A Speculative, Imaginary, and Anachronistic Exchange with Paul the Apostle in Troas

What would Paul the Apostle say about this?

“So, what I am trying to help you understand is that there is no longer Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female. For all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

All who were gathered in the upstairs room had been quiet when Paul was speaking, but the silence became brittle and tense at the hearing of those words. A young man sitting against the back wall raised his hand, disturbing his brother, who was asleep and leaning against him. He whispered into his brother’s ear as he rose.

“Go sit on the window sill if you can’t stay awake. Get some air.” The young man rose to his feet as his brother grumbled and made his way to the open window.

“Paul, I don’t understand what that means.”

“And you are . . .”?

“My name’s Xander. Anyway, you say that we are one, but when I look around, even just here in this room, I see all kinds of different people. My friend Simon is Jewish, and I’m Greek. I’m also male, and my girlfriend, Junia, is female.” The young woman seated on the floor next to him looked up and smiled.

The young man continued. “Jason over there is a slave—it’s okay, Jase. Everyone knows, and we all love you.” Several in the crowd chuckled and nodded their heads. “And his owner, who isn’t here tonight, is a Christian too, but let’s face it, Paul, he’s the owner and Jason’s the slave. How does Christ Jesus make all that just go away?” He sat down. His girlfriend slipped her hand into his and leaned her head on his shoulder.

A man standing by the door at Paul’s right scratched his beard. “Is it like each of us is a different kind of ore, but Christ Jesus is the smelter who turns us into one new thing?”

Paul looked up at the ceiling and thought for several seconds. “Well, I might put it a different way. When the ores are removed from the smelting pot, there is indeed just one thing, yes? No matter how you look at it, you can’t see the various ores any longer that were combined to make what is new. Maybe this metaphor works better: Imagine we have all the components for making a fine stew.”

Young Simon looked at his father. “I wish he didn’t say ‘stew.’ I’m starving, Dad. When are we going to eat? It’s almost midnight.”

His father frowned. “Pay attention, Simon. Paul’s leaving tomorrow. We may not see him again. You can eat when we get home.”

Paul cleared his throat. “We have potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, onions, herbs and spices, even a bit of meat.”

“But not the kind that’s been sacrificed to idols, right?” The old man sitting in the middle of the room scowled at Paul.

“Different topic, Jonas. Stay with me here.” Paul spread his arms out in front of him as he imagined a table where all the ingredients lay. “Each of these things is unique in itself. A carrot is a carrot, an onion is an onion, and so on. But when we put them in a pot and let them simmer in broth, over time, something changes. Each ingredient is still observable and unique, but having simmered in a common broth, they have joined together to be a new thing, and the flavor of each one has influenced the whole without eliminating each ingredient’s distinctiveness.”

The apostle scanned the room and took note of a number of puzzled faces. “Look, let’s go back to what my young friend was saying. Sure, when you look around this room you see all the diversity and distinctiveness that is real and true. But you who are Jews, before you came to faith in Jesus, would you have counted any gentiles as your friends? And would a slave ever consider calling the owner ‘brother,’ except out of the love that God’s Spirit has put into our hearts? You see, ‘in Christ Jesus’ means something in real life, friends. It means that we don’t look at other people strictly from a human viewpoint any longer. We now see people as ones made in the image of God and beloved by him.”

The young woman sitting with Xander at the back of the room spoke softly. “But I still wish that God would break all the walls that keep us apart.”

“What do you mean?”

She stood and looked around tentatively. “I’m Junia, Mr. Paul. Well, there’s a big difference between the status of a man and the status of a woman. And even though Mr. Aristarchus—that’s Jason’s owner—is a kind man, he still has all the rights and Jason has none, at least not until Jason's debt is paid. Even when we’re together like this, those differences still exist.”

Paul smiled. “You have spoken well, my friend. Yes, all that you’ve said is true. But being one ‘in Christ Jesus’ isn’t magic. All of the things you described don’t just disappear as if God has erased them. But there is something very unique that happens ‘in Christ Jesus’ that reframes all of those statuses and relationships.”

