First Blessings

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Introduction to St. Paul’s First Letter To Timothy

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

Almighty God, you called Timothy to be an evangelist and teacher, and made him strong to endure hardship: Strengthen us to stand fast in adversity, and to live godly and righteous lives in this present time, that with sure confidence we may look for our blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

INTRODUCTION

A faithful older priest in our diocese once asked me to co-author a book with him, a compilation of fictional letters from two “senior” priests to a junior priest new to parish ministry. He envisioned it along the lines of C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters —humorous in tone, serious in content — in which a senior demon guides his young protégé in the art and skill of temptation.

The two older priests would bring their experience to bear to help the younger one navigate the daily nuts-and-bolts of life and ministry in the parish — everything from tricky theological topics to proper liturgics to maintaining one’s own spiritual health to dealing with troublesome parishioners. I politely declined, in part to avoid the presumption of thinking I had sufficient experience and wisdom to be up to the task and in part because I simply had not the time. And, of course, I have no experience with troublesome parishioners! But, I thought then and I think now that such a book would be useful.

Absent our book, young priests needing and wanting such instruction will have to content themselves with St. Paul’s pastoral epistles — 1, 2 Timothy and Titus — because that is exactly what those epistles are: St. Paul’s mature pastoral guidance to his two young protégés on how to do church, on how to manage the various problems that arise in the Christian community from heresies, power struggles, self-doubt, temptations, and the complexities of human relationships with old and young. He also addresses the importance of spiritual self-care, the selection of ministers, and more. There are other great spiritual texts like these epistles found outside Scripture — The Book of Pastoral Rule by St. Gregory the Great and The Rule of St. Benedict come to mind — but they are, in some sense, extended meditations and commentaries on St. Paul’s pastoral epistles. So, we will go to the source. Of these three letters, we will consider the first in canonical order, 1 Timothy.

BACKGROUND

Our story with Timothy starts with St. Paul’s first missionary journey, c. 46-47. You can read the pertinent details in Acts 14:1-23. Having experienced opposition and threat in Iconium, Paul and Barnabas fled to the nearby twin cities of Lystra and Derbe where they continued to preach the gospel. In Lystra, Paul caused a major, city-wide disturbance by healing a man crippled from birth. Into that chaotic situation, men from Antioch and Iconium came fomenting discontent against Paul and Barnabas resulting in Paul being stoned and left for dead in Lystra. Here is how Luke concludes that part of the story:

19 But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. 20 But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. 21 When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. 23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed (Act 14:19-23).

Even with all that had happened, Paul left behind him believers and a church or churches in Lystra with appointed elders to provide oversight.

Now, we fast forward a few years to A.D. 48-51 — probably early in that period — to St. Paul’s secondary missionary journey. We find him again in Lystra:

1 Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra. A disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. 2 He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. 3 Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily (Acts 16:1-5).

We find out in 2 Tim 1:3-7 that Timothy was a third generation believer: his grandmother Lois, his mother Eunice, and Timothy himself. I am now going to use some anachronistic language to say that Paul had confirmed or ordained Timothy; that is, he had imparted to Timothy some gift of God through the laying on of hands, a gift that he encouraged Timothy to fan into flame.

Timothy became Paul’s companion and fellow worker, and Paul became a mentor to him. In time, Paul appointed Timothy to church oversight in Ephesus. Today the Church recognizes Timothy as the first Bishop of Ephesus.

This is enough background to bring us now to the text itself. As we make our way through this overview, keep in mind that this letter is a pastoral manual: instructions, advice, best practices on how a young bishop is to shepherd a church, or churches, to deal with problems, to conduct himself properly among the flock, and to select pastoral leaders.

We will not be able to do a detailed study of the whole of the letter. So, instead, I will take one or two topics from each chapter to serve as an overview.

TEXT

Chapter One: Right Doctrine, with Love and Purity of Heart

The Church has always had to contend for the true gospel, for right doctrine. The specific heresies vary from place to place and from time to time, but that there will always be heresies — along with simple misunderstandings — is a given. And one of the chief functions of a bishop — and a priest acting as the bishop’s representative in a given local church — is to correct those errors. In my own ordination vows, the bishop asked me:

Will you be ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away from the Body of Christ all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God’s Word; and to use both public and private admonitions and exhortations, to the weak as well as the strong within your charge, as need shall require and occasion shall be given (BCP 2019, p. 491)?

I take that question and its answer — I will, the Lord being my helper — quite seriously. And, St. Paul wanted Timothy to take that responsibility seriously, too. That’s why he leads with it.

3 As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, 4 nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. 5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions (1 Tim 1:3-7).

I make three observations about this brief text.

First, placing it so early in the letter seems to imply that heresy was a particular problem in Ephesus and that dealing with it — establishing right faith and banishing doctrinal error — was of prime importance. But, this statement, true as it is, comes with a warning, which leads me to the second observation.

The goal and outcome of right doctrine is not being right for the sake of being right, but rather growth in love, purity of heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. I have noticed an interesting and disturbing phenomenon in the church: a hyper-focus on the minutia of right doctrine can often make people uncharitable and just plain mean-spirited. There is something terribly wrong with that. Right faith should — must — make one more loving, more merciful. If it doesn’t I suspect the problem lies not with the brain, but with the heart; the head is pure, but the heart is not. So Paul emphasizes that the goal of doctrinal purity is love that issues from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. A good and faithful theologian is known not only by his knowledge, but also by his love.

For my third observation: some aspire to leadership in the church — and here Paul is speaking particularly of an aspiration to teach — long before they are ready, long before they have either the knowledge or the gifts. Such people have the potential to do great damage, not only to others but also to themselves. I have seen such people wander off into heresy and make shipwreck of their faith.

Paul warns Timothy about such people. St. James has similar concerns in his epistle:

1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness (James 3:1).

Chapter 2: Prayer, Male Restraint, Female Modesty, and Leadership

There is a scene in Fiddler On the Roof that I have mentioned before; it’s one of my favorites. The townsfolk of Anatevka come to see their rabbi and to ask a question. One of them, Leibesh, speaks:

Leibesh: Is there a proper blessing for the czar?

Rabbi: A blessing for the czar? Of course. May God bless and keep the czar…far away from us.

https://youtu.be/8jZFnKZcids?si=HNxbJu_BkoAgqwmEhttps://youtu.be/8jZFnKZcids?si=HNxbJu_BkoAgqwmE

I think of this whenever I read St. Paul’s instruction about prayer for the authorities.

1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. 3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:1-4).

Essentially, St. Paul tells us to pray for kings and those in high positions that they may leave the church alone to lead quiet and godly lives, that they might not make trouble for the faithful or hinder the free exercise of the faith. This is the essence of what we mean — or should mean — by separation of church and state: the state does not interfere with or hinder the practice of faith. But, St. Paul also mentions another reason we pray for the authorities: God wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. We intercede on behalf of those authorities who do not know or accept the truth or who know it and practice it only very imperfectly. And we pray that under their authority we may be free to proclaim the Gospel.

How we are to pray — the spirit with which we are to pray — matters, and St. Paul has instructions both for men and women. For men, Paul says, “Don’t let your prayer meeting break out into a brawl.”

8 I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling (1 Tim 1:8).

Wouldn’t you like to know the story behind this instruction — what was going on in Ephesus?

For women, Paul says, “Don’t let your prayer meeting become a fashion show.”

9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness — with good works (1 Tim 2:9-10).

For Paul, modesty didn’t have to do with showing too much skin or with wearing form-fitting Spandex body suits out in public; that’s our problem, not his. He was concerned with an ostentatious display of wealth that shamed the poor women in the church and that spoke against humility and generosity. He wanted the women to dress respectably — in terms of outward ornamentation — and to be clothed in good works.

Now, if I don’t at least mention the latter part of this chapter some here will accuse me of clerical cowardice. Here is the verse in question.

11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness (1 Tim 2:11).

Where you place the emphasis on this verse serves as a good Christian Rorschach Test. Did you emphasize “let a woman learn quietly” or the instruction that she do so “with all submissiveness”? The first, that a woman should be allowed to learn and to do so in peace, undisturbed, would have been scandalous in St. Paul’s time. That she is to do so with submissiveness is scandalous in our time. We have to get beyond our cultural biases to appreciate what St. Paul is actually saying.

Yes, women were to be allowed to learn undisturbed (quietly), which is still unheard of in some Middle Eastern cultures and was radical in the Christian community. But the purpose of their learning was not the disruption of families or churches. The women were to submit to established authorities: the husband in the home and the elders in the church. Their right to learn was not an invitation to attempt to wrest authority from male leadership. Freedom to learn was not freedom to foment discord.

The modern church has no problem with women learning; that’s a given largely because it is the prevailing cultural norm in the West. But, the church struggles with this matter of submission largely because that violates the cultural norm. My point being that we may have been more influenced by the culture than by Scripture, so it is important the we keep coming back to what St. Paul says, and that we do business with that word rather than with the word our culture speaks to us.

Chapter 3: Qualifications for Church Leaders

St. Paul had apparently given both Timothy and Titus the task of appointing elders/overseers over the various churches and deacons to serve in the churches. These correspond to our bishops, priests, and deacons — not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence, but they are the spiritual ancestors of our current clergy. So, what did St. Paul instruct Timothy to look for? What attributes must a bishop/priest have? A deacon?

Bishop/Priest

1 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, 5 for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7 Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil (1 Tim 3:1-7).

This emerges clearly from the text: the bishop, the priest is not the CEO or CFO of an organization, not an administrator in the modern sense, not a promoter or an advertising executive, so character and not skill is of primary importance. Ministries, churches, lives are destroyed if this passage is ignored. What scorn is brought upon the church when a bishop or priest proves not to be above reproach — especially in this day of social media? How much damage can be done by a bishop or priest who is not a “one woman man,” the literal translation rendered here as “husband of one wife”? How destructive is a bishop or priest who demonstrates little self-control, whose first reaction is caustic instead of gentle, who is arrogant and conceited instead of humble? What harm may be done by a bishop or priest who plays fast and loose with the church’s money to enrich himself? And you can go on through the list asking such questions. The church should ask such questions about its clergy, should demand much of us who are called to serve. Now, I will speak personally: hold me accountable to these things. If I fail, confront me with my failure, in love. If I do not repent and amend my life, talk to my rector, Fr. Jack. If that does not suffice to resolve the issue, speak directly with my bishop, Foley Beach. Lives are at stake.

The characteristics of a deacon are similar, and I will leave those for you to read.

The end of this chapter may contain a bit of liturgy or part (or perhaps all) of an early creed. In our Eucharistic prayer, following the words of institution, the priest says, “Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith,” and the people respond:

Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again (BCP 2019, p. 133).

Now, look at the parallels between that bit of liturgy and 1 Tim 3:16. I can imagine St. Paul’s standing in a small house church, perhaps at the Eucharist, saying, “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness,” and the people responding as one:

He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,
seen by angels,

proclaimed among the nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory.

These few lines are rich; they address the incarnation, the witness of the Holy Spirit and the entire heavenly realm, the ascension, and the proclamation of the Gospel throughout the world. St. Paul calls this the mystery of godliness, that is, the proclamation of the faithfulness of God in Jesus, good news once hidden but now revealed to all creatures in heaven and on earth.

Chapter 4: Warning and Encouragement

One of the great myths of the Enlightenment was the hope of unlimited progress. If the world could only cast off the shackles of kings and popes and embrace the glorious freedom of democracy and science, it would move steadily toward Utopia, from good to better throughout its days. This myth dies hard. We still believe that if only we can elect the right president and the right representatives, if only we can get Christians in positions of power, if only…then we can bring about the kingdom of God on earth.

St. Paul saw things differently. He didn’t envision the world marching toward the promised land. He saw dark days ahead, in his time, in Timothy’s time, I think in every time.

1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, 3 who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer (1 Tim 4:1-5).

Timothy’s task is to hold fast to the truth in such time, to teach the truth, to model the truth. So, St. Paul exhorts his young protégé.

6 If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. 7 Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; 8 for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. 9 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. 10 For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

11 Command and teach these things. 12 Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. 13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. 14 Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. 15 Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. 16 Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers (1 Tim 4:6-16).

Notice the forceful verbs Paul uses in this passage: train, toil, strive, command, teach, devote, practice, immerse, keep watch, persist, save. Paul seems to see Timothy’s ministry as a life or death struggle played out in dark days. I think we, too are in such dark days. The question is whether we — the church — has the intensity to withstand and prevail the dark days. Perhaps as a means of self-examination, we might ask ourselves whether St. Paul’s forceful verbs are descriptive of our own lives and ministries. Do I train, toil, strive, practice, persist in the faith in a way fitting for the times?

Chapter 5: Instructions for the Church

Church life is complicated and messy; it is made so by all the sinful people in the congregation and by all the sinful people who lead and serve them, in other words by all of us. This chapter reads something like an HR Manual, spiritual human resource guidelines for handling some messy inter-personal relations in the church.

The first, most basic principle is that people are different and must be treated differently.

1 Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity (1 Tim 5:1-2).

What seems most significant to me in this instruction is that Paul considers — and wants Timothy to consider — the church as an extended family made up of one’s fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters. If you remember that general principle, it will help with many different specific issues. You honor fathers and mothers. You exhort, you encourage brothers. You protect sisters. Treat the church as your family and you won’t go far wrong.

Then there follows an extensive instruction on dealing with — caring for — widows. This follows from this principle of the church as family. These widows are the church’s mothers; honor them as you would honor your own mother. But, there is another important principle here, too. The church takes care of its own, particularly those who are are most vulnerable; in Paul’s society that would have included widows without biological family.

When Paul instructs the church to honor widows, he means to provide material assistance to them, not just to think highly of them and to treat them with respect. Feed them, clothe them, house them, meet their needs. You can read all the details about which widows qualify for church assistance in 1 Tim 5:3-16. Underlying all these requirements is a simple ideal: to promote the godliness of all parties involved in the situation. Church assistance wasn’t automatic; it was contingent upon several factors: the presence and ability of the widow’s family to care for her, the age of the widow, her reputation of holiness and her history of good works.

It wasn’t just widows who were placed on the roll for honor, that is, for financial assistance; the elders of the church — what we would call the clergy — were supported, as well. This instruction, 1 Tim 5:17-25, is so needed in our current climate of blame and suspicion fueled by the dumpster fire that is social media. Let me summarize this passage in bullet point form:

Support the bishops and priests financially, especially those who preach and teach. They are worthy of a double stipend.

Don’t listen to gossip about the clergy. If there are credible charges based upon evidence of two or three witnesses, then take that seriously. Otherwise, don’t allow slander.

If the clergy are engaged in sinful behavior, deal with it without partiality. If they refuse to repent, rebuke them publicly. To fail to deal with sin is to be complicity in it, to take part in the sins of others.

So, in ever briefer form: Honor the clergy; do not entertain gossip; do not ignore their sin. And Paul says, you can avoid many clergy problems if you are slow to ordain — if you ordain only those who have been thoroughly tested.

EXCURSUS

Time will not permit a discussion of 1 Tim 5:24-25 though the passage is central to the cultivation of humility in judging others. As a brief commentary on it, I offer a story from the Desert Fathers concerning Abba Moses the Black, a man with a history himself (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_the_Black).

