Paul finds this both an intrusion and a rejection of the essence of the gospel which he has been proclaiming. Paul had declared that all that matters was a response of faith to Jesus. The Gentiles did not have to become Jews first and then become Christians. Whether Gentiles or Jews Christians were now no longer needing to fulfil the requirements of the Law. They were not under the Law.

This may sound convincing enough until we transpose it into the key of current debates. Paul was declaring that you could leave large parts of the Bible aside and that you should see it as having its main meaning in what Jesus brought to us. His Christian opponents were appalled. They saw Paul compromising the Word of God - watering down its demands. Such people would describe themselves today as fundamentalists. Such fundamentalists vehemently opposed Paul throughout his ministry. Paul knows his position is vulnerable. He certainly was not intending to abandon scripture. He was interpreting it. But then how could he declare that the biblical Law no longer applied?

Paul argues that he is, in fact, taking scripture seriously. Abraham is his example (3:6-9). Abraham found favour with God before there was any such Law. The promise to Abraham that not just Israel but the whole world would benefit from his stance Paul takes as a prediction of the coming to faith of the Gentiles. Gentiles come to favour with God also not on the basis of keeping the Law, but simply as Abraham does: by faith. This still leaves Paul needing to explain why the Law was even necessary.

His explanation is quite negative. The Law was designed to expose people's need of God by showing how they fail (3:10-14, 19-22). Even though given by God, it played a very indirect role. It was not set up to offer an alternative to Abraham's way of responding to God. On the contrary, he argues, its function was to drive people to the point where they saw that as the only way forward. The Law, he suggests, puts a curse on us and traps us in guilt and failure. For Paul, the death of Jesus was an act whereby he took the curse on himself in our place and released us from it. Paul's usual way to speak of God's initiative in reaching out to us is to interpret the death of Jesus as an act which does what is necessary to make God's love and forgiveness available to us. Whether one chooses this way of expressing it or simply asserts on the basis of Jesus' whole life (and much of the biblical tradition besides!) that God reaches out to us in compassion, the major claim Paul is making remains: God treats us the way he treated Abraham and expects from us only what he expected from Abraham.

Our passage begins with Paul's assertion that the Law functioned to enslave us and expose our needs, like the slave in richer households (3:23-25), who was responsible for disciplining children for their education (frequently very harshly!). People who see in the biblical Law something with ongoing relevance as an expression of God's guidance will be appalled by Paul's descriptions. In the next breath (in chapter 4) Paul will speak of Gentiles who were once enslaved to false gods! How dare he associate commitment to scripture with enslavement to pagan gods! Paul made such claims not because he was dispassionately analysing the role of the Law in Israel's history and people's experience, but because of Christians who had turned the Law into a set of demands which became almost a set of qualifications one had to meet before one was acceptable to God. That is his context and it will remind us, perhaps, of Christians today for whom biblical laws have become not a source of generous guidance but an instrument whereby to oppress oneself and others.

As Jesus appears to favour speaking of God as "father", so Paul asserts that God wants us to see ourselves not as slaves of commandments or inferiors bossed about in the household, but as family, as sons and daughters (3:26). He returns the attention of the Galatians to their conversion and baptism (3:27). Paul understands faith as an event in which we join and become incorporated into Christ's being or body. Here he uses the image of Christ as a coat: we put on Christ. It does not mean we lose our identity, but rather that we become one with Christ. We enter the sphere of his power and influence, especially understood as love. As God's love flowed in Christ, so that river continues to flow and in baptism we celebrate our new relationship with him by diving into the river, as it were (and in other contexts placing our infants in that stream where it is flowing in the community of faith). In another sense, as he is the true child of God, so we becomes daughters and sons of God as we join him. The main emphasis is that we are treated as people of worth. That is the meaning of God's love. We are children not slaves.

3:28 broadens the picture. Paul could not speak of a loving relationship with God without seeing the implications for our relationships with others. He was also wanting to say to his opponents: you see, it makes no difference as far as God's love is concerned. God does not favour one group of people above another and God certainly does not favour people who keep the biblical laws over those who don't. So Paul picks up what might have been a common way of expressing the new unity people found in Christianity by listing pairs. The love was there equally for Jew and Greek (his common word for Gentile), just as it is equally there for slaves or free people, men and women. Every person is of worth. Of course, Jews remain Jews, and Greeks, Greeks. Women remain women, and men, men. And, perhaps more worrying, slaves remain slaves, and free, free. But we see elsewhere (especially in Philemon) that Paul took the worth of each individual very seriously and that included slaves.

Paul was fairly conservative when it came to social customs. He wants women not to abandon their usual attire (1 Corinthians 11), for instance. But his strong affirmation that all are one in Christ is radical. It means that no one side of these pairs can claim superiority. All can exercise ministry. Paul is typically radical in his thinking. He grounds his approach ultimately in his understanding of God. He also goes beyond laws - for instance, against discrimination - to positive engagement, because he places the person and the personal relationship at the centre of his thought. Faith is also not an achievement, but an open positive welcoming response to the possibility of love.

Paul concludes by bringing us back to Abraham. Earlier he had spoken of the promise to Abraham's seed. He interprets this in a rather contrived manner not as a reference to Abraham's descendants but as a reference the one descendant, Jesus, and then implies that by our solidarity with Jesus we become heirs of the promise. People in Paul's world sometimes employed such methods of interpretation. Underlying the argument is a conviction which we might share with Paul: all that mattered in the case of Abraham was his willingness to welcome God's goodness. That is all that ever matters, because when this truly happens our lives begin to change as love creates love in us and through us.

Gospel: Pentecost 4: 20 June Luke 8:26-39

Pentecost 3

William Loader

Pentecost 3: 13 June Galatians 2:15-21

Our passage begins immediately after Paul has reported his conflict with other Christians in Antioch in 2:11-14 and must be read in the context of Paul's wider concerns in Galatians. Christian preachers had come into Galatia (in Asia Minor, present day Turkey) insisting that Gentiles who joined the faith must be circumcised. Paul had not taught that. Paul reports in Gal 2:1-10 that those whom he had somewhat reluctantly called the "pillars" of the church (2:9; 2:6), James and John and Cephas, had accepted that Gentiles need not be circumcised and had not insisted that Paul's companion, Titus be circumcised.

But then, later, Peter seems not to have understood the implications of that concession. Peter with other Jewish Christians had welcomed both Jewish and Gentile Christians as part of the church in Antioch in Syria and shared meals with them. James also seems to have understood the matters differently. People coming from James' church in Jerusalem had arrived in Antioch and insisted that the Christian Jews should not be eating together with the Gentile Christians. This outraged Paul who refused to recognise such a distinction between Jews and Gentiles. Paul was even more upset that Peter and even his companion Barnabas were persuaded to toe the Jerusalem line.

To us it looks like downright discrimination and we naturally tend to side with Paul. Most of us reading this material are probably Gentiles. How dare there be such a distinction!? Yet in some ways one could argue that those whom Paul scolds were taking a consistent position which was quite defensible. Paul is effectively associating the attitudes of those who were preaching circumcision in Galatia with the approach of those who had insisted on separation in Antioch. Peter and Barnabas (and to some extent, James, if he lurks behind the event) seem to be less sure of their own position and are open to the charge of inconsistency and hypocrisy (perhaps a bit harsh). Those, however, who upset the situation in Antioch and those who were now causing trouble in Galatia will have maintained a defensible and consistent stance: Christ came not to change scripture or its laws, the Word of God, but to add something. He was after all fulfilling the Jewish hope for a Messiah. The Messiah was not meant to demolish the Law but to make it victorious and effective.

