Thoughts on 2 Corinthians 2:1-4

One of the great mistakes we make is to over-glorify those whom we admire. I started writing this on the weekend that Pope John Paul II died and as I watched and listened to the coverage, journalists and Catholics alike are going overboard in their admiration, making him out to seem somewhat less than human. John Paul was a man of the Cross because he knew the depth of his own sinfulness, and that he needed the Cross if ever he was to be forgiven. He was also an individual with the same feet of clay as any of the rest of us. What is true of you, what is true of me, what was true of John Paul II, was also true of the apostle Paul. He was a man who had just as many inner struggles as you and I -- possibly more.

Tom Wright points out that Paul's words in 1:8, which are often interpreted by commentators as a reference to physical illness that brought him close to death, sound very like the words of one who is suffering a "nervous breakdown." The pain inside him has reached such an acute level that he was "burdened beyond our strength" and that he "despaired of life itself." Having spent much time with a lot of pastors, and having been one for most of my adult life, I can fairly say that there have been occasions when the pressures of ministry have brought me and many others to this point. Not only have I wanted to give ministry up, but I am very tempted to abandon life, too.

I have heard pastors talk about stresses in their congregations taking from them restful sleep. I have watched pastors precipitatively lose weight because they have been robbed of their appetite and can no longer eat, decending into all sorts of illnesses because of their lack of food, sleep, and other natural restoratives. More pastors than I care to count have cardiac problems that have clearly been triggered by their work.

This, I suggest, is the way it was with Paul over the stresses of ministry he had experienced in the Roman province of Asia, as well as his concern for the Corinthians. A strong person can carry an enormous amount, but there is always the proverbial straw on the camel's back -- and it seems that Paul has encountered that straw.

So as we jump forward to the beginning of Chapter 2, we find him saying, "I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you." Which of us when pastoring has not said and thought something like, "I can't take any more of this. I need a break. I can't see So-and-So because I know that it will be a messy interview and I just don't have the inner resources to handle right now." This is how it was with Paul. There had just been too much and he could take no more of it for the moment. He also knew that coming to Corinth and handling a confrontation was not going to do either the church any good, nor the people with whom he was involved, nor himself.

So, he stayed away and wrote a letter instead. The modern equivalent of this is avoiding a face-to-face with someone (or a group of people), and making do with an email. While emails can hasten and ease communications, they are also a medium in which words spoken can be greatly misunderstood. Paul's letter sent to Corinth had clearly been misunderstood!

He sent the letter of pastoral correction for ills that are going on there, and his detractors have said, "See, he's brave with words but shies away from confrontation." Paul sent his letter hoping words on a page would be seriously considered as they looked at their believing and their lifestyle. "I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice" (verse 3). He goes on that he wrote, "to let you know the abundant love that I have for you" (verse 4). These letters came from a pastor's heart, but the heart of a pastor who had been wounded in the execution of his vocation as Apostles and teacher.

I suspect that Paul had done what most caring pastors I know have done, and that is walk the floor at night anxious for about the wellbeing of a particular individual, family, or group. He tells us that he wrote to the Corinthians out of much thlipsis (affliction) and synoche (anguish). Again, I believe that these are emotions that are no strangers to the faithful pastor, and like Paul, they are washing down with tears (verse 4).

When we are up and things are going well, it is relatively easy to cope with pastoral burdens and with the crap that is just a standard part of all Christian ministry; but when we are low and down, then it is a struggle just to keep ourselves afloat, let alone deal with arguments within the church or the mumps and measels of the soul that are so readily contracted by believers committed to our charge.

But the truth is that as we see Paul working through something that might be familiar to us, we must also recognize that he does not resort to cheap, paperback psychology, and 'feel good' motivational notions that are slapped over the surface of pain in our culture, both secular and Christian. No, he takes his pain to the Cross. These first two chapters of 2 Corinthians are full of Paul's complaints, but they also speak of the comfort that is ours in God (1:4), that we are heirs with the risen Lord (1:9), that we are equipped by the grace of God (1:12), that we are anointed and sealed by the Spirit for ministry (1:23), and that there are hard knocks that come with divine commissioning (2:17).