He looked over at the young slave. “Let me use Jason’s situation as an example. What if his owner was not a brother in Christ? And what if Jason ran away but was caught and sent back? What would happen to him?”

Jason raised his hand. “I know, because it happened to my father. When he was captured and returned to his owner, he was whipped, tortured, and then branded. He only lived a few days after that. I was sold to cover my father’s debt. Thanks be to God that Mr. Aristarchus bought me.”

Paul shook his head and sighed. “I’m very sorry about your father, Jason. But you have spoken well.”

Jason wiped tears from his eyes. “Paul, what if I ran away from Mr. Aristarchus (not that I would), and came to you for help? How would being ‘in Christ Jesus’ make a difference?” He sat down. Some sitting near him patted him on the shoulders.

Paul looked around the room at the expectant faces. “This is a very important question, Jason. In that scenario, if you were to be captured by slave-hunters, they would take you back just to receive their reward. They would not care what happened to you. But because we are all ‘in Christ Jesus’ I would appeal to Mr. Aristarchus to see the situation, not as a slave and owner relationship, but as one that involves children of the living God, ones who stand on level ground at the foot of Jesus’ cross, a cross where there is room for all hands to be laid. I would counsel forgiveness and reconciliation, because . . .” He looked at the young woman who had spoken earlier. “Because, Junia, that is how God removes the walls of status and privilege and ethnicity that separate us in the world. He calls us into the reconciling work that he is doing in the world.”

Jason spoke again. “It’s amazing to think that somehow, in Christ Jesus, that my life is important. In this world, I have no rights at all, even though I am blessed to be with Mr. Aristarchus. But sitting here tonight with all of you—all of you who call me ‘brother’—I feel like my life is just as important as anyone else’s.”

Paul smiled again. “Yes, but let’s go back to the distinctiveness that remains even though we are one. Imagine once again that Mr. Aristarchus is not your owner, and we all learn that you are being mistreated and beaten by your master. We wouldn’t turn away because we’re all the same and we’re all important. We would start by recognizing that in the image of God that we share and in the love that God has poured out by his Spirit, that we all have value. But your suffering would bring all of our attention to you. It would be as if we have come together as one actual body—even the body of Christ!” He turned to a man sitting not too far from him, scribbling on a piece of scroll. “Tertius, make a note of that, would you?”

Tertius looked up from his work. “Which part?”

“The ‘body of Christ’ part. I want to remember that.” He turned back to the people in front of him. “If one part of that body were injured, the rest of the body would turn its attention to that part, and marshall all of its energy in order to bring about healing. The rest of the body wouldn’t say that it didn’t mean anything because all body parts have value, right?”

Heads nodded and people began to talk among themselves. The door opened and a woman stepped into the room.

“It’s late, and you are all welcome to stay here with our brother Paul as long as you like. But there’s no reason to die of hunger in the process. Take a break and come share food together. My daughters and I have it all prepared. Even some stew!”

“Thank you, Susanna, my dear sister.” Paul raised his hands in the air. “Come back after you’ve had your fill. I have more to say to you!”

The people made their way into the next room. Xander stood and helped Junia to her feet. “Paul never seems to run out of words. We’ll probably be here until dawn.” He surveyed the room, looking for his brother. His eyes fell on the empty window sill.

“Where’s Eutychus?”

I Belong

One of the first non-Jewish persons to become a follower of Jesus was a black man.

He had come from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel, even though he would have understood that there were certain realities about his life that would keep him from ever truly belonging to the people called by God to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. You can read his story in Acts chapter 8 in the Bible.

True, he was a foreigner and one whose dark skin color would make him stand out in a Jewish crowd in that time and place. Those realities, however, would not keep him from going through particular purity rites that would allow him to become a proselyte to Judaism. But there was one other unchangeable reality that would always keep him from belonging to this family of God.