This was a consistent position. Such people found it very difficult to understand why one should set aside what scripture commanded about circumcising Gentiles. Nothing within Genesis 17 suggests that the law was anything other than permanent. Those guilty of setting it aside laid themselves open to the charge of tampering with the Word of God - or, even worse, winning adherents through watering down scripture. The same would apply to food laws. Paul was confronted with the power of a first century fundamentalism, which insisted that scripture was inviolable and infallible.

On the other hand Paul was not jettisoning the scripture. He appeals to it regularly. His argument is that Jesus is the one who brings us into a right relationship with God (justifies us) and this offer of a right relationship stands in its own right. It is not dependent on our fulfilling the requirements of biblical law first or as well. It is a matter of accepting the offer of that relationship - believing it is offered and saying yes to the offer and so entering a new relationship with God. This applied whether one was a Jew or Gentile. Because this is the case, it is invalid to make distinctions between Jews and Gentiles. We are all sinners, that is, people needing such a relationship, including forgiveness. Therefore we must not discriminate against Gentiles. If God accepts them, we should, too. We should eat with them. We should not insist that they be circumcised. There is a note of sarcasm where Paul begins our passage in 2:16 declaring that he is among "the Jews" and not the Gentile "sinners" - he rejects such discrimination because we are, in fact, all sinners!

Paul has to meet the objection that his approach dismisses the biblical law and represents Christ as doing the same. It makes Christ into an enemy of the Bible, because it suggests Christ rejects what the Law requires. Christ seems like a servant not of goodness but of sin (2:17). The arguments must have been fierce. Many Christians found Paul's approach totally unacceptable. Paul counters by saying that if what he is saying is true, then any attempt to reintroduce the Law and its demands as the way to be right with God is to transgress God's will. Here we have charge and counter charge: "Paul, you make Christ a servant of sin" (2:17); "No, I don't" says Paul. "When you come with all your biblical demands, you are the ones who are transgressors!" (2:18). Is any reconciliation possible?

Such accusations plagued Paul's life. He kept insisting: we are set right by God's initiative in Christ, not on any other basis, biblical or otherwise. It meant however that he had to explain how he could set scripture aside and yet claim to be taking it seriously. 2:19 indicates his direction, which he will expand in chapter 3. He is not rejecting the Bible, he argues. Rather its commandments performed an important function. They exposed his need to be restored into a right relationship with God. Through the Law, as it operated in this way, Paul was brought to the point where he needed to be rescued and where he was rescued through God's offer in Christ.

Paul will employ other arguments as well, including the claim that scripture, itself, points forward to something which goes beyond the Law. This is not the place to rehearse all his arguments or to look at how he reworked and modified them on reflection in Romans. They are quite varied. Some are stronger than others. But the common ground which Paul will not surrender is that in God's eyes all people matter and the offer of a right relationship is without discrimination and unconditional except that one says yes and enters the relationship and lives within it. This does not mean that Paul is unconcerned with good living. On the contrary, he believes that the new relationship will have the result that people will begin to behave the way God behaves as the Spirit of God fills their lives. That includes generating the fruit of goodness and love (5:22-23). Paul will even claim that such fruit more than fulfil what the Law seeks to bring about by commands (5:13-14). Of course, Paul is thinking in this context only of the commands he values, namely the ethical laws, not those concerned with such things as food and circumcision which had taken over centre stage in the disputes among Christians of his day (in a way which grossly distorted Jewish tradition).

Paul's argument is that an existential change generates the newness, not the observance of biblical commandments. In 2:19 he declares that he is crucified with Christ. This very odd statement belongs closely with what he says earlier in the verse: "I, through the Law, died to the Law". At one level it means that he identifies himself with Christ in such a way that Christ's death became like an event in his own life. Paul understands Jesus' death as a death to deal with sins. Christ died for us, so in a sense he died in our place or in him we died. The Law (those parts of it that mattered for Paul) qualified Paul for condemnation or death, but Christ faced that consequence on our behalf. So Paul can say: when Christ died, I died. Later in 2:20 he writes of the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This is Paul's explanation of the basis on which God offers a right relationship with himself to all.

Paul understood coming to faith, therefore, as like joining oneself to Christ - in his death to receive the benefits of what he believed he achieved; and also in his coming to life: to share his risen life which is available to all through the Spirit of God. Elsewhere Paul uses the act of immersion in baptism and of rising from the waters as a way of representing this event and the way we join with it and make it our own. Behind this complex understanding is the confidence that through Christ God freely offers a right relationship to all and that in this relationship new life and goodness is generated which achieves all that the proponents of biblical commands seek to create. To espouse his opponents' position would, for Paul, mean denying this new initiative of God. It would, as he says in 2:21, mean nullifying the grace of God. If this is not the effect of Christ's death, then, he argues, that death has no real value. The approach of Peter and the rest is therefore a betrayal of the gospel as Paul understands it.

Not everyone will find Paul's particular understanding of the achievement of Christ's death to be the best way to speak about the good news, but there can be no denying that with it he upholds what many would see as a central tenet of Christian faith: God offers a relationship of ongoing love to all without discrimination and that neither entry into this relationship nor continuing in it is dependent on qualifications based on race, gender, or levels of adherence even to biblical law (the latter puts him in conflict with most Jewish Christians and Jews of his time). Paul makes this so central that it relativises all else, including scripture itself, although he argues that it is not inconsistent with underlying values of scripture. Anything which conflicts with the central insight of love in right relationship has to be set aside, even if it is biblical, because, he would argue, the more fundamental biblical insight must always overrule what appears on the surface of its pages. Circumcision discriminates; God does not; it must go. Food laws discriminate; God does not; they must go; and more.

Others would find ways of retaining a meaning for circumcision and for food and other laws. Paul's approach is more radical. What he saw in Antioch and is now hearing about from Galatia must, to his mind, undermine the thoroughgoing compassion and inclusiveness of the gospel. It was perhaps more dramatically obvious in Antioch than it was in Galatia, but Paul knows that in both instances it is inspired by a spirituality which places greater emphasis on issues of authority and correctness than on what achieves loving and right relationships. The issue is an ongoing one in the church's life today.

Gospel: Pentecost 3: 13 June Luke 7:36 - 8:3

Pentecost 2

William Loader

Pentecost 2: 6 June Galatians 1:11-24

Paul is mad about what had happened in Galatia. He abandons the standard elements which begin a letter. Instead of following the stylised greeting (1:1-5) with a word of thanksgiving to God for the addressees or blessing God for them, he turns on them sharply in confrontation. Thus in 1:6-9 he expresses his amazement that they had turned away from the gospel he had presented to them. It was not that they reverted to their pre-conversion beliefs. It was rather that they had been swept off their feet by a new set of preachers who were much more like fundamentalists than Paul. These newcomers upheld scripture to the letter and so insisted that the Galatians must be circumcised, as Genesis 17 requires. They saw Paul's mission which excused Gentiles from circumcision as a sell-out of the truth. Paul was making faith easy. No wonder he was successful - all those God-fearers sitting up the back of the synagogue holding out against being circumcised could all jump down and join. It was a coup for Paul's mission, but they saw it as a betrayal both of scripture and of Israel. To Paul their approach is anathema - a real curse, as it still is in Christianity today, though we are generally more polite.

