How often do we use the Epistles as the source of our Sunday homily, even as contributors to The Preacher? The desire of the Bishops at the Second Vatican Council to produce a new Catholic Lectionary (the basis for the Common Lectionary, revised in 1994) was to provide ‘richer fare at the table of God’s word’. The Old Testament readings were chosen to relate to the Gospels, broadly in terms of promise and fulfilment, which offered the possibility of an intertextual presentation by the preacher, whereas the Common Lectionary provided an alternative track offering the possibility of greater focus on one reading. The intertextual approach works best in the major seasons of Advent, Lent and Easter, where the Epistles are chosen with the season in mind, but in Ordinary Time the Epistles seem to be sidelined. The writings of the Apostles, mainly Paul, which were so prominent in the old Roman Missal and the Book of Common Prayer, seem to be suffering from neglect by preachers and hearers of God’s word, having become just a necessary gate to pass through on the way to the Gospel. Should this be of concern to us and require a response?

By far the greatest number of second readings in the lectionary come from St Paul. Paul is honoured as the first great Christian preacher. Paul preached about what he had heard, not from Christian texts, because no such texts yet existed in his day. The Gospels were not yet written and the written texts available to him were The Law, the Prophets and the Writings which he knew well from his Pharisaic past and enabled him to plumb the depths of the mystery of Christ that had been revealed to him.

For Paul the primary goal of preaching was the telling of the story. Never having met Jesus before his crucifixion, Paul’s first encounter would have been through the negative narrative told by Pharisees with whom he studied. It was the religious experience which Paul himself recounts discretely in Galatians 1:12-16, his encounter with the risen Jesus, which changed the narrative Paul grew up with, the divine giving of the Law, to the new story at whose heart was Jesus Christ, died and risen.

But what gave this new story power was Paul’s life, which bore the stamp of Jesus’ death and resurrection and a credibility which could awaken faith, just as Jesus’ life and preaching awakened people to ask the question, ‘Who is this who speaks with such authority?’ In 1 Corinthians 11:1 Paul says, ‘be imitators of me as I am of Christ’. It is the imitation of Christ which is the source of his power and authority. As Christ was crucified in weakness but lives in power, so Paul’s credibility lies in the paradox of the power exercised through his weakness (2 Corinthians 13:2-4).

Paul’s initial preaching to those Gentiles who became his converts probably took place not in places of religious worship but in Paul’s rented workplace as he travelled from city to city. But his initial encounter with these Gentiles was not the end of his work. Paul had to spend time with them so that they too might become living interpreters of the story. In other words, the kerygma had to become didache; Paul had to spell out what the story meant in terms of their lives. Consequently, Paul himself experienced a tension between giving time to his communities or pressing on with his task of primary evangelisation.

In Paul’s letters we see him managing this tension as he continued to minister to the spiritual needs of his converts and form them into a community, recalling them to the core of his initial evangelisation, or instructing them on the implications for their lives in the light of the story of Christ. In several letters we read that Paul did not write in isolation but included colleagues like Timothy, Silvanus and Sosthenes, chosen for their faith, as co-authors who also kept in touch with Paul’s communities. Timothy would fall into the category of someone who could be judged as weak and therefore to be despised because of his youth and inexperience, but Paul urges the Corinthians not to despise him as he is doing the work of the Lord (1 Corinthians 16:10,11) whose power had revealed itself in weakness.

In his first letter to the community of Corinth Paul writes ‘It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you.’ Paul had preached and founded the community some time before, and as it grew it attracted new members with very strong egos who undermined the unity of the community and indeed Paul’s own apostolic authority. Paul was not in a position to return to them again at that particular moment to address the many problems and questions that had arisen, so he wrote a letter as the best substitute for his personal presence until he could stay with them for some time in the following winter (1 Corinthians 16:7).