"To trust in the God who raises the dead, with that faith anchored in the resurrection of Jesus himself, is the best therapy anyone could discover, in the first century or the twenty-first" (Tom Wright, Paul for Everyday: 2 Corinthians, page 10).

2 Corinthians 2:1-4

1For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. 2For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? 3And I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice, for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all. 4For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.

2 Corinthians 1:15-24

15Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. 16I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. 17Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say "Yes, yes" and "No, no" at the same time? 18As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.23But I call God to witness against me--it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth. 24Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.

Thoughts on 1:15-24

"The trustworthiness of the messenger affects the trustworthiness of the message," William Barclay says when commenting on this rather awkward little paragraph in the first chapter of 2 Corinthians. What this demanding little passage demonstrates, however, is that Paul's experience with the Corinthians were similar are some of the challenges we face in Christian ministry today. The worlds of the 1st and 21st Centuries might be different in so many ways, but human nature within the context of the Gospel community does not necessarily alter! We find Paul caught in a similar bind to one that has trapped many of us from time to time: which is being accused that he is unreliable because did not keep his word. Paul is accused of saying one thing and doing something else.

Here's the situation: Paul told the Corinthian Christians that it was his intention to visit Corinth on his way to Macedonia, and then to come back from Macedonia by way of Corinth (verse 16). Perhaps it had been his plan to make Corinth the port from which he would sail to the Holy Land taking aid to the church in Jerusalem (But more of that aid later). Corinth was such a hub of commerce that there was a steady stream of vessels that sailed out of there to ports in the eastern Mediterranean.

But as can so often happen, changing circumstances got in the way of the original plan. It would appear that the situation in the church in Corinth deteriorated so markedly that it would not have been disasterous for him to stick to his initial timing. If he had come when he planned, he would have arrived just in time to engage in a painful and destructive confrontation. As he considered the situation, Paul concluded that for the least damage to be done, it would be wisest for him to s
stay away rather than go when he originally intended. As he says, "I call God to witness against me -- it was to spare you that I refrained from coming to Corinth" (verse 23).

This decision shows a side of Paul's personality that often gets overlooked. Because he was so convinced of the importance of firm doctrine and holy living, Paul is often accused by those who read his letters through the eyes of their own agenda, of being harsh and insensitive. Yet if he was such a person, he would perhaps have taken pleasure in wading into the mire of controversy in Corinth and laying down the law. But he did not do that, and instead deliberately stayed away until a more appropriate moment so that the damage of error and misrepresentation could be undone pastorally rather than confrontationally.

While it is important for a faithful pastor to take revealed truth seriously, affirming it when necessary in wider church and congregation, timing is crucial. Some of the greatest pastoral disasters that I have seen in my years in ministry have been because leaders have got their timing wrong rather than keeping their powder dry. Just in the past week I have received frantic emails and phone calls from folks in a parish where I once served telling me how the ineptitude and poor timing of the priest have combined to cause turmoil in a once healthy work of God.

Paul was a faithful pastor, and as a result of his sensitivity is blasted out of the water by his detractors and the "super-apostles" who have been stirring things up in Corinth. He is accused of being two-faced, and not a man of his word. You can hear Paul's detractors taking this change of plans and using it to undermine Paul's credibility. "He's not to be trusted," they would be saying, "This man, Paul, is a vacillator" (verse 17).

The apostle's response is to say that because he is a servant of the living God, it is contrary to the divine nature to be two-faced, saying both "Yes, yes," and "No, no," at the same time. If we listen carefully we can hear in the background the comments of those who were trying to remove Paul from the Corinthian picture. "If we cannot trust Paul when he makes everyday promises about whether he comes here or not, how can we trust him when he speaks of the things of God? How can we believe that Paul's 'take' on the Good News about Jesus is true?"