So Paul finds himself somewhat with his back to the wall. These opponents probably also claimed better credentials than Paul had. They could probably "names-drop" leading apostles with whom they had been associated. As for Paul he had no such authority. There was much more at stake than Paul's ego (though that must have played a role). It was a matter of what lay at the heart of faith. Was it grace with freedom to remove barriers, including biblical ones if need be, or was it law enshrined in an attitude towards the bible (theirs at the time) which is so familiar to us from today's fundamentalisms? The problems confronted Paul everywhere he turned, dogging him throughout his ministry. His willingness not to lie down and submit, but to assert at great cost what he believed to be true has left us the rich legacy of his letters.

Our passage presents the first stage in his argument. The basis for his understanding of the faith does not depend on instruction from senior apostles. It is not human and derived. It is divinely inspired. Christ also met him and turned him around from being a leading persecutor to being an apostle to all the nations. His opponents might not have found this very convincing. Paul had to learn about the faith from somewhere. It didn't all happen on the road to Damascus. In reality he probably had a better grasp of the gospel when he was fighting it than many did (and do) who claim to be Christian. He must have sensed that what was at stake was not just sets of laws, but Law itself, the will and being of God. These Christians, whom he was hassling, were threatening to shift the focus from commandments to a more dynamic approach which set love at the centre and applied it freely to life's issues - some of them, anyway.

When Paul flipped, it was not to a set of unfamiliar beliefs. It was to a set of beliefs whose attraction had probably heightened his anxiety, fear, and anger, to the point where he broke down and began to be built anew. This could not be reduced to being given a package of instructions by senior apostles. It was a reflex and reflection of encounter with God, in which Paul now claimed he recovered what was God's purpose for his life from the very beginning. Contrary to the safely redrawn image of Paul in Acts, where Paul remained in Damascus for no more than "several days" before going to down Jerusalem (9:19-26), Paul tells us it was after three years that he made his way there and stayed only a fortnight, seeing only Cephas (Peter) and Jesus' brother, James. People would have disputed this, but Paul insists he is not lying.

He then set off for Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, also the home of the Galatians, who were a settlement of migrant celtic peoples as their name (Galatai) reflects. The churches of Judea didn't see him. They had only reliable hearsay to go by, as they gave thanks that one of their great persecutors had swapped sides. Why is Paul saying all this, interesting as it is for us as we seek more information about him? Because he wants to counter his opponents, who are trying to undermine his gospel of freedom by disputing his credentials and authority. In Christ's name they are wanting to impose an understanding of faith that is based on strict observance of biblical laws. Paul knows that this fails to reach the heart of the faith that Jesus lived and died for. He refuses to allow himself to to be drawn down into a debate about legal authorisation. So convinced is he that faith sets people free and that this has a transforming effect which goes far beyond what meticulous observance of laws, including biblical laws, can achieve, he will go on to speak of love not as a reason to keep rules, but as a fruit of the Spirit (5:1, 22-23).

Paul's understanding had many loose ends and left him vulnerable. It meant he had to grapple with the implications of his new faith and ward off the zealous Christian critics. Had he abandoned scripture, betrayed Israel, committed apostasy? How do you then approach scripture if you are not going to accept all of it? Won't abandoning rules lead to lax behaviour and moral disaster? What basis is there in the biblical tradition for arguing that only faith and grace matter? Paul will grapple with these questions not only in the rest of Galatians, but throughout his ministry, leaving us his best (though incomplete) answer in Romans. Next week we see that the problem was not only these preachers. It was also one that went to the heart of the movement and its chief players: Peter and James. How could they be so wrong? Were they?

Gospel: Pentecost 2: 6 June Luke 7:11-17

Trinity

William Loader

Trinity: 30 May Romans 5:1-5

In 2 Corinthians Paul had to argue that his adversities, far from being an indication of failure, were in fact what one might expect of a life lived in unity with Christ. Christ suffered from opposition. Paul suffered from opposition. In that letter Paul seems to be dealing with believers who stood under the influence of a spirituality which highlighted success and impressiveness, and called Paul's status and authority into question because he did not measure up. It upset Paul. The final chapters of that letter are among the most personal of all his writings. Against a barrage of criticism, he has to argue that what counts is not impressiveness and power but one's consistency with Christ and Christ's ministry and above all with God's grace which we have come to know uniquely in Christ.

Here in our Romans passage we hear echoes of these concerns of Paul's. In a calmer setting he reiterates that the life lived in solidarity with Christ will often look like Christ's life - including hardship. The difficulties and defeats will not drive us into shame but be something we can be proud of, because it is about being real, being really in touch with Christ's way. Paul touches this theme while asserting that being set right with God (justification - 5:1) brings us peace with God. This is about reconciliation. Almost by definition, to have our relationship with God right is to have our relationship with ourselves right - and our relationship with others. When our relationship with God, ourselves and others is not right, we are troubled, stressed, and at worst alienated - from God, ourselves and others and we are destructive.

Paul has been emphasising that nothing should clutter the simplicity of our relationship with God. There are no hidden hurdles we must jump or qualifications we must achieve. It is an unconditional love which greets us - long before we are even able to assess ourselves. Of course, when someone offers you that kind of relationship, it can be very threatening, because the invitation is to be loved for who we are, not for who we are trying to be or for the image we are trying to hide behind. Dropping the mask and the coping strategies can be a long and difficult process. Trusting ourselves to let ourselves be loved is a choice to be vulnerable where we may have collected many bad experiences. It is often hard allowing ourselves to be loved. Paul has been demolishing every claim to add something as a condition on the basis of which the love would flow. Nothing is required, but acceptance of the love offered: faith. In the previous chapter he has argued that Abraham showed such faith and God declared: that's the right kind of relationship; that's what counts as righteousness or goodness.

It also makes sense that Paul claims that this kind of relationship brings peace. If we were dependent on constant renegotiation, like a continuing quality appraisal exercise to keep the same level of funding, we would be far from peace. The peace would end up being our own achievement. Not so for Paul. The ground of the peace of which he speaks is access (5:2). It is access to God and that means access to God's grace or compassion. It is full and generous and adequate. It is, of course, not the meaningless smile of one who just doesn't care what we do or who we are. It is the grace and compassion which addresses our true self - so it is not only forgiving and comforting, but also encouraging and challenging. We will find ourselves sometimes rejecting such grace and choosing our old strategies to establish our self worth. It is possible to hate love - even kill it, precisely because it addresses us as we really are.

Paul's spirituality stands and falls by this understanding of God's compassion. It is the basis of his present confidence and also of his hope for the future (5:2). For Paul one's sense of self is closely connected to one's relationship with God and also one's relationship with others (we might call that ministry, but it is wider than ministry). So Paul sees through the manipulations of ministers of his own time to claim authority and status for themselves. It would have been very frustrating to find them turning up in the congregations you had founded and especially when they went on to try to undermine your ministry.