This sense of ‘presence in absence’ is articulated more forcefully in the letter to the Colossians 2:5. Colossians has been the subject of scholarly controversy. Is Paul’s temporary absence due to his imprisonment or indeed was Paul even alive when the letter was written, in which case the author’s intention would have been to preserve the legacy of Paul and assure that Paul’s occasional writings should transcend the barriers of time? Towards the end of Colossians is mentioned Tychicus, ‘a beloved brother, a faithful minister and a fellow servant in the Lord’ (Colossians 4:7,8). Tychicus, has been sent ‘so that he may encourage your hearts’ (Colossians 4:8). Because Paul dictated his letters through a secretary, which in ancient times was a slow, laborious and painstaking exercise, it would not be surprising if Tychicus brought the letter with him, explained it to the congregation and helped them understand Paul’s thinking.

We might well wonder how easy it would be for a secretary to produce the kinds of letters that Paul wrote. What would it have been like being his secretary? We know from the anecdote in Acts 20:7 (and following) that Paul was not a man easily lost for words, and one of his listeners sank into a deep sleep and fell off the window ledge to his death as Paul talked on and on through the night. The secretary would have to try to transcribe the complex thoughts of a man whose mind was racing with ideas. Might we imagine Paul’s letters more as a series of notes, or the minutes of a meeting, rather than a polished talk which would be worthy of the pages of a serious journal?

Another ‘problem’ the preacher encounters today is understanding the context. We do not always know exactly the questions Paul is trying to answer? I remember hearing Paul’s letters described as listening in to a telephone conversation, not knowing what was being said at the other end of the phone.

Today’s preachers of the Epistles will stand in the place of people like Tychicus, Paul’s ambassador. They will know their author’s mind and his way of thinking. This may involve considerable preparation, familiarising themselves with not just the extract but the letter as a whole and the context in which it was written. Given the time involved they might think of choosing a series of readings on which to preach from time to time.

On the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time last year the second reading was from Ephesians 5:21-32. The reading opens with the command, ‘Give way to one another in obedience to Christ. Wives should be subject to their husbands as they are to the Lord’. Just before the service began the Reader, a very devout parishioner, told me that they could not possibly read it. Fortunately, I had anticipated that the reading, or at least that line, might create some controversy so I prevailed on them to do so otherwise I couldn’t preach on it.

I began the homily with an imperious ‘Wives, obey your husbands!’ Noticing their reaction I then invited them to imagine Paul being interviewed on television today and being interrupted as soon as he’d spoken the offending words. Do we also switch off when the word of God challenges our cultural norms or our personal prejudices?

The next stage was to invite the congregation to give Paul a hearing, explaining how Paul’s society was patriarchal, and Paul was using the standard ‘household codes’ found in the literature of the time showing what the ideal household should look like. Paul is not singling out married couples in particular, but the whole Christian household to live in mutual obedience.

The third stage was to show how Paul subverts the norms by imposing on the husbands the duty of ‘love’, which never appears in the patriarchal codes, the love whose standard is set by the blood of Christ shed on the cross which creates reconciliation and peace (Ephesians 1:13-14).

From this point on Paul’s theology becomes somewhat convoluted, possibly due to the limitations of letter writing. Is Paul expressing insights that are too deep to be handled in this form, and so he needed the services of a Tychicus?

I explained how by using the metaphor of the body he portrays Christ as the exemplary husband who by his love nourishes and sustains his body and bride the Church, with an allusion to Genesis 2:24, a text that originally explained the origin of marriage, and uses words like obedience and subjection, which may be offensive to our culture, because obedience to Christ (to the law of love) is fundamental to the Christian life and the harmony and good order of the community.

‘This is a great mystery’, he concludes. By ‘mystery’ Paul is referring to the mystery of Christ (Ephesians 3:4), the pivotal point in the revelation of God’s plan for creation. In the Latin Catholic tradition mysterion was translated as sacramentum, which led to the development of the theology of marriage as a sacrament. The content of mystery, though, is more than the eye can see. Paul seems to be inviting the congregation to make connections between the day-to-day existence of family households, the family of the Church, and ‘every family in heaven and on earth’ (Ephesians 3:15) in the light of Christ’s death and resurrection.

After Mass that evening the Reader came up to me and said that they had heard the passage many times, but it was the first time it made any sense. The response of the Reader made me think that perhaps I had done some justice to Tychicus, if not full justice to Paul. ‘When I am weak, then I am strong’ (2 Corinthians 12:10).