At One with the Task
A departure gives us a chance to say things we wouldn’t otherwise say, especially when it is final. Paul’s speech in Miletus is moving. Elsewhere, too, we have heard him speak of his experiences. Think of the tirade in 2 Corinthians (‘thrice whipped, once stoned, thrice shipwrecked’); or of his correction of the Galatians (‘Let no one trouble me, I bear in my body the marks of Jesus’). At Miletus the tone is different. There is tenderness in Paul’s voice. His words testify to acceptance. He, who has preached kenosis and crucifixion to the world, shows us what the Christian condition consists in. It is as if he no longer has eyes for himself. The only thing of consequence is to complete the mission received: ‘to testify to the gospel of the grace of God’. We can sometimes perceive discipleship as a burden, not least when the world is against us. We kick against the goad, complain, and cry, ‘Usquequo? How long, O Lord?’ In the mature Paul we see a Christian fully at one with his task who finds freedom and fulfilment in it, even when he knows that ‘imprisonment and afflictions’ await him. We glimpse what it means for the glory of Jesus to be alive in a person. Then everything else recedes into the shadow, even things that normally, humanly speaking, would scare us witless.
