Lay preacher - Viv Whimster

Paul doesn't seem to be so popular these days and tends to get bad press. In Methodist circles, he is rarely even called 'Saint' Paul. (Actually, I don't think that would bother the man who called himself 'the least of all God's people'.) For centuries, nearly a quarter of the New Testament has passed as being written by Paul, but now many preachers avoid his writings as subject matter, and dismiss his theology. 

This morning I'd like to make a stand for Paul, because I feel this reputation is undeserved. I guess I have to acknowledge two reasons for my prejudice. 

The first reason does not have a very sound basis and is due to the subtle influence of black and white TV. In the 50's and 60's, the BBC produced a number of religious programmes. I remember watching the Easter story one year, dramatised in daily episodes leading up to Good Friday, in the home of our Jewish neighbours of all places. Later, when we had acquired our own TV set, a dramatised series on the early church was broadcast. Playing the character of Paul was the actor Patrick Troughton, who was one of the early Dr Who's. Influenced by this portrayal, I envisaged Paul as a congenial man, with deep eyes and a gentle smile - though perfectly capable of being strong and controversial; a converted Pharisee whose fanaticism became driven by the light and love of Jesus Christ. Somehow that image has stayed with me, although reason tells me that he must have looked very different from Patrick Troughton!

Maybe influenced by this mental picture, but also by the evangelical theology in which I grew up, I read 'the NT epistles', the letters attributed to Paul, which include Ephesians. At first, I struggled through them in the old-fashioned English of the AV, but later they sprang to life as I discovered J B Phillips' paraphrase. That is part of my reason for asking Maurice to read a 21st century paraphrase for this morning's passage. For me, these letters were transformed from stuffy writings to the human response of an early Christian pioneer, attempting to nurture groups of diverse people in this new faith. At the same time, Paul was working through for himself a theology that challenged the strict Jewish thinking and training of his earlier years.

So, that briefly explains my own view of Paul. Although brought up as a strict Jew, he had been born in Tarsus, well away from Jerusalem, the centre of Judaism. Paul was a Roman citizen by birth, which gave him a status that many worked a lifetime to buy. He understood Greek culture and life among Gentiles. He was ideally suited to the task of taking the gospel message beyond the tiny country of Israel in which Jesus had lived. 

I suspect that Paul's current unpopularity is not so much the man himself as the way the church has fossilised his theology. In fact, I think he would be deeply distressed by the way that over the years, Christians have set his ideas in stone and ignored his methods. Paul was acutely aware of the cultures in which he worked. He constantly tried to relate his growing understanding of who Jesus was with the thought patterns of those around him. Whether it was seeing the place of traditional Jewish practice in relation to faith in Christ, or presenting the gospel message in a Greek temple, or establishing guidelines for worship, Paul was grappling with it. Many of Paul's letters were in response to specific situations within these new churches, so we cannot expect to make them into systematic theology, with fully developed ideas and concepts. In fact, we find Paul's own ideas changing with time. He seems to let go of the idea of the Jewish people recognising Jesus as their Messiah and becoming an integral part of the church. Like other first century Christians, he also learnt to live with the fact that Jesus was not going to return in glory in the next year or two, as they had believed at first. Paul responded to the difficulties facing these Christian communities, interweaving his practical response to those situations with his understanding of who God is and what God has done through Jesus. He regularly got carried away and sometimes his sentences went on and on as he described the wonder of God's love. Then, in response, he worked out what it meant to live lives consistent with one's beliefs.

We are not alone if we do not find Paul's writings easy. Even the apostle Peter, way back in the first century, acknowledged that ' there are some difficult things in his letters'. The NT epistles were mostly written before the gospels. The earliest of Paul's letters were those to the church at Thessalonica, around 50 or 51 AD or CE (in the Common Era). Mark was probably the first gospel to be written, around 65 - 70, and Paul died in Rome, around the year 67. 

There continues to be debate over the authorship of Ephesians. Some scholars feel that the different words and expressions probably do not fit with those used by Paul in other letters that are believed to be genuinely his. It is also possible that Ephesians was written for a wider circulation than one single church, as it does not address any specific pastoral issues or refer to any particular individuals who would have been known to the writer. Look at the end of Romans or Philippians, for example, and you are immediately introduced to significant people who were part of those church congregations.

You might be wondering why Ephesians is even in our New Testament if we are neither sure that it was intended for the Christians at Ephesus nor written by Paul. It would have been one of many letters circulating among the early churches: some originals, some copies of them. There is little evidence of Paul's influence in the gospels. However, at some stage, a person or group (maybe the Historical Society or their convenor??) recognised the value of these writings, and collected them. They were accepted into the New Testament canon and have been part of our Holy Scriptures ever since.

As I said before, I don't think Paul would be impressed by the way Christians have stuck so religiously to his responses to a culture very different from ours. I find it hard to believe, for example, that the once- strict Jew who socialised with the uncircumcised and waived his kosher diet, would be insisting that women still wore hats and kept quiet in church. If Paul appeared today, I suspect that he would be at the forefront of inter-faith dialogue, and have an on-line discussion through a web-site. 

This is all far away from today's text from Ephesians. In all this, I have not referred to or commented on the content of what is written there. That is because these verses are still very relevant. They talk about our relationship with each other as Christians and how we live our lives. They contain a message that we can find in many parts of the Bible, from the beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures, through the gospels and woven through the letters of the NT:

"Just as children copy their parents, you must copy God. That means living a life of love, like Jesus."

It is as much of a challenge now as it has ever been. However, I for one, am grateful to Paul for the way he interacted with the situations and cultures of his day. Whether or not these words from Ephesians were originally his, he would be encouraging us to find ways of responding to God's love for us, in the way we live in compassionate and caring ways ourselves.