The Joy Of Giving

More than anyone else among the first disciples of Jesus, Paul understood and explained that Christian faith should be driven by the delight that can only be found in authentic and selfless giving of of oneself, in the pouring out of one’s life for others.

When I lived in the South-West of France, some thirty years ago, I heard a famous French politician, an atheist and a socialist, declare that Paul’s letters were his favorite bedtime reading.

Now, I do not know how familiar you are with these writings beyond the snippets we read on Sundays at mass. I love how richly layered and dense with meaning they are.  But I also know how arcane, uncompromising, and angrily partisan Paul often becomes. Even among the first generation of Christians he was not to everyone’s taste.

He had a fraught relationship with the very saint with whom he is celebrated today, Peter.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul declared to have “opposed Peter in the face” because -his words- “Peter acted very wrongly” and hypocritically (2:11-14). Peter returns the favour by declaring, somehow peevishly, that the “beloved Paul” writes things “that are hard to understand” – no surprise if, Peter adds, they can be twisted by the ignorant and the unstable (2 Pt 3:15f).

If you want to have some fun, ask Chat GPT or Claude to pull out for you some of the many passages where Paul lashes out at people: he calls the Galatians foolish (Gal 3:1), wishes that some of his opponents would “castrate themselves” (Gal 5:12), and calls others dogs (Phil 3:2). He recommends that the Corinthians should deal with an agitator by handing him over to Satan (1 Cor 5:1–5) and often indulges in biting sarcasm to make a point (see for example 1 Cor 4:8–13). Not to talk of some of his not so tender views on women who, he says, “should be held in submission and keep silent in churches, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church” (1 Cor 14:34f) – and the lasting damage produced by his blanket labelling of same-sex relationships as “against nature”, “shameless”, and resulting in impurity, dishonorable passions, and a debased mind (Rom 1:26-31).

What is there not to love about the ‘beloved’ Paul!

How, I wonder, could his writings be the favorite bedtime reading of a socialist and atheist French politician?

I believe that, like many others, including myself, this French politician must have fallen under the spell of Paul’s passionate dedication to a cause. With fiery people, flareups and summary judgments are the reverse side of ardent love. Indeed, Paul is equally capable of erupting in some of the most lyrical passages of the whole New Testament and possibly of the world religious literature. I never go back to these passages without being deeply moved, inspired, and comforted by them. Two instances will suffice.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? […] No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8)

And then there is the profoundly moving hymn to love in 1 Corinthians:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. […] Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

How can you not be drawn to Paul when you hear passages of this kind!

And yet today’s liturgy does not quote these texts to commemorate Paul but chooses instead a passage from a letter, 2 Timothy, written by someone else probably decades after Paul’s death. Even a generic familiarity with Paul’s authentic letters easily detects that the style of 2 Timothy is markedly different: where Paul argues and wrestles through questions and objections, 2 Timothy insists on fixed ‘deposit’ of faith and sound teaching. Paul speaks to communities that are still discerning their authority structures in real time. 2 Timothy wants to consolidate those structures into something durable to survive the apostles’ death, claiming the support of the authority of Paul. No surprise that, in 2 Timothy’s version of Paul’s testament (the passage we find in the liturgy today), the tone is militaristic: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7). We can almost hear the first rumblings of the Church’s “militant” stance that would become dominant in Christian history for centuries.

And yet there is a case for quoting this fictional version of Paul’s testament to commemorate his martyrdom. One sentence in particular has an unmistakeable Pauline flavor and echoes the lyricism of some of the passages I quoted earlier.

2 Timothy makes Paul declare “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come” (2 Tim 4:6). This declaration is an adaptation of a sentence that Paul did  indeed utter in his letter to the Philippians:

Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me. (2:17f)

Everyone in Paul’s time would have understood the image of the pouring of wine that accompanied both Jewish and pagan sacrifices. Interestingly, this libation did not add anything to the sacrifice itself. The offering of food or of an animal’s blood were all that was needed to propitiate the divinity. The pouring of wine was added as a way of signifying that the sacrifice had not been offered just because it was prescribed, but willingly and joyfully. “Wine  maketh glad the heart of man”, says the Psalm (104:15). So pouring it out liberally as a drink offering means that the gift of the sacrifice expresses sincere, wholehearted, jubilant gratitude - as indeed Paul declares in the passage I have just quoted: “Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all” (Phil 2:17).

No Christian of course can hear of a drink being poured out and not be reminded of  Jesus’ words at the last supper: “Drink of it, all of you,  for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”. (Mt 26.27f).  The wine and the blood being poured out mean that Jesus’ life and love are given totally, fully, for us. Those who drink this blood are transformed by Jesus’ love and can find joy in pouring out our own lives for each other.

Paul strikes to me as someone who understood, taught, and exemplified this crucial aspect of Jesus’ message and of the real meaning of the Eucharist - namely that Christian life should shun every form of inner or outer coercion, whether guilt, or duty, or fear – and be driven only by the delight that can be found in loving, in caring for each other, in working tirelessly for justice and peace, in putting others above ourselves, in humility, patience, trust, and hope.

This is what makes Paul’s personality so magnetic and his letters so addictive.

More than anyone else among the first disciples of Jesus, Paul understood and explained that Christian faith should be driven by the delight that can only be found in authentic and selfless giving of of oneself, in the pouring out of one’s life for others.

“Each one – he declares- must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver”. (2 Cor 9:7)

In this attitude there is such beauty and such freedom that it makes me forgive everything that I find objectionable in Paul’s writings. Above all, I will always be grateful to him for having rescued a sentence by Jesus that memorably enshrines  the joyful dimension of love but strangely did not make it in the Gospels. Paul must have heard this sentence from someone who had known Jesus and made it the centerpiece of his life and of his theology:

Remember -Paul says- the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed (makarion), more joyful, more fulfilling to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:35)

Saint Paul holding a sword