When someone writes in one
paragraph (two sentences, actually) about uncovering mysteries hitherto
unknown, being in prison, receiving a commission and experiencing a revelation,
you know that you’re probably reading a spy novel. This stuff is the
stock-in-trade of famous writers of that genre such as John Le Carre, Robert
Ludlum, Tom Clancy and others.
Or, you could be reading Molly
Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses that consists of only two
super-sentences but spills over more than 36 pages. Perhaps you’re reading
William Faulkner’s one sentence consisting of 1,288 words in his 1936 novel, Absalom,
Absalom!1
But no! The writer in question is
the ancient apostle Paul, who sounds here in the opening verses of Ephesians 3
like Ian Fleming’s 007 — Bond, James Bond. The apostle writes, “I, Paul
am a prisoner.” And he goes on to describe an almost cloak-and-dagger mission,
or commission, that he chose to accept, that would blow the lid off all
previously held conceptions about relations between God and human beings. In
other documents that he wrote to various ecclesiae throughout
Mediterranean area, he told of floggings, making speeches in open-air
amphitheaters, meeting with governors and dignitaries, jumping out of sinking
ships, beach landings, a narrow escape in a basket from an upper story window —
he was the Daniel Craig of his era. He had no time to die.2
We know about espionage. If we
didn’t grow up during the Cold War, we’ve certainly watched plenty of films and
television to know that spies have been around for a long time. We also know
that there’s enough information and redacted files in folders or on servers in
Pentagon vaults and Langley subterranean caverns about clandestine and covert
operations that, if printed and stored, would sink the USS Gerald R. Ford
aircraft carrier. Some documents are still either highly redacted or not available
to the public at all. Top secret.
For example, almost 10 years ago,
the CIA got around to declassifying the last documents from the World War I
era.3 The documents shed light on how to open a sealed letter
without detection (with a cautionary note not to inhale the chemicals you’re
using.) Also uncovered were recipes for writing in secret ink and how the
Germans were doing at the time.
And it took the CIA almost 100 years
to let this information out — only a little quicker than the Vatican acknowledging
that Galileo got it right.
...approximately 1,766 words remaining. You are not logged in. Please see options at the top of this page to view complete sermon.