Paul therefore responds by saying that God's promises are not two-faced, and that he is a servant of Jesus Christ, and that what he said about the faith is true. But his change of plans have no bearing on the truth of the Gospel. Besides, when he made his initial plans they seemed to make most sense at the time, but now he recognizes that these were plans "according to the flesh" (verse 17).

The reality is that in this situation Paul was damned if he did, and a damned if he did not. If he had visited Corinth when he said he originally would, there would have been one almighty explosion from which the church there may not have recovered. Yet by delaying his visit his own credibility as a reliable human being was called into question. This, very often, is a dilemma of ministry. Our integrity is our calling card. Yet a good leader is always thinking ahead and thinks through the consequences of actions that might be taken. Sometimes it is better to compromise our own reputation for the sake of the Gospel, rather than doing damage to the work in which we are involved.

Nevertheless, there is a point here that we should not overlook. Promises should never be taken lightly, and neither should they be rescinded lightly. Even if it is for the finest reasons in the world, we should count the cost very carefully before going back on something. The church has been disasterously damaged in recent years by the marred integrity of so many of its leaders. While few of us might have been involved in these scandals there is a filter down effect until the integrity of all ordained people, regardless of their denominational affiliation, is called into question. Then when we fail to show integrity in little things, the scales are further tipped against us.

This is one of the factors that has made ministry more stressful and increased the difficulty of the task which God has set us. Our affirmation is here in these passage, too. Paul tells the Corinthians that they come as servants of the living God, established as such by their common faith in Jesus Christ, anointed by him, and sealed with the seal of God, their hearts filled with the Spirit, which is God's great and reliable guarantee (verse 22).

The word Paul uses for guarantee is ARRABON, and it meant in secular Greek of the time the first instalment of a payment for a good or a service, and it is the guarantee that the rest of what is owed will follow. This is how Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit, for the third person of the Trinity dwelling within us is our guarantee, God's pledge of more to come -- both through life and into eternity. It is the presence of this ARRABON within our lives the keeps us moving forward in the ministry to which we are committed, knowing that God is our witness and he will not let us down, even in the hardest place.

2 Corinthians 1:12-14

For our boast is this: the testimony of our conscience that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. (13) For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and acknowledge and I hope you will fully acknowledge-- (14) just as you did partially acknowledge us, that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you.

Thoughts on 1:12-14

We all know the saying that if you throw enough mud at a person some is sure to stick. Paul was on the receiving end of mud-slinging -- some of which had clearly stuck to him as far as the Corinthians were concerned. "You can't trust that man, Paul," was possibly the kind of thing that was said behind his back, "He's boastful, arrogant..." and whatever other slurs his detractors thought would erode his position among these immature Christians.

It doesn't take more than a year or two in ordained ministry to realize that those in leadership are often the target of such whispering campaigns -- or worse. When it happens we wrestle inwardly to know what might be the right way of responding to such accusations, especially if they are gross exaggerations or untruths built around one tiny inconspicuous fact. Clearly this was an issue at the beginning of the church, too, and here is Paul beginning to try to clear his name in the eyes of the Corinthians.

Implicit within this text is the notion that Paul is deceitful and underhand. Perhaps he is accused of being insincere and two-faced. Having read and re-read this epistle a good number of times in the last few months, I am wondering if Paul is actually on the receiving end of some pretty heavy projection by his detractors. Given the character of those who are seeking to gain from the intrusion they are making into the Corinthian church, making a colorful splash as they do so, this would make a lot of sense.

But as we all know, it is extremely hard to gracefully and graciously extricate ourselves when we are on the receiving end of this stuff, and it can be both hurtful and painful to our inner being. Paul was clearly a sensitive man, and as he learned of the disruption in the church and of the attacks on himself he was crushed inside and sought to present himself in a true rather than a false light.

"We boast," he told the Corinthians, "Not in ourselves but in the forthright and open way in which we have behaved toward you from the very beginning" (Verse 12). He wants to make the point that words written and words spoken are consistent. What is interesting is the word that he uses in verse 12 that is usually translated simplicity, has an alternate reading and can be the word hagiotes which means holiness. While the better manuscripts are overwhelmingly for haplotes, these two possibilities together make the point that in a faithful life there should be no hidden motives, and that he, Paul, is being utterly straightforward. There are no hidden meanings in Paul's words. As they say often in my part of England, Paul was "calling a spade a spade."

