Giving thanks for Saul/Paul

 

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh on Sunday 1st May 2022, the 3rd Sunday of Easter

Imagine for a moment that you are Saul, who we heard about in the 1^st Reading (Acts 9:1-20).

You are approaching Damascus, one of the great cities of the Roman Empire. You are on important business. You carry letters from the High Priest himself, which give you the authority to round up the subversives who follow what they call the Way, both men and women, followers of that notorious criminal Jesus of Nazareth who was justly executed for inciting rebellion against lawful authority.

Suddenly, a light flashes around you. You collapse in a heap on the ground. You hear a voice saying ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ Where is this voice coming from? ‘Who are you?’ you say. ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting’ the reply comes. ‘But get up and go into the city, and you will be told what to do.’ Then you realise that you can see absolutely nothing, even with open eyes.

What a terrifying realisation – you have been struck blind, completely blind. Your travelling companions lead you by the hand into the city, and there you stay in a room for three days, sightless, neither eating nor drinking. Your mind races, returning again and again to the agonising question, ‘Why me? I am a good Jew, a Pharisee, punctilious in keeping the Law. Surely I don’t deserve this fate?’

Then at last a man called Ananias comes into your room. He is a Jew like you, living in Damascus, but he is also one of those subversive followers of the Way, against whom you have been breathing threats and murder. He simply touches you with his hands and says softly, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit’. And suddenly you can see again – it is as if something like a blindfold fell off your eyes.

What a surge of relief you feel! And as your strength returns you find that everything – the whole course of your life – is changed.

This is the bones of the story told us by Luke, the author of Acts. But let’s look a little closer at this man called Saul in Hebrew or Paul in Greek. He is worth studying because he - more than any other of the first generation of Christians - has profoundly shaped our Christian faith through his missionary activities and writings.

Saul was a cosmopolitan Jew of the diaspora.

He was born in Tarsus, a major Mediterranean trading port in what is now South East Turkey, to a devout family - in his own words (Phil 3:5) he was ‘circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee’. The family must have been quite well to do for him to inherit Roman citizenship.

He could read and write fluently in Greek, the common language of the Eastern Empire, as well as Aramaic and Hebrew no doubt, and he was sent to Jerusalem to complete his education in the famous rabbinical school of Gamaliel. He said of himself that though he was not an impressive speaker he wrote words of wisdom.

He had learned the trade of tent making, by which he proudly supported himself during his later missionary journeys. But he may have been trained for ownership or management. He knew how to use a secretary and dictate letters, and he displayed the managerial skills to plan, monitor and control missionary teams in the growing network of churches he founded.

It is clear from his letters that Paul was a disputatious personality. He was quite prepared to challenge the authority of Peter and James, the leaders of the growing Christian community in Jerusalem, when he thought they were wrong, for instance when he insisted that his gentile converts should not have to adopt the whole of the Jewish law. And he must have been a prickly individual, always certain that he was right, who was known to fall out with his co-workers.

Saul was also a zealot – he would throw himself body and soul into whatever project he believed to be right. This led him to prominence in a pogrom against Jesus’s followers in Jerusalem, after he watched the stoning to death of Stephen, the first martyr. And hunting those who fled the pogrom brought him to travel on the road to Damascus.

Saul’s religious experience on the road to Damascus changed his life utterly.

Religious experience is a strange thing. God seems to choose to reveal important things suddenly to some people. Not just to Jews like Saul, or to Christians – many claim the experience of being ‘born again’ even today - but to individuals of other faiths – for instance the Buddha Gautama’s awakening under a Bo tree. But most of us discover religious truth and faith in a much gentler, gradual way, as I have, absorbed as if by osmosis in a process which takes a lifetime.

What exactly Saul experienced is uncertain. Acts says that he saw a bright light and heard a voice. Was it an epileptic fit or a kind of migraine perhaps? In his own letters he says only that ‘God revealed his Son to me’, and claimed he had seen the Risen Lord, which is why this reading is set for the Easter season. He used it to justify his claim to be the equal of the original apostles. And he believed he had been called not just to serve Christ but to accomplish a special task – to convert the gentiles. This is what he dedicated the rest of his life to.

