Another Paul who modified his ethos by mimicking the rhetoric of a “fool.”

Reading: 2 Corinthians 8–13

Main Topics: (1) Cheerful Giving, (2) Paul’s Fool’s Speech, (3) Thorns in the Flesh

1. Cheerful Giving

In 2 Corinthians 8–9, the Apostle Paul preaches about “cheerful” giving, emphasizing that Christ’s followers should come to the aid of others not through “exhortation” but out of their own choice:

“The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Cor. 9:6–7, NRSV)

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Reading: Romans 7–16.

Main topics: Overcoming Evil with Good, Predestination and Adoption, Women in the Early Church

There is a scene from Toni Morrison’s Beloved that takes my breath away every time I read it, that makes me gasp and ache and weep with grief and hope. Baby Suggs, the matriarch of the community, the grandmother-prophet that leads the congregation in worship, takes her people into a clearing and prays over them. She tells the children to laugh, the men to dance, and the women to cry.

“It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart.

“She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound pure.

“She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.”

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Christ as the Good Shepherd was one of the most common and early illustrations of the Savior in early Christian art, before the Edict of Milan in 313 AD granted religious liberty to minority groups like Christians. The image of a shepherd was a furtive, sneaky way of remembering Christ through paintings and statues without being persecuted or even executed by the Roman Empire. These images of Christ were also reminiscent of Greek depictions of Hermes Kriophoros, representing a story in which Hermes saves a city from the plague by carrying a ram on his shoulders and running around the city’s walls. In other stories of kriophoros, or “ram-bearers,” the rams are representative of sacrifice—a fitting complement to Christ’s own atoning sacrifices. Additionally, the tragic Greek hero Orpheus (who was very nearly able to resurrect his wife, Eurydice, from death, and whose own head had been able to keep singing sad, beautiful songs long after it was torn from his body) was also commonly depicted as a shepherd, playing music to birds and animals from his lyre. It’s not always easy to distinguish among these various personalities in ancient art, and it’s also possible that many pieces of art simultaneously represented a synthesis of these various stories: stories of heroism, tenderness, care, and sacrifice. [Read more…]