PENTECOST IX 2013

Rembrandt -- St Paul at his writing desk

• Amos 8:1-12 and Psalm 52  • 
• Genesis 18:1-10a and Psalm 15  • 
• Colossians 1:15-28  • 
• Luke 10:38-4

On the majority of Sundays in the Christian year, the lectionary readings include a passage from one of Paul’s letters. This is a fact with which we are so familiar that its significance is often lost on us. Here are letters written by an early follower of Jesus to tiny groups of people in places that, often, no longer exist. How can it be that, almost 2000 years later, millions upon millions of people, in countless different languages, listen to them read aloud in the most worshipful moment of their week?

The answer is that, despite their humble origins, Paul’s letters have a depth of theological understanding and spiritual insight that no other Christian writings have ever matched. It was Paul, rather than Peter, John and the other disciples, who grasped the true significance of the Jesus he had never encountered in the flesh. Paul was first to understand the full import of believing that Jesus was the Christ promised by the God of Israel. And though he does not use the names by which they have subsequently become known, time and again he sets out the fundamental doctrines that such an understanding implies.

Caravaggio -- Mary and Martha

This week’s extract from his letter to Colossians is a case in point. There is only a trace of the once vibrant Greek city of Colossae in what is now Turkey. Paul writes to correct some false understandings of Jesus that have arisen there. In so doing he articulates a key element in the Christian faith – the Doctrine of the Incarnation. “Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God”. This is Christ’s divinity, and the means by which human beings can come to understand a transcendent God.  At the same time, Christ’s humanity –“his fleshly body through death” enables him “to present” human beings as “holy and blameless and irreproachable before God”. It is in Christ’s uniquely two sided nature that our salvation lies.

Set alongside Paul’s profound reflections, however, this week’s short Gospel (about the all too human rivalry between Martha and Mary) serves as an important reminder. The ultimate meaning of the Incarnation does not lie in theological doctrines, but in ordinary life.