There is a relationship, it would appear between being open and honest and holiness, or that alternate reading would not have crept in. It is the Father of Lies who conceals and perverts, and Paul is urging them to realize that this is not his modus operandi. William Barclay points out that "a man may use words to reveal his thoughts or he may equally use them to conceal his thoughts. There are few of us who can honestly say that we mean to the full every word that we say" (Daily Study Bible -- Letters to the Corinthians, page 195).

I suspect that Paul is not claiming to be utterly and totally consistent in every word and action, no man who was so certain of his own fallenness would make such an assertion. However, he is trying to get across the point that he does not deliberately act in a sneaky, underhand, deceitful manner. That, I think, is the message to us when we are under fire, too. Under God we need to be as open and straight with the facts and people as we possibly can be.

Thoughts on 1:8-11

The literal meaning of the words thlipsis (affliction) is "pressure." We are pushed and shoved and buffeted by the pressures of affliction. It is highly likely that the false teachers who are leading the Corinthians astray and prodding them to question Paul and his credentials are teaching that Christians are individuals who are free from affliction and suffering. This is a heresy that pops up again and again through church history, and is very prevalent among Christians today. I have had several ministry disappointments in the past as people have walked away because I cannot promise them ease and prosperity.

What Paul does in this short paragraph is to tell us just how painful his own thlipsis is. Eugene Peterson paraphrases Paul in 8b-9a as "It was so bad we didn't think we were going to make it. We felt like we'd been sent to death row, that it was all over for us." Peterson is being pretty colorful there, but which of us when under ministry stress has not felt this way? How may of you dread that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach which refuses to go away, or that intense sense of nausea that accompanies the anxieties that go with being a leader in Christ's church?

Paul could well have been dealing with all sorts of other things that were burdening him besides his concern for the churches, and what seems to be amiss in all of them, but his responses to stress were very similar to ours. I recall not long ago our bishop, Bert Herlong, saying that for several months after General Convention he would wake up at 2.42 a.m. worrying about what had happened and what was going on. Sleeplessness and feeling like death warmed over are very much part of the ministerial life and lifestyle -- and I wonder why no one told me about that in seminary. Or, did they tell me and I conveniently overlooked their words?

Yet for Paul this affliction is not "unto death," because he goes on to say that we are dependent on the God who raises the dead (9), and he delivered Paul from this excrutiation (10a). It is, therefore, upon him that we set our hope. I fear that too many Episcopalians in the last 18 months have set their hope on something that will fail them -- church politics and intrigue, walking away from the field of conflict and hoping being out of ECUSA will reduce the stress, denial, and so forth. Our hope is the Lord who raises the dead, and he will deliver us, although we walk in darkness now because we do not know how this can be.

This week, while preparing my sermon on Abraham for Sunday I was reading John Goldingay's book, After Eating the Apricot. In that he talks about the way that Abraham and Sarah are guided by God to live by his promise. However, Goldingay goes on, Living by God's promise regularly means living by a word that seems more than somewhat unlikely to be fulfilled. Think about that for a moment. We live in hope, therefore are dependent upon God's promises to us, but how often does it seem that those promises are unlikely to be fulfilled. Yet, and here is an element of discipleship that gets forgotten, we just plod on. Plodding is something 21st Century people are not good at -- so pastors should model it.

In the light of all this, Paul calls upon us to pray (11). During the last few months I feel as if affliction has stripped me of reliance on my own gifts and abilities, they were clearly doing no good to our little congregation. It was only when I was afflicted to the point of feeling I was under sentence of death and that this mission congregation could not survive, and I threw myself on God's mercy and grabbed at any mite of help and comfort that I could get, that God said, "OK, now I am ready to work..."

