“Recalculating”
A meditation based on Colossians 3:22; 1 Timothy 2:11-15; 1 Timothy 1:8-11; Philemon; and Philippians 4:4-8
July 12, 2009 Redlands United Church of Christ
Rev.Dr. Sharon R. Graff
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There we were—John and I—in a foreign country last year, collecting our travel maps and computer-generated driving instructions in front of the rental car company desk at the Shannon Airport in Ireland. The friendly salesperson asked if we would like a GPS. I can honestly tell you that our decision to pay the extra fees for that GPS was one that saved our marriage! For the next two weeks—while I drove and John navigated—instead of yelling at each other about which way to head on those unfamiliar roads, or which exit to take on those interminable roundabouts, we could direct our collective irritation in unison toward that little device! With amusing regularity, she—yes, the GPS was a she, with a friendly and efficient-sounding female British accent—she would regularly be baffled by our choice of turns. When we failed to follow her direction—either by design or by mistake—her response was always the same: “recalculating… recalculating… recalculating…”
A few weeks ago, while sitting in a seminar in Portland, Oregon, listening to Professors John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg try their best to redeem the Apostle Paul, I began to think that what we Christians need when it comes to making peace with Paul is to do a little recalculating of our own! We have read Paul at his worst—anti-gay, anti-woman, pro-slavery—and, assuming this comes from Paul himself, have thrown the book down in disgust. We have agreed that Paul ruined the simple gospel preached by Jesus—love God and love your neighbor as you love yourself—ruined it with his own complicated layers of unintelligible doctrine…and in response, we ignore the apostle’s teaching. Paul has become the apostle we progressive Christians love to hate—the one whose bigoted words we abhor, and whose words on love and inclusivity and egalitarianism somehow get lost in the shuffle of our own short-sightedness. I cannot honestly say that I have changed my outlook or attitude toward Paul—I, too, have been disgusted by him for so long and it is difficult to change old habits—but I can admit with some level of conviction that perhaps I, like you, have sold Paul short.
Take, for example, the readings of this morning. Scholarship is in agreement that not all these readings are from the original pen of the real Paul. There are, within the New Testament writings, at least three distinct Pauls. The reading from Colossians—the “slaves obey your master” verse—was one of the verses used during Civil War years to advocate for slavery. It was written by someone who lived a generation or so after the death of Paul and who was trying to accommodate the teachings of Paul to the conventional practices of the latter first century. Borg and Crossan refer to this author as the “conservative Paul”…clearly he or she was not the original apostle. The two readings from the first letter to Timothy—used in our generation to beat women into submission and GLBT folk back into the closet—originate from a writer near the end of the first or early into the second century, writing long after Paul had died. This author was, as Borg and Crossan suggest, a “reactionary Paul.” That is, he or she was writing in the name of Paul, developing the message of the original Paul, but also countering it at important points. Most biblical scholars today—across the theological spectrum—agree that the letters written by this author (including the letters to Timothy) are decidedly not Pauline because their styles of writing and divisive content run counter to that of the apostle.
So, within the letters that make up the New Testament, we have the conservative Paul and the reactionary Paul, neither of whom were actually Paul the Apostle. Perhaps our recalculating can take into consideration that many of the detestable passages attributed to Paul are, in fact, no more than later attempts by someone who was afraid, someone other than Paul, someone who tried to rewrite the Christian gospel in their own narrow image. And if we cannot excuse this brother or sister in Christ, perhaps, at least, we can better understand their motives. Finally or, perhaps we ought to say, “firstly,” we have the real apostle—Paul who was struck blind while on his way to persecute more Christians in Damascus. Paul, whose return to seeing was accompanied by a spiritual sight which allowed him also to see Jesus as the Christ; Paul whose return to sight opened his eyes to see Onesimus the slave as a new brother in Christ, and to see the good, the pure, the true and honorable in all, because, in point of fact, God had stooped to see the same in him. This is the Paul that scholars Borg and Crossan refer to as “the First Paul” or “the Radical Paul” because his writings are, for the most part, clearly aligned with the radical teachings of Jesus. This is the Paul who speaks against slavery and for egalitarian Christian communities. This is the Paul who writes enthusiastically of Onesimus the runaway slave as a “child,” as one who has become like Paul’s own heartbeat, and as one who “is no longer a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” This is the Paul, who appeals to Philemon, the slave owner, as another “brother in Christ”—equal to Onesimus the slave… radical equality! This is the Paul that bases his appeal for the freedom of Onesimus, not on obligation or coercion, but on love.