In 5:2 and 3 Paul uses a word, sometimes translated, "boast". It sits uneasily in some anglo-celtic Christian cultures (not all!), especially where boasting is seen as inappropriate behaviour. At worst in such cultures we can see people playing a little game: "I hope people will value me; perhaps if I say I'm no good at things, people will say I am." The suppression of honest self-evaluation and of assertion of one's strengths is not self denial. Self denial is abandonment of our constructed selves and returning to our true selves as people loved and valued. Paul is never hesitant to boast of his strengths and the value of what he does - but always on a value scale which rates love as the highest value. Fortunately, from one of earlier letters to Corinth we have his marvellous excurse about love which makes this clear (1 Cor 13).

Rather than be ashamed of hardship (assuming a shaming culture), Paul asserts the opposite. He began the substance of his address to the Romans with just such a claim: "I am not ashamed" (1:16). Not only is he not ashamed; he also sees value in hardship. Here he doubtless draws on the wisdom of his time, which could also sometimes value the benefits of harsh experience. Surrounding the mention of hardship in 5:3-4 is the word, "hope" (5:2 and 5:4b and 5). A positive attitude informs Paul's self-understanding. Whatever the circumstances he looks to the future without despair - even in the worst crises. That hope is founded not in promises of things or a place, but in the person of God.

5:5 brings us back to the starting point of the passage, but in different language and using different ideas. The common factors are love in 5:5 and grace in 5:2. For Paul peace and hope are not simply founded on a past event, much as he highlights the cross and resurrection of Jesus as something into which we enter in solidarity. They are also founded in something which is ongoing: the love which comes from God and enters into us through God's intimate presence with us, the Spirit. That love keeps on flowing into us and out through us into the world. Elsewhere Paul speaks of love as a fruit of the Spirit.

So for Paul peace is about being in a right relationship with God, not as some distant judge nor as someone who is trying to draw us up into himself, but as one who is expansively living love out into the universe. We will have peace as we ride the flow of God's compassion out into the universe in our world and context. This is not a matter of following carefully defined oughts, ancient or modern, but of being inwardly connected in such a way that we have an orientation which unites our joy, our intentions and attitudes and our actions. The more we allow ourselves to be loved the more we are free to ride the flow.

Gospel: Trinity: 30 May John 16:12-15

Pentecost

William Loader

Pentecost: 23 May Acts 2:1-21

One of the three pilgrimage festivals, Pentecost falls 50 days (seven weeks) after Passover, as its Greek name, Pentecoste (50th), preserves. It is also called the Feast of Weeks, an occasion to celebrate the gathering in of the harvest (Exod 3:14-17; Lev 23:15-22). It also became a time to celebrate the coming of the divine Law on Sinai. Legend has it that on that occasion a flame came down from heaven and divided into 70 tongues of fire, one for each nation of the world. All could understand, but only one nation promised to keep the Law, Israel.

Such symbolism has shaped our story. Perhaps it also lies under the influence of the Tower of Babel story in which human ambition resulted in the collapse of the tower and the breakdown of communication: the legend to explain why people speak different languages and cannot understand one another (Gen 11:1-9). Certainly the imagery of wind reflects the word for Spirit, which in both Hebrew and Greek, means wind, breath and Spirit.

These rich embellishments may hide a historical event. It is entirely credible that the first great pilgrim festival after Jesus' execution at Passover and his disciples' acclamation of his resurrection would have been a special occasion for the fledgling Christian community. Perhaps there was some event amid the crowd. Perhaps there was some experience which those who believed saw as an outpouring of the Spirit. Luke is hardly likely to have dreamt up the occasion from probabilities.

Yet we can see that Luke has been painting panels of faith richly coloured with symbolism. He has Jesus appear after his resurrection for forty days before ascending. His hearers would have made the connection to the forty years in the wilderness. He has 120 believers assembled in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost. His hearers would have recognised the numerical symbolism. Here was true Israel. Then comes the Spirit and the harvest! The Spirit comes as wind. The Spirit comes also in tongues of fire. None of this would be lost on those familiar with the word used for Spirit and stories told about Sinai. And some would hear the echoes of Babel.

Not only is the symbolism striking. The scheme of events also clearly reflects symbolic interests. We celebrate the Day of Pentecost as the day of the coming of the Spirit because of Luke's symbolic history. In John's gospel the Spirit is a gift of the risen Jesus on the day of resurrection when he appears after having risen and ascended to the Father - all back to front, when compared with Luke's scheme. No other New Testament writer reflects Luke's timetable of events. Even Luke, himself, in his gospel, has the ascension much earlier according to some early manuscripts (24:51). Paul and most others assume that resurrection means exaltation to God's right hand. From God's presence Jesus then appears as the risen one to his disciples - and not just limited to forty days. Paul hails his own encounter - long after forty days after Easter - as an appearance of the risen Lord.

So, whatever historical event lies beneath Luke's story in Acts 2:1-21 - and there probably is one - we have to recognise that he is writing a symbolic narrative which wants to tell us something much more than a once-off historical event. He is celebrating the presence of the Spirit in the early Christian movement. He does so with a slight sense of humour. He alludes to the phenomenon of speaking in tongues, which Paul also mentions, and gives it also a symbolic twist. It makes people sound like drunks to those who do not know what is going on. But to those who do know, here is a language miracle, which reverses the curse of Babel. Communication is restored! Luke nowhere follows his creative innovation through to its logical conclusion at a literal level, namely, that Christians filled with the Spirit don't have to learn languages! How often people have wished that they could! So, here, too we have symbolism.

Like a movie director, Luke creates a scene with wind and fire. The scene is a commentary on the whole movie to follow. The God of Sinai and the Law is acting again. The promise of an abundant flow of God's Spirit is being fulfilled. God's Word, God's Law, is being declared. These people with flames shooting from their heads are again the true Israel, committed to obey God's Word. History is repeating itself, but in a new way. The focus on Israel is reinforced when we realise that Luke is talking here about people from all parts of the empire: all Jews! This is a celebration of God and God's people. In Acts 10 the same blessing becomes available to people of other nations.

Luke's symbolic scene expresses hope and confidence. John's gospel has Jesus say to his disciples as they face the prospect of his death: ''Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God and believe in me!" He then goes on to speak of the coming of the Spirit (14:16-17), which is then expanded in our Gospel Reading for today. If we celebrate the presence of God in the person of Jesus who lived compassion in flesh and blood, does his death leave without hope and only with memory? Is such life still possible? Luke's artwork answers in unmistakable terms: yes. God, God's Spirit, the Spirit which drove Jesus, is accessible to all! Believe it! Believe that God said yes to Jesus by raising him from the dead. God said: this is who I am and how I am! We are not left with a good and inspiring memory, but a promised presence. That presence promises we stay in touch with the divine word, we learn to communicate in love, and we can celebrate being a community in true continuity with God's people of all ages.

