“Old Paul, New Paul” — Introduction to the Preaching Series on Paul
October 5, 2008
Doug Johnson Hatlem & Tim Schmucker
Tim: Today the Preaching Team begins a seven-Sunday series on Paul.
Doug: The Apostle Paul.
Tim: Yes, that’s how many of us learned his name in Sunday School.
Doug: Well, other than Jesus, no Biblical figure is larger in our faith story than Paul.
Tim: Paul has shaped post-Jesus Christianity – our understanding of Jesus and of Christian faith – like no other. Paul looms large, real large.
Doug: And new interpretations and disputes over Paul have been critical at key times in Church history, the early church, after Constantine, the high middle ages, the Reformation, in the debate between liberal theology and Karl Barth, and especially in the large shadow of WW2.
Tim: Many of us learned in childhood from our parents and in Sunday school much of Paul’s basic theology. While recognising the risk of being overly simplistic, perhaps we could summarize the main points as follows:
1. We are all sinners and are in need of redemption and grace. Or as Paul wrote in Romans 3, a verse I was taught before I knew what being a sinner meant: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are sinners.
Doug: Sin?!, That’s a dirty word in a church like ours!
Tim: [continuing by completely ignoring]
2. We need forgiveness, offered by God through the death of Christ. Romans 5:8 (as I memorized it in the KJV): “For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We need forgiveness.
Doug: That’s the first verse I can remember memorizing too. In the King James Version.
Tim: [continuing]
3. To receive this forgiveness, we must accept Jesus Christ and believe in him. Romans again: “[we] are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood,” and “now that we have been justified by Christ’s blood, we will be saved through him from the wrath of God.” Paul juxtaposed the Jews search for salvation through the Law with salvation in Christ. Christ’s blood, rather than good works, Paul insisted, is what imparts salvation. We are saved by Christ’s atoning death on the cross.
Doug: It’s all about mercy, grace, and love man. You know, not like those Jews and Catholics who are all about the works, law, and judgment of the OLD Testament.
Tim: [continuing]
4. Plus, we know the Apostle Paul as a social conservative. Women were to keep silent in the church and veil their head (my Amish Mennonite mom called it “the covering”). Paul taught submission: Christians to governing authorities, and wives to husbands. Plus he didn’t condemn slavery, inequity, or injustice.
Doug: Social conservative? Tim do you know that the most popular Marxist, Freudian, atheist, European philosophers are now reading and admiring the apostle Paul.
Tim: Umm … we are not going to go there.
Doug: No, no, no. That would be too much.
Tim: But we did find a different reading at work when we went away to University. A new perspective on Paul.
Doug: Yeah, but this isn’t university. Maybe we ought to just continue to think of ourselves as followers of the Jesus of the Gospels and basically to ignore the writings of Paul.
Tim: I don’t think we can get away with that now. Perhaps we’ve misunderstood Paul. Perhaps our understanding of Paul has been shaped, even warped, due to Western Protestant influences and perspectives. Perhaps a new reading and understanding of “the Apostle Paul” is sorely needed.
Doug: Yes, there are too many interesting questions.
Tim: Such as?
Doug: Did Jews ever actually think they could earn salvation by good works? Is Paul’s understanding of justification and salvation really what Protestants have claimed it to be?
Tim: Whoa, careful there Doug!
Doug: [continuing by completely ignoring, going way too fast] Has Judaism been superseded by the Church in such a way that Jews are no longer a part of God’s covenant? If not, then what is new about the New Testament? Are Paul’s writings directed primarily to individuals or rather to church communities? Maybe to both? Maybe not? Does any of this have political implications? In the U.S., in contemporary Palestine, here in …
Tim: [INTERUPTING] Doug, wait a minute, wait a minute, what does all this have to do with Mennonites and Anabaptists, remember we are part of the Radical Reformation?
Doug: [slowing down significantly] Sermons and Sunday School will be exploring some of these questions and others over the course of the next two months. On the preaching team we’ve been reading various scholars during of our last several meetings. We’ve consistently warned ourselves that we’ll be delivering sermons and not lectures. Our aim is for you to find as we have the new perspective on Paul to be intriguing and delightful and jarring and as productive of hope and faith as a new found love. Or perhaps an old love completely rediscovered.