Borg and Crossan agree that to understand letters written to someone other than us in a century that is not ours, we’d best turn the letter into a story. The story behind the letter to Philemon is this: Paul is imprisoned in Ephesus, serving time in the jail of the governor for some serious offense. Philemon is a slave owner and Onesimus, the slave who flees to Paul for protection because Paul is in a powerful position over Philemon. The episodic question addressed in this brief letter is simple: can a Christian master keep a Christian slave? Basically, this should be the shortest letter, six words at most: “Dear Philemon, Free Onesimus. From Paul.” But it takes Paul 25 verses because this is a teaching opportunity that the apostle will not ignore. Philemon’s entire household is watching what their master will do about this fugitive Onesimus. Yes, Onesimus has apparently become Christian, but he is still a slave. According to Roman law, his running away could cost him his life. Paul is transparent in his desire that not only will Philemon spare the life of Onesimus, but that Philemon will do the freeing freely and receive his former slave as the brother in Christ he has become.
Because of his apostolic authority over Philemon, Paul could force him to free Onesimus, but here Paul chooses the more persuasive path. To force the issue would deny Philemon the chance to practice (and strengthen) his own Christian faith. So, as Borg and Crossan taught me last month, “what we have here [in this little letter to a slave owner] is a masterpiece of what the Romans call rhetoric, and we might call manipulation!...What we have here is a revelation of Paul’s character and a glimpse into the heart of Pauline theology that insists on faith-with-works…Paul is persuading Philemon to do something he ought to know to do on his own…the point Paul makes is clear: a Christian master cannot hold a Christian slave, because how can you be equal and unequal at the same time?” Listen again to Paul’s words, and imagine how you would feel if you were the owner of the slave in the story… “To Philemon, our dear friend an co-worker, to Apphia our sister, and to the church in your house: Grace to you and peace from God and the Lord Jesus Christ…” Do you see that already Philemon is accepted as an equal, and Apphia—a woman—as Paul’s sister in faith? This certainly does not sound like the purported Paul we read at the beginning of this morning’s service. He continues: “When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward Jesus…” Paul is laying it on thick, positively gushing as he writes of and to Philemon, “I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother…”
Keep it coming, Paul! I believe Philemon’s defenses are weakening. This is like praising a person’s generosity before hitting them up for a loan. Then, abruptly and tersely, Paul, who is himself doing his duty sitting in prison, requires Philemon to face his own duty, that is, to do something much more radical than either to forgive Onesimus or to give him to Paul as his legal protector, but for Philemon to receive Onesimus back freely. Hear this radical request in Paul’s own words: “I appeal to your for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become…I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you…so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother, both in flesh and in the Lord…So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me…” Paul concludes his pointed and radical request that Philemon abolish the slavery of Onesimus by offering to pay for any inconvenience or debt incurred by this incident out of his personal funds, and says, “Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.”
As Borg and Crossan write in their book, The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon, “this letter’s conclusion, like its opening, reiterates that the entire affair of Philemon and Onesimus is personal, but not private; Philemon [is reminded] that [this] is a public matter, and everyone is watching what he will do…” History has deprived us of knowing the end of this story of Philemon and Onesimus. We have no assurance that Philemon followed Paul’s radical advice and freed Onesimus freely, though the anti-slavery writing of the later, conservative Paul that Kerry read this morning, suggests to us that by the generation or so after Paul died, the Roman establishment of slavery was being threatened by this upstart Christian egalitarian religion. And so, in reaction to the radical Paul we see in this story, we are left with the words in Colossians used tragically through the centuries to defend the horrors of slavery: “slaves obey your earthly masters in everything…” By the end of the first century, so threatening was this Christian ideal of equality—an ideal practiced by Jesus and preached by the Apostle Paul—so threatening was it that the reactionary author writing in the name of Paul would flatly state, “Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.” These destructive words are found in the little letter to Titus, written in reaction to the words of the radical Paul to free Onesimus freely. Written, in effect, to sanction hierarchy by not even addressing slaves directly. Written to insist that they all return to Roman normalcy of masters over slaves by commanding slave owners to assert their God-given authority.
My friends in Christ, those who argue that these words defending slavery are every bit as authentic as those we read in Philemon advocating for its abolishment…well they, are, I believe, getting their exercise by jumping to conclusions. It is a stretch for anyone to accept that these later-written words are original issue from Paul’s pen to our ears. So do we discount these writings that are obviously not from the original—or “radical”—Paul? No, but neither do we elevate them to the authoritative place of the radical Jesus or the radical Paul who followed in his footsteps. As part of being biblically literate—as opposed to being a biblical literalist—we must realize that the bigoted teachings on slavery from Colossians and Titus did not derive from the Radical, or First, or Authentic Paul, who was an Apostle of Jesus. This Paul—this Radical Paul—was and is radical because in the midst of the Roman Empire that claimed hierarchy as a right by building its imperial strength on the backs of slaves, this Radical Paul claimed a reality diametrically different. “I appeal to you,” says the Radical Paul, “not with power over you, but on the basis of love…take Onesimus the runaway slave, the slave you could rightly have put to death, take him back forever, no longer as a slave but as a beloved brother…welcome him as you would welcome me…and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit…”
Recalculating… Turning direction… You see, today we are invited to recalculate our own biases about the Apostle Paul. By exploring the teaching on slavery of the three major authors of the New Testament letters—the Radical or Authentic Paul, and the Conservative and Reactionary Authors writing long after Paul was dead—I hope we can begin to see that Paul, as Borg and Crossan declare, Paul is more appealing than appalling. This recalculating may take us some time…after all, Paul is the Apostle we have loved to hate. Remember, that Paul is also the Apostle who authentically and earnestly admonished, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and anything worthy of praise, think about these things…” I dare us, scripture challenges us, and God invites us to do the same for and with the Radical Paul.
