Pilgrim Preaching

On Christ Saving Sinners

Proper 19 | Pentecost 16C
1 Timothy 1:12-17

Making Friends with Paul

In 1 Timothy, at that place in a letter where we would expect thanksgiving for the letter’s recipients, we get something else. In this letter, thanksgiving is offered for the way that Christ has called Paul and made his own ministry possible. To those of us who are pretty sure that a follower of Paul, rather than the apostle himself, wrote 1 Timothy, this beginning brings a smile. One of Paul’s students sets out to construct a letter in the apostle’s voice. How shall he begin? Why not begin with content that can be heard as arrogant and self-absorbed? That’s it! Of course. I imagine the disciple reviewing his first paragraph and saying to himself, “Nailed it!”

(Most of us have had remarkable teachers who were like Paul in at least this respect: they were odd combinations of brilliance, arrogance, self-doubt, and foolishness. It may help when we spend time with Paul’s letters to offer Paul the same level of charity that we would give to the great, flawed, beloved teachers we have known.)

Mercy

So Paul, or someone trying to get Paul’s voice right, begins with thanksgiving for the mercy shown to him. Mercy is getting something good just at a time when it would make more sense if you got nothing, or getting something good at a time when you should have received punishment. To understand the gift of mercy that Paul talks about, we have to have at least a sketch of what Paul was doing when he got what he did not deserve. So Paul fills in some back story: in short, he was “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence” (1 Timothy 1:13).

For more detail, one can look at the story of a mob-killing of Stephen in Acts. Luke reports that witnesses to the stoning “laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58), also known as Paul. A couple of chapters later in Acts, Saul is “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1a). He requests letters from the high priest to the synagogues at Damascus, “so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:2). Paul himself describes his former life by saying, “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it” (Galatians 1:13).

This is the one who receives mercy: one who was so sure of himself that he could claim to practice violence in defense of justice. In 1 Timothy, Paul says he acted in ignorance, as if he imagines that ignorance offers an excuse. It doesn’t, but Paul is not the only one to marvel at the contrast between the good we thought our actions would have and the harm we actually did. “I didn’t know it would turn out that way.” “I was trying to help.” “I didn’t think anyone would get hurt.” No matter what we intended, still, there we are, standing in the need of mercy.

Salvation: Swords to Plowshares

Having described his past, Paul goes on, “This saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15). Paul’s claim to be “chief of sinners” may strike many hearers as one more bit of evidence of his life-long arrogance. Yet it would be a mistake to get stuck in analyzing the flaws in a personality here. The thanksgiving emphasizes Paul’s sinfulness only insofar as it demonstrates the surpassing greatness of Christ’s work to save Paul, to strengthen him, and to call him to something better (cf. 1 Timothy 1:12). The words point beyond Paul, and beyond sinfulness, to the work of Christ to exercise “the utmost patience” in order to save blasphemers, persecutors, people of violence, and other sinners. Christ makes Paul an example to show that if Paul can be saved, anyone can be saved.

To figure out what it means for Christ to “save sinners,” we have to look back to the first verse of this lesson. There, we see that Christ strengthened Paul, judged him faithful and appointed Paul to Christ’s service. “Saving,” as Paul describes what happens to him, is not moving a name from one column to another. Saving is certainly not ignoring sin and the harm it does. Saving is re-commissioning someone for new work. It is taking a persecutor of the church and turning him into an ambassador of Christ. Saving is the human equivalent of fashioning swords into plowshares. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Paul should know. He is Exhibit A.

The fact that Paul is Exhibit A tells us one more thing about salvation in Christ. From Galatians 1-2, we know that before his experience of the risen Jesus, Paul was bright, zealous, ambitious, and quite sure he was right about things. From the rest of his letters as well as the testimony of Luke in the book of Acts, we know that after his experience of the risen Jesus, Paul was bright, zealous, ambitious, and quite sure he was right about things.

