The Thursday After

I enjoy reading and listening to Richard Feynman, the famous and colourful American theoretical physicist. I particularly like his line “If you can’t explain something to a first year student, you haven’t truly understood it”. I have found this to be true, both when others explain things to me and when I try to explain things to others. I also like his view “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned”.

I enjoy reading and listening to the Bible, more than I used to. A few years ago I would read and fit lines into what I already knew. Now when I for example read Colossians, I am much more likely to ask what was going on in Paul’s head and what was he trying to say to those people in Colossae so long ago, so far away and such a different world than mine. And I want to be able to understand it so well I can explain it to “a first year student”. I think in part, this has made me love the Bible. Its also convinced me that many of the things I already “knew” were just not what Jesus or Paul were talking about. Refreshing.

I’ve also observed that I (we?) spend more time listening to others or reading books about the Bible than actually reading the Bible. Is that weird? I am now convinced the Bible is a book to be read, re-read and meditated on for a lifetime. Wondering what Paul had in mind and what was going on in Colossae has helped.

Take heaven as an example of something I “knew”. I’m seeing “new” that “heaven” is God space and “earth” is human space. I love this short video. Both of those short videos explain heaven and earth to a first year student, and really help when, for example, I start reading Colossians.

A few things that have helped me.

I used to have this picture of Paul writing the letter with ink, quill and paper by candlelight and then people handing it around like a class note. That is certainly wrong. It would have been written on animal skin (parchment) by a professional scribe in really small letters to use the smallest amount of parchment. Then it would have been read by someone (probably the same person who delivered it) who would perform it based on verbal instructions from Paul. Writing a letter was expensive (parchment, hiring a scribe over a few sessions) and would have needed someone to actually finance it. Paul would probably have worked with chalk and slate to get his ideas sorted before hiring the scribe to get it down on a “good copy”. So those words are not haphazard. They are thought out and trying to get as much down in a small a space as possible (for more see the Bible Project’s series on “how the read the Bible” the section on the letters — there’s more good stuff there).

Another curiosity tidbit – the word “colossal” and “Colossae” are not related.

I’d way rather read the stories Jesus told. I find it harder to get into Paul’s dense prose. And only sometimes does poetry really light my imagination. Paul’s poetry in Colossians 1:15-20 doesn’t really light my imagination … at least not yet. But knowing that he was a smart, anointed dude, who took great care to share his heart in a few square centimeters of parchment makes me persist. I’m getting there.

Tom (“N.T.”) Wright in his book Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters (quoted this morning) translates and lays out Paul’s poetry to make it easier to see (see below). And yes, its a carefully written poem – verse A, a chorus and then verse B.

Verse A (v15,16) says Jesus is the image of God — which was well brought out this morning, and everything (including the power structures and the things we can’t see) we created by him and for him. Interestingly, I thought the world was made for humans — apparently not quite right.

Verse B (v18b-20) is similar to Verse A. In Verse A, Jesus is the first of the original creation when heaven and earth overlapped. In Verse B, he is the firstborn of the realm of the dead, that is he’s first in re-creating, that process of having heaven and earth overlap again.

Yup Paul, you packed a lot into a few square cm of parchment.

I’ve general found people I admire to be a reliable guide — when a few of them say the same thing, I should check it out. People I admire say that this is an amazing poem. I see a little of that, and I get a sense there’s lots more. So I guess I’ll have to persist with meditating on this poem.

Here’s the poem as Wright lays it out:

He is the image of God, the invisible one, the firstborn of creation
For in him all things were created, in the heavens and here on the earth.
Things we can see and things we cannot, — thrones and lordships and rulers and powers —
all things were created both through him and for him.

And he is ahead, prior to all else and in him all things hold together;
and he himself is supreme, the head over the body, the church.

He is the start of it all, firstborn from the realms of the dead: so in all things he might be the chief
For in him all the Fullness was glad to dwell and through him to reconcile all to himself, making peace through the blood of the cross,
through him — yes, things on the earth and things in the heavens.

[from The New Testament for Everyone, Tom Wright]