There is a long way to do, but I am staggered what the Lord has done so far. Now I understand the dynamics of some of what has been going on, but behind those dynamics is the hand of the Comforter, the one who draws near, and who says out of affliction I am able to bring hope, from the blood shed on a Cross I am able to bring life.

2 Corinthians 1:8-11

8For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers,[a] of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

2 Corinthians 1:1-7

1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia: 2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

Thoughts on 1:1-7

I began reading 2 Corinthians in my cycle of daily bible readings on August 26th last year. The weather was hot and exceedingly humid, and in that week it had felt as if one freight train after another had been rolling over me. In my journal a day or two earlier I had prayed, "Quieten my fears, O Lord," and again on that particularly day I was worrying over finances, several families who were leaving our congregation, and a woman who had gone off on an alcoholic bender. Added to all this, I was having trouble sleeping, there were difficulties in the diocese, and I was beginning to wonder whether the Church of the Apostles would survive -- and if it did, whether I would survive the burden that was crushing me.

Any priest who has been doing this job for more than five minutes knows the toll that the accumulation of things takes on both your health and your sanity. I suspect I was looking for a word from the Lord when I picked up my bible that August morning. I wanted comfort, I wanted Someone to stroke me and tell me that everything was going to be alright. Instead I got Paul pouring out his soul onto the page -- but what startled me was that his soul was in as many tatters as my own.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and God of all comfort," (1:3) he begins after his familiar introduction of himself to the Corinthians. Then he goes on to speak of this God being the one who comforts us in all our afflictions, and in the following handful of verses the Apostle tells us just what he is going through.

"We share Christ's sufferings... we are afflicted... we suffer" and he urges the Corinthians to share his sufferings.

As I read these words I knew they were being written by a man on the very edge. He was torn apart over what the Corinthians were up to, and there were all sorts of other ministry and pastoral burdens that were weighing him down. There are those moments in all our lives when everything is just too much for us, and that, I think, is how it was for Paul as he poured out his soul to the Corinthians who he loved so much, but who were causing him such pain and anxiety.

The word which really caught my attention, and which Paul uses over and over again is affliction, or thlipsis which is the word used in the original Greek. During one of my readings of 2 Corinthians during the fall I found myself going through the whole letter in one sitting and circling every time that Paul uses the word. It is a perfect word to describe the agony of the burden of ministry. The KJV translates it tribulation, and one of the older commentators calls it "the anguish of spirit caused by the revolt and estrangement of Paul's Corinthian converts."

Some of those writing about Paul's response to the news from Corinth have tended to dismiss this as much too strong a response, but I would hazard that those scholars have never found their souls caught in the mangle of pastoral life at a time of crisis in the wider church. One of the things that strikes me about the responsible pastors I have known all over the world through the years, is that they are intensely involved with the lives of those in their congregations, however small or large those congregations might be. There are few faithful clergy I know who in the last couple of years have not suffered sleepless nights and nailbiting days which have brought them to their wits' end. So was Paul as he churned his "anxiety for all the churches" (11:28).

But Paul does not dwell on his pain, his agony, and his suffering. Even in these early verses when he seems to be having trouble keeping his emotions under control, he points us back to the God "who comforts us in all our afflictions" (1:4), telling us that although we share in Christ's sufferings, we also "share abundantly in comfort too" (1:5). Perhaps Paul had in mind the words of Jesus on the night before he was betrayed that the Comforter would soon come, and maybe this is who he drew upon as he prayed over the circumstances in which he found himself.

Dependence upon God came no more naturally to Paul than it does to us. It was, as Mike Thompson points out in his commmentary, "something he learned repeatedly through the 'ups' and especially through the 'downs' of his Christian experience. Recollection of how God had rescued him in the past fuelled further confidence that God could be trusted to deliver him in the future" (Thompson p. 19).

Which brings it back to us and our struggles. The afflictions at the grassroots and in the wider church are not going to go away. I suspect that those of us who are by nature worriers will continue to worry, occasionally (like me) catastrophizing over the outcomes from all that is happening. We want our circumstances to change, God wants us to be transformed by our circumstances. We might think that what is happening is the worst kind of disaster, yet in the divine economy it could very well be that this is precisely the pruning we need by the Spirit so that we can bear more and healthier fruit.