In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called, “Tapestry,” Captain Picard has an experience of seeing what his life would have been like if one particularly embarrassing chapter had been removed from it. Afterward, he confides to his first officer, "There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of. There were... loose threads—untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads, I unraveled the tapestry of my life."

Paul is genuinely remorseful about having persecuted the church, yet he cannot remove that thread and still tell the story of his life and his new life in Christ. In the end he comes to see Christ as having re-commissioned even this chapter along with all of the elements of his character that led him to do such a thing. At least part of the miracle of salvation in Jesus Christ, as testified to by the apostle Paul’s life, is that Christ does not unravel the tapestry of those whose lives he saves. He does not unravel anything, but out of that mess of threads and stitching, he creates something for the neighbor’s good.

Talking about "Paul" in the Later Pauline Letters

A. K. M. Adam, writing for Working Preacher, counsels against discussing theories of authorship in sermons on Pauline texts: "If you trust that Paul wrote the letter, just go ahead and preach; if you doubt it, do not make a point of that within the sermon (instead of saying 'Paul says,' you can say 'The epistle says' or 'Our lesson says,' or avoid using constructions that would require identifying personal authorship). Then, schedule a series of educational events to explore the reasons and counterarguments about Pauline authorship at some other time."

I agree with AKMA's reasons for this advice. He points out that often preachers use this topic in order to take a swipe at those who disagree with them about authorship questions, or in order just to demonstrate that they went to seminary while most of the people listening to them did not. It is also true that if the comment about authorship is offhand, one may only communicate to one's hearers, "Our preacher doesn't believe the Bible," and if the comment is extended, it can be really difficult to find one's way back from such an excursus to a sermon that has something to do with the content of a text rather than the identity of its author.

Yet the advice to say just "The epistle says," or "Our lesson says," when preaching a text from the letters whose Pauline authorship one doubts is harder to follow than it sounds. I find such language hopelessly awkward, especially when Pauline autobiography is part of the text. When in 1 Timothy, for example, the author speaks of being the foremost of sinners, it is not quite right to say, "Our lesson speaks of Paul as foremost among sinners." It is rather the case that Paul speaks of himself this way, according to 1 Timothy, just as he had, according to 1 Corinthians, referred to himself as one "untimely born" (1 Corinthians 15:8). I do not know a preacher who would hesitate to say, "Paul speaks of himself..." when preaching on the 1 Corinthians text, yet many in my circle would hesitate to speak that way when preaching a text from 1 Timothy.

I think it is right for preachers not to labor over issues of authorship in a sermon, but my practice is slightly different from AKMA's. One time within a sermon, I will say something like this: "Here Paul, or someone writing in Paul's name, offers counsel to Timothy, a young leader in the still very young Christian church." After that, I will say "Paul" when I am speaking of the author. I present authorship options, then I move on in such a way that people are invited into the text on its own terms—even if the terms on which the text constructs authorship are, in my judgment, fictional.

I'm not claiming that this practice is any better than those AKMA suggests, only that it is less awkward for me. My guess is that answers to questions like this one are highly contextual. That is, as preachers and congregations get to know each other, various approaches to teaching and "wondering aloud" on topics like authorship within a sermon surface. Avoid sounding like Dr. Science ("He knows more than you do."). Avoid saying things you do not believe. Do what you can to invite people into a text rather than distancing them from it. Within these general guidelines, a good practice for your community will likely take shape.

Preaching Paul's Gospel: Initial Hunches and Questions

Many readers of Pilgrim Preaching know that I'm on a year long sabbatical from my teaching post in New Testament at Luther Seminary. My writing project is a book on preaching from Paul's letters. Preaching from the letters is risky: we can lapse into scolding our congregations ("I am Paul; you are the boastful, bigoted, fractured Corinthians"). We can wield a Pauline vice list like a blunt instrument, or present the fruits of the Spirit as a To Do list. Or we can turn everything Paul said into something it isn't: cheap grace.

