May God the Father,
Out of the rich treasury of his glory,
Strengthen you through his spirit with a power that reaches
Your innermost being.
May Christ find a dwelling-place through faith in your hearts,
So that rooted and grounded in love,
You may measure with all the saints,
In its breadth and length
And height and depth
The love of Christ
Which surpasses understanding.
That you may be filled with all the fulness of God.
Do you keep all the Christmas cards that you’ve received? Do you ever read the sentiments, the message in the cards? These days with the cost of postage I suspect many have gone to sending some sort of Christmas greeting – if at all via e-mail or text message. Some years ago, I either received a Christmas card with this message – or maybe sent it myself. It’s been so long ago I don’t recall. It is such a beautiful prayer that I framed the card and it’s on the wall of my bedroom.
It is also a rough paraphrase of Paul’s prayer for the church at Ephesus found in his letter to that church which is our second lesson for this morning.
Our first lesson are Luke’s words beginning his Acts of the Apostles:
“In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all the things that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven…as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
A brief word about our bulletin art. It is an Icon of the Ascension by Andrei Rublev in 1408. In it we see Jesus’ ascending and, in the group, witnessing the Ascension we see the two men in white robes. Also, in the middle of that group we see Mary, Jesus’ mother. The apostle who almost looks as if he is about to shake Mary’s hand would be Peter and the youthful apostle on the right could be John. It is good to see Mary in this Icon – the Mother of God – which reminds us that this is also Mother’s Day that we remember and honor all of our own mothers.
I recently completed a book that has helped my understanding of the times in which Paul’s letter, Luke’s Gospel and his Acts of the Apostles were written. It is “God’s Ghostwriter “by Candida Moss. A short sentence on the book cover describes it: “Enslaved Christians and the making of the Bible.” Ms. Moss is chair of theology at the University of Birmingham and has previously taught at Notre Dame.
Who wrote the words we hear every Sunday? Who were the people who would have first heard what we have heard read today? What was their station in life, what was their life like in the days that they wrote the words that they did?
A review by Peter Thonemann in the Wall Street Journal about this book piqued my interest. In it he said [this book]”is by far the best account we have of the roles played by enslaved people in supporting the high literary culture of the ancient world…” Further, “Throughout antiquity, every stage of literary composition, dissemination and reception was facilitated by enslaved letter -carriers, copyists and readers…. even reading a book generally meant listening to an enslaved person, who was himself reading from a scroll copied out by another enslaved person”
When we think of slavery many of us would associate it with the slavery of more recent centuries, which was racial. Black people were the enslaved ones. In Roman times anyone – any race – could be enslaved. Many of the population in countries which were on the losing side of wars would find themselves enslaved. In 70 A.D. when the Romans captured and destroyed Jerusalem many of its population were enslaved – some even taken to Rome and there paraded as part of the spoils of war.
In his background discussion of New Testament times Luke Johnson in his book, “The Writings of the New Testament:” The [Roman] empire grew by conquest, however, and two significant aspects of life within in were shaped by that fact. First, an already stratified society was swelled at its lower levels by large numbers of slaves…They congregated in the cities and dangerously distended their populations. Such…peoples were often ready for rebellion or religion or both…. They also placed extreme pressure on the empire’s ability to feed them…. The second fact…was the constant pressure of taxation on the provinces Taxes levied on subject peoples were especially severe….”
A pagan writer of the second century Celsus described members of the new Christian faith as “The stupid, the low-born, the gullible; slaves, women and children” (2). I suppose you could say the “deplorables” of that day. [Quoted by Thonemann in his review]
So, what would a service of the new Christian faith be like?
I would imagine it might have gone something like this:
I will be using the names of some people who lived during these years and may have attended a home church in a city which would have had such a church. Just for the fun of it you might like to look up their names and see if you can find out something about them.
It is about – in our way of counting time – around the year 64 A.D. The group of maybe forty to fifty people are meeting in a large room on the property of a wealthy man – and slaveowner – named Philemon. They are in a city called Colossae approximately one hundred miles inland from Ephesus. The presider of the group is named Tychicus. The service has begun with readings, prayers, and hymns. Now a former slave named Onesimus comes forward, takes a scroll and moves to the middle of those present. [After he completes his reading Tychicus will read an account of the Last Supper during which he will distribute bread and wine. ]
Onesimus begins reading: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, “and he said to them, “Thus is it written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so, stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy…”
Amen.
Richard Robertson
Sources:
Wall Street Journal, Saturday-Sunday, March 30-31, 2024, Page C7, “The Gospel’s Invisible Ink,” Peter Thonemann [A review of God’s Ghostwriters]
“God’s Ghostwriter,” Candida Moss, 2024, Little, Brown and Company
“The Writings of the New Testament,” Luke T. Johnson, 1986, Fortress Press