A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to judge him, to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. So the priest sent another messenger to Moses, urging him to come, since all the brothers were waiting for him. So Moses took his oldest, worn-out, leaky basket. filled it with sand. placed it on his back, and went to join the council of judgment. When the brothers saw him arriving, they went out to great him, asking him why he had arrived so burdened. Abba Moses said, “My many sins run out behind me, and I do not even see them, and yet today I have come to judge the sins of someone else.” The brothers relented, called off the council, and forgave their erring brother.

Chapter 6: Watch Out and Fight the Good Fight

In this last chapter, St. Paul again warns Timothy against false teachers. How do you identify them? Look at their character and at the results of their teaching.

4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. 6 But godliness with contentment is great gain, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world (1 Tim 6:4-7).

There are people who delight in sowing discord or in profiting unduly from their ministry. No matter the quality of their doctrine or their teaching, these are false teachers and must be opposed. Watch out for them.

And then, St. Paul encourages Timothy about his own behavior. We will close with this charge.

11 But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, 14 to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen (1 Tim 6:11-16).

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Look again. What do you see?
(Ezek 37:1-14, Ps 130, Rom 6:15-23, John 11:1-44)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It is late; the day is past and deep darkness covers the land. A childless, old man from southern Iraq — the husband of a childless, old woman from the same land between the rivers — sits inside his tent pondering. For some time now he has been wandering a land not his own, surrounded by a people not his own. For some time now he has been wondering about the visions he sees and the voice he hears. Can this unknown god who called him make good on promises made, or is the covenant only a piece of parchment — not even that because nothing was ever written down and there were no witnesses? And then, in that pensive moment:

1 … the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great” (Gen 15:1).

Was it courage or desperation or disappointment or something else entirely that drove Abram to respond? Who knows? Only this time Abram leaned into the vision, pushed back in challenge of the voice.

2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir” (Gen 15:2-3).

Abram accuses God — accuses God — of failure to keep his word, or at least of being slack about it.

4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven” (Gen 15:4a).

Now, what follows is the rest of the conversation as it plays out in my imagination.

“Look toward the heavens, Abram. What do you see?”

Then, looking upward into a darkness we can only imagine, at a panoply of celestial lights that were near blinding, Abram says, “Stars: I see stars.”

“How many?” the voice asks.

“More than I can count; I have no number,” the old man says.

“Look again, Abram. What do you see? Not stars, but children, your children, more than you can count, broadcast across the earth as the stars are broadcast across the sky. As my covenant stands with the stars — my law by which they burn and shine and praise — so, too, does my covenant stand with you and with your offspring.”

And to this, the old man has no reply except this: 6 And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness (Gen 15:6).

Look again. What do you see?

Two generations later, Abram’s conniving grandson Jacob is on the run from his brother, fleeing back to the old country from which Abram had come. As he beds down for the night, he takes “one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep” (Gen 28:11). Before you drift off, Jacob, take a look around. What do you see? “A very uncomfortable pillow and a hard-packed dirt mattress,” he might have responded with a note of self-pity. But then, perhaps sleeping fitfully:

12 … he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! 13 And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. 14 Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Gen 28:12-15).

So, Jacob. Look again. What do you see?

16 … “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” 17 And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen 28:16-17).

Not a stone pillow and a patch of dirt for a bed, but the very house of God, the gate of heaven, the land of the promise.

Look again. What do you see?

Generations come and go: past the Patriarchs, past the Exodus and the great wandering, past the conquest and settlement of the land, past the Judges, past the United Kingdom, well into the dissolution of kings and kingdoms. The king of Syria was warring against Israel and against Elisha, the prophet of Israel. Hearing that the prophet was in Dothan, the Syrian king sent horses and chariots and a great army and surrounded the town by night.

15 When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” 16 He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2 Ki 6:15-16).

Look around. What do you see, servant of the prophet? Syrians: enemy horses and chariots and a great army. Look again. What do you see?

17 Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha (2 Ki 6:17).

Look again. What do you see? “Oh, my Lord, I see the fiery horsemen and chariots of God Almighty!” Yes. Yes, you do.

We could multiply examples — both Old and New Testaments — to show that this theme runs like the River Jordan throughout the whole of Scripture: things are not always — perhaps not even usually — what they seem. Look again. What do you see?

The prophet Ezekiel lived in the sixth century B.C. among the Judean exiles somewhere near the Chebar Canal in Babylon; the whole of his twenty year priestly and prophetic ministry was spent away from the land of promise, away from the Temple, away from any semblance of covenant fulfillment. Look around, Ezekiel. What do you see?

I see the end of all things. I see death and destruction. I see the glory of God leaving the Temple: abandoning his holy place, abandoning his people to the curse of the Law. I see — I hear of — the destruction of the Temple and the city. I see wave upon wave of exiles in forced march toward a foreign land, toward a slavery not in Egypt this time, but in Babylon. I see my people and their hopes slain and scattered on the ground. I see a valley of dry bones, the bones of the whole house of Israel — hopeless, cut off, very dry.

Are you not a priest, Ezekiel? Are you not a prophet? Have you no prophetic word to speak to these bones? Then the LORD said to Ezekiel:

4 …“Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them (Ezek 37:4-8).

Look again, Ezekiel. What do you see? I see bodies: bone to bone, sinews, flesh, and skin. But there is no life in them.

Are you not a priest, Ezekiel? Are you not a prophet? Have you no prophetic word to speak to these bodies? Then the LORD spoke again to Ezekiel:

9 …“Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army (Ezek 37:9-10).

Look again, Ezekiel. What do you see? Dry bones, hopeless, cut off? No, I see an army, an exceedingly great army.

Yes, but look again. There is more. What do you see?

11 …“Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord” (Ezek 37:11-14).

Look again. What do you see? Graves opened, bodies rising: this is the great day of resurrection. This is Spirit and life. This is end of exile. This is the Lord’s doing, the fulfillment of the covenant, the end of death, the renewal of all things.

Prophesy, Son of man. Look again. What do you see?

Six centuries come and go until another Son of Man receives word from dear friends, Mary and her sister Martha, about their brother Lazarus: “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

Jesus could have spoken a word to the messenger, “Go, tell the sisters that their faith has healed their brother.” Had he done, Lazarus would surely have been healed from that very moment; his followers had seen him do this before. But he did not speak that word. Jesus could have left immediately and headed for Bethany; his disciples — and the sisters — likely expected him to do. Had he done, he might have arrived in time to place his hand on Lazarus’s head and rebuke the fever. But he did not leave. He waited: one day, then another — long enough for Lazarus to die.

Four days after the sisters’ message had first arrived, Jesus himself finally arrived in Bethany. Martha came out to meet him; Mary did not. What did she see? An enigma? A disappointment?

21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you” (John 11:21-22).

Does Martha speak a rebuke or merely the facts? If you had been here….

Look again, Martha. What do you see? A friend who has disappointed you? A wonder worker who had healed others but not his own friend, not your brother? A prophet of God whom you thought you knew well, but who now has left you puzzled and confused?

Look again. What do you see?

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this (John 11:25-26)?

Martha says she believes, but her later actions shows that she does not fully understand, not yet.

This encounter is repeated a bit later with Mary: if you had been here. And then they all wept together: the Jewish mourners, the sisters, Jesus.

“Take me to the tomb,” Jesus said, and they escorted him to a cave with a stone sealing its entrance. It is tempting to stop the narrative here to say, “Look, Jesus. What do you see?” But we know the answer. He sees his own tomb just a few days hence. He sees his own body, cold and lying in a stone-sealed cave. He sees the two sisters and his own mother weeping once again and more bewildered than ever.

39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”

And here Martha, ever the pragmatic one, betrays her lack of understanding.

Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days” (John 11:39).

Look, Martha. What do you see? A grave with the decaying body of my brother. His distraught friend come too late for a healing. A futile gesture of…what? What does Jesus think he’s doing?

Look again, Martha. What do you see?

40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out” (John 11:40-43).

Now look again, Martha. Look again, Mary. Look again you mourning and skeptical Jews. Look again, you confused disciples. Look again, Judas. What do you see?

44 The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go” (John 11:44).

Look again, all. What do you see? This is a sign of resurrection. This is a sign of life. This is a foretaste of the whole house of Israel — a valley full of dry bones — becoming a mighty army.

Look again, all. What do you see? This man, this friend, this rabbi, this puzzle standing before you is the resurrection and the life; is the Christ; is the Son of God who has come into the world; is the fulfillment of every covenant, every promise made by God to his people; is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world; is the victor over death and hell; is the redeemer of all and the one who will renew all things.

Look again, all. What do you see?

If we are honest — and we might as well be — it is hard to see. It is hard to see when our hearts are broken by promises unkept or delayed. If it hard to see when our eyes are filled with tears of grief. It is hard to see when our minds are clouded with doubt or confusion or disappointment. What will open our eyes? What will help us look again? A prophetic voice like Ezekiel’s calling for dry bones to live again. A prayer like Jesus’s in the full assurance that the Father — his Father and our Father — already knows and already has heard. A fear shattering and death defying Gospel proclamation, a shout of “Come forth!” spoken into the maw of an open tomb. This is what we need to look again: prophetic voice, faithful prayer, Gospel proclamation.

And for this we need one another. I cannot speak that prophetic voice to myself in the midst of my own valley of dry bones. I need your voice speaking the prophetic word, the word of God. I may not be able to pray in full assurance when I am facing down my own death or the death of one I love — whether the death of hopes and dreams and expectations or of body. I need your prayer. I may not be able even to whisper or stammer a proclamation of the Gospel when facing my own dark abyss. I need you to shout to me in the bold foolishness of faith, “Come forth!” I need you, and you need me, and we need one another to say, “Look again. What do you see?”

And the world needs our prophetic voice, our faith-filled prayer, our Gospel proclamation — our shout of victory, the victory of Christ. The world is, at this moment, as blind as I have ever seen it. Look, world. What do you see? Enemies on every side. Threats within and without. Distrust and suspicion. Wars and rumors of wars. A creation groaning and coming apart at the seams. A social order straining under the weight of careless neglect and abuse of power, of social covenants made and broken. Fools and despots and foolish despots running the world headlong toward the precipice.

Where is our prophetic voice? Where is our faithful prayer? Where is our proclamation of the Gospel, our cry of command and victory? The truth has not changed. By God — by God — the valley of dry bones can rise again into an exceedingly great army. It is only awaiting the prophetic voice. The Lord Jesus is still praying — not outside his friend’s tomb but at the right hand of his Father — and is uniting our prayers to his own, if only we will pray. And we still have something to proclaim — do we not? — good news to those still in the grave: “Jesus is Lord! Come forth!”

So, look again. What do you see?

Amen.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter To the Colossians

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

You are Jesus Christ, Word of God. Begotten before the light, creator together with the Father. You are the fashioner of man, all in all.

You are the bridegroom of the church, the charioteer of the cherubim, and captain of the angels. You are God who is from God, Son from the Father, Jesus Christ the King forevermore. Amen (abbrev. from Melito of Sardis (+AD 180), Fount of Heaven: Prayers of the Early Church, ed. Robert Elmer, Lexham Press (2022), pp. 38-39).

INTRODUCTION

Over the past several weeks we have been reading St. Paul’s epistles in the Daily Office and our formation classes have focused on broad overviews of those letters. Some of them, like Romans, consist of a carefully crafted argument, so we had to tackle the entire letter step-by-step — quite a feat in just one or two sessions per letter! The epistle we consider today, Colossians, is a bit different in structure; it is front loaded. By that I mean that the core of the letter is presented first and the rest of the letter follows directly on from that. So, rather than an overview of the whole, we will do a deeper dive into the first chapter. With that firmly in place, it is relatively straightforward to see how St. Paul develops those main ideas. First, a bit of background on the correspondence.

BACKGROUND

In the early to mid-50s of the first century, Colossae sat as the smallest of a trio of cities — Colossae, Laodicea, Hieropolis — about 100 miles east of Ephesus, up the Lycus River valley.

That location and that timing are significant because they bring the Colossians within the orbit of St. Paul’s ministry in Ephesus which began circa A. D. 52 and continued for some three years. Paul did not found the church in Colossae, and there is no evidence that he ever visited the city. It is more likely that a resident of Colossae — and here we know his name, Epaphras — encountered Paul in Ephesus, heard the Gospel from Paul, embraced it and spread the good news about Jesus when he returned home. Perhaps it was Epaphras who sent others to hear Paul in Ephesus, notably Philemon and Apphia, possibly Philemon’s wife. These became the nucleus of the Colossian church which met in Philemon’s house. Sometime later — and there is scholarly debate about when and where — Philemon’s slave Onesimus fled his master, made his way to Paul, and became Paul’s son in the the faith. It was for the sake of Onesimus that Paul wrote to Philemon; these two letters, Colossians and Philemon, belong together and should be read as a pair.

Paul wrote the letter to this small church in Colossae while he was in prison. But, where and when this imprisonment was is a matter of some debate. Traditionally, it has been held that Paul wrote from Rome in the early 60s. But, there is a strong and growing minority opinion that Paul was actually imprisoned in Ephesus during his three years there; there are hints of it in the Corinthian correspondence (1 Cor 15:32, 2 Cor 1:8-11), and we know from Acts that there was “no little disturbance” concerning Paul and his preaching of “the Way” in Ephesus — a riot stirred up by Demetrius and the devotees of the goddess Artemis (Acts 19). Paul’s preaching threatened both religion and commerce in Ephesus and those two powers conspired against him. It is not unreasonable to think that opposition might have led to his imprisonment, and, frankly, an Ephesian imprisonment makes more logistical sense of Paul’s ministry and correspondence relative to Colossae than does the Roman imprisonment. But, I will gladly leave that dispute to the scholars. It really doesn’t affect our discussion at all.

Much of this background information can be gleaned from the Letter to the Colossians, particularly from the salutation (Col 1:1-8) and the concluding greetings (Col 4:7-18). In summary, St. Paul writes this letter to a church at one remove — founded not by Paul but by Paul’s converts — to people some of whom he knows quite well and in whose spiritual lives he has been very influential. Though he writes from prison, this is a letter of hope, and joy, and encouragement. It is also — like most of Paul’s letters — an occasional letter: something prompted it; he is responding to some issue. In the case of Colossians, it seems that Paul is responding to one or more doctrinal challenges — heresies — that are troubling the church and attempting to gain footholds there. These false doctrines are not identifiable with any singular known heresy. There seem to be elements of the Judaizers, possibly elements of proto-gnosticism (though this letter predates the origins of gnosticism proper), elements of pagan religion, and possibly of some syncretistic blend of several of these elements with a corresponding relativizing of Jesus.

Here are some of the textual hints about the nature of the problems the church faces.

Colossians 2:1-4, 8

1 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments (Col 2:1-4).

8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ (Col 2:8).

Here the problem is empty philosophy, human traditions, and the elemental spirits/principles (στοιχειον) of the world — all things that are opposed to Christ. Philosophy might point toward proto-gnosticism with its emphasis on hidden knowledge available only to the adepts. Human tradition could nod toward Judaism. And then there are the elemental spirits (principles) of the world, an unusual term that will appear again in the letter. It might refer to a type of paganism in which elements of the natural world are worshipped as spiritual beings; think of the gods of Egypt, e.g. the god of the Nile, which God judged in the Exodus. Or, it might actually refer to principles in the Jewish Law. Or, it might be more along the lines of the spiritual principles behind the fallen world: power, sex, money, honor — what we might called the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. The details matter little, because the remedy is the same for all these possible meanings.

