Proper 5 Year A

Lectionary reflections - Year A
Ordinary Time
Proper 5
Hosea 5.15—6.6
Romans 4.13–25
Matthew 9.9–13, 18–26

‘I knew the great Apostle Paul. Buy me a drink, and I’ll tell you all about him. I used to act as his secretary, sometimes, which I knew, even then, was a great honour. Of course, I didn’t realize quite how important he was going to be, but even in the early days, you could tell he was a man to watch. He had such energy, and he was always talking and thinking. It was quite hard to keep up with him when he was dictating. Sometimes I’m afraid I may have missed out a few words, or got a bit muddled. I hear now that his churches kept his letters, and read them out over and over again, and I do hope I didn’t make it harder for them.

‘I volunteered to help him, of course, because I’m quite proud of my writing, but also because, in a way, I owe my right to believe in the Lord Jesus to him. He fought hard for Gentiles like me to be included with the others, and he needn’t have bothered about us because, after all, he was a Jew himself. ‘I hoped I might get to know him better, working with him, but he was a hard man to know. I still don’t understand, to this day, why he gave up his family and his own tradition to join the Christians. Going around with him, I heard lots of stories about Jesus. The ones I liked best were the ones where Jesus goes out of his way to help people that the respectable folk
wouldn’t touch with a bargepole. He used to eat with collaborators and prostitutes, so they say, and touch lepers and unclean women, and even I wouldn’t want to do that, though I’ve had a varied life myself, and often been short of the next meal...

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