And the Christ who chose to appear to Saul chose well. Saul was the right man in the right place at the right time. His personality and his skills made him outstandingly successful at the task of converting the gentiles. The book of Acts tells the dramatic story of his missionary trips throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. At some point he ceased to use the name Saul, so that in the latter part of Acts and in his letters only his Greek name Paul is used.

Paul founded vibrant congregations, and nurtured them by writing letters to encourage and sometimes chastise them. He developed a Christology and a theology of salvation which continues to inspire and perplex us. And he bravely endured many hardships and punishments over some 30 years of work, culminating in two years of house arrest in Rome. There, according to tradition, he was beheaded as a martyr in the reign of Emperor Nero – he who allegedly fiddled while Rome burned.

In 70 AD, just a few years after Paul’s death, the Jews of Judea rebelled against Rome.

Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed – just as Jesus had predicted, according to St Matthew, though he may have been writing in hindsight. All the inhabitants of Jerusalem were dispersed as refugees. The fate of the Jewish Christians is uncertain, but most probably they merged into the Greek speaking gentile churches created by Paul. Without Paul’s churches the small, vulnerable Christian minority might well have been wiped out – and we would not be here today.

So let us give thanks to God for Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, for his mission to the gentiles which has led us to Christ, and for the inspiring and challenging words he has left us.

I will finish in prayer in the words of the collect for the Conversion of St Paul:

Almighty God, who caused the light of the gospel

to shine throughout the world

through the preaching of your servant St Paul:

Grant that we who celebrate his wonderful conversion

may follow him in bearing witness to your truth;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Faith and Works

 A reflection given at Morning Worship for the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 17th November 2020

If you are accused before a judge of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

In today’s reading (James 2:14-26), James tells us we cannot claim to have faith if we cannot show works. ‘Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’, he says. The works he is talking about here are good works, works of charity to help fellow human beings in distress, such as clothing the naked or feeding the hungry. This is the same message that Jesus taught in the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. He told his followers, ‘You are the light of the world … let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven’.  

Disciples of Jesus ought to be able to their good works as evidence that they are Christians. But are good works enough to prove the case?

On judgement day a brutal tyrant may try to persuade a judge that his good works outweigh the oppression and suffering he has caused. Are you and I so different? All of us have fallen short of God’s standards, we all have probably contrived to keep our shameful acts secret. We may try to claim that our good works, done for all to see, are sufficient to prove that we are good Christians. But no one can bargain with God. God sees right through our pitiful excuses for the bad things we have done.

St Paul understands very well that good works are not sufficient to justify the bad. In his Epistle to the Romans (Romans 3:21-30), he argues that we are justified through faith, not through works. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, he says. But God is righteous, God is good. By God’s grace freely given, those who believe in Jesus Christ can be redeemed through Jesus’s self-sacrifice. God will forgive our bad deeds if we change our lives, and we can be reconciled to God.

So for Paul, it is faith that comes first, not good works. People have sometimes seen this as contradicting James view. ‘Sola fide’, faith alone, was the catch phrase of the Lutheran reformation. But this is a false opposition. Luther himself, in his ‘Introduction to Romans’, said ‘A living, creative, active and powerful thing, (is) this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever...Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire!’

The fact is, evidence of good works is not enough to convict anyone of being Christian, but an absence of good works – and bad deeds - is evidence someone is not. After all, speaking of false prophets, Jesus tells us, ‘You will know them by their fruits’.

And what of those who do not claim to be Christian, but who we can see do good works? We should give thanks to God for them, I think, and consider them people of good will with whom we are happy to work. And we should leave judgement to God.

 

The story of Cornelius & Peter

An address given at Templederry, Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 12th January 2014, the 1st Sunday after Epiphany, celebrated as the Baptism of Christ.

What image does the name Cornelius conjure up for you?

