The August 8th edition of Life Magazine in 1955 included a short spread on a new theory about the paintings of the Greek-born Spanish painter, El Greco. The theory was that the artist had “used insane people for models” when he painted images of the apostles and other figures from the Scriptures. “To back up his theory,” according to the magazine, the scholar who proposed it “went to the asylum in El Greco’s town of Toledo where he was able to match some of El Greco’s ‘possessed’ portraits with remarkable look-alikes.”* The magazine includes photos of the faces of patients at the asylum that are paired with close-ups of El Greco paintings, notably a comparison of St. Paul. The caption points out that the “haunting eyes and sensitive features of El Greco’s St. Paul are matched by [a] mental patient whose beard and hairline also resemble [the] portrait.”
Although there is apparently some evidence that El Greco visited the asylum in question, the theory that his models came from there has not held up well in the art world, despite the notable similarities of beards and hairlines of latter-day mental patients.
Still, it suits us, by and large, to think of St. Paul as crazy. Often, he was one to go big or go home.
Take his views on relationships. If you’re a man, he’s going to tell you that you are large and in charge, you are the head of the household, and women should be subject to you. If you are a woman, he is going to tell you to keep your head covered, your mouth shut, and to be subject to your husband. If you are married, he’s going to tell you that’s ok, but if you are single, he’s going to tell you to stay single - unless you can’t control your passions, then maybe you should get married.
On other topics, too, he had a knack for drama. If he thinks you are out of line, causing trouble in they church, he’s going to thank God that he had nothing to do with baptizing you.
When it comes to conflict resolution, he’s going to tell you that Christ is our peace, and that he has made two groups into one, and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.
When he writes about love, he waxes eloquent, and tells us not only that love is patient and kind, but that it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and that love never ends!
About Jesus, St. Paul doesn’t just say that the Lord came down from heaven. No, he tells us that “though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” And that God “highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.” (Phil 2:6-11)
And it would never suffice for St. Paul to tell you simply that Jesus loves you. For him, the truth is so much larger: “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 n Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39)
Maybe this is the way crazy people talk... well... crazy people… and preachers. It certainly bears little resemblance to most public discourse these days.
When St. Paul arrived in Thessalonica, he found a synagogue and he got to work. He taught at the synagogue on only three sabbaths, but in that short time, he planted a seed that would grow a church. Say what you will about St. Paul, he wasn’t crazy. In fact he was very good at what he did. And what he did was to make sense out of the fledgling Christian faith, in those first decades after Jesus’s resurrection and ascension, when people didn’t yet know whether or not that faith would amount to much. And then he spread that faith as far as he could carry it.
It may be true that in ways St. Paul was a creature of his time, but in other ways he was also way ahead of his time. Has his message of unity in Christ ever been surpassed? It was St. Paul who wrote that “there is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) Yes, St. Paul was good at what he did.
St. Paul, by El Greco
In El Greco’s portrait of St. Paul, it’s not the beard or the hairline of the apostle that stands out, rather, the artist has emphasized the apostle’s hands. One hand is leaning on the hilt of a sword (which is the instrument of his death). The other hand holds a letter (an epistle): the form of writing most associated with the saint. The effect is to convey that here is a man that has something to tell us, and that the message will cost him his life. There is nothing about the painting that suggests that here is a crazy person. Rather, it tells us that here is a holy person, and that his message is everything.
About one aspect of that message, St. Paul seems to have been wrong: that Jesus would return to establish his kingdom on earth soon. In this miscalculation, the apostle was in good company, since Jesus himself suggested that time was coming soon for the kingdom of God to be established, and that “by endurance you will gain your souls.” Well, we now know that it’s required a lot more endurance than anyone expected.
When you think the kingdom of God is dawning soon, it changes your perception of things. And apparently, among those who converted in Thessalonica, some decided that if the kingdom of God was near at hand, then there was no point in going to work, or doing anything much at all. But St. Paul would have none of it. “Now we command you, beloved,” he wrote, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness!” He goes on, “For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you....”
“You yourselves know how you ought to imitate us.” Here is a challenge that the church has not much interest in these days: to imitate St. Paul.
I would guess that the reason we are not too interested in trying to imitate St. Paul has less to do with the fact that he was a man of his time, and more to do with the fact that again and again he suggests we go big or we go home. He is far too clear about the demands of following Jesus, and the conditions required as the kingdom dawns. He is far too certain about the power of the Name of Jesus, and about the salvation that comes by that Name. And we are uncomfortable with this kind of certainty, with this kind of faith.
Give us St. Thomas any day, over St. Paul. Doubt we understand, even as a companion to faith. But St. Paul’s strident certainty often seems like just a little too much for us. He makes us nervous in an age of the life of the church when many are more likely to go home than to go big.
Here’s another thing that ought to make us nervous. When St. Paul is writing to the Thessalonians, warning them not to be idle, but to imitate him, he is specific in what he means: “we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it.” I like the nerve of this man. But I see that in so many ways, the church has lost her nerve these days.
It’s tempting (oh, so tempting) to borrow a measure of nerve from St. Paul on Commitment Sunday, and to launch into a harangue about the danger of eating anyone’s bread without paying for it. Has the church become a place where many come, expecting to eat bread without paying for it? By this, I am not talking about the hungry who come to be fed on Saturday mornings, but the rest of us, who are called to do the feeding.
As I say, this homiletical line is tempting to me, considering the timing of the message today, and the sweet simplicity of it: “For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us... and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day….” Here is a custom-made stewardship sermon that might not comfort the afflicted, but that should certainly afflict the comfortable! Are there any here who are eating bread without paying for it?!?!?!
It may not be one of the top three questions in the Bible, but it’s not a bad question. But for me to follow this line of thinking this morning would be to choose a different emphasis than the one El Greco chose when he painted St. Paul: that is, the message, which is everything. And the message is love. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor... love is the fulfilling of the law,” he wrote in another letter. (Rom 13:10)
“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” (I Cor 13:1)
“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” (Rom 12:9-10)
The epistle that St. Paul holds in his hand in El Greco’s painting is addressed to Titus, who was a friend of St. Paul’s and who, tradition says, became the bishop of Crete, the Greek island where El Greco was born. For El Greco, the letter is a letter home, to friends. It’s a love letter. The kind of love you would give your life for.
It wouldn’t bother me if El Greco had used the mental patients at an asylum as the models for his portraits of the saints. But I’d prefer it if someone discovered that he’d really used the members of his local parish church.
Maybe he would have selected as his model for St. Paul one who had been accused of eating bread without paying for it. “Come,” the artist might have said, “sit for me, and try to look like St. Paul. “And while you’re at it try to imitate him, remembering that he taught not only that you should not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but he also taught that faith, hope, and love abide; and the greatest of these is love.”
And that message is everything!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
17 November 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
*the scholar/critic was Gregorio Marañón