No wonder preachers in lectionary-based worship choose the gospel reading upwards of 75% of the time! Even so, I want to see if together we can't do a better job of preaching from Paul.

Narrative sermons from Pauline texts?

I started this project thinking that the problem with epistles preaching was that preachers did not use what we know about narrative when we preach Paul. We know that stories draw people in. A story can inspire empathy for another's plight and spark the imagination for something better, both for the other and ourselves. Why not explore preaching Pauline texts with narrative sermon forms? All of Paul's churches had stories to tell; the letters have back stories. Moreover, they participate in the story Paul and his hearers are writing together as they try to live in Christ. I thought my book would document those Pauline stories and encourage narrative preaching from epistles texts.

Some of that original inspiration may still find its way into my work, but the bloom is rather off the rose of "narrative" for me at the moment. Some of it has to do with listening to a significant number of unintelligible narrative sermons in the not-too-distant past. Some of it has to do with not wanting to abandon the letter form and its non-narrative elements before I've explored more carefully how they might come to life in preaching. Some of it just seems beside the point: let's explore the texts before we decide that we should make them something they're not.

The plan is still to work letter by letter through all thirteen letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament. The Revised Common Lectionary includes something like 136 distinct texts from Paul's letters. Many of them are assigned in a lectio continua fashion, which means that the lectionary developers chose to stick with a particular letter through several non-festival Sundays. This arrangement of the lectionary is a lucky break for those who might want to sustain engagement with a particular letter through a number of Sunday sermons. If I end up writing what I'm planning, my book will offer initial remarks on each letter, then comment minimally (about 1000 words) on each of the texts from that letter that appear in the lectionary. In either an introduction or a conclusion, I'll add more general observations about themes that emerged during a year of reading Paul toward the task of preaching.

Emerging Themes

Already some themes seem to be occurring in my writing. Already, too, some questions are taking shape that I believe will accompany the work throughout the year. My next posts here will explore these themes and questions in more depth. Here is the list of topics I have so far. I'd be grateful for any you would like to add in the comments here.

We're in this together.

Jesus and us, Jews and gentiles, insiders and outsiders, you and me, Paul and those to whom he writes, strong and weak: the list of possible opposing groups who, according to Paul, are really not opposed seems to go on and on in his letters.

The cross.

Some of the rap on Paul is that he did not know or care as much as he should have about the decades of Jesus' life and the years of his ministry before Good Friday. That criticism is not entirely without merit. I want to look at how the cross defines Paul's understanding of Christ and his work. I also keep seeing the cross in Paul's understanding of what constitutes life "in Christ." I think this will matter for how we preach Paul—just a guess.

Questions

How is the church's story related to Israel's story?

All of my graduate training was focused on exploring how Paul used Israel's scripture, and how he connected the story of Jesus with the story of God's choice of Abraham and his family as those through whom the whole would would be blessed. I wonder, will this theme of continuity between the testaments emerge as I read through the letters, and if it does, what will be its implications for preaching?

How is Paul's vision for the church related to the Empire?

For the last 15 or 20 years, it has been fashionable in my field to read various parts of the New Testament as offering subtle (or not-so-subtle) critiques of Roman imperial power and then to point out how the critique logically extends to American imperialism, or globalization, or some other 21st century principality or power. I am skeptical about the claims (they fit so tidily into our current context and are often articulated by rather privileged "tenured radicals"), but I am also curious with respect to how these themes may be discerned in Paul. I wonder whether the critique of imperialism is present in Paul. Is it represented differently in different letters? How does it relate to other themes present in his theology? I'm curious: What will we find in the letters and, embedded as many of us are in our own Empire, how will we preach what we find?

What of justice and justification?

During my senior year of seminary, I attended a conference on "justice and justification." I do not remember much about the papers presented, but the title has always stuck with me. Almost no one I know can hold these two ideas in their mind at the same time. Can Paul? And if he can, how does he do it, and does his way of doing it give us anything to go on if we want to try to hold such things together in sermons, or in the common life of a congregation and a neighborhood?