If you’re a certain age like me, it might be that wise old elephant Cornelius with the wrinkly forehead, who was Babar’s friend and trusted counselor in the children’s book. Or if you’re a bit younger perhaps it’s Cornelius the chimpanzee archaeologist in the cult SciFi movie Planet of the Apes, who believed that apes descend from humans.

How many of us, I wonder, would think immediately of Cornelius the Roman centurion, whom St Peter addresses in today’s 2^nd reading from Acts 10:34-43? Not many probably! Which is a shame, because the story of Peter and Cornelius is important for our faith. To understand why, I’m going to focus on that story today.

Now the lectionary reading, as so often, is only a small fragment of the larger story, so I’m going to try to summarise it for you. But I do urge you, when you have a moment, to take down your Bible at home and read the whole thing, from the beginning of Acts Ch10 to the middle of Ch11.

The story begins with Cornelius.

Cornelius was a centurion in the Roman army, stationed in Caesarea, the Roman administrative capital of Palestine. He was in charge of a company-sized unit of around 100 men, equivalent to a Captain, or perhaps a Major or Commandant in today’s army - a man of substance and authority.

He was a ‘God-fearer’, we are told. These were people who were not Jews, but believed in one God, admired the ethic of the Jewish religion and sometimes attended synagogue – many thoughtful gentiles at the time were feeling their way to a monotheistic faith and no longer believed in the old pagan pantheon of Gods.

One afternoon Cornelius had a vision. In the vision an angel told him to send messengers to fetch Peter from Joppa where he was staying - a day’s journey away on foot. Perhaps he had heard tell of Peter’s preaching, and realised he should hear what Peter had to say. Anyhow, he did as the angel asked him.

The next day Peter also had a vision, just as Cornelius’s messengers were approaching Joppa. He fell into a trance as he waited hungrily for his mid-day meal. He saw a bag-full of unclean animals in front of him and a voice told him to kill and eat them. He protested that the Jewish law forbade him to eat unclean meat, but the voice said, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane’. While Peter was still puzzling over what this meant, the messengers arrived to ask him to go with them to Cornelius.

The next day Peter set out for Caesarea with the messengers and some disciples from Joppa. Cornelius had called his family and friends together and was waiting for them. When Peter arrived he said to them, ‘You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean’. His words would have been shocking to a pious Jew – he has begun to question whether the strict Jewish law is really what God wants.

It is at this point that Peter gives the address we heard in today’s reading.

First he reassures Cornelius, his family and friends that God does not reject them because they are not Jews - ‘I truly understand’, he says, ‘that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him’.

Peter goes on to speak simply and powerfully of what he knows from his own experience. He tells them about Jesus’s special relationship with God: his baptism by John, his healing ministry to the people of Galilee and Judah, his death and resurrection, his command to the disciples to continue his teaching. And he interprets the words of the ancient prophets to show that ‘everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name’.

While Peter is still speaking, we are told, ‘the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word’. Peter’s words, shot through with personal conviction, so excited Cornelius, his family and friends that they became ecstatic, ‘speaking in tongues and extolling God’. Perhaps it was something like a charismatic prayer meeting today, with hand-waving, clapping, dancing and whoops of joy. Peter recognised that despite being Gentiles they had received the Holy Spirit, just as the disciples had at Pentecost, and ‘he ordered them to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ’.

The story continues with Peter’s return to Jerusalem.

Word has got back to the apostles and believers there about what had happened at Joppa, and they take Peter to task for consorting with Gentiles.

So Peter tells them the story from the beginning, finishing by justifying his actions in these words, ‘“If then God gave them the same gift (of the Holy Spirit) that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” …  And (the believers in Jerusalem)  praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”’

Those who wished to maintain a Jewish exclusiveness were silenced, at least for the time being - though as we know the issue continued to bedevil the Christian community for many years to come.

The story of Cornelius and Peter is a story of many epiphanies.

