The Last Sunday after Trinity Year A

Lectionary reflections - Year A
Ordinary Time
The Last Sunday After Trinity

Leviticus 19.1–2, 15–18
1 Thessalonians 2.1–8
Matthew 22.34–46

1 Thessalonians is almost certainly the oldest document in the New Testament. As in so many other things, Paul is a pioneer. It is hard for us to imagine ourselves back to a time when the Christian community had no ‘writings’ of their own. But one of the things that the epistles make clear is that there was, nonetheless, a remarkable degree of certainty about what constituted the heart of the Christian faith. It centred around the death and resurrection of Jesus, as the activity of God, at work to rescue his people (cf. 1 Thess. 1.10).

These earliest Christians had the Jewish scriptures, which might not be at all well known to those who were Gentile converts, and they had the stories of Jesus told to them by their founders, and then some, the lucky ones, had letters. How Paul’s letters must have been treasured by his churches, longing for reassurance and sustenance in their new life. Very few of the epistles in the New Testament are
formal theological treatises. The nearest Paul comes to that is in Romans. Most were personal, though clearly meant to be read several times, aloud, to the gathered Christian community...

Taken from Lectionary reflections year A by Jane Williams - Published by SPCK