Amen and Be Blessed
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“I Don’t Believe It!”
A meditation based on Psalm 145:10-18; Ephesians 3:14-21; Mark 9:14-24
July 26, 2009
Redlands United Church of Christ
Leif T. Lind
A man is on trial for murder in Oklahoma. There was strong evidence of his guilt, but no one had discovered the body. In his closing arguments, the defense lawyer, knowing that his client would probably be convicted, decided to play a trick. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “I have a surprise for you all. Within a minute, the person presumed to be dead will walk into this room.” He then turned and looked confidently towards the courtroom door. All eyes followed his, and the jury waited, stunned and expectantly. A minute later, the lawyer resumed. “Actually, I didn’t mean what I just said. But you all watched the door with such anticipation that it is reasonable to assume that you doubt whether anyone was killed. I therefore insist that you return a verdict of not guilty.” The jury, now confused, returned to deliberate. A few minutes later the jury returned with a pronouncement of a guilty verdict. “But why?” asked the defense lawyer. “You must have had some doubt; I saw you all staring at the door.” “Oh, we did look,” replied the jury spokesperson. “But your client didn’t.”
Doubts. We all have them, if we are honest with ourselves. Some of us have theological doubts or uncertainties about God’s Word. Others ask how we can trust the miracles of God when they clearly contradict the laws of science. Still others are more concerned with the larger, more mundane questions of the universe. Why does God allow suffering to continue? Why doesn’t God answer my prayers? Where is God? Doubts. They can be nagging. They can be overwhelming. They can threaten to sap our faith of its very vitality. The first thing we can console ourselves with is that doubt is normal; it is natural. Almost all of scripture’s giants of faith doubted at some point in their lives. Even Christ asked the question, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” Which is not to say he did not have faith in God. But he did have doubts. Writers in the Western world have traditionally had mixed feelings about the value of doubts. One can find many quotations defending the merits of doubt:
• “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.” (Paul Tillich)
• “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam)
• “Doubt is but another element of faith.” (St. Augustine)
• “Who knows most, doubts most.” (Robert Browning)
• “Never be afraid of doubt, if only you have the disposition to believe.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
• “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” (René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy)
• “Doubt is the origin of wisdom.” (René Descartes)
• “To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.” (Polish proverb)
And perhaps, best of all:
• “Why didn’t someone tell me that I can become a Christian and settle the doubts afterward?” (William Rainey Harper)
On the other hand, there many others who freely denounce doubt in no uncertain terms:
• “For right is right, since God is God, and right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would be sin.” (Frederick William Faber, hymn writer/theologian)
And Christianity is not the only religion that traditionally has felt that doubt may be a bad thing. Mohammed confidently opened the Koran with these words, “There is no doubt in this book.” (Surah 2)
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In our last reading for this morning, we learned the moving story of a father who, in desperation to help his son possessed for many years by an evil spirit, is willing to try almost anything. He first makes his way to the disciples, who apparently are totally incapable of healing his son. Authority to cast out evil spirits had previously been granted to the disciples when Jesus sent out the Twelve to preach in Galilee (Matt. 10:1), but in today’s story they are helpless. The father now rushes towards Jesus and pours out his story of trouble and disappointment. He tells of long years of suffering and then, unable to endure it any longer, exclaims “But if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus then replies to him, “If you are able! — All things can be done for the one who believes.” With a burst of tears, and realizing his own weakness and lack of faith, the father casts himself on Christ’s mercy with the cry, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
The father doesn’t believe, but he wants to believe. He is not sure whether Jesus can heal his son. He is confused about what to believe, what not to believe. He has just witnessed the disciples’ inability to do anything to help, and his doubts have been confirmed. They have tried to cast out the spirit in Jesus’ name, but to no avail. Why should the results be different when Jesus does the same? Then, miraculously, Jesus heals his son! Not because the father has great faith, but in spite of his obvious doubts. To paraphrase another text, “Where doubt abounds, God’s grace does much more abound.” (Rom. 5:20)
Doubt can actually be a good thing to have. If I go into a store to make a purchase, I probably will go up to the cash register and give the cashier my credit card. What happens next? In many cases (maybe not often enough!) the cashier will ask to see my I.D. He or she will then look at my driver’s license, take another look at my smiling image (“Yes, that’s me…”), and if she doesn’t doubt that I am the rightful owner of the credit card, will then proceed to swipe my card. Reasonable doubt is a good and necessary practice. If we don’t ask the questions, we will never have the answers! And if we don’t doubt, we will never know which questions to ask…! And God knows that. I believe God has given us minds with which to think and reason, and God expects us to use them critically. Honest doubt is good. And our God is big enough not to be offended if we challenge or question some of the difficult ideas we find in scripture.