Colossians 2:16-18

16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind (Col 2:16-18).

The first part of this — food and drink; festivals, new moons, Sabbaths — seems to indicate pressure from Judaizers much like Paul addressed in his Galatian letter. The latter part — visions, angels, sensuous mind — could again be proto-gnosticism or even a form of paganism. But again, the remedy is more significant than the individual symptoms, and it is the same for all.

With this background, let’s turn to the text.

COLOSSIANS 1

St. Paul’s Prayer (Col 1:9-14)

St. Paul opens the letter in his characteristic manner, with a greeting that includes (1) his identity as author, (2) the identity of the recipients, (3) sometimes a brief description of their relationship, and (4) a blessing, often with a prayer. It is the prayer in verses 9-14 that I would like to focus on.

9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:9-14).

How often do we pray for the church? Certainly, we “pray for the Church and for the world” (BCP p. 128) during the Prayers of the People at each Eucharist, so, weekly at a minimum. Paul says that he has not ceased praying for the church at Colossae from the day he first learned of it.

What do we pray for the church? There are some profoundly good prayers for the local congregation in the BCP (p. 649) which may be incorporated into the Daily Office. Here is one:

Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear our prayers, and grant that in this Congregation the pure Word of God may be preached and the Sacraments duly administered. Strengthen and confirm the faithful; protect and guide the children; visit and relieve the sick; turn and soften the wicked; arouse the careless; recover the fallen; restore the penitent; remove all hindrances to the advancement of your truth; and bring us all to be of one heart and mind within your holy Church, to the honor and glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

What prayer did Paul offer for the local congregation at Colossae? He prayed that the church might: (1) be filled with knowledge of God’s will, a filling that would require spiritual wisdom and understanding, (2) walk (live) worthy of the Lord (Jesus), (3) bear fruit (of the Spirit?), demonstrated by works and knowledge, (4) be strengthened with power and might for endurance and patience with joy, (5) give thanks for God’s deliverance of them from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of his Son.

Both of these prayers — our Anglican prayer and St. Paul’s prayer — are very good, and I encourage you, perhaps as part of your Lenten discipline, to pray for the local congregation, for Apostles, daily. Perhaps that is already your habit; if so, thanks be to God. In looking at St. Paul’s prayer, there are some key notions:

St. Paul is interested in knowledge: not the knowledge that the world gives, but the knowledge of God’s will that is discerned spiritually. The world has its type of knowledge and its ways of knowing, which, of course, we have too. But the church has a different way of knowing; we discern matters spiritually.

St. Paul is interested in behavior: how we walk (what we do), what kind of fruit we bear (see Gal 5:22-24). Paul simply does not pit faith against works; what we do, how we live, matters, and it must be compatible with the faith we profess.

St. Paul is interested in power: not in the kind of power that dominates others, but in the kind of power that gives us endurance in trials.

St. Paul is interested in grounding us in our identity. We were once slaves to the fallen powers of the kingdom of darkness, but now we are free citizens in the kingdom of God’s Son because of the redemption and forgiveness of sins we have in Jesus.

These are the characteristics the Colossian Christians must have to deal with the problems facing them. I can’t see that anything has changed.

St. Paul’s Hymn to Christ (Col 1:15-20)

Now, St. Paul moves quickly from prayer to praise, to an early Christian hymn to Christ. Here, at the outset, I want to make what may appear to be just a “picky” detail, but which is really essential. Col 1:13 makes clear that Paul is speaking of “the beloved Son” of God. That beloved Son, at a given point in human history, became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and fulfilled a vocation as the Christ/Messiah. The Son is co-eternal and consubstantial (of one essence) with the Father. Jesus, the incarnate God-man was born in time and became the Messiah of Israel. When we describe Col 1:15-20 as the Hymn To Christ, that is really short hand for the “Hymn To the Son, who took on flesh as Jesus of Nazareth and became the Christ.” All of this matters for a right understanding of Christ.

Whether St. Paul is quoting a hymn well-known to the church or composing one under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is a matter of some debate. But these few verses are the heart of the letter. There is not a single problem facing the church in Colossae whose solution is not found in this hymn, because the solution to every problem is found in Christ himself.

Stanza 1

15 He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.

16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities —
all thing were created through him and for him.

17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Stanza 2

18 And he is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
that in everything he might be preeminent.

19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

20 and through him to to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of his cross.

Notice that the first stanza addresses the Son’s identity relative to creation: Who is the the Son and what is his position relative to created things? The second stanza addresses the Son’s identity relative to salvation: Who is the Son and what has he done relative to our salvation? The two stanzas parallel each other in their structure and content: compare (1) vs 15 to vss 18 and 19, (2) vs 16 to vs 20.

Now, let’s consider some of the details of the hymn.

Col 1:15-17 Christ and Creation

We have icons here at Apostles and have done from very early on. Some of our founding members were instrumental in forming an icon guild that painted icons and taught the spiritual craft to others. Have you thought much about how icons are used in prayer and worship? Consider an icon of a saint. When we look at that icon we are not meant to see so much the historical figure, but rather to see Christ manifest in the life of the saint. We look through the image on the board to see the face and character of Jesus as Jesus was present in the saint. Every image on every icon is flawed in this sense; the saint only very imperfectly imaged Jesus.

Why this talk about icons? In the Greek of Col 1:15, St. Paul calls Jesus εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ, the icon of God, which we translate as the image of God. The Son, incarnate as Jesus, is the icon of God, the man in whom God is present, revealing himself, the perfect image of the Father. To see Jesus is to see the Father. And that icon is not flawed. That icon perfectly shows forth the image of the Father, “for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:19). When St. Thomas wanted to see the Father, Jesus told him, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”

St. Paul goes on to say that the Son is the firstborn of all creation. Let’s start with what this does not mean. It does not mean that the Son of God was born in time, the firstborn, in that sense, of all created things. That is the heresy of Arius who said, “There was a time when the Son was not!” That heresy was condemned at the first Council of Nicea in A. D. 325. We reject it every time we say the Nicene Creed.

Firstborn, as used by Paul, is not a statement of order (first, second, third, etc.) but rather a positional title of authority and role. It is a matter of primogeniture: the right of the eldest child to inherit the property and authority and responsibility of his father. So, Paul maintains that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation in that sense: Jesus exercises the Father’s authority over all creation and inherits all creation as his own. And, that authority is more than a legal matter, more than something extrinsic; it is intrinsic to the relationship between Son and creation, just as the superiority of a creator is intrinsic in the creator-creation relationship. Paul explores that in 1 Col 1:16:

16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities —
all thing were created through him and for him.

In summary, Paul says: all things in the physical realm and in the heavenly realm were created by, through, and for the Son. The Son is the active agent, the instrumental agent, and the receiving agent of creation. Let me offer an analogy. Suppose I decide to build a house. When it is complete, I can say — using passive voice — the house was built by me. Suppose further that I actually did the construction from top to bottom — a one-man affair. Then, I could also say that the house was built through me, that is, through my creativity, expertise, and effort. Lastly, since I plan to live in the house myself, I could say that the house was built for me. By me, through me, and for me: the house, in all respects, owes its existence to me. That is something like the relationship St. Paul envisions between the Son and creation. All creation owes it existence solely to the Son and owes its worship solely to the son.

St. Paul especially mentions that the Son created thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities. It is most likely that he is identifying specific ranks/choirs of angels as found in Jewish thought and later in Christian literature. Pseudo-Dionysius put forward a ninefold hierarchy of angels sometime in the 5th-6th centuries, and it became the standard scheme in much Christian thought:

• Seraphim

• Cherubim

• Thrones

• Dominions

• Virtues

• Powers

• Principalities

• Archangels

• Angels

If St. Paul is speaking of choirs of angels — as seems likely — he is asserting the primacy and superiority of the Son over the angels. Why? Remember that one of the heresies in Colossae was angel worship. We worship the creator of the angels, Paul says, and not the angels themselves.

To round out the relationship between the Son and creation, St. Paul says:

17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Now, if you’ll allow, I’ll engage in a bit of anachronistic thinking. As sons of the Enlightenment, the prevailing religious notion of our Founding Fathers — at least of those who still believed in God at all — was deism, the notion that the Creator of the universe created a clockwork universe, wound it up to operate on its own, and then went away to do whatever it is that god does when not creating.

The notion of ongoing interaction between creator and creation was swept off the table. St. Paul really preempts that notion here by saying “in him all things hold together.” If the Son were absent from creation for an instant, if creation were ever out-of-sight-out-of-mind, then the center would not hold and all things would fly apart, dissolve. In St. Paul thinking, the sun rose today not due to pre-programmed natural laws but rather because once again God said, “Let there be light.” As the Psalmist said, “This is the day the LORD has made.” So, St. Paul insists that the Son is actively and personally involved in creation at every instant.

This is the first stanza which explores the Son’s identity relative to creation. The second stanza details the Son’s identity relative to salvation.

Col 1:18-20 Christ, the Church, and Salvation

18 And he is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
that in everything he might be preeminent.

Notice that St. Paul begins this section on salvation with the Church, the body of Christ. In the 3rd century, the Christian Bishop Saint Cyprian of Carthage wrote, “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus,” there is no salvation outside the Church. This is simply expressing the truth that salvation consists of incorporation into Christ, and that that entails incorporation into his body, the Church. St. Cyprian also wrote, “No one can have God for his Father, who does not have the Church for his Mother.”

The relationship between Christ and the Church is top-down, not bottom-up. Christ is the head, the sole and absolute authority in the Church , the one whose will the Church obeys. The Church is not some egalitarian club; it is an ordered, organic, hierarchy with Christ at its head. Christ is, in everything, and certainly in the Church, preeminent. Why is that true?

It is true because Christ is the beginning of all things, and certainly the beginning of the Church: no Christ, no Church. But, he is also head of the Church by virtue of being the firstborn from the dead. It is he who, by his resurrection, “broke the bonds of death, trampling hell and Satan under his feet” (BCP 2019, p. 133), who by his resurrection has become “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20). “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22). And this shows the importance of Christ being head of the Church. What is true for the head, is true for the body. If the head is the firstborn from the dead, then, in due time, that body will follow.

Christ is also head of the Church by virtue of his nature, “for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:19). The Son is the perfect image (icon) of God in that there is no “transcription error” in going from Father to Son, but also in the fact that the icon is complete; there is nothing missing in the image.

At the right time, the Son became man, God incarnate. For what purpose? As we say in the Nicene Creed:

For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
and was made man (BCP 2019, p. 109).

St. Paul is even more descriptive of the nature of our salvation here in Colossians:

20 and through him to to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of his cross.

Through the Son — specifically through his sacrificial death on the cross — God reconciled to himself all things in heaven and on earth, and thereby made peace. We were — all of us — alienated from God, at enmity with him. But, through the cross, God took the initiative to reconcile us to him, to bring peace in place of enmity, to create a body of people for himself over which Christ would reign as head. God did this through Christ. God did this for us through Christ. This is how St. Paul sums this up as he concludes the great Hymn To Christ:

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister (Col 1:21-23).

STRATEGY

Now, having established — in this great Hymn To Christ — the identity of Christ and his essential roles in creation and salvation, Paul is ready to combat the various heresies faced by the Colossians. I think I need only mention them for you to see how Paul structured the Hymn to address them.

1. First there is the matter of hidden knowledge: mystery and philosophy that only the initiated know and which is only available through special ascetic and spiritual practices and teachings. We’ve spoken of this a proto-gnosticism, the beginning of a heresy that still plagues the Church today. To this Paul simply points to Christ as the image/icon of the invisible God, the one in whom the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. And that, dear friends, is not hidden. Christ came to dwell among us and to make God known to us. That fullness is precisely what is proclaimed openly to all people in the Gospel that Paul preaches. There is nothing hidden, nothing to do but hear and believe and then to live the truth. The good news is the answer to the gnostic hidden wisdom.

2. Then there is the matter of the worship of angels. But, Paul says, angels — whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — were all created by, through, and for the Son. Worship the creator, not the creation.

3. St. Paul also addresses disordered regulations: do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. Our salvation does not depend upon these things, but rather the reconciliation, the peace provided by the blood of the cross.

And, so it goes. Building on the Hymn To Christ, Paul deals with all the nascent heresies threatening the church at Colossae. In the latter part of the letter, chapters 3 and 4, St. Paul explores the implications of all this for living out the faith in the church, in the family, and in the culture. These matters are not difficult to understand, but they are challenging to practice.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Romans, Part 2: Pears, Vines, and the Gospel

We begin this morning with a prayer from the The Solemn Collects of Good Friday.

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.

Let us pray for the Jewish people: that the Lord our God may look graciously upon them, and that they may come to know Jesus as the Messiah, and as the Lord of all.

Almighty and everlasting God, you established your covenant with Abraham and his seed: Hear the prayers of your Church, that the people through whom you brought blessing to the world may also receive the blessing of salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 570).

As I am preparing this post for publication, Israel and the United States are engaged in join military action against Iran. And, it is only in recent days that a tenuous “peace” of sorts has prevailed in Gaza following months of Israel’s relentless military action against the Palestinians there. Opinions are divided on both these actions and I know some for whom the foregoing Solemn Collect is difficult to pray, not theologically, but viscerally. Here it is important to distinguish between the political state of Israel and the Jewish people. This prayer is offered not for the former — the state of Israel — but for the latter — the Jewish people. That we single this people out for prayer simply acknowledges their unique place in salvation history, a place that St. Paul insists is not over. The Jews are our fathers and mothers in the faith, or perhaps our elder brothers and sisters, but family nonetheless. And we pray for our family even if we are, for the moment, estranged.

Summary of Romans, Part 1 (Chapters 1-6)

Grab on and hold tight for this breakneck summary of last week’s lesson, Romans, Part 1 (chapters 1-6).

Paul is writing a fund raising letter of sorts to the church(es) at Rome. He wants to go to Spain and he is hoping to use Rome as his home base of support for that mission; he needs a staging area (a home church) and financial support. Since the church(es) at Rome either do not know him or perhaps know him only by his reputation as a troublemaker, Paul writes his fund raising letter as a theological summary of his presentation of the Gospel, and as a thorough introduction of himself and his message. But, a second issue is never far from his mind: the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. How does Israel — who seems to reject Christ wholesale — factor into God’s plan for the redemption of all things? Is there still any place for the Jews in the Gospel, or is Israel now an outdated dead end replaced by the Gentiles, God’s Plan A gone hopelessly wrong?

Paul starts the letter with the assertion that all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, are in bondage to sin and are under God’s righteous judgment. The Jews cannot stand on the Law to save them because they did not and do not keep it. The Gentiles cannot stand on the natural law to save them because they did not and do not keep it. Paul writes:

For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:

“None us righteous, no not one;
11 no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Rom 3:9b-11).

So much for the bad news. Now for the good news, the Gospel.

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith (Rom 3:21-25a).

