The Second Reading

The second reading appointed for each Sunday Eucharist comes from writings in the Christian Testament other than the Gospels. Most often the reading is from a letter of Paul but may come from another letter writer, The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, or The Revelation. Paul wrote his letters to fledgling churches beginning around 49 C.E. (A.D.). The oldest of the Gospels, Mark, was likely composed and written down between 65 and 75 C.E. Thus Paul’s accounts of the activities and life of early church communities and his accounts of Jesus’s life and words (though these are few) are the most ancient accounts we have. His description of "The Last Supper" predates all others. (On the night before he died, Jesus took bread . . .) The Gospels report events that happened much earlier than Paul’s writings, but the Gospels themselves were written down long after the events they relate.

Paul’s letters are curious things. He was writing specific advice, critique and thoughts about the significance of Jesus to specific communities with specific questions, problems and conflicts. He was not legislating universal solutions and responses for all events in all times. We are invited to learn from these letters about why and how Jesus matters. We are invited to learn how to address problems, puzzlements, conflicts, struggles and crises in our own time, not necessarily copying Paul’s specific solutions, but, using his example, to discover how that same Jesus would have us address life in our own day. Example: Paul decrees in his letter to the church community in Corinth that women should cover their heads. That was a solution related to the Middle Eastern custom still in use today of women wearing scarves and covering their heads and faces. That particular dictum of Paul has long been abandoned by most Christian communities of our day. The issue that Paul may have been addressing (something like competitive hair styling) is really about the need for all (men and women) to behave thoughtfully and decorously, respecting the sensibilities of each other and caring more for the joy and serenity of worship than for any tangential, petty issues. That “advice” is as apt now as it was then.