It’s worth reminding ourselves what an epiphany is. The English word comes from a Greek root meaning ‘showing forth’. It is used in two senses. First, in everyday speech, it means a sudden insight experienced by someone – a ‘Eureka!’ moment. Second, in a religious context, it means an event in which God reveals himself to human beings. An example of an Epiphany in this 2^nd sense is the Coming of the Wise Men which we celebrated last Sunday, a day early, in which God reveals his Son to the Magi in the shape of the baby Jesus. Another is the Baptism of Christ which we celebrate today, in which God through a voice from heaven, accompanied by the Spirit in the form of a dove, marks Jesus as his Son.

The story begins with Cornelius’s vision, a little epiphany in the everyday sense – a ‘Eureka’ moment in which he suddenly realises that the preacher Peter might have something important to tell him.

Then we have Peter’s vision, another little epiphany in the everyday sense, which causes Peter to question the rigidity of the Jewish dietary laws in which he had been brought up, which had become such a barrier between Jews and gentiles.

How marvellous it is that these little epiphanies are brought together to make possible the greater Epiphany, in the religious sense, in which the power of God as Holy Spirit was revealed to Cornelius, his family and friends - just as the apostles and disciples experienced it at Pentecost, and indeed as Jesus did at his baptism. They were the first gentiles we know of to experience it.

But the whole story, taken together is an even greater Epiphany – this is why I believe it is so important!

It shows us God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, revealing his nature to be inclusive – God seeks to include in his kingdom all people who turn to him and do what is right. This is revealed first to Peter and then through him to the first Christians in Jerusalem in the context of race: ‘God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life’.

But the Holy Spirit didn’t stop there. St Paul later received the insight that God’s inclusive nature extends beyond race, to social status and gender too. As he wrote in Galatians 3:28, ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’. Some found this difficult to accept - Paul like Peter had to contend with those who preferred an exclusive God – but as time moved on eventually Paul’s teaching was accepted by all.

In our own days I am convinced that the Holy Spirit continues to work for inclusion. More and more Christians are being led to understand that those attracted to the same sex are one in Christ with the rest of us. There is resistance of course – some of it frankly quite shocking - but that would not surprise Peter or Paul.

I hope and pray for, and look forward to, the time when the Holy Spirit has brought us all to accept one another as fellow disciples of Christ no matter what our sexual orientation, race, social status or gender may be.

Saul or Paul?

Address given at Templederry, St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan on 14th April 2013, the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year C.

Imagine for a moment that you are Saul, who we heard about in the 1^st Reading (Acts9:1-20).

You are approaching Damascus, one of the great cities of the Roman Empire. You are on business, important business. You carry letters from the High Priest himself, which give you the authority to round up the subversives who follow what they call the Way, both men and women, followers of that notorious criminal Jesus of Nazareth who was justly executed for inciting rebellion against lawful authority in Church and State.

Suddenly, a light flashes around you. You collapse in a heap on the ground. You hear a voice saying ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ Where is this voice coming from? ‘Who are you?’ you say. ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting’ the reply comes. ‘But get up and go into the city, and you will be told what to do.’ Then you realise that you can see absolutely nothing, even with open eyes.

What a terrifying realisation – you have been struck blind, completely blind. Your travelling companions lead you by the hand into the city, and there you stay in a room for three days, sightless, neither eating nor drinking. Your mind races, returning again and again to the agonising question, ‘Why me? I am a good Jew, a Pharisee, punctilious in keeping the Law. Surely I don’t deserve this fate?’

Then at last a man called Ananias comes into your room. He is a Jew like you, living in Damascus, but he is also one of those subversive followers of the Way, against whom you have been breathing threats and murder. He simply touches you with his hands and says softly, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit’. And suddenly you can see again – it is as if something like a blindfold fell off your eyes.

What a surge of relief you feel! And as your strength returns you find that everything – the whole course of your life – is changed.

This is the bones of the story told us by Luke, the author of Acts. But let’s look a little closer at this man called Saul in Hebrew or Paul in Greek. He is worth studying because he - more than any other of the first generation of Christians - has profoundly shaped our Christian faith through his missionary activities and writings.

Saul’s background was that of a cosmopolitan Jew of the diaspora.