Peter's speech is equally flamboyant as it uses Joel. This enhances the moment of great drama: moon turning to blood, a darkened sun, blood, fire, smoke - it just needs dramatic musical accompaniment, drums, trumpets, clashing cymbals. We're off again into a block buster portrayal of Pentecost! Both the story and the speech are doing things, painting word pictures, inviting us to fantasy - all because Luke really wants us to sense a momentous truth. The Spirit, Breath, Presence of God, which we celebrate in Jesus, can be present in human community. When this happens and we let it happen, the ancient curses which divide us are undone and we connect with God in a new way and we gain a new sense of identity.

Luke invites us to play and play we should - he has set the scene. Let's run riot with symbolism. He did. And in doing so the key is not to lose connection with what and who is being celebrated.

Gospel: Pentecost: 23 May John 14:8-17
Epistle: Pentecost: 23 May Romans 8:14-17

Easter 7

William Loader

Easter 7: 16 May Acts 16:16-34

The remarkable stories in this passage belong to legends of the early church which may well have their basis in some actual events, but have been elaborated with an eye to symbolism in a manner which stretches the fabric of the narrative at times beyond the credible. What may well have been an account of an exorcism by Paul now serves also to underline the divine support of the mission and the missioners. The spirit which belongs to the realm of the spirit world and so has better information than mere mortals announces the credentials of Paul and Silas.

The outrage that the slave girl's felt is as understandable today as it would have been then. Tackle anything which is likely to lead to diminishing returns for investors and you must be wrong from the very start! National leaders have used the same logic to resist doing sensible things about climate change. Don't threaten business! In our ancient story money was being made by fortune telling and the claim that the girl had access to additional information. That, too, is part of our modern world. People still spend large amounts of money to crib more of reality than is their share, short-cuts through life. Industries are still built on the claims to short circuit reality with super insights and revelations. It has a way of masquerading inside most religions and in many practices of the new age. Such things become so self-convincing that the basis for critical assessment is surrendered to fantasy seen as reality.

The narrative makes it sound like Paul addressed the situation only because it irked him. We would probably want to retell the story in more compassionate terms. Perhaps Luke is more concerned that we see Paul doing what Jesus did and so understand the church as the continuity of his ministry. Depicting a mercenary basis for those laying unjust charges against Paul serves the cause well of those Christians in Luke's day who are probably very concerned that civil authorities see them not as a threat. They should understand that any trouble which surrounds them comes from others. We find this concern reflected in other stories. Christians are good citizens. It has its limitations. Sometimes to be true they must stand up for principles and more importantly for people in ways that authorities would find irritating and interfering - then and now.

The imprisonment links Paul to Peter who suffered the same fate, as will the miraculous escape. Far from being a threat to society, Paul and Silas were singing hymns - at midnight, a threat only to neighbouring prisoners who wanted to sleep! Luke, the storyteller, knows of other stories where miraculous things happen about midnight and so his drama begins. The two are so ideal they are not even praying for help. For Luke and Luke's hearers the earthquake is a divine response to their virtue. It is not clear why the jailer should have seen it this way, but the story sweeps to its climax. For the jailer, who could sleep through the singing, wakes and immediately jumps to the same theological conclusion as Luke and his hearers, believes and is saved. Luke gives no account of what such salvation meant, nor what the jailer might have understood by the term, making it a favourite story for those who drift with the "Are you saved?" - theology which is so popular in certain circles - they can fill the words with their own content, a kind of blank cheque for evangelism.

Not only are Christians harmless, they don't even run from prison when freed! And nor do other prisoners! Would any authorities hearing the story really give it credence? Perhaps they would have. Perhaps not. Paul sat many days, indeed months in prison without such escapes. For Luke it suits the legendary story of the church as divinely blessed and controlled in what, in his hands, becomes its golden age. This is not the way it happens in his reality or ours, but, for some, a golden age image inspires and gives assurance that we, its successors, had a good beginning which was divinely founded - in far-off "Bible times"..

Household conversions would have, nevertheless, matched Luke's reality, as would offered hospitality. Receiving hospitality from hearers and converts had been part of the movement from the beginning. The household then becomes a church fellowship, a place for welcoming others, for sharing meals, including the eucharist, and for telling the stories and legends of faith. When such households converted and were baptized, children and slaves included, salvation meant a change of household which for some would be quite revolutionary and for authorities, concerned to maintain an ordered society with slaves at the bottom, a big worry. If they were lucky, slaves would cease to be sexually exploited, be treated with dignity, and become an anomaly in the system which some, including the writers of Colossians, Ephesians and 1 Peter would have to struggle with as they tried to uphold it. Behind the dramatic stories are probably some significant disturbances which brought hope and showed the gospel in action and gave many of the authorities real cause to worry. "Being saved" might have meant something quite different from the harmless assurance of a home in glory land.

Gospel: Easter 7: 16 May John 17:20-26
Epistle: Easter 7: 16 May Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

Easter 6

William Loader

Easter 6: 9 May Acts 16:9-15

Luke is depicting the spread of the gospel by stages. Whether Paul really had such a vision or Luke, the storyteller created it, it remains the case that Paul crossed over from Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, to the Greek mainland, or really above the Greek mainland at the head of Aegean sea. So began the mission which touched cities there to which he later wrote: Philippi, Thessalonica, and, down into the Greek mainland, the isthmus port city of Corinth. By linking the move to a supernatural event, a vision, Luke is underlining that this was part of an action willed by God.

Travelling from Troas up to Samothrace and then down to Neapolis and by road a short trip to Philippi was a fairly straightforward journey. According to the gospel traditions found in Mark 6 and in Q, the common source of Matthew and Luke (see Luke 10), those who went out two be two were expect to be put up by local hosts. The same pattern governs Paul's behaviour. Hence he comes to stay with Lydia, the woman who dealt in purple cloth in Philippi.

The story tells us that he met her among some people who gathered to worship God beside the river that ran past the city. Apparently outside the gate was a place of prayer. Paul will have been following his usual practice of going first to the local community of Jews, the synagogue, sometimes designated as "place of prayer". Perhaps Lydia was already a senior person in leadership in that community and will have become the foundation member of the Christian congregation there. Perhaps her successful trade gave her money and influence and illustrated her business and leadership skills. Thus quite incidentally we may be hearing of one of the first leaders of a Christian congregation - a woman. Paul did not seem to have the problems which others sensed in having women in leadership. Prejudice would eventually win and often still holds the upper hand, though now processed with genuine conviction by some as divine order.

Luke may well be taking the story from a connected source in which a participant in the events tells the story, for suddenly we find a "we" appearing in the account. Some have concluded that Luke, himself, must have been there and so refers to himself. Others see it as part of Luke's story-telling technique with parallels in literature of the time, a kind of fiction to add vividness to the narrative and used sometimes in accounts of sea voyages, as here and in the stories that follow. It is one of the main grounds for identifying Luke as the author, whereas in the text itself we never hear who was the author of the so-called Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. The problems with claiming Luke as the author lie with the discrepancies in detail and theology between Luke and the real Paul, whom we encounter in his letters. If Luke is the author, then we have to explain the discrepancies - did three decades cause distortion of memory? Alternatively, we can be satisfied with acknowledging that we do not know. Certainly from his writings he tells us much about himself and his emphases - even if we shall never know his name! So, when I refer to the author as "Luke", I am using the designation very loosely.