The good news is that God has taken the initiative to deliver us from sin and its wages, death, through the faithfulness of Christ and through our faithfulness to Christ. Though the Law served its purpose to bring us to Christ, we dare not now go back to it or add it onto Christ. It is faith, and not the Law, that lies at the heart of the Gospel. So much for the summary of Part One.

Pears and the Law

Now to part two of our series, beginning with Romans 7. Paul wants to drive home an important point about the Law, that our failure to keep it was not the Law’s fault, but was the result of sin in us that was stirred up by the Law and which carried us along with it. We cannot blame the Law for our condition; sin is at the root of it, sin that enslaves us.

Now, rather than turn directly to St. Paul here, I want to turn to St. Augustine, to a brief passage from his Confession.

It is certain, O Lord, that theft is punished by your law, the law that is written in men’s hearts and cannot be erased however sinful they are. For no thief can bear that another thief should steal from him, even if he is rich and the other is driven to it by want. Yet I was willing to steal, and steal I did, although I was not compelled by any lack, unless it were the lack of a sense of justice or a distaste for what was right and a greedy love of doing wrong. For of what I stole I already had plenty, and much better at that and I had no wish to enjoy the things I coveted by stealing, but only to enjoy the theft itself and the sin. There was a pear-tree near our vineyard, loaded with fruit that was attractive neither to look at nor to taste. Late one night a band of ruffians, myself included, went off to shake down the fruit and carry it away, for we had continued our games out of doors until well after dark, as was our pernicious habit. We took away an enormous quantity of pears, not to eat them ourselves, but simply to throw them to the pigs. Perhaps we ate some of them, but our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden.

Look into my heart, O God, the same heart on which you took pity when it was in the depths of the abyss. Let my heart now tell you what prompted me to do wrong for no purpose, and why it was only my own love of mischief that made me do it. The evil in me was foul, but I loved it. I loved my own perdition and my own faults, not the things for which I committed wrong, but the wrong itself. My soul was vicious and broke away from your safe keeping to seek its own destruction, looking for no profit in disgrace but only for disgrace itself (St. Augustine, Confessions, Penguin Books (1961), Book II, Chapter 4, pp. 47-48).

Notice what St. Augustine said about theft. He didn’t steal the pears because he was hungry; he had no need of them. He stole the pears because God’s law condemned theft and that stirred up in him the desire to steal. He stole only to enjoy the theft and the sin. This paints man into a corner, and St. Augustine presents the dilemma so well. The Law tells us what is wrong, but it does not and cannot empower us to refrain from the wrong. Instead, sin takes advantage of the Law and stirs in us the desire to do evil. We are schizophrenic; we have a divided mind. It you have ever been near a “Fresh Paint” sign you know exactly what St. Augustine experienced. You had no desire to touch that wall until you saw the sign; it stirred up the desire in you and you seemed powerless to resist.

Now to Paul and Romans 7. He says — using a particular example — that he never coveted until he received the Law that says, “You shall not covet.” Then, the sin to which he is enslaved stirred up the covetous desire and he seemed powerless to resist: Augustine before Augustine. He didn’t want to disobey the Law, but through the Law, sin had him in its grasp and compelled him to act contrary to his true desire. Then comes the famous passage that you know well:

14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death (Rom 7:14-24)?

There is the great human dilemma. We know the Law is good. We want to obey it. But sin has slipped in through the “back door” when the Law was given and has enslaved me; it has taken advantage of the Law to kill me. Paul’s cry is real: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death” (Rom 7:24)? And that question leads us to the heart of Romans and one of the most magnificent chapters in all of Scripture: Romans 8.

Freedom!

The first four verses say it all in dense summary.

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

God, in Christ, has done what we could never do: he has freed us from slavery to sin by condemning sin in the flesh of Jesus. This is crucial because it lies at the heart of what we call “the atonement.” Jesus, who knew no sin and owed no debt to it, nevertheless drew all the sin of the world to himself, took it upon himself becoming the epitome of sin for our sake (2 Cor 5:21). Then he bore that sin to the cross and God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus to fulfill the curse of the Law (see Deut 28:15-68): condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus. Think of sin as a spiritual parasite and the body of Jesus as the willing host. Destroy the host, and the parasite cannot survive. Jesus offered himself as the host knowing that with the destruction of his flesh, parasitic sin would also be destroyed. It is not without significance that we call the bread of the Eucharist the “host,” from the Latin hostis meaning “victim.”

Jesus gave himself as the host for sin, as the one who took upon himself all the sin of the would, and offered himself as a willing victim so that sin might be destroyed. Now, when I speak of sin being destroyed, I mean its power over us has been destroyed and the dilemma that both Saints Augustine and Paul spoke of has been resolved. While we may still freely choose to sin, we are not compelled to do so as slaves. Through Christ, we are free and, even more, we are now empowered by the Spirit, not enslaved by the flesh.

Our freedom is just the beginning. The purpose of God is to restore all things in heaven and on earth — our bodies and all of creation — to free all things from the corrupting power of sin. This is an already-not yet moment in the story. Christ has already won the victory over sin and has freed us from death, the wages of sin. But, sin has not yet been eliminated as a real possibility, nor have its consequences. Because that has not yet been fully implemented we still suffer and groan in the flesh. And not only we, but all of creation groans. So, Paul gives us this great promise and assurance:

18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Rom 8:18-25).

So, while the work that Christ did was finished on the cross, its outworking is not yet complete. It is a future reality, and we have a part to play in its coming to full fruition. Part of that work — a significant part of that work — is our prayer, our hope, our confidence in the goodness and love of God. Listen to St. Paul’s words:

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:26-28).

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:31-39).

Paul, Israel, and the People of God

Paul has been accused, by the Judaizers, of antinomianism — of rejection of the Mosaic Law — and even of being antisemitic in the sense of denying the central and eternal role of Israel in God’s redemptive purpose, of saying that God’s purpose for Israel failed and that he has now abandoned the Jews in favor of the Gentiles. In Romans 9-11, Paul defends himself against those charges and explains his understanding of the role of Israel and the relationship between Jews and Gentiles in the Gospel. It is a long and complex argument. I can only try to outline the major points of the argument as simply as I can while passing over some points — important ones — that might distract us from the main line of thought. That will be deeply unsatisfying to some of you, and I understand that. My only defense is the shortness of time we have for the task at hand.

Paul starts with his love for Israel — he would trade his life for theirs — and with an affirmation of the central role that Israel has played in God’s plan: adoption (election), glory, covenants, law, worship, promises, patriarchs, and ultimately Christ himself — all Jewish. Paul is neither antinomian nor antisemitic. See Rom 9:1-5.

Nor has God’s plan for Israel failed just because most of Israel has failed to see Jesus as messiah. True Israel, faithful Israel, has always been a subset of the descendants of Abraham and never the whole lot. The covenant came through Isaac and not Ishmael, through Jacob and not Esau. God has always worked with a Jewish remnant. That is not a failure; that is God’s sovereign choice. See Rom 9:6-29.

Now, I must leave the text for just a moment for an excursus on election and God’s sovereign choice, because this is a place where Paul’s argument has been distorted. Paul is talking about the instrumental election of a remnant of Israel through which God will accomplish his plan of redemption for all people. That is a dense statement, so let’s unpack it a bit. This passage is not about God selecting some individuals for salvation and some for damnation. It is not about individual predestination though som want to make it about that. It is all about which group of people God chooses to use to accomplish his purpose for the good of all. Just because a group is not chosen for a particular purpose does not imply that that group is eternally rejected by God. God may and does, according to his wisdom and righteousness, choose certain people, certain groups, to be his instruments of salvation and judgment. But that does not mean that those not so chosen are destined for destruction: more about this in Paul’s discussion of Israel. Now, back to the text and to Paul’s argument.

How is it — and how is it fair — that the Jews who pursued righteousness through the Law missed it while the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have found it through faith in Christ? Paul answers that faith is the key. Yes, the Jews — some of them and to some extent — kept the Law, but they did so as if by their work they might obligate God to declare them righteous, in sort of a theological quid pro quo. But righteousness is found only in Christ and only through faith: “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom 10:4). See Rom 9:30-10:13 for the extended argument.

Because of this, there is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles in terms of access to God. There are advantages of being a Jew in terms of having a long history of engagement with God, in terms of the glory of being chosen and caught up in his purpose. But in terms of the righteousness of God? No.

10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom 10:10-13).

Well, what about those Jews that God has not chosen in this moment, in other words, what about those Jews who reject Jesus? Has God then rejected them? Are they no longer part of his purpose? This is where Paul’s argument get really dicey for us. It is where we are thrown back on the providence of God and on his loving mercy and on his plans, the details of which are opaque to us. It is the part of Paul’s argument that he grasps in principle, but even so struggles to articulate fully, so that at the end of it, recognizing the human inability to fully penetrate the mind and will of God, Paul resorts instead to humble doxology, to praise:

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”

35 “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen (Rom 11:33-36).

Now, to the argument. God has preserved for himself a remnant of faithful Israel, those who have seen and believed that Jesus is the messiah; these Paul calls the elect. As for the rest:

7 What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, 8 as it is written,

“God gave them a spirit of stupor,
eyes that would not see
and ears that would not hear,
down to this very day” (Rom 11:7-8).

Understand that hardening means that God has affirmed the free choice of an individual or a people and has made them more resolute in those choices. It is not an arbitrary act of God, but rather God saying “yes” to the exercise of human will and choice. Remember that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart only after Pharaoh had done so himself. God’s hardening is God’s saying yes. But then God uses those with hardened hearts for his own salvific purposes, again, as with Pharaoh. The hardening of the heart of much of Israel was for the sake of the Gentiles. It is through their hardening of heart that God made way for the Gentiles to be receptive to the Gospel. We see that writ small in Paul’s own ministry. He went to the synagogues first in each town. Only when the Jews had hardened their hearts against the Gospel did Paul turn to the Gentiles. Why the hardening of most of Israel was necessary and how that works in detail — as far as as I’m concerned, God only knows. What Paul does give us, not by way of explanation but by way of analogy, is the image of an olive tree and grafted branches.

Think of an olive tree — Israel — with ancient roots: Abraham and the covenants, Moses and the Law, the prophets. There are some branches of the tree — the Jews with hardened hearts — that are broken off to allow room for wild olive shoots — believing Gentiles — to be grafted into the tree, to be nourished by and to share in the life of the rootstock. Note the implication here: the Gentiles do not receive the blessings of God apart from Israel, but by becoming a part of Israel through faith in Christ. God has not abandoned the Jews by including the Gentiles. God has made the Gentiles part of Israel so that they may share in the fullness of all God’s promises to Israel realized in, fulfilled through, Jesus Christ. The Gentiles dare not be arrogant about this, thinking that God has rejected Israel in their favor. They, too, can be broken off to make room for others.

What comes next, the completion of Paul’s argument, is a deep mystery. The hardening of the Jews is partial in scope and time. At some point — when the fullness of the Gentiles have been grafted in — the hardening will have achieved God’s purposes and it will be lifted. At that time mercy will again be offered to all. Those Jews who embrace Christ will be grafted back into the tree and in that way all Israel — that is, all believing Jews and Gentiles, all those who accept Christ as messiah and savior — will be saved. Jews and Gentiles belong together and are made one in Christ. See Romans 11:25-36. It is for that we pray. There is much more in chapters 9-11; we have just scratched the surface. But, I hope this will give you a helpful overview of Paul’s argument, on his own terms, so that these chapters will make better sense when you read them prayerfully and thoughtfully.

Now, in the little time remaining, we will look at some practical implications of all that has gone before. How, then, were the Romans to live? How are we to live?

Life in the Church

It may be tempting to divide each of St. Paul’s letters into two sections: theology first, followed by right living — the practical stuff. But, I think that misunderstands Paul who sees the Church as the advanced guard of the age to come, a living signpost pointing toward the renewal of all things in Christ. If I might say it this way, the Church is living, incarnational theology, theology with flesh on. The Church is what theology looks like lived out. So, there is no real distinction between the two sections of Paul’s letters. We are all theologians in the sense that the Church is called to live out its theology.

Now, I am really going to go far out on a limb. I’m going to try to summarize the heart of St. Paul’s theology, lived out in the Church, in a single sentence:

Through the redemptive work of Christ, received by faith, all those in Christ — without distinction — all those in Christ belong at the same Table, and all must live in love, one for another.

It is a clunky sentence, and others may do better, but it gets at the heart of St. Paul’s deepest convictions: the centrality of Christ, the sufficiency of true faith, the necessity of unity in the Church, and the primacy of love.

I have chosen one passage — that is all time will permit — that exemplifies this living theology, Rom 12:9-21. With this, I’ll bring this lesson to a close.

9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Rom 12:9-21).

There is Paul. There is his understanding of the Gospel. The question for the Roman Christians is simple: Can you, will you, embrace and support this Gospel? That, of course, is still the question.

Amen.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Romans, Part 1: Fundraising and Cosmic Redemption

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

O God, you desire that all people be saved and come to knowledge of the truth: Prosper all those who live, preach, and teach the Gospel at home and in distant lands; protect them in all perils, support them in their loneliness, sustain them in the hour of trial; give them your abundant grace to bear faithful witness; and endue them with burning zeal and love, that they may turn many to righteousness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 652).

Introduction: Fund Raising Letters

There are great blessings of being an assisting priest: no administrative tasks and no handling of money. Due to the generosity of this parish, I never have to think about fundraising.

But, I have ministry friends — some of them missionaries — for whom fundraising is an ongoing matter of concern. In the churches of my youth, it worked this way. A missionary would have a “home church” from which he/she would be sent out and which would provide a base of financial and logistical support. Beyond that, the missionary would visit like minded churches to secure additional funding and prayer support. Once on the mission field, the missionary would provide this church network frequent updates with details of the work, photos, special needs, prayer requests, that sort of thing. When home for furlough, the missionary often stayed with members of the home church and used that church as a “base of operations” from which he/she would visit other supporting churches and perhaps seek out new ones. A home church was crucial both for logistics and for finances.

Since he began his missionary work sometime around 46/47 A.D., St. Paul had considered the church in Syrian Antioch as his home church. It was there that he and Barnabas were first commissioned and sent out with fasting, prayer, and the laying on of hands (Acts 12:1-3), and it is there that Paul returned after each journey. And that worked well for Paul for a decade, until he wanted to travel farther afield, farther to the West, as far even as Spain. A “home church” as far away as Antioch simply wouldn’t be feasible for that plan; he needed a sponsor closer to the action. And, for Paul, that meant Rome, the center of the world. But, that was problematic for some obvious reasons: Paul had not founded the church at Rome — we don’t know who did — and he was known there, if at all, only by reputation. What to do?

Do you get solicitations in the mail, fund raising letters? If you have ever donated to a charity, you almost certainly do. These letters follow a similar script. They tell you about the good work that the group is doing — perhaps with some photos or data included — and they assure you that their continuing ministry is totally dependent on donors like you. Won’t you consider becoming a regular supporter or, if you already are, consider increasing your support in the coming year?

How much time do you spend with one of those letters if it is from a group with which you are unfamiliar? Would you read the letter if it were, say, 7111 words long? For comparison, my sermons average 3000 and these lesson around 4000.