He was born in Tarsus, a major Mediterranean trading port in what is now South East Turkey, to a devout family - in his own words (Phil 3:5) he was ‘circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee’. He took great pride in his family, which must have been quite well to do for him to inherit Roman citizenship.

Saul could read and write fluently in the Greek common language of the Eastern Empire, as well as Aramaic and Hebrew no doubt, and he was sent to Jerusalem to complete his education in the famous rabbinical school of Gamaliel. He said of himself that he wrote words of wisdom, even though he had to confess he was not an impressive speaker – he was no orator.

He had learned the trade of tent making - he was proud he could support himself by it during his later missionary journeys. But he may have been trained for ownership or management of a family business. He knew how to use a secretary and dictate letters, and he displayed the managerial skills to plan, monitor and control missionary teams in the growing network of churches he founded.

It is clear from his letters that his was, shall we say, a disputatious personality. He was quite prepared to challenge the authority of Peter and James, the leaders of the growing Christian community in Jerusalem, when he thought they were wrong. As he did when he insisted that his gentile converts should not have to adopt the whole of the Jewish law. And he must have been a prickly individual, always certain that he was right, who was known to fall out with his co-workers.

Saul was also a zealot – he would throw himself body and soul into whatever project he believed to be right. This led him to prominence in a nasty pogrom against Jesus’s followers in Jerusalem, after he watched the stoning to death of Stephen, the first martyr. And it was following those who fled the pogrom that brought him on the road to Damascus to the religious experience that we now call the Conversion of St Paul.

Saul’s religious experience determined the rest of his life.

Religious experience is a strange thing. God seems to choose to reveal important things suddenly to a some people. Not just to Jews like Saul, or to Christians – many claim the experience of being ‘born again’ even today - but to individuals of other faiths – for instance the Buddha Gautama’s awakening under a Bo tree. But most of us discover religious truth and faith in a much gentler, gradual way, as I have, absorbed as if by osmosis in a process which takes a lifetime.

What exactly Saul experienced is uncertain. Acts says that he saw a bright light and heard a voice. Was it an epileptic fit or a kind of migraine perhaps? In his own letters he says only that ‘God revealed his Son to me’, and claimed he had seen the Risen Lord. He considered this to be a resurrection experience – which is why this reading is set for the Easter season. He used it to justify his claim to be the equal of the original apostles. And he believed he had been called not just to serve Christ but to accomplish a special task – to convert the gentiles. This is what he dedicated the rest of his life to.

And the Christ who chose to appear to Saul chose well. Saul was the right man in the right place at the right time. His personality and his skills made him outstandingly successful at the task of converting the gentiles. The book of Acts tells the dramatic story of his missionary trips throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. At some point he ceased to use the name Saul, so that in the latter part of Acts and in his letters only his Greek name Paul is used. He founded vibrant congregations, and nurtured them by writing letters to encourage and sometimes chastise them. He developed a Christology and a theology of salvation which continue to inspire and perplex us. And he bravely endured many hardships and punishments over some 30 years of work, culminating in two years of house arrest in Rome. There according to tradition he was beheaded as a martyr in the reign of Emperor Nero – he who allegedly fiddled while Rome burned.

In 70 AD, just a few years after Paul’s death, the Jews of Judea rebelled against Rome.

Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed – just as Jesus had predicted, according to St Matthew, though he may have been writing in hindsight. All the inhabitants of Jerusalem were dispersed as refugees. The fate of the Jewish Christians is uncertain, but most probably they merged into the Greek speaking gentile churches created by Paul. Without Paul’s churches the small, vulnerable Christian minority might well have been wiped out – and we would not be here today, as a Christian community in this place.

So let us give thanks to God for Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Let us give thanks for his mission to the gentiles which has led us to Christ. And let us give thanks for the inspiring and challenging words he has left us.

I will finish in prayer in the words of the collect for the Conversion of St Paul:

Almighty God, who caused the light of the gospel

to shine throughout the world

through the preaching of your servant St Paul:

Grant that we who celebrate his wonderful conversion

may follow him in bearing witness to your truth;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen