The Epistle [Epiphany 1; St. Luke 2:42-52]

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For Jesus speaks to you today from His Gospel saying,

“And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.”

All of Jesus’ understanding and answers are given to us in the Gospels and the Epistles. In fact, so much teaching is found in the Epistles, that it has been falsely said of Christianity that without St. Paul, there would be no Christianity.

Indeed, St. Paul and the Apostles did use their letters for persuasion as well as teaching and preaching. Usually they follow a harsh menu and bring in a lot of practical points and tips. This is why many people focus more on the epistles than the Gospel, because in it are things to do.

This is what St. Paul is credited with. Jesus didn’t give a clear case for a religion, if He even was advocating for one scholars say, so St. Paul and the Apostles came and cleaned things up a bit. This is the trap. If you are simply looking for Christianity to be distinct from other religions by actions or love, then I have bad news for you.

This trap is large and spacious and we can see this even from the Epistle reading today:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. (Romans 12:1-5)

Just look at all the work St. Paul is religiously demanding in just 6 short verses. He is desperately appealing to us, wishing to stir up a deep emotional response in both action and reason. He is appealing to a higher power and its mercy, to prove that we should do as he says. That we should present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

It then seems as if he goes on to give us the program to enact such a sacrifice: non-conforming mind renewal, testing, and discernment. Many Christians teach and live or die by this program they think is laid out here, even claiming to have the spiritual gifts to accomplish such feats of super-spirituality.

He goes on, appealing to grace this time in verse 3, to get you to be more humble, to be sober, and to have faith. And he convinces you by saying that we are all in this together, so why wouldn’t you want to help everybody?

All of the Epistles in the Bible could fall under the umbrella of any cult’s teachings, as any one can accomplish these same works without Christ. Also, for those who are only looking for works and love to single them out, without the Epistles there would be no Christianity for them.

Of course teaching is good. Of course living a life filled with love and obedience is better than the other options. But, we remain in our sinfulness if we think the Apostles are only giving us our best life now or if we think we need life changes to prove Christianity true.

The early Church never thought this way. The Old Testament and the Epistles were illumined by the Gospel and as such, they wanted to hear from both, next to the Gospel. As the years went by, the epistles paired better with the Gospel, probably because they were written within the same time period, and so it is that the greater portion of history that survived was those pairings.

In fact, the Epistle-Gospel pairings we hear even in our time, have been handed down to us in a near unbroken line for nearly 1300 years. If you look in the old hymnals, all each Service had was an Epistle reading and a Gospel reading. These readings have gone through more trial and error so that we can confidently say that we are hearing all that God wants us to hear, even though it is not the entire Bible!

The importance of the Epistle reading, then, is not its moral value or historic value, but its ability to preach the Gospel to us. The Apostles don’t give us a way to chose Jesus as our Savior, but a way to see how Jesus made Himself our Savior. The Epistles don’t tell us to decide between Jesus or sin, death, and hell, they decide for us that Jesus is already ours because of His actions and decisions.

I said earlier that the Epistles reveal to us what it was that Jesus was answering the teachers of Israel and we hear it even in this small space of the letter to the Romans. St. Paul doesn’t say “make your bodies holy”, he says “present them as holy”, as in they are already holy to begin with all you need do is present God with His own work, because He was the One Who made them holy in the first place. 

The Epistle does not demand that we just change the way our mind thinks or think of things from a different point of view. He demands a transformation, a renewal, both of which are impossible for us. Quite literally, the Word demands a transfiguration of the mind and a renewal of the Holy Spirit. Both of which are God’s work in you, when you hear the Word, because it is only Jesus who is transfigured and Jesus Who is renewed on Easter.

The equality and measure of faith spoken of in verse 3, along with everything else, all culminates in verse 5: the Body of Christ. Here is what caused all the teachers to be amazed, that God has a body and that He uses it to make His people holy, acceptable, and perfect, in Christ, by their access to Him.

The Body of God; the Body of Christ is the key to knowing what Jesus answered, because, like us, we want to hear God’s Word only as basic instructions before leaving earth, as opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, come in the flesh, to redeem sinful humanity, not by demanding vows and piety, but by offering and giving a transfiguration that only He undergoes and by sending a renewal that only His Spirit creates.

It was the Old Testament that led these teachers to Jesus and it is the Epistles that lead us to His understanding. That the Christ must suffer and die and three days later rise again. Is this not in the Epistles? Is this not taught, alluded to, and assumed in all of the Apostles letters? Yes. So much so, that Christianity does not need St. Paul to exist, neither was it necessary for St. Paul to make excuses for Jesus and create a new religion.

Instead, the Epistles exist to return us all to the Gospel. In likewise, and opposite fashion, the Old Testament exists to get us to the Gospel. Where the Old Testament gets us there by words only, the Epistles use word and deed, otherwise known as Word and Sacrament. Sacrament being the optative word used, because it means God is acting on His own with the things He wants to act with, for us.

The thing He uses is His Son, Who is amazed that more people don’t realize that He must be in His Father’s house, among His Father’s things, doing the work of saving His Father’s creatures. He is also amazed that sinful humanity feels such a strong need for answers that they are willing to kill God on a cross to get them.

The Epistles then amaze us by reminding us that our God was made flesh so that when we hear about “found Him in the Temple” and “sitting among the teachers” and “asking them questions”, we can believe that He does these things among us as one of us. That we have a God Who creates such a world that we might find Him as easily as we would find a child in a group of adults.