rubbish

Though most folks never thought about it one way or the other, in my years of frustration with St Paul, I've probably come across more people who despise Paul than who love him. I myself am not all that big on Paul with sentences long and writing cumbersome unto Now I lay me down to sleep. As at Acts 20:7-12, the boy Eutychus so bored as Paul drones endlessly on and on and on, that he dozes off and falls out the third floor window to his death. Of course, Luke's point there is not how boring Paul is but Paul's astonishing act of rousing the boy to life, but I can identify with Eutychus; and if it isn't Corinthians it has got to be Romans, that we are reading through in the lectionary this summer. Jiminy, Paul, give it a rest for chrissakes, nobody is going to read all this. Imagine the congregation of the Roman church sitting or standing there listening attentively as who, Phoebe? (Romans 16:1) reads the epistle to them on and on, and one person after another suddenly looks at his/her Apple Watch, jumps up, mumbles something about late for an appointment, and rushes out for a beer. Or, let's face it, a double martini.

But I do love that Paul speaks his mind. Not Paul in Acts, that's not Paul speaking, that's Luke's story about Paul (as in what does Tom Sawyer say? Tom says whatever Mark Twain writes that Tom says) but Paul's own seven letters (okay maybe eight, IDK, maybe Colossians too). I'm thinking of Philippians 3 where Paul abruptly interrupts his train of thought with the interjection "WATCH OUT FOR THE DOGS, WATCH OUT FOR THE EVILDOERS" and goes off on a wild tangent before returning to his subject, speaking his mind about the losers who are trying to cut him down. 

So this morning I'm thinking in Paul's same book and chapter, Philippians 3, about Paul's valuation of his religion before he became an apostle for Jesus (Paul generally doesn't just say "Jesus", he says Jesus Christ, or more likely Christ Jesus, or just plain Christ). And I'm thinking about Paul's looking back on all that he has lost, which was his sense of having made himself righteous under the Law of Moses, and he's trashed all that self-certainty for the sake of sharing in the righteousness of Jesus. But Paul does not consider that he's lost anything, he says that everything he believed before was σκύβαλον (look it up) and he's glad to be shed of it.

I feel as Paul says about σκύβαλον religion, whose object is self, self preservation, certifying one's self-righteousness, putting oneself in a right relationship with God by obsessively, compulsively, slavishly performing dozens and hundreds of "works of the law" in order to keep God satisfied as the Gospels lead us to believe was the case with the Pharisees of Jesus' time; as well as religion whose object is to be "as sure for heaven as if you were already there" by saying certain words and professing certain beliefs before heading home this morning, lest you don't make it. 

σκύβαλον Paul calls the religion he cast aside in order to follow Christ. And yet that notion of saving oneself is the easiest route for any Christian to take. Not least because Paul's own fervent mission as he sees it, is to bring us pagans, Gentile sinners, into the faith of Christ (i.e., under the God of Israel). And to do this for as many of us as possible and as quickly as possible because, Paul and many of his era believed, the End Time was imminent. And with the End Time would come the Second Coming of Christ and the General Resurrection of the Dead, when all the living and the dead will meet Christ in the clouds for his judgment of how each one has lived his/her life, and those judged righteous being saved into the newly established kingdom of God on Earth. And, again, only those safely under the umbrella of the One True God and Creator, the Lord God of Israel being included at all. So, there's an element of Paul that, though not compatible with a modern scientific world view, does indeed ratify the personal urgency of being Saved. And leading others to personal salvation per Matthew 28:19-20. So there are Christians in that mode, on that road.

And yet being Saved into the group that is eligible for Judgment Day, if one accepts that as a faith event when the trumpet sounds and all, there is still the judgment itself, based on how one has lived: 

Will you strive for JUSTICE and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of EVERY human being? 

The letter of James 2:14-26 has it right: faith without works is dead. Or as Paul says, σκύβαλον.

T+

Here's the Romans 8 reading for Sunday:

Romans 8:1-11

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 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 to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law-- indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

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