7111 words: that’s an oddly specific number, isn’t it? It happens to be — according to Google — the number of words in the Greek text of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans. That letter may be one of the longest — and certainly the most influential and consequential — fund raising letter ever written. And that is what it is: a letter of introduction and a solicitation of support — financial and logistical — for Paul’s long delayed and much desired mission to Spain. Near the end of the letter, Paul finally gets around to making that point, to making his plea:

23 But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, 24 I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while (Rom 15:23-24).

The following verses are just itinerary items for Paul, but for us they are much more poignant:

25 At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints.

28 When therefore I have completed this and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will leave for Spain by way of you. 29 I know that when I come to you I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ (Rom 15:25, 28-29).

You know the rest of the story: Paul was arrested in Jerusalem, detained in prison for some two years in Caesarea, and then finally transported to Rome courtesy of Caesar’s soldiers. Did he ever make it to Spain? We simply don’t know. What we do have is his fund raising letter to the churches in Rome, one of the most significant pieces of religious writing ever penned.

Why such a long and complex letter? I can think of two equal and opposite likely answers. The first is that the Roman Christians did not know Paul, in which case he would need to introduce both himself and the Gospel he preached. If you are being asked to support someone, you have the right to know what they believe and what will be the nature of the work they hope to accomplish under your auspices. Or, the second possibility is that they had heard about Paul, about the trouble he caused everywhere he went and the divisive nature of his Gospel. In that case, Paul would need to set the record straight, and it would take at least 7111 words to do that! Either way, we are the beneficiaries, because Romans gives us the most comprehensive view of Paul’s understanding of the Gospel that we have in any single letter.

Now, two final words about the epistle before we consider the text itself. The “first” comes with a caution: some of what I will say may seem a bit different from what you’ve heard before, from the Reformers’ thought and from Protestant thought since then.

It’s not that the Reformers were wrong but rather that they were giving good answers to the wrong questions: to their questions, but not to Paul’s questions. They overlaid their agenda onto Romans instead of accepting Paul’s agenda. And what resulted was not a wrong view but a view that is too small, too individualized. The Reformers reduced Paul’s concerns to an “I problem.” I have sinned. I stand condemned before God and when I die I will go to hell. But, God sent Jesus to die on the cross for me. If I believe in him — by grace I am saved, through faith — if I believe in him, God will forgive me and I will go to heaven when I die. That is the Romans’ “I problem” focus.

But, Paul has something much larger in mind, something larger that also contains and answers the “I problem.” The something larger looks like this. God created a world in which to dwell with humans. These people were to be his prophets, priests, and kings and to implement his righteous rule over creation, to sum up the praises of all creation and to lead creation in worship. But, our first parents rejected this vocation and turned from the Creator to created things, a sort of primal idolatry. And that had devastating consequences not just for humans, but for all of creation. Everyone and everything — every aspect of creation — is caught up in futility and death and decay. Romans — the Gospel — is about God’s initiative to solve that cosmic problem. Since the problem started with man’s disobedience and led to his death, the way out of it is to bring man back into righteous relationship with God and to deliver him from sin and death. And that brings us to Israel and through Israel to Jesus, who in his perfect life, his sacrificial death, his victory over death through his resurrection, and his ascension to glory has begun the renewal of all things. A subset of that story — an essential subset, but not the whole story — is what the Reformers focused on: how the individual becomes part of that great story of the redemption of all things. If we don’t keep this larger story in mind, we will miss the real import of the climactic chapter of the epistle, chapter 8, and we will be totally confused by chapters 9-11 that grapple with the puzzling, ongoing role and status of Israel. In the typical Protestant reading of Romans — the “Romans Road” as it is called — which deals almost solely with the “I problem,” Israel has no essential place and Romans 9-11 is most often passed over in some confused and embarrassed silence. To be clear, nothing of what the Reformers held dear is lost in this broader interpretation. But by taking a wider view, by taking Paul’s view, very much is gained.

The second “final word” is a bit of historical context. Claudius reigned as Roman Emperor from A.D. 41 to 53. Sometime during that period he issued an edict expelling the Jews from Rome. The Roman historian Seutonius wrote this about Claudius and the edict:

Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome (Claudius 25, Catharine Edwards, trans.).

It seems likely that Chrestus is a reference to Χριστος, to Christ. We don’t know the exact nature of the disturbances, but we have seen the chaos Paul’s work among the Jews caused, so it is not difficult to imagine something similar in Rome leading to the expulsion of the Jews. Aquila and Priscilla, formerly of Rome, were caught up in that expulsion; that is why they were in Corinth. This expulsion had implications for the Church in Rome. Prior to the edict, the churches were likely multi-ethnic, Jews and Gentiles together. After the expulsion, they would have been Gentile-only churches which likely took on a decidedly different character than before.

But, with Claudius’s death and Nero’s ascension to the throne in A.D. 54, all of Claudius’s edicts were annulled and the Jews were free to return to Rome; the Jewish Christians could return to the churches. Whether the Gentiles welcomed them or not is an open question. They had done quite well without the Jews, thank you very much, and the Jews shouldn’t expect to come back to the churches in some dominant role now. In their absence, Jesus had become very much more than just the Jewish Messiah. So, all that had to be worked out. Did the Jews still have an significant role in redemption history or was all that old news now? Paul has to, and does, address all that, so Israel figures prominently in Romans.

Here, we are just beginning to see how complex all this is — how complex the epistle must be — and why 7111 words were necessary to even make a start of it all. And, with that, we turn to the text.

Paul and the Gospel

As did typical letters of the day, Paul begins with an introduction of himself, and he includes a brief, but significant, introduction of the Gospel.

1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4 and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, 6 including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,

7 To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 1:1-7).

Notice how Paul establishes his credentials: servant of Christ, apostle, set apart to bring the Gospel to all the nations including to Rome. And then notice how he talks about the Gospel: (1) promised by the prophets in the holy Scriptures (Israel’s prophets and Israel’s Scriptures), (2) descended from David (Israel’s greatest king), (3) concerning God’s son who was raised from the dead, Jesus Christ (Jesus, the Messiah of Israel). From the beginning Paul roots the Gospel clearly in the story of Israel, as the climax of Israel’s story: no Israel, no Gospel. And then, to emphasize that connection, he gives this great summary statement in the middle of the first chapter:

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith” (Rom 1:16-17)

The Gospel is about salvation — which is much more than the individual going to heaven when he dies, as we will see — and it is for those who believe. But get this: salvation is to the Jew first and also to the Greek. In terms of the Gospel, the Jews are prior to the Gentiles because the Gospel came through the Jews — as part of God’s covenant with Abraham — and only then to the Gentiles: to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

The Unrighteousness of Man

Why do we need the Gospel at all? Because Jews and Gentiles alike have gotten themselves in a mess; they all stand unrighteously before a righteous God. Paul paints a very dismal picture of the state of all human kind in Romans 1-3. In outline, the argument runs like this.

God has made himself known universally, not least through creation.

Though all men did indeed know him, they refused to honor him or give thanks to him. Instead of worshipping the true God, they chose idolatry instead. Idolatry is the most fundamental sin throughout Jewish history, and it plagues the Gentiles, as well.

The worship of that which is not God — idolatry — has consequences, and God gave man up to those consequences. A downward spiral ensued: sexual immorality and perversion (which always seems to go hand-in-glove with idolatry) and all manner of unrighteousness: evil, covetousness, malice, envy, strife, murder, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slander, hatred toward God, insolence, arrogance, ruthlessness, and so on. And then Paul issues the judgment on all who do these things: they deserve to die (Rom 1:32).

“Oh, but certainly not us!” some — the Jews especially — might dare to say. To which Paul responds, “Oh, then, you presume to judge others? In doing so, you indict yourself, not least for your hard and impenitent hearts that fail to acknowledge your own sin and for your rejection of repentance. All stand guilty before God — Jews, with the Law, and Gentiles without the Law — because neither group has kept the law it has: for Jews the Mosaic Law, and for Gentiles the natural Law written in all men’s hearts.”

So, Paul concludes his indictment:

9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one;

11 no one understands;
no one seeks for God.

12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one” (Rom 3:9-12).

The Righteousness of God

Now, back to the story again. God created humans with the intent to dwell with them; that’s what we see initially in the Garden. But, the sin of our first parents made that impossible. So, God re-starts the story on a small scale with the calling of Abram and the creation of a people, Israel, with whom he would dwell in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple. Israel was the microcosm of creation through whom God would renew the world and fulfill his purpose to dwell with all humans. But now, Paul has charged that the Jews have failed to keep the Law; they have broken the covenant; they are no better in that sense than the Gentiles.

And that raises questions. Is God’s whole purpose of having a holy people among whom to dwell thwarted then? Is man a lost cause? What, if anything, can be done? And right here, at this moment of near despair, comes another of Paul’s great summaries of the Gospel:

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:21-26).

Yes, we are unrighteous, but God is righteous. God’s righteousness means, not least, that God is faithful to his covenant even when Israel has not been. What he has promised to Abraham and through Abraham for all men, he will accomplish, and, in fact, he has accomplished through Christ Jesus: redemption through faith in Christ, grace as a gift. And, this is not for the Jews only; the Jews cannot boast in their covenantal relationship with God nor in their possession of his Law:

27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith (Rom 3:27-30).

The Primacy of Faith

But, of course, all this raises even more questions, not least about Abraham. Wasn’t Abraham justified by his works — specifically by the work of circumcision? Now, as an important aside: you see through this line of questioning that when Paul talks about works, he is not, like the Reformers, talking about general good deeds or those works like pilgrimages, masses, or purchases of indulgences demanded by the medieval Roman Catholic Church. Paul is talking about the works of the Jewish Law, those things that uniquely marked out the Jews as the covenant people of the God, works like circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, dietary restrictions. So, back to Abraham: Paul insists that Abraham was justified by faith before any works of the Law, i.e., before, and therefore without, circumcision. These few verses summarize Paul’s argument from Romans 4.

9 Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 10 How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Rom 4:9-12, 22-25).

The Beginning of the End

Remember where this story has been heading. Here’s an analogy. Imagine a large ship, perhaps a cruise ship, sinking far from shore. Some passengers have made their way to the decks, though not all can do so. Coast Guard and Navy helicopters are on the scene, but the best they can do is to lift a few of the passengers to safety. But, what if one of the helicopters can lower an engineer to the deck who can rescue the entire ship instead? That’s what is needed: not to pluck a few souls out of the deep, but to put the whole ship back to rights. And though this analogy fails in a thousand ways as all analogies do, that is what God has done for us in Christ. That is what Paul says:

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (Rom 5:6-11).

So, the end has begun. The first step to putting the world/cosmos to rights is putting humankind to rights. And that is what Jesus has done; that is what is on offer through his faithfulness to God’s plan and through our faith in him: “from faith to faith” is the Pauline phrase.

To emphasize the true scope of what this means, St. Paul hearkens back to the beginning of the story, to creation. He notes the disastrous effects of Adam’s choice for all mankind: “…sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom 5:12). But, Paul say, Jesus is the new Adam who restores mankind:

15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many (Rom 5:15).

18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous (Rom 5:18-19).

Dead to Sin, Alive to God

But what does all this mean on a practical level? If we are made righteous — brought into right relationship with God solely by grace through faith in Christ and all this apart from the works of the Jewish Law — does that now mean anything goes? Apart from the Law, can we live anyway we please? Some accused Paul of saying that. God forbid, was his typical response. He answers more eloquently here:

15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification (Rom 6:15-19).

Having been freed from the power of sin — a power exercised through the Law and leading to death — we are now free to choose what we will serve: impurity and lawlessness or righteousness leading to sanctification. Note: Christ’s work of faithfulness and our responding faith have brought us into right relationship with God (righteousness) and now we are to press on toward sanctification, to holiness of life. Martin Luther once used the image of the Christian made righteous by grace through faith as a snow covered dung heap: the righteousness of Christ hiding/masking our unrighteousness.

But that is not the end. We are not intended to live a masked life, to remain a dung heap. We are to become holy in reality, to live a life of sanctification. The good news is that we have now been set free by Christ to do just that.

But that is a story for another time, for next week.

1 Corinthians, Part 2: Order In the Church and the Cure for All That Ails Us

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

1 Corinthians, Part 2 (Chapters 7 thorough 16): Order in the Church and the Cure for All That Ails Us

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things in heaven and on earth: Mercifully grant that in this Congregation the pure Word of God may be preached and the Sacraments duly administered. Strengthen and confirm the faithful; protect and guide the children; visit and relieve the sick; turn and soften the wicked; arouse the careless; recover the fallen; restore the penitent; remove all hindrances to the advancement of your truth; and bring us all to be of one heart and mind within your holy Church, to the honor and glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 649).

Introduction

Last week we considered the historical background of St. Paul’s relationship with the Corinthian church: his founding of it, the arrival of other Christian leaders in his absence and the resulting creation of divisions and questions of authority, the moral challenges the church was facing. Starting with chapter 7 and extending through chapter 15, Paul seems to be addressing some particular questions or notions that the church had, matters they had apparently written to him about in a letter that we do not have. It is a hodgepodge of issues. While Paul addresses them individually, he also sees them as different symptoms of a common disease that he addresses in chapter 13, where he provides the cure for all that ails them.

The Questions

Marriage
Paul has already addressed some issues of aberrant sexuality including incest, adultery, homosexuality, and prostitution. It is reasonable then to turn to the proper context of sex in which it reaches its fullest expression: marriage. That he does in chapter 7.

It is interesting how humans tend to migrate to the extremes on any issue. We see it in our own political landscape where the extreme right and the extreme left of the spectrum are both overloaded and between them lies the nearly vacant middle. A centrist — if there is one left — is unelectable. Or, you might imagine a battle field — say in World War I — with the opposing forces dug in within sight of one another with a deadly no man’s land inbetween.

So it was in Corinth on the issue of sex. Some were libertines — anything goes — and some were puritans with whom essentially nothing goes. Paul wants them to see the possibility of a life in-between the extremes. We’ve seen the former — the anything goes people, those who didn’t even want to condemn incest; now Paul deals with the latter — the puritans — starting with a quote from them:

1 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is well for a man not to touch a woman (1 Cor 7:1).

There is general consensus that the statement, “It is well for a man not to touch a woman,” comes not from Paul but from the puritan extreme in Corinth; Paul is probably quoting from their letter. It is a nascent gnosticism that views all things material as impure, as lesser than things spiritual, as something we are to rise above. In this view, there is something inherently sinful, or at least unspiritual and unbecoming, about the very bodily matter of sexual intercourse. So, it is well for a man not to touch a woman.

Now, frankly, Paul does not give a rousing defense of the goodness and even holiness of the body and of sexual love in the context of marriage. He does elsewhere; Ephesians 5 comes to mind. Here, he is very practical. He is speaking matter-of-factly to a church situated right in the middle of a sex saturated city. His argument goes like this.