This "Luke" does seem to be drawing on sources which go back to early days as he depicts the progress of the expansion of Christianity. It was very much city centred. Expansion beyond the city would be left to the locals. Paul makes his way to key cities, part of his passion to spread the good news across the world he knew. Thanks to the security of Roman roads and sea, his own energy and enthusiasm, and his deep conviction that there was really was something relevant to say to Jews and Gentiles about God, the faith made enormous progress. Along the way it opened new doors to leadership for those who might otherwise have been left aside. Significantly this included women and built on the leadership and innovation some had already been able to exercise, like Lydia. Her congregation remained supportive of Paul after his release from prison there (16:40) and through his later ministry (Phil 1:3-5; 2 Cor 8:1-2), though Paul in his letter makes no mention of her and instead speaks of two women who were quarrelling, Euodia and Syntyche (4:2). We see the beginnings of congregational life - in some of its common aspects.

Gospel: Easter 6: 9 May John 14:23-29
Epistle: Easter 6: 9 May Revelation 21:10,22-27; 22:1-5

Easter 5

William Loader

Easter 5: 2 May Acts 11:1-18

Luke brings us to one of the crunch points in early Christianity: how it would handle non-Jews. Fortunately we know about the issues also from Paul, who wrote 30 or 40 years earlier. At stake was whether gentiles, non-Jews, could also be counted among God's people. Was the good news also for them? There were many different answers. There have also been many different understandings both of the problem and of the way, at least, Luke's saw the solution being given.

The problem is complex and our response to it has implications still today. Beginning with Jesus' ministry, it is clear that he claimed that in his ministry something was beginning which would in future come to full reality. Its impact would be good news for the poor and hungry. He addressed these hopes to his own people, Israel. At the heart of his message was the generosity of God whose goodness reached out to all, including the marginalised and the downright wicked. Possibly already at the end of his life people acclaimed him a kind of messiah, enough to lead him to his death. His resurrection vindicated what he said and did. There would be hope for Israel.

What happens when the message of his ministry and subsequent execution and vindication reaches gentiles, as it did when the Hellenists had to flee to places like Damascus? Jesus appears to have embraced a big vision for Israel which probably included generosity also to the gentiles, based on prophetic hopes that they too would come to Jerusalem and all nations would live in peace. This motif persists in early tradition (Paul's gathering of the gentile offering; Matthew's image of the gentile magi). Would gentiles be invited to be spectators of this future happening and its realisation in the present or could they participate? Should the concrete hope for Israel be transposed into something universal at a spiritual level - like a kingdom only in the world of the spirit? The simplest answer was to follow biblical provisions for foreigners to be accepted by conversion to Judaism and circumcision, a provision made clear in Genesis 17. But there was no precedent for that to happen on a grand scale. Most such conversions we know of were incidental or through marriage, not through mission.

Christian preachers, all of them Jewish, had also to decide whether, beyond picking up gentile converts incidentally, they should actually seek them out. It was not that Jews and gentiles never mixed. Most Jews lived out in the gentile world of the empire. Some were in the army. As with most things, where people became ritually impure, there were provisions for purification. It was no more sinful to become unclean by entering a gentile's house than it was to become unclean through menstruation or dealing with a corpse. Becoming unclean and then undergoing was as natural a part of life as literal washing from the dirt of the day. The general rule, however, was that one should avoid becoming unclean where possible. So most Jews would avoid entering a gentile house. This explains why both times that Jesus heals at a distance entailed healing gentiles partly to avoid entering their houses. To be careless about purity issues was sin, but the impurity itself was not sin.

Would Christian Jews be able to make entering gentile houses a regular feature of their behaviour? Would they be able to eat with gentiles on a regular basis - something else to be avoided? It is striking that Paul tells us in Gal 2:11-14 that he with Peter and Barnabas and other Jewish Christians had indeed decided to share in meal fellowship with gentiles at Antioch until people came from James, the brother of Jesus, leader of the Jerusalem congregation, who persuaded them to stop doing so - all except Paul! Paul justified his behaviour by insisting that God's love now overrode all such requirements, just as he and others had agreed that it overrode the requirement of circumcision. Paul's defence was on the basis of an approach to scripture which exercised discernment about what mattered moist and was courageous enough to declare some things unnecessary or redundant. Naturally enough, more conservative Christian hated him for it and nearly all of his letters show how he had to struggle with fundamentalist of this kind.

The first hand historical material in Paul's letters sits somewhat awkwardly with Luke's account in Acts. Luke is writing at a time when these issues had been largely resolved, including the tensions between Peter and Paul, and where showing unity was paramount. Accordingly, he has Peter become the hero who first affirmed that it was OK to enter gentile houses and eat with them! He had to rely on the sources available to him, which are not always reliable, as this instance shows. In fact the result is that he makes Peter sound more like Paul and later makes Paul sound more like Peter, namely when he depicts Paul as remaining an observer of Jewish law, quite contrary to what his letters tell us.

There are some further peculiarities about Luke's account which seem to indicate the awkwardness of his sources. The vision really does sound like it is telling Peter that the food laws no longer apply and should never have applied, for nothing which God made is unclean! That had been Mark's reading of the import of the incident about washing hands in Mark 7:1-23. Jesus declared that all foods are clean (7:19). Such a setting aside of biblical law contradicted what Luke said elsewhere in his gospel and so he omitted the passage. Here, too, he seems to understand it not as denying biblical laws about unclean animals but as symbolic. It symbolises that human beings are all to be considered clean. Later we find him asserting adherence to the Law in ways that assume the biblical laws remained intact. So, on Luke's understanding of Peter's vision, which he found in his sources, not animals, but human beings are now clean and so Christian Jews should feel free to mix with all human beings and eat with them. What a pity the real historical Peter did not know what Luke's Peter knew, when he was later in Antioch!

One way or other, both Paul and Luke reach the conclusion that no discrimination, no matter how biblically based, can stand in the way of God's outreaching love. Of course, Jews and Christian Jews who remained strict adherents of biblical law also affirmed such love for all, seeing circumcision and other provisions as God's gift of guidelines to sustain and protect the special relationship. Luke is close to them, needing divine interventions from heaven to contemplate change, but Paul goes all the way in arguing that one needs to recognise the unintended consequences of some biblical laws, which stand in tension with what should be seen as its heart and promise. Making love so central that it gives us freedom to set aside even biblical laws where new cultural contexts make them inappropriate was the insight which Paul brought. It is still at the heart of the much conflict about use of scripture today.

Gospel: Easter 5: 2 May John 13:31-35
Epistle: Easter 5: 2 May Revelation 21:1-6

Easter 4

William Loader

Easter 4: 25 April Acts 9:36-43

Peter is like Jesus and Jesus is like Elijah and like Elisha and all are like God: they raise the dead to life. Whatever history may lie behind the story in Acts, it certainly implies a claim to continuity. The language and detail of the Old Testament stories have helped shape the account here. Luke is probably drawing on older tradition. Was Dorcas/Tabitha a significant foundational leader in Joppa? Probably. Was there such a raising? There is no way of verifying this. Many remarkable things happened. This may have been one of them. It may be a legend related to the foundation of the Christian community at Joppa. This is more likely than that Luke has made it up afresh. A one-off event like this would impress hearers in the ancient world. Whether they expect that this would become a permanent element of Christian mission - a very useful one in any age - is doubtful. It would be left behind as a wonder for some to believe and others to allow to join the image of a golden age no longer relevant to every day life.