He was a eunuch. And because of this “blemish” (see Leviticus 21), he would always be an outsider.

Most likely he was made that way as a child because his imposed destiny was to be a servant in the court of the Queen of Ethiopia. He would never know the joy of family and would have to accept the fact that he would always be an outsider to the religious life for which he longed.

But on his way home he met Philip, one of Jesus’ friends. The man had been reading from his own personal scroll of Isaiah, and the section he was curious about would be, in a modern Bible, Isaiah chapter 53. He and Philip talked about it, and the result was that the man put his faith in Jesus and was baptized. Then Philip took off and the Ethiopian man disappeared from the story of the Bible.

I’ve thought about this man a lot. Did he really see himself differently after this encounter? What did he do when he got back home? There are legends about him, but we really don’t know any more about him than what the story in Acts offers to us.

But we can speculate about what he did on his way home. It was a long trip back to Ethiopia, and it probably would have taken a month or so by chariot to complete the trip. What would he have done to occupy himself?

He would have kept on reading.

He would move through Isaiah chapter 53, then chapter 54, chapter 55, and then to 56. In my mind I imagine that he suddenly calls out for his entourage to stop so that he can read the text more carefully, maybe away from the road where he can sit by himself.

The words would jump off the surface of the scroll as he read:

Do not let the son of the foreigner
Who has joined himself to the Lord
Speak, saying,
“The Lord has utterly separated me from His people”;
Nor let the eunuch say,
“Here I am, a dry tree.”

For thus says the Lord:
“To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths,
And choose what pleases Me,
And hold fast My covenant,

Even to them I will give in My house
And within My walls a place and a name
Better than that of sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
That shall not be cut off.

I see the man rolling the scroll up and gazing off toward the far horizon. And he would say to himself,

“I belong to God. My life matters.”

Racism

I originally posted this almost three years ago. Perhaps it may speak to us today as well.

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I frequently speak at a variety of churches, but I'm not scheduled to do that this weekend. However, if I were, I would want to preach something like this:


Some of the earliest followers of Jesus were guilty of racism.

It wasn’t the ugly, violent, hate-filled, demonic brand that was demonstrated this week in Charlottesville. But it was still racism. It was the kind that said that some folks were in with God and others were out based on their ethnicity. The folks who were in were the people of Israel—faithful Jewish people. The folks who were out were the pagans of the world, commonly referred to as Gentiles or Greeks.

There was a kind of logic to this form of racism. Jesus was Jewish and so were his disciples. All of the drama surrounding Jesus took place in Israel, including the unleashing of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, impacting thousands of Jewish pilgrims.

Jesus even once said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

So, it was easy for the earliest Christians to embrace a form of racism that was grounded in their understanding of the ethnic nature of their faith.

It wasn’t that they didn’t care about the Gentiles in the world. After all, Jesus had commanded them to make disciples of all nations—an echo of God’s call to Israel’s first ancestor, Abram, a call for the people to bring blessing to all the families of the earth. But in order for those Gentiles to become Christians—the thinking went—they would have to conform to Jewish law and the ordinances related to dietary requirements, circumcision, and so on. Once that was properly done, they could join this new, emerging family of faith. They had to do this because Gentiles were considered to be unclean because they were not Jews but were instead part of the pagan world that stood far away from God. It was a categorical form of racism.

But then, one day, Peter—a chief leader in the Christian movement—had a bizarre vision of animals being lowered from the sky in a gigantic sheet. These weren’t just any kind of animals; they were the “unclean” kind that were not to be eaten by faithful Jews. And, yet, a voice from heaven ordered Peter to rise up, kill, and eat those animals. Peter was horrified and protested that he had never done such an awful thing in his life. The voice responded by telling him not to call profane what God had made clean. This happened three times and then disappeared.

Almost immediately afterward, some Gentile men knocked on Peter’s door and told him that their leader, a Roman centurion named Cornelius, had experienced a vision of his own and Peter had been in it. Cornelius sent his friends to find Peter and ask him to visit. Peter consented, still puzzling over this strange situation, and traveled with the men to Cornelius’s home.

