The A-List?

Would we invite the apostle Paul to our conferences, to our leadership forums?  Would he, would his message, suit our needs?  Would he be embraced as if he were an angel of God?  Would he be good T.V?  I have my doubts – let me explain.

I’m not sure his credentials would cut it, much less his appearance. Paul was, allegedly, diminutive, maybe even bow-legged, certainly not classically handsome.  Physically imposing?  Hardly.  And he was scarred by consistent stonings and beatings.   We would be hard-pressed to suggest they left no marks, no obvious and grievous wounds.  (He carried around in his body the dying of the Messiah.)  No, the camera would not have been his friend.

He revelled in his weaknesses, his inabilities.  We give much time and energy to the very opposite.  But the power of the resurrected Christ rested on him, barely on us.   His calling card looks like a series of disasters, so much so, we’d be convinced he was out of God’s will – yet we considered him stricken, smitten of God.  

Some contended his letters were weighty, but not so much his personal presence.  He wasn’t a clever nor a trained orator; in fact, he wasn’t an impressive speaker at all, by his own admission.  This wasn’t a case of feigned humility.  He wasn’t always popular and tended to cause riots in the places he visited.  His presence often caused trouble to God’s churches.  He was subversive as far as the Jewish and Roman communities were concerned.  Better side-lined, which very thing they consistently attempted.

No, we probably wouldn’t invite him.  Too controversial, and he could so easily offend by appearance, let alone his message.  We’d insist on cultural filters that Paul would have been diminished by. 

Pity, though.  We have just done the ‘powers’ an irrevocable service by silencing, arguably, the greatest of human voices and thinkers.  His insights and fresh interpretation of the Old Covenant were, still are, world-changing.  His message was compelling, if not his person.  His passion and drive - out of this world.  His unreasonable love for God and his church was the death of him. 

But it is he who changed history, he who formed the churches of God in trying and unlikely circumstances, he who wrote the bulk of our New Testament with words and concepts as magnificent as was the cross he preached, world defining.  He is a challenge to our self-oriented piety, the niceties of our good life. 

Paul on the A-List?   I think not – thank God!