The framework of the story is worth noting. Luke explains that Dorcas was a very good person. For some she became the model woman, understood as a woman who did good works, engaged in charity, but not in leadership. The passage does not warrant that conclusion. It may however reflect Luke's values who seems almost to make a case that people who are helped deserve it. He adds similar good reports to the story of the centurion whose servant Jesus healed and similarly praises Cornelius in Acts 10. At the other end of the story is Simon the tanner, an occupation that according to some would make him something of an outsider. Both Jesus and the early Christian movement often found a following among outsiders and marginalised groups.

It is slightly unusual that the body was taken upstairs and laid out instead of being buried or placed in a tomb. Perhaps the story needed it to work. There needed to be time for Peter to come from Lydda. Luke wants to make sure that his hearers are sure that Dorcas really is dead. The echoes of Jesus' raising of the dead girl in Mark 5 are striking, not least in Jesus' works, "Talitha com" (Little girl arise), which sounds so much like "Tabitha, arise!"

Stories of raising the dead to extend their lives before they die at a later stage easily evoked notions of resurrection, though that was understood as more than temporary reprieve. They also symbolise hope. The good news is about bringing life where there is death, love where there is hate, healing where there is brokenness. The greater wonder today is when we can see people stand on their feet, communities make their way out of traps of poverty, enemies move towards reconciliation, despairing people finding meaning again. These are realities which take up the direction or flow of what would otherwise be legends left to the past. They invite us to take such stories as symbols of what is an abiding value and through them to find the hand of God in new beginnings today.

Gospel: Easter 4: 25 April John 10:22-30

Easter 3

William Loader

Easter 3: 18 April Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)

Luke tells the story of Paul's conversion three times (see chapters 22 and 26 where he has Paul recall it). People hearing Acts read at one sitting, as many would have done, would have been impressed. Doing things in threes was a common ploy to bring emphasis. In each account Paul is depicted as a persecutor of Christians. According to Luke he was standing by in support at the stoning of Stephen. Apparently the conflict became most severe in the Greek-speaking communities in Jerusalem. Stephen was one of their leaders.

In 8:1-3 Luke tells us that the apostles remained safely in Jerusalem, while the others had to flee the city. The likely explanation is that the conflict was not so severe in the Aramaic-speaking community to which the apostles belonged. Luke's account of the issues which confronted Stephen in chapter 6 seems to indicate that they are not the same as those which earlier faced the apostles, but were about the status of the biblical law and the temple. Acts tells us that there were a number of different Greek-speaking communities in Jerusalem, reflecting the different homelands from which people had come. For many of them, as for many diaspora people of other cultures even today, issues of maintaining identity were crucial. The reports that the new movement was advocating a stance towards scripture which would undermine or compromise that identity would have caused outrage. This probably explains why the conflict was so much more severe among them.

Forced to flee Jerusalem these Greek-speaking Christian Jews would have carried their message into the synagogues of neighbouring towns and cities. So the harassment was counterproductive: it spread the movement quite literally and stirred up new problems, especially as Gentile guests in the synagogues, sometimes called "god-fearers", also came to hear the Christian message in greater numbers. The first Christians had to face a whole host of new questions, including whether to admit Gentiles, if so, whether to circumcise them, and what biblical laws they should observe, not to speak of the problems entailed in eating regularly with them as a matter of course in the new Christian communities, something most Jews would see as a practice one should avoid unless absolutely necessary.

Enter Saulus Paulus! Saul as his fellow Jews called him was known by his more formal name, Paul, out in the wider world. Change from one to the other had nothing to do with his conversion. So Paul is chasing down Christians who have fled to Damascus in Syria. Precisely what he would have been able to do is unclear. Probably it would include encouraging synagogue leaders to join in the suppression, including whippings. There are serious doubts about Luke's claim that Paul would have been able to arrest people and bring them to Jerusalem because that would go way beyond any jurisdiction exercised by the high priest as we understand it. Nevertheless, it is clear that Paul is committed to stamping out the new movement. From his own writings we have his first hand testimony that he "persecuted the church of God" (1 Cor 15:9; Gal 1:13).

We must also assume that he would known why he was doing so. The story of his encounter with Jesus to which he, himself, also alludes in 1 Corinthians and Galatians, would only make sense if he knew who Jesus was. Perhaps more significantly, he must have understood why these Christians were dangerous. The issue of the inviolability of scripture and its law, and therefore the unique status of Israel, was at stake. It is tempting to speculate that he may well have grasped the core of Christianity very well - before his conversion, better than many Christians did later!. The issues he faced then are not so different from the issues with which most of his letters grapple and for which he was harassed - mostly by Christians who alleged he had betrayed scripture and Israel.

Paul flipped. Psychologically, such an about face is quite credible. People's intensity in resistance tends to rise when they fear what they are resisting is perhaps valid. What evoked the change - or perhaps the straw which broke the camel's back - was an experience he had on the road to Damascus. Luke dresses it up or uses a dressed up version complete with sound and light effects. Paul, himself, never indicates such detail, but he does report that the risen Christ, the one appointed Son of God, appeared to him. Indeed, in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul includes himself in the list of those to whom the risen Lord appeared - depicting himself in a shockingly self-deprecating phrase as an "abortion" of a person, nicely disguised n translations as ":one untimely born"!. But he belongs among the witnesses. In his lifetime some disputed his claims. Interestingly, Luke's sources appear to reflect a position closer to the doubters, since Luke does not have the risen Jesus appear to Paul before his ascension on the 40th day, but only afterwards in what he describes a "heavenly vision". Luke seems unaware that his sources are not as favourable to his hero as he is.

Conversion may indeed miss the mark in describing what happened. It certainly does if we reduce it to meaning recruitment or even if we think it just means turning to God so that one will be saved or safe. There is a good case for speaking instead of Paul's call. This, in fact, fits almost all of the stories of appearances and disappearances of the risen Jesus. They are nearly always depicted as Jesus asking disciples to do something. Both Luke and Paul himself relate the event to Paul's sense of commission to bring the gospel of Christ to the wider world. It is, after all, not as though Jesus is thought to have finished what he was doing and changed now to developing a loyalty program of admirers and worshippers. What came alive again in the Easter story was not just a person, but that person's passion and mission.

Paul would probably wonder what we are talking about when we distinguish conversion from call - and so most likely would Luke. That overwhelming sense of love, embodied in Christ, and now flowing in the body of Christ, namely those identified with him and his story, broke through barriers and reached out to all. Paul saw himself as a prime example of this amazing grace - as did Luke. Such amazing grace also changed Paul's perspective on scripture from a fearing defensive fundamentalism to a centred, critical, interpretation, inspired by Jesus' own stance. He was prepared to follow its logic to the end, refusing to withhold regular table fellowship with Gentiles (as James' pressure insisted, to which Peter and Barnabas succumbed - Gal 2:11-14), resisting those who insisted on circumcising Gentiles (because scripture said so in Genesis 17), and asserting that in the love of God in Christ we are no longer under the biblical law, even though we more than fulfil the legitimate demands it contains.

