Where is the world of Paul? Map of modern day Turkey/Greece

An amazing variety of plants and animals, birds

Paul….
I have to be honest and say that Paul is not my favorite character in the Bible.
While we were on the bus I thought… if Paul was on this bus, I would not be the one he would come sit with for conversation.
Paul is a male Jew… I am a Gentile woman
Paul is a lawyer…. I’m an artist

Paul enjoys debate…. I enjoy watching movies
Paul has a PhD and studied with Gamaliel, a famous teacher…. I have an Mdiv and studied with Perry Yoder who is, I guess, famous in his circles.
One of my aims was to make friends with Paul and I think I managed to do that.
Another one was to gain some tools to read Paul’s letters which he wrote to specific churches for specific reasons in a place and time that is foreign to me.

You were forced to Learn Greek;

The Greeks believed you needed to:
Train the body through playing Greek sports

Worship through sacrifice

44 pontifici maximo

This archway says: “From the emperor Caesar Augustus, the son of the god, the greatest of the priests…. It is the entrance into the marketplace or Agora reminding everyone of who really has the power and authority.

Emperor worship meant that when the emperor would come to town a town crier would position himself on a platform and call out, “Welcome, Caesar! You are the lord of the empire! You are the savior who guarantees our peace and security!”

47 crowd sitting on theatre steps

Emperor worship meant going to the Marketplace and attending political rallies, festivals and publicly swearing oaths of allegiance.
Saying things like: “I will spare neither body, soul, life nor children, but will in every way undergo every danger in defense of their interests; …. Etc.

Dragging Paul and Silas and other believers to court

Persecution and throwing them in jail. Persecution, not only by the military but by neighbors who wanted to fulfill personal oaths of loyalty to their Emperor. It was dangerous, these groups of believers were vulnerable…

One of these small groups who worshipped Jesus was in Sardis.
Here is the temple of Artemis in Sardis, one of the seven largest temples and more than double the size of the Parthenon in Athens

Notice on the left, the small round building. That, my friends, is a small church.
A Christian church that had the audacity to not only follow Jesus, the son of God, but to build their worship space right up against the temple

The second thing is they decided that they needed to bring together all the writings about Jesus that fit the creed. This collection of writings is the New Testament. They chose letters of Paul, Gospels and other writings, and set them apart as authoritative, trustworthy and true. That’s how Paul’s letters became scripture.

But I still had trouble understanding Paul. What do we do with his ideas about slavery, women. Women were leaders in the early church. Ordinary women like Priscilla, Housewives like Junia, Fabric store owner like Lydia….,
The questions make me dizzy…. So I looked for another tool to read Paul by. 

When you don’t know what to do, start at the beginning. We looked at the culture Paul wrote in. Let’s look briefly at HOW letters are written. You can see in this example of one of the earliest copies of Philippians. Greek is written without spaces between words and no punctuation. You can imagine how hard it is to translate.

I put it into your bulletin as an insert to take home and read, along with discussion questions. I have the way it would be written in Greek and then the easier way to read it.

Imagine someone unearthing this letter 500 years from now and trying to understand all her references to photographs and skype and MCC and the call to pray in groups of two or three. Karen is a leader, a voice of authority in our denomination. I respect her. What part of this letter is for me and what part is for Fiske?

This is the same question I ask of Paul’s letters. What part of the letter to the Thessalonians is simply a directive to that congregation going through a particular crisis and what part of it is God’s directive for me to follow as faithfully as I can? The early church leaders chose these letters of Paul to show us who Jesus is and how his life, death and resurrection saved the world, saves us. How much energy to do I want to spend getting caught up in details of praying with a head covering or not.

You can see I cover my head when necessary.
These questions are deep and wide and take a lifetime to think through. So let’s keep struggling together to understand these life-giving words we call the Bible.

Here are some other ways this trip gave us glimpses into the world of Paul:
reading scriptures in the places where they were written
communion in Corinth

Hearing about Paul as a nurse tenderly caring for her children in 1 Thess 2:7.
Helped me think about Paul as more of a vulnerable human being then this giant of a man who could withstand everything. It says in Acts that after he was released from Prison he went to Lydia’s house. I decided that maybe I couldn’t debate the finer points of justification with him, but I would be at Lydia’s house to help with the healing from the trauma of prison.

Most of all we remembered our baptism. People encountering Jesus formed churches, they changed their allegiance so it was fitting that one of our favorite moments was standing in the baptistery in the Christian Church at Ephesus and singing: Lord I want to be a Christian. This is my prayer, for myself, for you, for the church.

You don’t have to travel to the world of Paul to figure out where your allegiance or loyalty lies. Humanity has not changed that much – Ephesus had hot and cold running water in their homes. We are called to be faithful… to Jesus Christ, the son of God.

Here is an updated version of the pledge of allegiance written by two seminary professors, June Alliman Yoder and Nelson Kraybill. If you feel comfortable say it with me….
I pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ, and to God’s kingdom for which he died—One Spirit-led people the world over, indivisible, with love and justice for all.