Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, July 21, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I love that the writer of 2 Peter namechecks Paul here. Not only namechecks him, but calls him out for his dense and sometimes incomprehensible theological discourse. Honestly, I laughed when I read this. But what I love most about it is that it humanizes everyone involved. These were not angels or pure, saintly dispensers of wisdom. These were men putting pen to paper and sharing the good news of God’s promise with the early believers and, centuries later, with us.
I also love the clear warning in this text: Paul’s writings are hard to understand and therefore can be easily twisted, as they have been in the years since. What springs to mind first for me is the way his writing has been used to justify the oppression of women to the exclusion of them from being pastors and teachers in the church—when he himself counted women among the apostles and gave them leadership roles. Stripped of their original contexts, his words have given rise the oppression of women, the justification of slavery, hatred toward the LGBTQ+ community, and more.
It can be so hard to hold in tension the damage done by Paul on the one hand, and the liberating understanding of grace he describes, which underlies my whole understanding of God. Today I choose to see that damage as wrought by those who would twist his words to justify hatred, and maybe just let Paul off the hook a little for it.
What are my feelings about the writings of Paul which have led to oppression and hatred? How do I square those with the message of grace?