Paul

Passion Sunday

Luke's Triumphal (?) Entry

Luke 19:28-40

I am probably a redaction critic at heart, by which I mean that I have the most fun with the scriptures when I am looking at how one author has changed (or edited, or if you like, redacted) another's work. Take, for instance, what we call "the triumphal entry" into Jerusalem. The texts are Matt 21:1-9, Mark 1:-10, Luke 19:28-40 and John 12:12-19. It's pericope #269 if you have an Aland synopsis; if you want to make your own synopsis of the gospels on this or another text, check out The Five Gospel Parallels. With the help of Preaching through the Christian Year C (PCY), here's a short list of things that set Luke's version of the story apart from the way most of us are used to thinking of the story.

1. We have heard Jerusalem mentioned a few times in Luke, most often in connection with Jesus having "set his face" to go there. Now he's there. After his entry into the city, he will weep over it (Luke 19:41ff). This scene, #270 in your synopsis, is unique to Luke.
2. There are no "Hosannas" and no one is trimming palm branches and laying them in Jesus' path. The PCY authors comment, "Because those [displays] belonged commonly to nationalistic demonstration and parades, perhaps Luke wants this event to carry no such implication" (166). In any case, it is a quieter scene than the one I have running through my mind on Palm Sunday.
3. The disciples are the main audience for Jesus' entry, rather than a festival crowd of adoring fans. Matthew and Mark talk about a large crowd in the city for Passover watching this "triumphal entry." John speaks of a crowd, too, who have gathered to see the one who raised Lazarus from the dead. By contrast, Luke says Jesus is received by his disciples (see esp. Luke 19:35-37). This "is not the group, says Luke, that later called for Jesus' crucifixion. To be sure, Jesus' followers did not understand him or the nature of his messiahship, but neither are they persons who sing praise and scream death within the same week" (PCY, 166). (Hmm... there goes at least one sermon I've preached a time or two, not to mention some memorable hymn texts.)
4. Luke makes no reference in this scene to David or Davidic images of the messiah. Maybe this is Luke's intentional soft-pedaling of the political implications of Jesus' ministry ("Really, we're not a threat to the status quo!"), maybe not. Either way, if we think of the triumphal entry and think, "The people turned on Jesus because they wanted a political messiah king and he wasn't one," we have to look somewhere else besides Luke's account of things to conclude that is what people wanted.

Preaching and Redaction Criticism

So, this is interesting stuff. Will it preach? If so, how?

I hesitate in any sermon to say things like, "Luke's Jesus says _____." Or "In Luke, there are no palm branches." The first makes it sound like there are/were four (at least) Jesuses, as if each evangelist had his own personal pet named Jesus. Just "Jesus says _____" is enough. As for pointing out differences in the gospel accounts within a sermon, I have heard this done well a few times, but I try not to make a habit of it. Why? (1) It can make Bible reading into a parlor game. We're playing "Where's Waldo?" by another name ("Where are the palm branches?"). (2) It emphasizes the gospel writers at the expense of their message; we start caring more about Luke than about Jesus and what happened in the text.

So the short answer is, "No, this stuff won't preach," or "Preaching this stuff will make you sound bookish, out of touch and concerned about something besides the 'one thing needful'." However, read on.

I would not try to build a sermon around the insights provided by our redaction critical dive into Luke 19, but I would use them to get the tone of the day right. By "right" I mean that when the text is from Luke's gospel, I would try to have the sermon and service feel subdued yet hopeful, rather than "triumphal" and characterized by "Cameron craziness." (Cameron is the name of Duke's basketball arena.) I would not announce my findings or intentions to people ("Welcome to worship. Today our service will be subdued yet hopeful."). I would just try to craft something like that, and I would know to craft something like that because I had done a little redaction criticism as I studied the Gospel text.

Ain't biblical studies grand?