When they arrived, the house was filled with Cornelius’s friends and family. It was a house full of Gentiles. It was a house full of unclean Gentiles. As Peter stood on the threshold of the house, he had to make a decision to either run for the hills or dive into a pool of uncleanness. He took the risk and stepped into the house.

Peter began to reflect out loud about how he was starting to realize that God’s acceptance of people was more broad and generous than he had ever imagined. And in short order the people were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to praise God. It was a phenomenon that had also happed to Peter and the other disciples. But it happened on this day to people who had never satisfied the requirement of conforming to the Jewish law.

When the other disciples heard what had happened, they challenged Peter’s actions, but then embraced his conclusion that this great gift of the Holy Spirit was not restricted to Jewish people.

This was, of course, a very positive change for these early leaders. But the change didn’t always translate to the everyday folks who were gathering in the Christian gatherings that were popping up in various places. There were still some who were saying that conformity to the Jewish law was a prerequisite for Gentiles to enter into the Christian faith; that Gentile ethnicity was a blockage to a life of following Jesus.

The apostle Paul had to address this issue in at least a couple of places. In the letter to the church in Rome, he showed that Jews and Gentiles both stood before God on equal ground. Ethnicity or religious legalism had nothing to do with faith in the God and Father of Jesus Christ. All people had the same problem when it came to sin. He summed up his argument quite succinctly when he said,

“For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

People, being human, find it easy to drop people into categories that too often are negative, resulting in suspicion, exclusion, and, as we’ve seen again recently, hatred and violence. Paul had to help the earliest Christians come to grips with an emerging reality called the church, a church that was often made up of a diverse population of faithful people. In that reality, they struggled to learn what it meant to be a people of oneness—oneness with God and with one another. So, Paul offered them this amazing statement:

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Now the people first hearing these words would probably have looked around the room and noticed that, indeed, there were still Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female. The unique identities of the people were not swallowed up into a cosmic melting pot. They remained who they were, but in Christ Jesus they were one. This oneness would not flatten out their differences, even minimizing the problems faced by some of them (after all, the life of the slave, for example, would be markedly different in its quality than for one who was free). There would still be cultural, economic, legal, and gender advantages and disadvantages that they would experience, but in Christ they would live in a new reality of oneness. There were no categories of in or out, clean or unclean. They were all in, made clean by God in and through Jesus Christ.

There are too many stories in our world that are like what we heard about in Charlottesville. Governmental leaders are either unwilling or unable to deal with things like this in a nation that is as fractured, divided, and angry as ours. Suspicion permeates our society as neighbors fear neighbors and acts of violence become the staple of the daily news.

In the second century after Jesus, two plagues ravaged the Roman Empire. A third of the population died from disease, which could have been small pox, measles, or any number of highly contagious diseases. Many who were not sick fled the cities. Sick people were sometimes cast into the street to die alone. But there was one group of people who stayed behind to care for the sick.

It was the Christians.

Their love of life and lack of the fear of death allowed them to stay and care for those who were suffering. Because of their work, some of the sick recovered. But in the process, some of the Christians contracted disease and died. Nevertheless, they stayed.

We are living in a society that is suffering and sick. Will we fail to call out what is real about this disease and just hope it will all go away? Or will we come together and seek God, asking for a fresh empowering by his Spirit, that we might demonstrate within our own shared life the oneness of Christ that is not limited by race or ethnicity or economics or political preferences? And might we be the ones to step into the midst of this disease that surrounds us, speaking and showing the wisdom and love of God that does not allow racism or self-proclaimed superiority to build idols that will crush the most vulnerable among us?

It is important to recognize that, in the experience of Peter and Cornelius, racism was not broken by a strategic plan. It was broken by the work of God’s Spirit as people refused to let their differences become barriers to the work of God in their lives.