There is a funny little saying that I sometimes use. It is that we have been sold a pup. What it means is that when we purchase a puppy we don't have the slightest idea what we are getting. There are few clues about the temperament, size, or appetite of this little creature when it is placed in our hands as a small furry bundle. Only as it grows us do we discover that it was a cross between a Great Dane and a Rottweiler, will eat you out of house and home, and ought not to be allowed to be left unattended around children!

So is the ordained ministry. I remember my ordination to the priesthood in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, well. It was Anglican pomp and pageantry at its finest and I thought that with the bishop's hands laid on my head I was going to be able to change the world and all would be on the up and up from here. Very quickly I realized that this would not be the case as I found myself working for an unbalanced man who was sinking into deep mental illness. In three and a half decades of ordained life I have discovered just how untrained and demanding the pup that I was handed on my ordination day is. We need to face its realities, but we also need to recognize that as we set about this work, we do not do it alone but have the Comforter who is with us forever (John 14:16), and he will guide us into all truth.

Getting into 2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians is not an easy epistle either to read or to study. Because Paul wrote a number of letters to the church in Corinth, at least four, the modernist scholars of the past, with their scissors-and-paste approach to scholarship have opined that 2 Corinthians is a compendium of these offerings because it has so much discontinuity within it. As I read it and then read it again during a period of intense anxiety, I realized how wooden such scholarship is -- and these scholars clearly had a low opinion of the intelligence of these who supposedly constructed 2 Corinthians from various bits and pieces, because they didn't drop the additions and digressions into what would have been the most appropriate places!

No, this is the produce of a brilliant mind that was deeply disturbed. His "anxiety for all the churches" (11:28) drove him to dart all over the place, lose the thread of his thoughts and then pick it up several chapters later, and to spill onto the page his raw emotions. When you are experiencing such anxieties as a result of ministry yourself, then the discombobulation of the letter makes perfect sense because you realize this is exactly how you are responding to the pressures that are upon you.

The situation is that the Corinthians were not only being pestered by super-apostles who were calling Paul's credentials into question, but they were tending to give into these interlopers' ideas and attitudes. The Corinthians were oh so 21st Century, for Corinth, in a more exaggerated manner than most of the Greek world, was into style and presentation -- and image was not something that Paul was particularly good at.

I imagine Paul as being like one of the most effective priests I know -- short, dumpy, of questionable health, with a scraggly beard and a far from attractive balding pattern! In this he was probably quite a contrast to these troublers who had come in from outside and who were rhetorically clever, had well-buffed bodies, and knew how to smooth-talk their way into peoples' hearts and lives. The truth is that some of the most wonderful Christian leaders I have ever known have been physically non-descript and usually have not been recognized by the wider church for the extraordinary things that they have achieved in Jesus' name. Paul, today would fit into that category.

What Paul is doing in 2 Corinthians is plead with the church that they do not turn aside from the gospel that he brought to them. He is asserting his own qualifications as an apostle of the heart set free, and encourages them to return to the essence of the faith that he had brought to them.

This is a difficult book because it covers the whole waterfront of emotions, and yet imbedded in it is some of the most profound theological truth about God's nature and our obedience. We see into the heart of a pastor and an evangelist. As Mike Thompson puts it, "We find him describing the shape of his ministry and revealing what makes him tick. We watch him work in crisis with a congregation surprisingly similar in some ways, perhaps, to our own" (page 7).

It is this collegiality with Paul that has drawn me to this letter, and which makes 2 Corinthians a crucial tool in forming and encouraging pastoral leaders in these difficult times. Did Paul mishandle the Corinthians occasionally? You bet he did -- much as you and I mishandle relationships in our congregations on a pretty regular basis. Have you and I ever had folks in the parish gang up on us and want to run us from town on a rail? Yes, and so was the attitude of many of the Corinthians toward the Apostles.

This, brothers and sisters, is heavy stuff!