Paul's is a very big conversion and models a very big conversion which many refuse to make. Sadly, much that vaunts itself as authoritative Christianity, belongs firmly on the side of the Christians who hassled Paul all his life and who carried on even in the name of Christ what once inspired his own acts of persecution..

Gospel: Easter 3: 18 April John 21:1-19
Epistle: Easter 3: 18 April Revelation 5:11-14

Easter 2

William Loader

Easter 2: 11 April Revelation 1:4-8

The context of our passage is a formal greeting, based on what in some Christian circles had become common. Letter writing seems to be one place where very traditional forms persist. We still begin letters with "Dear.." and end them with some variation of "Yours sincerely". It is surprising that the patterns persist. Email and SMS communication have developed their own formal protocols. The common protocol in the ancient world of the New Testament took the form: X to Y, Hi! (Paul to the church at Corinth, greetings). The Christian form of the "greeting" favoured a word meaning "grace" (charis) rather than the common word which meant something like "be glad or happy" (charein). The Jewish greeting was usually, "Peace" (Shalom). Some Christians - and it appears some Jews - combined both influences and produces a greeting of "grace and peace" or "mercy and peace".

The formal framework was a structure within which to include major emphases and significant themes, especially those pertaining to the letter which followed. This is certainly the case here. It is no casual greeting. It is no ordinary grace and peace, but grace and peace from a special source. John is wishing his readers grace and peace from God. It is, in fact, more complex. John describes God as "The one who is", an allusion to the Old Testament tradition in Exodus according to which God interpreted his name as meaning: "I am who I am".

Then, as now, this description opens a range of possibilities. It was a way that also some non Jews loved to speak of their gods. It evokes a sense of the Being who is beyond and within all being. The two additional descriptions, "The one who was and the coming one", give a dimension of time. If "the one who is" invites us to think of the here and now and to contemplate the spatial dimensions, the terms, "the one who was" and "the one who is to come", evoke a sense of time and timelessness. in the beginning - and in the end: God; and in the midst of life: God. This is all embracing, combining a sense of origin with a sense of destiny and at the same time a sense of presence.

Even to stop here would leave us with a rich basis for reflection. What can be more important than to be in a relationship of grace and peace with this one? This is no loyalty drive for a deity, a kind of distraction from everyday living. Its focus is on life itself and the one who is within it and beyond it, before it and its goal. Notice that the threefold designation is not: "who is, who was and who will be", but "who is, who was and who will come". This is a promise of engagement. The reference to coming takes us away from an image of God as aloof and uninvolved. God is not an absent God who was and who always exist - beyond us and with no interest in us.

The image of seven spirits takes us into the realm of the imagination, as does the image of the throne. This is the language of those who have learned to see greatness in terms of royalty and its grandeur. In such a world people bow, the honoured sit on thrones, wearing crowns. John enters this world of language and imagination when he seeks to portray the greatness of the God who is and was and will come. Later he will subvert such imagery by depicting a slain lamb as the lion of Judah. But here the image is of a throne surrounded by serving courtiers, here depicted as a perfect (sevenfold) group of spirits or angels. It is as though it is not enough simply to speak of God, as though God cannot be contained or limited, but has to be thought of as more than our image of a single human person.

The real definition of God which controls John's understanding is the one we find in Jesus. Jesus gives us the shape of God. He is the witness (1:5). The Greek word also came to mean "martyr". Jesus is both witness and martyr. He is "faithful", another way of saying we can trust what we see, especially what we see about God. This is an affirmation of Christian faith. "Firstborn from the dead": and "ruler of the kings of the earth" draws on Psalm 89:27, according to which God promises to make the king of Israel, his "firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth".

Christians took over this idea and applied it to Jesus, when they celebrated him as Israel's Messiah (= Christ = Anointed King). "Firstborn" belongs to the ancient notion that the king was adopted as God's son. "You are my son; today I have begotten you" were words spoken to a king at his coronation (see Psalm 2). Christians came to interpret the resurrection of Jesus as a coronation in which God appointed Jesus as his son in this sense (see Heb 1:4-6; Rom 1:2-4; Acts 2:36). This is its sense here. The king which Israel hoped for would be superior to all others, as a firstborn son had preference in handling his father's estate. Christians saw that honour bestowed on Jesus. It fitted all the more neatly because Jesus was the first to be raised from the dead - first "born" from the dead.

The elaborate imagery about Jesus comes from the world of courts and kings, and the rituals which accompanied them. It was a way of saying: God has underlined that this Jesus really was the valid exponent of what God's being and doing, his going and his coming, is about.

Half way through 1:5 we shift gear. Now John exhorts his hearers to offer their praise. This was also a common feature in the beginnings of letters, but here, too, the substance is significant. John's preferred way of speaking of Jesus' achievements was, like Hebrews and Paul, to focus (almost entirely) on his death as a means of dealing with sins. This leaves out a lot, but it preserves a central aspect of the good news: forgiveness of sins. Like the writer of Hebrews, John is very much at home in the world of cultic thought and its presuppositions.

The strong echoes of Old Testament language and ideas continue in 1:6, as John takes up Exodus 19:6, which spoke of Israel as called to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. John sees this coming to fulfilment in a community which brings honour and praise to God. It is an image of worship. We are still within the language of kings and honour, but here it is expanded to include cultic notions. Notice that it does not single out just some Christians to take a priestly role, but sees the whole community as existing to be and do what once only the priests did (but even then, at best, in a way that included the whole community, as Exod 19:6 indicates). The "Amen" at the end of 1:6 may suggest that John sees his letter introduction as forming part of a liturgy which might be performed in a community with responses.

1:7 continues to draw on Old Testament texts, this time more directly. It cites both Daniel 7:13 and Zech 12:10. The former influenced Christian statements about Jesus as the coming Son of Man. The latter will have influenced the account of Jesus' death in the fourth gospel, which alone refers to a soldier spearing Jesus' body. Perhaps at some stage (and probably in Revelation still) it was a general reference to the leader's rejection of Jesus and his crucifixion, rather than to a particular act. Here the focus is on all peoples and their acknowledgement of who Jesus is. Zechariah 12:10 goes on to say that the people will mourn over the pierced one as over a firstborn son. John may have had the allusion to "firstborn" in mind. His careful but complex formulation is really seeking to indicate that all people will eventually come to see who Jesus was and bemoan their rejection of him. Later we shall see that there is a motif of vengeance behind his stance.

In 1:8 we are back with the formulation of 1:4 except for two expansions. The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet indicate that God is all encompassing. The final designation, "ruler of all" (pantocrator), was a favoured designation of God - like "Almighty".

In the beginning: God; in the end: God; in the midst of life: God. These are less statements about time and place than they are statements of hope and trust. That hope and trust is then defined with reference to Jesus. What kind of God is this? The designations were not uncommon in religions of the day and still find their echoes in many religious communities, Christian and otherwise. They are sitting here beside very Jewish ones and particularly beside a quite specific Jewish image of messiahship. They also sit within a frame of honouring which takes kingly courts as models (as did temples). Can we identify with what is happening in this language? Can we re-say it? Does it matter? For John it is the secret of grace and peace for our world.

First Reading: Easter 2: 11 April Acts 5:27-32
Gospel: Easter 2: 11 April John 20:19-31