Frances writes on next Sunday’s readings:- The Greco-Roman world, far more than ours, was governed by status and ‘honour’. Who you were, your status in society, mattered and was made highly visible in the clothes you wore; the manner of your speech; indeed, even how you moved. In the theatres and amphitheatres different tiers of seating were reserved for different groups, the senators nearest the orchestra at the front with the second class behind them and going on and up to the provision for slaves and women at the top. Slaves would often have been branded, and so freedmen and women would wear clothes that hid such marks. Rich freed, no matter how wealthy, could never expect to compete with wealthy land owning elites and would often be pilloried for their ostentatious wealth and vulgar showy houses. Any visitor to Pompeii will have made their way to the house of the Vetti, and know exactly what I mean.
When St Paul wrote to the Christians of Colossae (Col 3:1-5.9-11) he was addressing a similarly status conscious society, and he was at pains to spell out the significance of the Christian message to this small and probably snobby group. Last week I remarked that his Greek does this by speaking of the believer as “co-buried; co-raised, co-quickened to life with Christ”, hinting at the intimacy of our union with and in Christ by his death on the cross. This is again how our passage reads, though the Jerusalem Bible’s “Since you have been brought back to true life with Christ” fails to retain the intimacy, the indissolubility of our remaking in, by and with Jesus. This is precisely why Paul points out to them just how completely inappropriate their continuing of any former behaviour must now be considered. We have to recall here that this was a slave owning society, and that owners frequently sexually abused their slaves as well as frequenting brothels, since under their previous pagan existences, no moral reform was ever considered necessary. It is only in the light of the enormity of the Christian message, to which every believer is given access and invited to live a God-like life, that any of us can truly consider the rightfulness or abhorrence of our behaviour. St Paul never questioned the existence of slavery, that would have been far too difficult, but he quite simply lays before the Christian community of Colossae the nature of their new and stunning relationship with God, as a God moreover so staggeringly different from the pagan ones they knew, with their pushy power, immorality and fickleness. He offers them Christ the Son who dies to unite us to God and who gives us infinite love and freedom, and asks them/us to choose how to live henceforward. With such an understanding, how can one who is truly of God, made for eternity with him, treat foreigners, slaves and the freed with contempt? His message has never been more relevant.
At the complete opposite of the spectrum, we have the tired, world weary and contemptuous answer of Qoheleth or the writer of Ecclesiastes (1:2; 2:21-23). He wrote in the early second century BC, possibly in the Holy Land or Egypt. He wrote at a time when his country Israel was under the rule of the Ptolemy’s, heirs of Alexander, and was exploited by them, and as a result seems to have produced a writer of the most world denying and jaundiced values. There is very little joy or fellowship in his writing, and any idea of values which contribute to the good of others seem entirely lacking. Those familiar with this text will shudder at its views on women and society in general. Perhaps the compilers of our lectionary deliberately included it to remind us precisely what the alternative looks like at its most deathly and unpleasant.
The Christian life, as presented to us by Jesus, both in what he said and in how he ultimately lived and died, is one in which such values find no place at all. In our Gospel (Luke 12:13-21) we are given a small glimpse of this. A man in a crowd has found this impressive teacher, and thinks that he can appeal to him to sort out his legal dispute with his brother. Jesus resolutely declines the offer. Of course, he could have obliged and made a judgement favouring one or the other, or even offering a fair distribution of the property, but he refuses. It is not that Jesus did not care for justice or fairness, but perhaps behind the request he sensed the animosity and anger, the divisions within a family, and the build up of explosive tensions there, where his intervention would inevitably result in his taking sides. Perhaps, given the second part of the Reading, he was aware of the selfishness and satisfaction any judgment might bring, and knew that it was not part of his mission and identity to be party to such divisions. Given that this part of Luke’s Gospel is also about the build-up of increasing tension between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees (those who lived by and for the Jewish law in all its strictest application, thereby using it to exclude those less able to be observant) are we to see it as an indication of Jesus’ rejection of the things, the ways of living, which divide people and keep them apart, enslaved to other values, and ones not in accord with the divine will?
Those of us, who contribute to things like Facebook, can often be heartened by the generosity of others towards foreigners and visitors. Sometimes we are appalled and saddened by the ferocious lack of charity voiced by some. We, who today are faced with the enormous tensions within our own nation and across Europe, as thousands of refugees flood out of the Middle East, not to mention the economic migrants, need to take to heart the enormity of Paul’s message to Colossae. It wasn’t written just for this small and relatively isolated community, nor was it given because their behaviour was especially noticeable. No, it was precisely because their attitudes were so common. They and we have a long long way to go, as we reach out into the heart of God, and even more, allow him to reach out into ours.
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