Throughout the Bible we read of those who sincerely doubted. Abraham and Sarah doubted God’s promise to them. Job doubted God’s justice in what he saw as God’s punishment of him. The disciple we somewhat unfairly call “Doubting Thomas” would not believe until he actually saw Christ in person. In church history Luther doubted, as did Wesley, and today we can thank God for their doubts. The abolitionist Wilberforce doubted the very words of scripture, which seemed in many passages to allow God’s people to keep their own slaves indefinitely (as long as they were not Israelite slaves, Lev. 25:44-46 etc.). “I know what the Bible says,” he mused, “but I cannot believe it means what it appears to mean, in the light of the gospel of grace.” We can thank God for the doubts of great scientists of the day such as Galileo, who doubted the words of the Church. Where would we be today without these champions of doubt, urging us to think new thoughts and dream new visions for God’s world? However, we also need to learn to “doubt our doubts” as well as our faith. We need to learn to think critically with the capacity God has given each one of us. Those who insist that they have never had doubts about their faith have probably either never been thinking, or they are perhaps being dishonest with themselves! As Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth puts it, “To be without questions is not a sign of faith, but of lack of depth.” “We ask questions,” he says, “not because we doubt, but because we believe.”
And then there is the question of sincere doubt vs. dishonest doubt. We may recall the story of the Rich Young Ruler who came to Christ with an apparently sincere question, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18-43) This man, unfortunately, was hoping to keep God at bay with the questions he kept asking. He really didn’t want to know the answers. God’s truth can bear investigation. The truth will set us free! Let us not be afraid of honest questions and doubts. In real life, however, those answers are not always so easy to come by. We have to weigh the pros and the cons. Answers to life’s questions are seldom cut-and-dried. The evidence is not always totally clear. Welcome to the real world! If we were to make decisions based on a 99% likelihood that we had made the right choice, it wouldn’t be so hard to determine what was truth. If we even felt we were 90% likely to be correct, it wouldn’t be so difficult. But what if the choice comes down to two opposing choices that we feel are 49 and 51% likely to be right? Which one do we then decide on? Like Wilberforce we may be left with a decision that is probably — though not certainly — correct! There are few absolute certainties in life. And so we are often left with doubts remaining. Life would be so much easier if everything were black and white; no grays in between.
In the end we may have to learn to live by what we believe, not by what we doubt. “Lord, I do believe; help my unbelief!” If you do not believe that God is personal, but you do believe that God is a Force — then believe that! If you cannot believe that Christ is divine, but you do believe that he was a wonderful person and a good example — then believe that! Open your life to the mystery of the divine, and accept what you are able to grasp. Your vision may change with time, but live faithfully in the moment with what you now believe. If life provided all the answers, there would be no sense of mystery left. What is faith, if it is not concerned with the mysterious, the unknown, and the unknowable? As the writer Madeleine L’Engle puts it, “The questions worth asking are not answerable… The mystery is tremendous, and the fascination that keeps me returning to the questions affirms that they are worth asking, and that any God worth believing in is the God not only of the immensities of the galaxies … but also the God of love who cares about the sufferings of us human beings and is here, with us, for us, in our pain and in our joy.”
Or as Albert Einstein described it in his 1932 Berlin speech to the German League of Human Rights, “The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious… He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.”
In the year 2001, numerous letters written by Mother Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta) during the 1950s and 1960s were made public during the Vatican’s process of gathering her paperwork for sainthood proceedings. What shocked the world was the dark, even despairing, tone of these writings. Although known for her generally cheerful spirit, the Teresa revealed in her letters shows the torment exacted by her continual, deep spiritual pain. In more than 40 letters, many of which had never before been published, she bemoans the “dryness,” “darkness,” “loneliness” and “torture” she was undergoing. She compares her experience to hell and at one point says it drove her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She writes, “In my soul, I can’t tell you how dark it is, how painful, how terrible — I feel like refusing God.” It was, one might say, the “dark night” of her soul, a darkness that frequently coexists with — perhaps even strengthens — one’s faith.
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
And this I believe!
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Live To Know Him
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