As I pointed out earlier, Jesus once said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This was not a statement of exclusion, but rather one of mission. The people of Israel had lost their sense of vocation, that they would be God’s people, not for their own sake, but for the sake and blessing of all the families of the earth. Jesus came to those lost sheep so that they might recover their identity and destiny.

Are we ever lost in that way? Is there a way in which God’s Spirit must renew our lives so that we might recover our sense of mission in the world? In the midst of the tragedies we hear about every day, is God summoning us to proclaim and demonstrate a new reality, a reality that Jesus called the kingdom of God? Or, in our forgetfulness, have we become lost? In our lostness, could it be that our voices forgot to declare that racism, in any form is wrong in general, and absolutely anti-Christ in particular when found in the life of the church?

It’s not the worst thing to be lost, especially if you know that you’re lost and someone is looking for you. The worst thing is to be lost and not know it. Or to be lost and not care.

And the greatest thing is to be found by Jesus, and to follow him into the broken world that he loves, finding the courage to stand for justice because Jesus has already gone before us into that tragic place.

May it be so with us today.

Sign, Wonder, and the Art of Deflection

One day, Jesus entered a synagogue where he was offered an opportunity to teach (Luke 6:6-11). But this wasn’t just any day; it was the Sabbath. And there were specific regulations about what one could and could not do on the Sabbath.

So, when Jesus encountered a man in the synagogue whose right hand was withered, the religious leaders took notice and watched what Jesus would do. Their shared sense of outrage was ignited when Jesus reached out and healed the man, claiming that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath. But the leaders saw it differently. For them, this act was nothing more than a flagrant violation of Sabbath law.

For Jesus, the healing was a sign of God’s kingdom. For the leaders, it was a sign of religious disregard. They saw the sign, but they lacked wonder. There would be no reflection on what was really happening in front of their eyes. And their interpretation of the sign was actually an act of deflection. If they could turn people’s attention to the violation, then the value of the healing might fade into insignificance.

That’s how deflection works. If people’s focus can be moved away from an act or an event to something consequential or tangential to it, then the thing itself is diminished in its value.

A man’s hand is restored, but the value of the healing is disregarded because of Sabbath violation.

There are protests about police brutality and racism, but the value of the reason for the protests is diminished when attention is diverted to the resulting violence and looting.

People cry out, “Black lives matter!” But the outcry is muffled when it is subsumed by the counter-cry, “All lives matter!”

We see signs of injustice, and such signs should also produce the kind of wonder that opens our eyes and hearts to the pain and suffering of others. But deflection diverts our attention in such a way that the sign is reinterpreted, diminished, or subsumed, and wonder becomes irrelevant.

Deflection is an art form. It can be helpful at a Thanksgiving dinner when weird Uncle Harold wants to start a political argument. Deflecting the conversation toward his interest in collecting rare coins or brewing beer might help save the family gathering from disruption and anguish.

But deflection can also be strategically employed in order to turn people’s attention from very real and important issues. The most effective aspect of such deflection is the legitimacy of the claims made by the deflectors. Yes, it was true that Jesus’ work of healing took place on the Sabbath. Yes, it is true that violence and looting are destructive acts. Yes, it is true that all human lives are of value.

But the art of deflection starts a new conversation that produces a fog that hides the real issues from view and makes them irrelevant. The restored hand is irrelevant because it was restored on the Sabbath. Police brutality and racism is irrelevant because violence and looting took place during some protests. The value of black lives is irrelevant because the value of everyone else’s lives swallows the violation of black lives into an abyss of disinterest.

People of faith, in particular, should not allow deflection to take priority over reflection. When we see the signs of injustice, we must allow wonder to emerge so that we see with open eyes and hear with open ears. Deflection closes us to the possibilities that the cries for justice that we hear may actually be invitations to enter the work of God’s kingdom. It should be the people of God who are among the first to respond to those signs and who do not allow the masters of deflection to have their way.

As Jesus said to his detractors: “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:2-3).

May it not be so among us.