New Testament Reading—2 Corinthians 5: 15-20
(Stage Notes: The diary writer enters the stage with diary and pen in hand. He sits at a desk facing the audience as he begins to write in his diary.)
Day One
Dear Dairy,
I have a crazy pastor. In the church newsletter today, he went gaga over Harry Potter. He talked about how Harry’s letter of acceptance to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had been a life-changing event. It had been the turning point in Harry’s life. He had gone from being a miserable, picked on kid to becoming the promised one, the wizard who would save the world from the evil Voldemort.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan of Harry Potter, and all of that is well and true, but I am a little skeptical of what my pastor said next. He said that just as Harry’s letter had been life-changing the letters in the New Testament can be life-changing as well. He’ll have to work hard to persuade me of that.
Yeah, I admit I don’t know the letters in the New Testament that well. I see a lot of them are written by a guy named Paul. Who is this Paul anyways?
Sincerely,
Your inquiring Harry Potter Fan
Day Two
Dear Dairy,
I began reading Paul today. He has some high points here and there where he is full of poetry about the body of Christ or the meaning of love, but all of that is ruined for me by some of the other things he has to say. In Ephesians, he talks about how slaves should be obedient to their masters. In 1 Timothy, he says women should be kept silent. In Romans, he bashes gays and lesbians. To me, it sounds like Paul might be more like Voldemort than Harry Potter. After all, Harry was taught by Dumbledore, the legendary wizard who J. K. Rowling herself has publicly declared to be gay. At the moment, I think would rather be a student of Dumbledore’s than a student of Paul’s. I will have to ask my Pastor about all of this Paul nonsense tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Your Dumbledore Admirer
Day Three
Dear Dairy,
At first, my pastor had me thoroughly confused today. It was like he put the Confundus charm on me. First, he says that the real Paul never said those things about slaves and masters in Ephesians. The real Paul also didn’t tell women to shut up in 1 Timothy. He says those letters were not written by Paul at all, but were written by others later on. I was like, “Huh?” But then, I figured it out. I exclaimed, “Oh, they’re like Harry Potter fan fiction.” My pastor didn’t know what that meant, so I had to explain to him how they’re websites with thousands of Harry Potter stories on them, but they aren’t written by J.K Rowling. They’re written by fans. My pastor liked the analogy. He said he might use it in a sermon. He’s always stealing things.
Anyways, I then asked about Romans and Paul bashing gays and lesbians. That was just more confundus. My pastor said that there are two ways to look at it and you could take your pick. The first way is to defend Paul by saying our modern notions of people being gay or lesbian or homesexual didn’t exist back then. When Paul says it’s unnatural for men to be with men, he was likely talking about things like male prostitution or older males exploiting younger males.
But just when I was about to wipe Paul’s slate clean and declare him to no longer be a follower of Voldemort, my pastor told me that not everyone buys this argument, and maybe Paul was in need of another conversion experience. Maybe he needed to see the light for a second time. It can happen you know. In the Episcopal Church, a conservative bishop from the South named Peter Lee once had a second conversion. After a change of heart, he decided to vote for a gay bishop. Before the vote, his wife said to him, “Peter, do you want to be on the side of the future or of the past?”
Tomorrow we meet for Bible Study. I’ll see what else my pastor has to say about Paul.
Sincerely,
Your Advocate for More Peter Lees
Day Four
Dear Dairy,
I sometimes question my pastor’s competency for selecting scripture. He picks some weird ones. The scripture for our Bible Study this week was a bit of a turn off at first. It talks about Jesus dying for all of us and how we should no longer live for ourselves. Even though I don’t like to believe in some cruel God who would make his son die for the rest of us, my pastor thinks it’s important to remember that all theology is autobiographical. In other words, how we like to think about God comes out of our own life experiences. Given that Paul spent a bunch of time in prison and otherwise having a rough time on behalf of Christianity, it’s not surprising that he would celebrate Jesus as someone who sacrificed of himself for others. Paul wanted to feel like his own suffering was worth something.
My pastor went on to say that if you look at what much of what Paul wrote in his letters Paul was actually a kind of radical in a lot of ways. He wanted equality between men and women. He wanted equality for slaves. He was against the oppressive and violent Roman Empire. He believed that a new creation of justice and peace was rising up. In this new creation, people would become reconciled with God and with one another. Paul believed it was our job to be ambassadors of Christ and ministers of reconciliation.
Looking at Paul’s autobiography one can again understand why this would be his theology. Paul had once been on the other side. He had once been a persecutor of the Christians. He had once been an advocate for the Roman Empire. Given how he had his own conversion to a drastically different, new life as a nonviolent apostle, it is no wonder he wanted everyone else to experience this new life and become reconciled. He himself had made the leap from being unreconciled to reconciled. To put it in Harry Potter terms, Paul went from being a leading Death Eater to being a leading member of the Order of the Phoenix.
Tomorrow I will do the homework assignment Pastor gave us. He wants each of us to think about our own autobiographies and the theology that comes out of our own lives.
Sincerely,
Your Order of Phoenix Ambassador
Day Five
Dear Dairy,
All day I have been struggling with trying to figure out what theology could possibly come from my rather dull and uneventful life. Finally, a breakthrough came. My fiancé told me it was time that I finally got my act together and found some readings for our wedding ceremony. I got to work right away, and I happened to come across something Madeleine L’Engle once wrote in a book called “The Irrational Season.” She said that “it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created.” In marriage, a couple comes together to “become a new creature.” L’Engle goes on to talk about love not as an act of possession but as an act of participation. She says love is “part of that co-creation which is our human calling.” Wow, I thought. This stuff about people coming together and participating in the making of a new creation sounds a lot like Paul. Maybe marriage is one of the ways God works to help bring about a better world. Mmmm…and maybe Paul isn’t so bad after all.
At any rate, it is time for me to go. I’ve got a hot date. We’re seeing the new Harry Potter movie tonight. I am still not sure whether Harry has much to do with Paul. My crazy pastor will have to explain that another time.
Sincerely,
Your New Admirer of Paul
Amen.