Our Own Selves: Homeiromai, Paul as a Nursing Mother, and the Work of Caregiving

Pharmacies sell a small plastic box with seven lids in a row, one for each day of the week. If you've ever filled one for somebody else, you know it takes longer than it looks. You check each bottle, count each tablet, close each lid, and then you do it again next Sunday. Nobody gives you credit for it. It's one of a hundred small jobs that come with taking care of someone who used to take care of you.

In the second reading for Proper 25, Year A, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8, Paul reaches for a picture of exactly that kind of care to describe what he was like with a young church. It's the last picture you'd expect an apostle to use about himself. The readings for the Sunday are Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18, Psalm 1, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 and Matthew 22:34-46, and on Tuesday we sat with the Gospel, where Jesus hangs the whole law on two commandments, love of God and love of neighbor. Today we watch somebody actually do the second one.

Paul in Thessalonica, still bruised from Philippi

Paul founded the church in Thessalonica in a matter of weeks, and then an angry mob ran him out of town. He is writing from somewhere else, worried about the people he left behind, and many scholars think this is the oldest of his letters we have. Chapter two opens with Paul defending how he behaved while he was there, which tells you people were saying things about him after he left. Traveling teachers were common in Greek cities, and plenty of them were in it for the money and the applause.

So Paul lays out his case. "Though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition." Acts 16 says he and Silas were stripped, beaten with rods and thrown into prison there. He walked into Thessalonica with the bruises still on him. "We never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ."

He could have. An apostle had a right to be supported by the people he taught, and Paul says so elsewhere. The Greek behind "made demands" is closer to "we could have been a weight on you." Paul had the standing to lean on these people. He set it down.

Like a nursing mother: trophos and thalpō

And then he says what he did instead. "But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children."

The word for "nurse" is trophos. It usually means a nursing mother, or a woman who nursed and raised children as her work, and Paul sharpens it: a nurse with her own children, not someone on a shift who goes home at the end of the day. The verb for "tenderly caring" is thalpō, to warm something, to keep it warm. In Ephesians Paul uses it for the way a person nourishes and cares for their own body, and in the old Greek translation of Deuteronomy it describes a mother bird sitting on her eggs. Paul is saying he kept them warm.

If your Bible has footnotes, look at verse 7. Many translations note that other ancient authorities read "infants" instead of "gentle." In Greek, "gentle" is ēpioi and "infants" is nēpioi, one letter apart, and the word just before it ends in that same letter, so it's easy to see how a copyist could have doubled it or dropped it. Read it the second way and Paul says something stranger still: we were like infants among you, like a nurse caring for her own children. In one sentence he's both the baby and the mother.

Think about who those two figures are. An infant has no standing at all. A nursing mother has a kind of power, but she spends all of it on the child; she isn't the one being served. Paul had the standing to be heavy on these people, and he picks the two figures in the household who never lean on anyone. An infant can't, and a nursing mother won't.

Sharing our own selves: love of neighbor carried by a person

Look at what the ache produces: "not only the gospel of God but also our own selves." The Greek for "our own selves" is literally "our own souls," our lives. For most traveling teachers the message would have been plenty. Paul handed over himself along with it.

Put that next to Tuesday. Jesus said love your neighbor as yourself. Leviticus said that love looks like fair wages and honest courts. Paul shows what it looks like when somebody does it for a group of people over a few weeks. He sets down what he's owed, keeps them warm, aches for them when he's gone, and gives them his own life along with the message. That's the second peg, love of neighbor, carried by a person.

But the first peg is holding it up. Back in verse 4 Paul explains how he could set down flattery and greed in the first place: "we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts." He wasn't performing for the Thessalonians, because he was already living for someone else. A man who needs the crowd's approval can't afford to be an infant or a nursing mother. Love of God is what freed him to love them like that.

Caregiving and the part the list can't do

A lot of people are living in this passage right now, in the stretch of life where the direction of care reverses. The parent who filled your lunchbox now needs someone to fill the pill organizer. The father who taught you to drive needs a ride to the cardiologist. Somebody has to handle the insurance calls, the follow-up appointments and the question of whether it's still safe for her to live alone.

Caregivers carry an enormous amount, and most of it is invisible. Much of it is tasks, and the tasks matter. Doing them faithfully is love. But Paul names a second thing, and it's the harder one. He shared the gospel, the job he came to do, and he shared his own self. It is very possible to finish every task on a caregiving list and never actually be present to the person. You can drop off the groceries, refill the prescriptions, check the smoke detector and be out the door in twenty minutes with your mind already on the next thing. The list gets done, and the person gets very little of you.

Homeiromai helps here. Most caregivers already feel that ache of wanting someone near, mixed in with the exhaustion. It's grief that starts early, watching someone you love become less able to do what they used to do. Paul lets the ache turn into giving his own self instead of treating it as a problem to manage.

And if you aren't a caregiver, you almost certainly know one: the coworker who spends her lunch break at the hospital, the neighbor who hasn't had a free Saturday in months because his mother can't be left alone. The sick parent needs love. So does the tired person filling the pill organizer.

So try this. If you're caring for someone, plan one visit this week where you do nothing on the list. Sit down. Ask about something from before, the house they grew up in, their first job, how they met the person they married. Let the tasks wait an hour. If you're not the caregiver, find the person who is and take one task off their list without asking them to explain it. Bring the meal, make the pharmacy run, sit with the parent so they can go to a movie. That's kamokha, from Tuesday. They're like you, and they're tired.

The full episode of Monday to Sunday is above.