The sexual urge is very strong and most people will not be able to resist it. Because of that it is better to avoid temptation by having a husband or wife, a marriage in which sexual relations find their appropriate context. And he does something quite startling. He considers not just the husband but also the wife as what we might loosely refer to as a “sexual being” with physical desires and marital rights. He notes that the husband has a right to the wife’s body and the wife has a right to her husband’s body and that neither is to defraud the other in this matter. They may mutually decide to fast from sex for a time in order to devote more time to prayer. But that period shouldn’t extend too long. This is a powerful assertion for a man who is often portrayed as a misogynist. Wives were considered property in Greek and Roman culture. They were expected to provided for their husband’s sexual needs and to produce heirs. But Paul insists it’s not like that in the church. Wives are parters with rights. That is significant. So, it is not necessary for a man not to touch or woman or a woman not to touch a man. In fact, for many, it is necessary. But, not for all.

Paul acknowledges that for those who have a gift of celibacy like himself, especially given the difficulties of the times, it is good if one can live without marriage so that one is able to devote oneself solely to the Lord. That is better even than marriage in those difficult times, if possible, though getting married is good, as well.

EXCURSUS
We tend to presume that the default relationship is marriage and that it is somehow tragic if a man or woman fails to find a spouse or strange if a man or woman chooses to live a celibate life. But, the Church has never looked at it that way. Marriage is honorable and celibacy is honorable. The monastic movement is witness to that as is the celibacy of Roman Catholic priests and Orthodox bishops. All of us will be celibate at one or more periods in our lives and some choose to be permanently so in order better to fulfill the vocation God has given. It is not tragedy but faithfulness; it is something to be honored.

Now to a matter that is still very current: mixed marriages. What if one spouse is a believer and the other is not? First, Paul would say that one should not choose that situation from the start. A believer should marry in the Lord (1 Cor 7:39) and should not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever (2 Cor 6:14). So, it is inadvisable — for a host of reasons — for a believer to enter into marriage with an unbeliever. But, what if the marriage was already established — we’ll assume between two non-believers — and one of them turns to follow Jesus? Should the believer leave the non-believer? The answer is a simply no. If the unbeliever is content with the situation, the believing spouse should not initiate a divorce. In some dense writing in 1 Cor 7:12-16, St. Paul indicates that the believing spouse “consecrates” — makes holy — the unbelieving spouse and makes their children holy. And that may be enough for the unbelieving spouse’s salvation. Who knows? This making of two people into one in marriage is a mystery with spiritual implications likely beyond our understanding. If, however, the unbelieving spouse is not content to live with a believer and leaves, the believing spouse is not bound to the marriage any longer. Even today, in the ACNA, we consider abandonment — which is really what we are talking about there — one of the three just causes for ending a marriage. Paul moves on to the next question.

Food Offered To Idols
In a town like Corinth — one with a large Jewish population — there would have been kosher meat markets; if you were Jewish and concerned about such things you could know that what you were purchasing had been properly butchered and inspected and was fit for Jewish consumption. And, if you were invited to a meal at the home of a Jewish neighbor, all was well there, too.

But, what about in a church context with a mixed congregation of Jews and Gentiles? What about at the agape meal, the church potluck before the Eucharist? The Gentiles likely wouldn’t shop at the kosher market. Much of the meat that they purchased would have come from the “left overs” of pagan sacrifice in pagan temples. Some meat was offered to the gods, some was eaten by the worshipers, and some made its way to the local meat markets for sale. This presents at least two problems. A devout Jewish Christian invited to a meal at a Gentile’s home — even the home of a Gentile believer — might be served non-kosher meat, to the wounding of his conscience. Or a Gentile believer might likewise be served meat offered to idols by a neighbor. If he had just escaped from pagan worship himself, he might be disturbed by the thought of being sucked back into idolatry through eating that sacrificial meat. And then there is the group that just wants to know what they can buy and use for their own consumption. Can we eat meat offered to idols if we know it has been? If we don’t know, must we verify the provenance of the meat? It is all very complicated. Can Paul simplify the matter?

For Paul, here’s the place to start, the bottom line: stay out of idol’s temples. Don’t do anything that draws you into — or even seems to make you complicit in — idol worship (1 Cor 10:6-22). When we eat from the Lord’s altar, that is, when we consume the body of Christ and drink his blood in the Eucharist, we are participating with — uniting ourselves to — Christ. What about those who eat and drink from the altar in an idol temple? Well, an idol is nothing: a piece of wood or metal with no real being and no powers at all. But, behind the idols lie the demons, and the worship that is given to idols passes to the demons, and that we may not do. Paul says very clearly: You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons (1 Cor 10:21). So, stay out of idol’s temples and do nothing that draws you (back) into idol worship.

Now, about the meat itself, there are two basic principles. First, meat doesn’t really matter at all provided it is eaten with blessing and thanksgiving to God. Second, people do matter, and if eating meat puts a brother’s salvation in jeopardy, do not eat the meat. Suppose you have no qualms about eating meat offered to idols; then you are truly fine and free to do so — no harm to yourself. But, suppose also that a brother who has just recently escaped idol worship sees you eating it and assumes, wrongly, that it must be proper to feast in an idol’s temple. If he is then drawn back toward idol worship, you have harmed a brother. Or perhaps he is simply scandalized by seeing you eating that sacrifice and withdraws from the fellowship. Either way, your exercise of freedom has wounded a brother. That you cannot do; you cannot allow your legitimate freedom to hinder a brother’s faith. Better not to eat meat at all than to risk harming a brother. In all of this, it is your brother who must be considered in your actions; his spiritual welfare is more important than your freedom.

This is an important issue, and we will take a moment or two for questions, if you have any.

Women in Worship: Order in the Church
Next we come to some difficult passages related to women and worship, particularly the issues of women wearing head coverings (1 Cor 11:1-16) and women being silent in worship (1 Cor 14:26-40). I’ve heard N. T. Wright — a true Pauline scholar — say that given the opportunity to ask St. Paul one question, it would be: What’s all that business about women’s head coverings? While even devoted Christian scholars do not know all the details, we do know the general principle that Paul insists on — that worship must be done decently and in order (1 Cor 14:33, 40). And I believe that these two issues of head coverings and silence must be read in that context. There are still some unresolved questions, but this is a good place to start.

As to head coverings, Paul couches this in terms of identity and honor. It appears that he is speaking primarily to married women for whom the veil would be an outward symbol of their marital status and thus a way to honor marriage and husband. To cast that off in a misunderstanding of Christian freedom would be seen as something shameful or even worse. This is where I think some understanding of the Corinthian context might — and I emphasize might — be helpful. Remember that Corinth was the home of the Temple of Aphrodite with its thousand or so priestess/prostitutes. I think that Paul is truly concerned that no equivalence or similarity be drawn between that pagan temple and the church, between priestess/prostitutes and righteous Christian women. To flaunt marital cultural norms by refusing to wear the veil and by insisting on leading in worship, might be to invite confusion with pagan worship and immorality. So, married women, keep the veil on. Now, that being said, let’s hear Paul:

2 Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. 3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, 5 but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven (1 Cor 11:2-5).

Notice what the last verse assumes: that the wife is praying or prophesying; and I think the context indicates that this is being done not privately, but in a church setting. So, whatever St. Paul means later when discussing women being silent in church, it cannot be a total ban on women’s participation in a speaking role in worship; praying and prophesying are allowed. So, let’s tackle the matter of women speaking in church.

There is no consensus on this issue, and it is a divisive one. All of those approaching the text honestly and in good faith are trying to be obedient to the authority of Jesus as exercised through Scripture — through the whole of Scripture — but we simply don’t agree on what that entails. We can’t do a deep dive on this matter because we do not have time; volumes have been written on it and, if you are interested you can seek those out. I am going to offer one opinion — it is the one that commends itself to me — that makes sense in light of the Corinthian context and content. But it is only an opinion; you must prayerfully and studiously grapple with the text yourself.

If we look at the whole of chapter 14 where St. Paul is addressing corporate worship, the underlying theme is order. When speaking of the exercise of spiritual gifts in worship — particularly speaking in tongues and prophecy — Paul writes, “For our God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Cor 14:33a).

Immediately after these words Paul gives the instruction about women being silent in church:

33b As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. 35 If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church (1 Cor 14:33b-35).

And then Paul closes this section with these words:

39 So, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. 40 But all things should be done decently and in order (1 Cor 14:39-40).

So, all of this discussion about women is a very small part of a larger discussion on orderly church worship and restraints that must be placed upon the unbridled exercise of spiritual gifts to ensure that order. It seems to me — and please understand that I am expressing an opinion for you to consider and evaluate critically — it seems to me likely that women were speaking out in the Corinthian church, and perhaps in others, too, in a way that was disruptive to orderly worship. There are many possibilities. Perhaps, emboldened by their newly found freedom in Christ and with one eye toward the female priestesses of Aphrodite just up the hill, they sought to usurp the authority of the appointed male leadership of the church. Or perhaps they were just using the gathering time to socialize with one another and were getting too noisy. Perhaps, as Paul seems to imply, they were interrupting the worship to ask questions that were better dealt with at home. But, whatever the details, orderly worship was being disrupted and their behavior needed restraint just as speaking in tongues and prophesying needed restraint. Better to be silent — to be quiet — than to disrupt worship.

People have spent academic careers studying this topic; I have not, so I am certainly no expert on it. This is where I stand at the moment, a fairly middle of the road position that tries to be faithful to all that we know about Scripture and the tradition of the Church.

Holy Eucharist: The Supper of the Lord
For us as Anglicans — and it is true also for Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians — the Eucharist is the central act of worship on the Lord’s Day. We do many other things, but in some sense they lead to and flow from the Eucharist which the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324). Apparently, the Eucharist was prominent in the worship of the Corinthian Church, too. But, as in many other aspects of their life together, it was a mess. To this chaos, Paul sought to bring order.

From what we know about early Church practice, the Eucharist was the concluding rite of a full meal, the agape (love feast). All members would gather — from across socio-economic strata — and would pitch in what they had to share. For some — think widows, slaves, and the poor — this would be particularly important; it might be the one truly good meal of the week. And for all, it should have been a moment of communal unity in Christ. But, it had become divisive in Corinth. Food was not being shared equally. Some feasted and even got drunk while others arrived later to an empty table. In this way, the rich were being gluttonous and the poor were being humiliated. If you think that you can celebrate the Eucharist at the end of such a divisive meal, you need to think again, Paul writes. To approach the body and blood of the Lord having mistreated his visible body — your brothers and sisters — is to approach the table in an unworthy manner, to profane it, and to eat and drink judgment, not forgiveness. In fact, doing so has produced illness and even death among those guilty of this abuse. Whether Paul is talking physical illness and death, I do not know, but certainly he is speaking in a spiritual sense. To abuse the Eucharist is to grow weak and perhaps even to die spiritually. This is something to be taken with the utmost seriousness.

So, Paul says, if you are famished, eat and drink at home so that you may rightly observe the Lord’s Supper when you come together. And examine yourself before you come to the Eucharist. This is the reason we have confession and the passing of the peace before the Eucharist; it is a time for self-examination and corporate confession and a time to make peace with brothers and sisters, as necessary, so that we may partake of Communion in a worthy manner. Just an important point of grammar and theology here. I have known people to abstain from Communion because they felt unworthy of it. That is a damaging misreading of the text. We are not worthy. We even say that in our Prayer of Humble Access: “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.” But, worthiness is not what is required; a worthy manner is required. That worthy manner is characterized by humble self-examination and confession. With that, we come worthily to the Table of the Lord.

It is in 1 Corinthians that we receive from St. Paul Jesus’ words of Institution which form the heart of our Eucharistic prayer:

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor 11:23-26).

Now, a final word about the Eucharist, a word that hearkens back to St. Paul’s discussion of meat offered to idols. Remember that he said worship offered to idols — eating and drinking from a pagan altar — made one a participant, brought one into fellowship with, the demons that stood behind the idols. The same is true at the altar of the Lord. To rightly eat and drink at the altar/table of the Lord is to have fellowship with Christ and to be a participant of the divine nature. This is the essence of a Sacrament, and why the Eucharist is one of the two, chief Sacraments of the Church: something spiritual happens, some spiritual grace is received through the outward actions of eating bread and wine which have become for us the Body and Blood of Christ. If we fail to do so, or if we do so in an unworthy manner, we are spiritually weakened. But, if we do so rightly, we receive grace and all the benefits of Christ’s passion and death.

Love: The Remedy for all that Ails You

Last week and this week we have spoken of the host of problems that plagued the Corinthian Church: divisions/partisanship; sexual immorality, including incest and prostitution; misunderstanding of marriage; eating meat offered to idols and idol worship; gender issues including head coverings and the role of women in public worship; chaotic worship; abuse of the agape meal and the Lord’s Supper. While St. Paul has dealt with each of these symptoms of spiritual illness separately, there is a common, underlying disease. In 1 Corinthians 13 he prescribes the cure for all these ills — for the root cause of all the symptoms: love. We often read this chapter at weddings, but the context has nothing to do with romantic love. It is about Christian love that prefers the other to the self. It is about committed, self-sacrificial love. It is about the love of Christ made manifest in the lives of his followers. If the Corinthians learn to love in this way, that alone is enough to solve their myriad problems.

I’m simply going to read the chapter without comment. Hear it in light of all that we have discussed about the messiness of the Corinthian Church, and think how it might prevent or solve any problems we encounter here or any problems we might encounter here.

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known (1 Cor 13).

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Resurrection

There is one last topic to mention, and it is in some ways the most important; it is, in some ways, St. Paul’s summary of the Gospel:

15 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve (1 Cor 15:1-5).

Properly speaking, the Gospel is not about what we must be do to be saved. The Gospel is the proclamation of the Good News of what God has done in Christ to save us: the crucifixion of the Son of God for our sins in accordance with the Scripture, his burial and his resurrection on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. The Gospel is the proclamation of the great mystery of faith:

Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

St. Paul insists on the bodily resurrection of the Lord; no lesser view of it will do. He insists that the resurrection is historical fact; Jesus appeared alive again after his crucifixion to Peter and the Twelve, to five hundred people at one time, to James the Just and a host of disciples, and finally to Paul himself. And that has implications for all of us:

20 [But] in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Cor 15:20-260.

That is the basis for our hope, for our lives.

Let’s close this lesson with Paul’s closing words in his discussion of the resurrection.

58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (1 Cor 15:58).

Amen.

During a lengthy break on our recent diocesan clergy retreat, a fellow priest led me and one of our parish deacons on a pilgrimage to Cullman, Alabama. As a Tennessee native and lifelong resident, I had no idea that anything in Alabama could be described as good, true, and beautiful — much less holy — but I now find myself forced to repent.

Our pilgrimage began at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Roman Catholic Cathedral in downtown Cullman, a church that began as a windowless log cabin structure in the last quarter of the 19th century and has since grown into a beautiful and imposing structure with twin steeples marking the town skyline.

From there we drove a matter of minutes to the St. Bernard Abbey, a community of Benedictine monks originating from Metten Abbey in Germany. It took awhile for the monks to make their way to Cullman; Metten Abbey was established circa 700 A.D. and St. Bernard Abbey in 1891. The monks operate the St. Bernard Preparatory School whose campus surrounds the abbey. The abbey church is, from the outside, an example of the 1960s brutalist school of architecture — only slightly sanctified — functional and ugly. But inside? It is a breathtakingly beautiful and holy space. Even empty, holy silence and prayer are palpably present. For me, its power and beauty rivals that of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia — and that is saying something.

