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EasterArt Guest Blog: A Letter to Paul

Today's #EasterArt image was chosen by Jenny Meegan, one of our Lay Preachers on the South and Central Belfast Methodist Circuit. It is a decorated initial, from a fifteenth-century Italian Latin choir book, in the Free Library of Philadelphia, which features an image of the conversion of St Paul. In the New Testament we have an edited selection of Paul's Letters, including the First Letter to the Corinthians, from which one of today's lectionary readings is taken. Indeed back in my college days I took a course on the so-called Corinthian Correspondence, overseen by one of my predecessors as Superintendent of BCM. One of the frustrations in that correspondence is that we only have the letters from "one side", but the following is a letter to Paul from Jenny Meegan:

Dear Paul, 

I was surprised when David told me our reading for today was from your first letter to the Corinthians. I hadn’t expected to find you at the end of the first week of Easter! I was still thinking of this as the week the (male) disciples were behind locked doors. Despite meeting Jesus last Sunday they remained feeling unsafe to come permanently out of lockdown as the authorities were angrily blaming them for the disappearance of Jesus’s body. Were you around that week? If so I guess you would have been hunting them. You certainly were doing that later after Stephen was murdered. The secret police of today have nothing on you for persistence, cold-blooded, single-minded pursuit and ruthless killing. You saw and did it all as you admit to us here. 

But wait! As I’m reading your letter to the church of Corinth I’m starting to see you at Easter in a different way! During our lockdown I’ve been reading your letters to the Churches each day over the phone with my friends Amy and Ronnie. We’ve been using the 'Message' translations which make us feel as if you’re writing to us right here, right now. We love the way you’re so blunt and to the point! Well, we got to chapter 15 of your first letter to Corinthians yesterday - good timing as this meditation has to be in today! It was here we met you firmly in the heart of Easter. Was your letter written before the Gospels? If so, you’re one of the first people to write about those who met the risen Jesus! You start with the meeting with Peter and then with Jesus closest followers (so the women would be present as well as the men) and then you include lots of others I hadn’t known about. I wonder who the 500 people Jesus appeared to were? It sounds as if you’ve talked to some of them personally. We know that you met James, Jesus’ brother several times so I guess he told you all about his encounter with Jesus too. 

And then wow! This isn’t all the evidence from other people. You tell us Jesus finally presented himself alive to you! I’m not even going to think about timescales with it being after the Ascension. As you say later, God’s timescales are different from ours! That meeting on the Damascus Road has really changed you! You really want us to hear this Good News urgently today so that our faith is squarely built on this wonderful true message - Jesus Christ who died has really risen. I won’t end by thanking you Paul for teaching us this as you wouldn’t want that. But I will say, with you, 

Thanks be to our Living Lord Jesus 
who was crucified and has risen from the dead, 
Praise to the God of Love and Peace 
who is with us for sure. 
May the amazing Grace of the Master Jesus Christ 
The extravagant Love of God 
And the intimate Friendship of the Holy Spirit 
Be with us all 
Today 
And through all these dangerous difficult days 
For evermore. 
Amen 

I’m looking forward to reading your next letter Paul 

With thanks 

Jenny

Selah 








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