Paul preaching Christ crucified and raised
"Welcome, happy morning!" age to age shall say
is my favorite Easter hymn, indeed along with "Holy! Holy! Holy!" is a favorite hymn to open any Sunday morning year round. In my parishes long ago in human time, we might have sung it loud and lively at any odd time of the church year. Ice cream is not just for breakfast and "Welcome, happy morning!" is not just for Easter.
Sunday morning is my day to wrap up "text week" with a Sunday School lesson of some sort or other on one or more of the lectionary Propers for the day. It'll be short today because yesterday I got wound up like a spring-wound toy
and let myself run down and didn't stop until I'd said my piece. Which was about my need to explore things that leave a question mark over my head instead of backing off and not going there. As an Episcopal priest am I bound to embrace, teach and preach church doctrine regardless, or may I question, is there leeway for discussion, and does the church have the integrity to let me say my piece? May I explore, and if my explorations let me out at some bus stop other than the Nicene Creed, may I speak? We are not the Roman Catholic Church where thinking non-conformers like Hans Küng can be sidelined and silenced, even expelled, and at least from 20th century Bishop Pike and Bishop Spong, it's clear that in the Anglican formula Scripture, Tradition and Reason, Reason may hold forth.
But Paul preaching Christ - -
After weeks of Sundays reading from Paul's letter to the Romans, we now start Paul's letter to the Philippians. Here's the lectionary text for this morning, and I notice a couple of things.
Philippians 1:21-30
New Revised Standard Version
21 ... to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. 23 I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; 24 but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. 25 Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, 26 so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again.
27 Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, 28 and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God’s doing. 29 For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well— 30 since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.
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At Philippians 1:23b Paul says "my desire is to depart and be with Christ", which seems to tell what Paul expects after death. As opposed to elsewhere in his writings, where Paul says that those who die sleep in Jesus until the Last Day, and that at the Last Day the trumpet will sound and the General Resurrection will occur, when all living and dead with be gathered up in the clouds to meet and be judged by Jesus, what Paul says here is that he wants to die so he can be with Christ; no sleeping in Jesus? no waiting until the Last Day? straight to Jesus? So my question for the class is What do YOU think? What do YOU believe happens to us at death? Something or nothing? Awareness or oblivion? Asleep in Jesus until the end of time? Or instantly go directly to be with Jesus then and there upon dying? And do you have a hope, what do you HOPE happens at death? Contemplate your vision of where you may find yourself and what you may be upon dying.
The other thing I notice in today's reading is the first half of verse 29, Paul saying that God ... has graciously granted you the privilege ... of "believing in Christ", indicating that it's God's wish for us to believe IN Christ. Not to be overly grammatically technical, but Paul's NT Greek word for "believing" is πιστεύειν, the verb πιστεύω pisteuo, the noun pistis "faith". So, I believe, I have faith in, I trust, I have confidence in. For myself, looking at Paul's NT Greek for this in other places, where Paul uses the genitive (possessive) instead of the dative (indirect object), I have felt that Paul did not preach "faith in" Christ as the object of faith, but that Paul the monotheistic Jew advocated having "the faith of" Christ (whose faith was in God the Father - - part of Paul's mission of drawing as many Gentiles as possible to the faith of Christ before the Second Coming). But I am beginning to hedge and fudge on that (which at my age helps indicate that my mind is still working). We are in Philippians, and looking ahead a week to the famous "Philippians Hymn" (more on that next week) I find myself more and more up in the air about Paul's Christology; that perhaps, contrary to what I've always thought and taught, Paul's view was not necessarily the absolute monotheistic theology of a Jewish Pharisee, nor even that the man Jesus of Nazareth was simply Exalted by God the Father to become in some sense divine after his Resurrection; but that Paul may have believed that Christ (the Son of Man from Daniel 7?) came/was sent from preexisting divinity of some sort, and was therefore more "Incarnate" than just "Exalted"; and thus Christ WOULD be worthy of adoration type "belief in", in Paul's view.
So my second question then, if the class is willing to try theological inquiry, theological discourse of sorts. Mind, Paul lived in the 1st century New Testament Age, and so the point is TO AVOID attributing to Paul YOUR developed and orthodox 21st century Creedal theology or the Nicene Fathers' 4th century Nicene theology: try to not read back into 1st century Paul what you believe today. So, contemplate as the questions What do you reckon was Paul's christology? i.e., How divine do you suppose Paul likely believed Jesus to have been, considering that Paul is a monotheistic Jew, a Pharisee, but who claims that Jesus Christ appeared to him, who teaches that salvation comes through belief in Christ's death and resurrection, who teaches that at the Last Day Jesus Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, and to take charge of the newly formed kingdom of God on earth, who now says he'd like to depart this life (die) and be with Christ. What do you think Paul is thinking about Christ's divinity?
There's no trick here, just think about it and let's go there this time next week when we read the beautiful Christ Hymn in Philippians.
Tom+