But, it was the last site of the day that affected me most profoundly: Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in nearby Hanceville, AL. Established by Mother Angelica — of blessed memory — the founder of the Roman Catholic media empire EWTN, the monastery is home to the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, a cloistered Franciscan sisterhood.

A stone quad is anchored on one side by the church, the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, and on the other by the 13th century style Castle of San Miguel — yes, a castle — housing the obligatory, but excellent, gift shop.

The church itself is traditional and “ancient” though it is only a few decades old. I lament that I have no pictures of the interior; those photos are not allowed. But to enter the door is to leave one world and to journey into another. I was reminded of the tale of the conversion of Kyiv Rus to Orthodoxy. Grand Prince Volodymyr sent ambassadors around the world to “find” a faith that would bind his people together. When a group returned from Constantinople, they reported:

Then we went to Greece [Constantinople], and the Greeks (including the Emperor himself) led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is not such splendour or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty (Russian Primary Chronicle).

Nor will I forget the beauty of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. It was a classic example of Roman Catholic aesthetic: overdone holy exuberance with gold in abundance — everywhere there was gold — candles and statues of saints and angels, ornate decoration on every surface, marble and inlay, the singing of the cloistered sisters. I wondered at the cost of such a structure; I cannot begin to imagine the multi-million dollar price tag. And yet, all the stone, all the gold, all the ornamentation, all that costly beauty, was there in service of the only truly precious thing in the church: a small circle of bread, a consecrated Eucharistic host elevated several feet above the altar in a gold monstrance ensconced in an ornate golden tabernacle. Everything there, including the sisters themselves, is present for one reason only: to facilitate the adoration of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Sacrament. Everything there matters only insofar as it leads people to bow the knee in worship of Jesus as he is present in the bread.

Now I know this presents a challenge to classical Anglican theology which rejects transubstantiation and the Eucharist Adoration that flows from it. It is all there in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion:

XXVIII. OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.

The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped (BCP 2019, p. 783, excerpts).

It is not my purpose to debate Eucharistic theology here nor to re-litigate 16th and 17th century disputations. Some Anglicans of my acquaintance would have felt uncomfortable and possibly offended in the Shrine; I did not. My heart was strangely warmed and my spirit was lifted up to the Lord, not by the Eucharist theology on display but by the Eucharist piety on display. Would that all Christians, would that all Anglicans, would so love and hunger for the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist that they would queue up at the church doors every time the Eucharist was offered, longing to enter and kneel at the altar to hear the priest say, “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you in everlasting life,” knowing that the consecrated host given them is the most precious of gifts upon earth, the bread of heaven in their hands. Would that my heart was so filled at every Eucharist. Piety and not theology is the issue here, devotion and not disputation.

I do not remember how the conversation in my calculus class decades ago turned to “last meals.” The topic does not really follow from the first fundamental theorem of calculus, but, well life happens in the classroom and students ask intriguing questions. Several students expressed their preferences and then the question came to me. What would I choose for my last meal? I said, “a small piece of bread and a sip of wine.” Some of them understood and smiled. It is still my answer.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Fools and Warning Labels
Epiphany 4
(Micah 6:1-8, Ps 37:1-11, 1 Cor 1:18-31, Matt 5:1-12)

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

H. L. Mencken wrote for the Baltimore newspapers “The Sun” and “The Evening Sun.” His column of 18 September 1926 expressed a sentiment much copied and oft quoted — in one form or another — in the years since. He wrote:

No one in this world, as far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

I do not know about losing money, by I do know a thing or two about statistics. It is a statistical fact that half of the people in the world are of below average intelligence and it is equally true, from my experience, that more than half typically act like it, myself certainly included. We are comically, and sometimes tragically, foolish, the lot of us — some pretty much all the time and all at least some of the time. Frankly, most of us are just one bad decision away from making the evening news.

If you have your doubts about this, just consider these actual warning labels on real products, and remember that such labels are put there for a reason, often a reason born of painful experience.

On a hair dryer: Caution! Do not use while sleeping.

On an iron-on shirt decal: Caution! (You see where this is going, right?) Do not iron while wearing shirt.

On a package of fire place logs: Caution! Risk of fire.

On a fish hook: Caution! Harmful if swallowed. (It is good that fish can’t read.)

On a can of pepper spray: Warning! May irritate eyes.

On an electric hand drill: Caution! This product not intended for use as a dental drill. (So much for do it yourself, at home root canals, which I’ll bet you can find instructional videos for on YouTube.)

On a baby stroller: Caution! Remove child before folding. (It is so much easier to fold the child when it is out of the stroller.)

Convinced yet?

Of course, there are some products with hidden risks and dangers which really must be explicitly stated; think of the side effects of medications, which even the most intelligent among us could not be expected to know. Those warning labels are necessary to protect the foolish and the wise.

The foolish and the wise: which category do Christians fall in: foolish or wise? Well, we proudly fly the foolish flag; we are holy fools for Christ, all of us. I don’t mean to be insulting, but let’s just look at some of the foolish things we must believe to be a Christian.

A human baby was born of a virgin. Now, we’re pretty sex-savvy. Parthenogenesis — virgin birth — does not occur naturally in mammals. So a human virgin birth? Foolish.

That baby, though fully human, was also fully God. And not just any god, but the God by whom, through whom, and for whom all things were created; the God who called a people — the Jews, of all people — through whom he would rescue a world clearly gone to the dogs. A God-man? One special people? Rescue? Foolish.

This baby, when grown, ran afoul of the authorities for his preaching and rabble rousing; he got himself arrested, sentenced to death, and executed on a Roman cross. And he seemed to think — certainly his followers said later — that by his crucifixion he redeemed and renewed all things: defeated death, atoned for sin, delivered man from slavery to fallen powers. But, just look around. Things seem pretty much as they always have. To assume otherwise, to assume his death accomplished those claims, is, well it’s just foolish.

And then this one: three days after he was as good and dead as a door nail, this man rose again, claimed all authority in heaven and on earth, gave power to his disciples, promised to return, and ascended into heaven where he has been reigning ever since at the right hand of his Father. But dead men don’t rise up; there is no only-used-once resale coffin market on eBay. I could continue, but it’s all right there in the Apostles’ Creed, one foolish claim after another.

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 20).

All of this has been thoroughly debunked by philosophy, science, history, sociology and many other -isms, -ologies, -osophies and, well, just plain common sense. And yet the foolishness persists. This — all of it — is what Christians are foolish enough to believe, what we have to be foolish enough to believe.

Yes, we Christians are foolish. But don’t take it from me. Here’s St. Paul:

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God (1 Cor 1:26-29).

St. Paul says the situation is really worse than I let on. Not only are we foolish — of course, we are — but also weak, lowly, despised — nothing at all to boast of except that, for reasons known only to himself, God loves us and has chosen us. St. Paul assures us that there is Godly method to this apparent madness, and even Godly wisdom amidst this very real human foolishness. But, again, only a fool would believe that.

And that brings me round again to warning labels. Foolish people need warning labels for their own protection and often for the protection of others. And this is where I think the Church sometimes lets us down with a hard bump. The very things that are the most dangerous are the very things that the Church fails to label as hazardous. Take baptism, for example, which is certainly as dangerous as drowning or waterboarding; in every baptism someone dies.

A fine young man, Chase, will be baptized here today. I know he has been well prepared for this moment through proper catechesis; Dcn Michelle has led him faithfully through the ACNA catechism, To Be A Christian, and has answered all his questions clearly and thoroughly, I am sure. But, frankly — and I say this with great love and respect — Dcn Michelle is just one fool preparing another fool to do a very foolish thing in the presence of a whole assembly of fools. I will wager — you can apparently bet on anything now days — that no one has ever asked Chase whether he’s sure he really wants to do this, whether he really knows what he’s getting himself into, and, all in all, whether he wouldn’t really like a little more time to think this whole thing over. The Church will ask him these questions in a bit, but, by then the die is cast; it’s almost too late to back out. Baptism needs a warning label and the Church doesn’t put one on it, at least not prominently. So, let me give some of the needed cautions.

The Rite of Baptism begins with renunciations. The candidate will face away from the altar, looking out into the spiritual darkness from which he comes and from which he is escaping, and he will tell the world, the flesh, and the devil to “go to hell” where they belong, if you’ll pardon my language. I don’t use it flippantly but quite intentionally. These powers, the very powers of hell, have had control over him; these powers have enslaved him until today when he rises up and says, “No more! I renounce you!” And he can bet — we can all be sure — that this act of holy rebellion will not go unnoticed or unchallenged. The world presents us no opposition as long as we are marching in step with it. But turn around and head the other way and you will find yourself surrounded and blocked at every turn, a spiritual pedestrian going the wrong way on a very crowded one way sidewalk. You have to fight your way through.

The flesh is not an issue as long as you pamper it — pamper yourself — and indulge your passions. But just try saying “no” to a few things — no to sex or power or money or honor or just to selfishly insisting on having your own way — and you’ll see just how strong the pull of the flesh really is. And the devil? You’re picking a fight there with a being far more ancient, far more cunning, far more powerful than you can begin to imagine. If you think standing up to the high school bully was hard and risky and, well, maybe foolish, you’ve got no idea what the devil is capable of. But, at least the Church offers you a weapon: a smear of oil and a prayer:

Almighty God deliver you from the powers of darkness and evil, and lead you into the light and obedience of the kingdom of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 164).

And, do you want to know the truly foolish thing? The Church believes that this oil blessed by our Bishop, a successor of the Apostles, has real power, that this prayer actually accomplishes by the grace of our God exactly what it says — deliverance from the powers of darkness and evil. Sheer foolishness, unless, just perhaps it’s true. We fools believe it’s true. We fools know it to be true.

These renunciations are just the beginning. Having made them, the baptismal candidate then turns toward the light of the Church and the Altar and makes vows to turn to Jesus Christ and to confess him as Lord and Savior, to receive the Christian Faith as revealed in the Old and New Testaments, and — here’s the kicker — to obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments and to walk in them all the days of his life (see BCP 2019, pp. 164-165).

The foolishness here is obvious, isn’t it? In a culture that values and elevates personal autonomy above all else, to confess that one has a Lord, to choose subservience to another is even worse than foolishness; it is almost a form of cultural blasphemy. And to receive the Old and New Testaments as revealed truth? Those old stories, those Semitic myths — truth? Only a fool could believe that. But it is the last vow that is perhaps the most foolish, the most in need of a warning label: the vow to obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments and to walk in them all the days of one’s life. Does one just coming to baptism have any idea what this vow entails? Do any of us?

Let’s be clear. This vow isn’t one-and-done. I’ve said the right things, I’ve been baptized, so I’m good to go. Sorry, but no. This vow isn’t a matter of personal piety: of going to church once a week and perhaps even staying for Spiritual Formation once in awhile; of praying the right prayers and knowing when to stand, kneel, and cross yourself; of giving confession a try. Sorry, but no. Let’s be clear on this because the prophet Micah was clear on it and spoke clearly the word of God on it:

6 “With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?

7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

8 He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:6-8)?

So, what does it mean to obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments and to walk in them all the days of one’s life? It means to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. And here’s the warning label for all those foolish enough to vow to justice and kindness and humility before God: it is difficult and costly and you will not survive it intact and unchanged, if you survive it at all. Christian history, the Church calendar, our entire Christian consciousness is replete with martyrs, with those who died while doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly with God, with those who died for doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly with God. Why are these practices so dangerous?

Justice is more than keeping the letter of the Law. Justice is the act of setting to rights what has gone wrong — through the power of the Holy Spirit and the response of human agency — what has gone wrong first in oneself and then in the world. The passions that rage inside you and the passions that undergird the powers of this present darkness — political powers, economic powers, military powers, all the powers of darkness — these do not want the world to be put to rights, they do not want the proud scattered in the imaginations of their hearts or the mighty brought down from their thrones or the humble and meek to be exalted or the rich to be sent empty away while the hungry are filled with good things (see the Magnificat, BCP 2019, p. 45). And the powers will strike back. They struck back at Jesus. Justice is dangerous business.

And kindness? It is more than the occasional good deed. It is a life committed to mercy, to loving one’s neighbor as oneself, to forgiving when wounded, to laying down one’s life for a friend and even, perhaps, for an enemy: for Roman occupiers, for a self-serving High Priest, for a brutal and cowardly regional governor, for a Republican, for a Democrat, for an illegal immigrant, for an ICE agent, for all the image bearers of God, which means for all of us. Kindness, mercy, look exactly like Jesus who prayed for his Father to forgive those who were nailing him to the cross even while they were nailing him to the cross. Kindness is dangerous business.

To walk humbly with God is to answer the same call Jesus gave to his Apostles: Come, follow me. Come, leave behind family and friends, the comforts of home, the security of a career and bank account, the hard earned reputation, and, just maybe, life itself. And for what? For the great adventure. For walking humbly with God. With God. Just be warned. Humility is dangerous business.

Now, a word from Jesus. Imagine you are filling out a job application or perhaps sitting for an interview and the questions are posed: Why should we hire you? What do you “bring to the table?” With a pause, a deep breath, and a silent prayer you respond:

I am poor in spirit. Apart from God’s grace there is no health in me.

I am in mourning for the brokenness of the world and for my own complicity in it.

I take my place with the meek and lowly of the world. I have no power or prestige.

I am hungry and thirsty, not for wealth or pleasure or power or honor but for holiness and for things to be made right.

I know the world’s great need for mercy, and I know where, I know in whom, it is to be found.

I am not yet pure in heart, but I long to be, for in the pure heart, God may be seen.

I believe in and strive for peace — real peace — not just the strategic cessation of hostilities until advantage can be regained, but the peace that blesses my enemies.

Because of all this, I know what it is like to be persecuted and reviled, to be falsely maligned and I know, on my best days, how to be glad and rejoice in that persecution.

By God’s grace, that is what I bring to the table. Actually, it is what I pray to receive at the Table.

So much foolishness. Who would hire such a person? For what work is such a person fit? Well, Jesus would “hire” such a one; that person is fit for work in the Kingdom of God.

We Christians believe all of this foolishness: mostly we do, sometimes we even act as if we do. So, in spite of the labels that might warn us off, we nevertheless come to the water of baptism, come to the Altar for bread and wine — for the Body and Blood of Christ — come to the fellowship of the Church, come to Christ himself gladly as holy fools, because we know that St. Paul was right when he said:

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor 1:20-25).

And all we fools say, “Amen.”

Albert Einstein was well known for his use of the gedankenexperiment, an imaginative exploration of a scenario beyond his direct experience — a scientific game of “what if.” What if I could ride along on a beam of light? was a childhood question that never left him and that prompted an adult gedankenexperiment that led finally to his development of the general theory of relativity.

I have been grappling with a spiritual gedankenexperiment of my own for the past few days. What if I were the rector of an ACNA parish in Minneapolis, a parish that included law enforcement agents and immigrants, Republicans and Democrats, and a host of people struggling to be faithful to Jesus in the midst of a tense, difficult, and deadly situation? What pastoral counsel would I give them?

This is strictly hypothetical, a true gedankenexperiment. First, I doubt that such a parish exists. I do not know that the spirit of Antioch is alive and well in American churches: Jew and gentile, slave and free, rich and poor all made one by Jesus and feasting at the same Table. It seems to me that we are more nearly like the churches in Galatia or in Corinth. Second, I am not a rector, and I cannot imagine the stress of that calling. Third, I do not live in Minneapolis, so I have no primary source material with which to frame my answers, only the secondary and highly biased reports of media, political pundits, and the various administration spokespeople at both the city, state, and national levels. All these difficulties notwithstanding, what might I say to the parish?

It would be important to avoid my own biases by grounding my counsel firmly in Scripture and the Tradition. I might start here:

1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed (Rom 13:1-7, ESV throughout).

God is not the author of chaos, but of order; thus anarchy — the open disobedience to, defiance of, and interference with the exercise of just law — is simply not an option for Christians. If an officer — or an ICE agent — is properly executing a legal mandate, no Christian citizen should interfere with that officer or hamper him/her in the exercise of his/her duty.

But, I would lay alongside that text another one from St. Paul.

1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

5 Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, 6 not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, 7 rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, 8 knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. 9 Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him (Eph 6:1-9).

Though this is couched in terms of fathers/children and masters/bondservants (slaves), the greater dynamic at play is authority/power and subservience/weakness. Those, like children or bondservants, who are under the care and authority of others — parents and masters — should honor those in authority. But — and this is essential — the responsibilities are not unidirectional. The ones in authority must exercise Godly discipline, must not provoke those under them to anger, must act in accordance with the will of God, and must not threaten. So, Christian officers of the law, while exercising valid enforcement measures, must do so in a Godly manner, without provocation, without threatening. In modern parlance, an officer must attempt to de-escalate tense situations and resort to force only as an unavoidable last resort and to the least effective extent.

I would add to these texts the image of a righteous king from the Psalms.

1 Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to the royal son!

2 May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice!

3 Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness!

4 May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the children of the needy,
and crush the oppressor!

12 For he delivers the needy when he calls,
the poor and him who has no helper.

13 He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.

14 From oppression and violence he redeems their life,
and precious is their blood in his sight (Ps 72:1-4, 12-14).

Every Christian politician at every level is accountable to this: justice and mercy and deliverance for the poor, the weak, the needy. I might also add this Psalm, though I could as easily appeal to the Torah (see Deut 10:17-19, for example).

5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,

6 who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;

7 who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;

8 the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.

9 The Lord watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin (Ps 146:5-9).

God watches over the sojourners and expects those who govern in his name to do the same. Vying for political advantage at the expense of the governed is “the way of the wicked” which the Lord will bring to ruin.

Above all — and to all my parishioners — I would point to the words of Jesus.

28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mk 12:28-31).

Every Christian, regardless of civic role or social conviction, is accountable to God for love of neighbor. And, please, no quibbling over who is your neighbor. Jesus disallowed that question. The immigrant — with our without papers — the citizen, the protestor, the law enforcement officer, the politician, the pundit — yes, all neighbors. What is the standard of love? Let’s start here, again with Jesus: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 7:12).

Perhaps I would add one more text, if there were anyone left in the pews to hear it. It is long, but must be read in full.

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt 25:31-46).

Reading this, some of the Christians in my hypothetical parish might be compelled to work behind the scenes to provide assistance to those immigrants who are, for example, afraid to leave their houses to go work or to school or to the grocery store. This seems fully in keeping with the Gospel: aid to the least of the brothers of Christ — to Christ himself in their person — while still honoring the rightful execution of justice by the authorities. More directly, it seems consonant with the Gospel for a Christian to feed and clothe and visit an immigrant, legal or illegal, and to stand aside when a law enforcement agent executes a legal arrest warrant. It is also consonant with the Gospel — mandatory, in fact — for the agent to treat the immigrant with the love he himself would desire.

This is the way of the cross: hard, costly. Some concerned citizens with strong social convictions might have to change their public behavior with respect to law enforcement officials, might have to stand down and stop the harassment of those officials who are performing their sworn duty in accordance with law and with love. Some officers and agents might have to stand down from harsh enforcement tactics that provoke anger and present threats, that fail to treat the other as they wish to be treated. Some politicians might have to turn toward the way of righteousness and justice and mercy, and repent of currying the favor of their bases and of stoking division instead of promoting healing. Some media personalities and pundits might have to recommit to truth, or at least to truth-seeking, and forsware the cheap, quick, “gotcha” soundbites. This is the way of the cross: hard, costly.

In this gedankenexperiment, this is what I might say to my hypothetical parish. It is good that I am not a rector.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Feast of St. Agnes, Virgin Martyr
(Song of Songs 2:10-13, Psalm 45, 2 Cor 6:16-18, Matt 18:1-6)

Collect
Almighty and everliving God, who chose what is weak in the world to confound the strong: mercifully grant that we, who celebrate the heavenly birthday of your Martyr Saint Agnes, may follow her constancy in the faith; through Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This is the feast day of the Virgin Martyr St. Agnes of Rome, the anniversary of the day on which she was martyred. That statement alone shows how counterintuitive our faith is, if we just recognize that and practice it. A feast on the anniversary of someone’s execution seems a bit odd, doesn’t it? I don’t throw a party each year on the date of my mother’s or father’s death, and people might think it, and me, strange if I did. But each year when 21 January rolls around, the Church has a feast in remembrance of St. Agnes. Of course, the feast is not a party, but the feast of the Eucharist; we feast on the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ for whom Agnes — or any of the other martyrs — was willing to die. That is why feasts and martyrs belong together, even though the pairing initially sounds strange.

Today I will tell you the story of St. Agnes in part because it has become like a pebble in my shoe: not something that will cripple me, but an irritant, something uncomfortable. If I can’t get it out, at least I can put that same pebble in your shoes so that we can all limp along together.

Agnes was born in 291, give or take a year, into a wealthy and prominent Roman family. They were Christians and they raised Agnes in the faith, even though it was a difficult and dangerous time to be Christian. Diocletian was the Roman emperor, and his persecution of Christians was the last official one in the empire and the bloodiest of them all. It seemed to escalate around 303 and lasted through 312. Agnes was martyred near the beginning of this purge of Christians, 21 January 304. If you do the math, you will see that Agnes was twelve or thirteen years old when she was executed under the edict of Diocletian. What led to that?

From a young age — remember Agnes died when she was but 12 or 13 — she had determined to devote herself entirely to Jesus, body and soul. She had begun to think of and speak of Jesus as her spouse and was determined to have none other — determined to refuse marriage and to remain a consecrated virgin. That was hardly a viable option for a young girl in her situation; I can’t think of her as a young woman even though the legal minimum age for a Roman female to marry was twelve — fourteen for boys. Marriage had little to do with love or romance and everything to do with social structure: with family and political alliances, with the consolidation of wealth, with producing legitimate heirs. For Agnes, there were many would-be suitors of rank, but she declined them all citing her devotion to Christ. Likely with the attitude of “if I can’t have her nobody will” some of the spurned young men reported Agnes to the authorities as a Christian. One in particular — Procop — brought Agnes before his father, the local governor. The governor gave Agnes the opportunity to deny Christ and encouraged her to do so, but she remained steadfast. She was then taken before the prefect Simpronius who sentenced her to a punishment particularly designed to make her recant; I’ll spare you the details. This is the part of the account where the miracle stories of God’s protection for her begin: glowing radiance, the blinding of enemies, the death of Simpronius’s son and his resurrection following Agnes’s prayer for him. Make of all that what you will. Her story stands with our without the miracles.

Eventually, when these attempted tortures proved ineffective, Agnes was condemned to death. She was to be burned at the stake but, as the story goes in different versions, either the fire would not kindle or else the flames parted around her. Finally, a soldier pierced her throat with a sword and she died: 21 January 304. A few days later, Agnes’s foster sister Emerentiana was found praying at her tomb. After refusing to leave and after reprimanding the officials for executing Agnes, Emerentiana was stoned to death, another martyr in the family story.

I find this tale troublesome on many levels. It stirs uncomfortable questions, not least this one: What could a twelve or thirteen year old girl possibly do that could be seen as so threatening and disruptive to society that the only proper course of action was to coerce her by torture to relent and when that didn’t work, to publicly and brutally execute her? Now, I know that this still goes on; Malala Yousafzai is a modern day example, as are girls around the world who refuse to wear a hijab or who pursue education or who flaunt some other religio-social convention and who pay a high price for doing so. But the question remains. Why is the behavior of a child so threatening?

When I first started teaching over three decades ago, an administrator told me to “catch” a student misbehaving near the beginning of the school year and to really come down hard on that student, to make a harsh example of him/her as a deterrent to other student misbehavior. I never did that and I doubt it would be advised today. But the notion of deterrence is a possible reason for the brutal response to Agnes. One “defiant” young girl is no problem. But what if she serves as an example for others? Soon there are two of them, then four, eight, sixteen; it could get out of hand quickly and marriage and gender roles — pillars of the society — could come toppling down. You dare not let questioning of and opposition to the social norms go unchecked. As Deputy Barney Fife used to say to Sheriff Andy Taylor, “Nip it, Anj. Nip it in the bud.”

I can think of another reason for the city’s response to Agnes, and this one is both religious and political. We in the United States are unusual in our conviction that church and state must be — can be — kept separate. That notion would have been nonsensical in fourth century Rome or in most any other time in any other place. Religion permeated every aspect of life and social order. The gods were everywhere and involved in everything and always ready to take offense. To flaunt the social order then was to disrespect and disregard the gods. And with gods such as Rome had, that was not a good idea: plague, pestilence, famine, natural disasters, war — all these might result when the social mores are challenged, when the gods are ignored. Not only was Agnes a Christian — which meant she refused to worship the traditional gods — now she was refusing the social order that they had ordained. For the safety of the city, for the welfare of the entire populace, she must be brought into line or else eliminated.

I’m sure there are other sociological and psychological reasons for Agnes’s martyrdom, but these two are troublesome enough. They are troublesome not least because they challenge the Church in our culture, in our time.

What cultural norms are we challenging today that make us a perceived threat to the culture, so much a threat that the culture takes action against us? Surely, there are some norms that we Christians must challenge? Our culture isn’t so thoroughly Christian that we can say Amen! to everything it does or stands for? Unbridled capitalism makes the concentration of obscene wealth in the hands of the few not only possible but nearly inevitable. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and a few others have wealth exceeding the GDP of many nations in the world. Surely, the Church can’t give its blessing to an economy that concentrates wealth like that when many in our country struggle to afford basic necessities?

Unrestrained socialism — and its cousin communism — on the other hand makes the concentration of power and control in the hands of the few not only possible but necessary. This resulted in more mass deaths in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined. Amen to that? Hardly. One of our political parties wants to give women the choice to kill their babies. The other party wants to treat immigrants as sub-human and are willing to tear families apart to rid the country of the “wrong sort of people.” Are either of those acceptable to Christians?

Social media addicts and poisons our children. Are we going to hand them the newest iPhone? When, where, how, and about what do we, like Agnes, say no to the culture for the sake of our devotion to Christ and to the way of the Kingdom of God? That’s a pebble in my shoe.

And, as for the Roman gods, is our culture really thoroughly Christian or do we perhaps have pagan gods of our own — ancient ones repackaged for modern worship? Is our culture more ordered around Mars, the god of war and violence, than we like to admit? Listen to a recent comment by an influential Washington political insider:

“We live in a world in which, you can talk about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time” (Stephen Miller, interviewed on CNN by Jake Tapper).

That’s Mars’ talk; we are being called to bow at the altar of Mars. That ancient god is alive and well and thriving in America.

Aphrodite, the goddess of lust and sex? According to the Journal of Sex Research around 7% of U.S. adult internet users report addiction to pornography. Anecdotal evidence and the pervasiveness of pornography suggest to me a higher percentage. The United States is the top country for the viewing of pornography. The average age of first online exposure to pornography is eleven. Agnes was twelve when she gave her life for the sake of her purity. Our children begin viewing pornography one year younger. Aphrodite is alive and well and receiving our worship. When, where, how, and about what do we, like Agnes, say no to the culture for the sake of our devotion to Christ and to the way of the Kingdom of God? That’s a pebble in my shoe.

Do I need to say anything more about Mammon, the God of rapacious greed and obscene wealth? When, where, how, and about what do we, like Agnes, say no to the culture for the sake of our devotion to Christ and to the way of the Kingdom of God? That’s a pebble in my shoe.

One more question, this one perhaps the most troublesome of all.

Are we — is the Church — raising children who, at the tender age of twelve, are so devoted to the Lord Jesus that they would rather die than waver in their devotion to him? Are we — is the Church — raising a generation of potential martyrs? If not, why not? And maybe even more pointed, are we — their parents and grandparents — generations who would rather die than waver in our devotion? There’s the pebble again.

Well, those are my questions — some of them anyway — that are stirred up on this feast day. I would like to close with words by the Doctor of the Church Saint Ambrose (c. 339-4 April 397). This great theologian, Bishop of Milan, and mentor of St. Augustine, wrote this reflection on the martyrdom of Agnes. Note that he speaks of this day as Agnes’s birthday, as did our collect, meaning, of course, the day of her heavenly birth.

Today is the birthday of a virgin; let us imitate her purity. It is the birthday of a martyr; let us offer ourselves in sacrifice. It is the birthday of Saint Agnes, who is said to have suffered martyrdom at the age of twelve. The cruelty that did not spare her youth shows all the more clearly the power of faith in finding one so young to bear it witness.

There was little or no room in that small body for a wound. Though she could scarcely receive the blow, she could rise superior to it. Girls of her age cannot bear even their parents’ frowns and, pricked by a needle, weep as for a serious wound. Yet she shows no fear of the blood-stained hands of her executioners. She stands undaunted by heavy, clanking chains. She offers her whole body to be put to the sword by fierce soldiers. She is too young to know of death, yet is ready to face it. Dragged against her will to the altars, she stretches out her hands to the Lord in the midst of the flames, making the triumphant sign of Christ the victor on the altars of sacrilege. She puts her neck and hands in iron chains, but no chain can hold fast her tiny limbs.

A new kind of martyrdom! Too young to be punished, yet old enough for a martyr’s crown; unfitted for the contest, yet effortless in victory, she shows herself a master in valour despite the handicap of youth. As a bride she would not be hastening to join her husband with the same joy she shows as a virgin on her way to punishment, crowned not with flowers but with holiness of life, adorned not with braided hair but with Christ himself.

In the midst of tears, she sheds no tears herself. The crowds marvel at her recklessness in throwing away her life untasted, as if she had already lived life to the full. All are amazed that one not yet of legal age can give her testimony to God. So she succeeds in convincing others of her testimony about God, though her testimony in human affairs could not yet be accepted. What is beyond the power of nature, they argue, must come from its creator.

What menaces there were from the executioner, to frighten her; what promises made, to win her over; what influential people desired her in marriage! She answered: “To hope that any other will please me does wrong to my Spouse. I will be his who first chose me for himself. Executioner, why do you delay? If eyes that I do not want can desire this body, then let it perish.” She stood still, she prayed, she offered her neck.

You could see fear in the eyes of the executioner, as if he were the one condemned; his right hand trembled, his face grew pale as he saw the girl’s peril, while she had no fear for herself. One victim, but a twin martyrdom, to modesty and to religion; Agnes preserved her virginity, and gained a martyr’s crown (St. Ambrose, On Virgins).

Amen.