|
Bishop Brown,
Reverend Fathers, honored guests, brothers and sisters:
This weekend,
Christians worldwide inaugurate the Year of St. Paul as called for by Pope
Benedict XVI to celebrate the 2000th
anniversary of the saint’s birth. As we inaugurate this celebratory year
in California, already His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
and other Orthodox leaders, lay and ordained, have joined with Pope
Benedict at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls in Rome to begin
this important year in the life of all Christians.
Honoring St. Paul
with a year of celebrations will lift up his memory in new ways for all of
us. For St. Paul is both known to us as Christians and simultaneously
unknown, or more likely, taken for granted because of his omnipresence in
the lives of our Churches. Most of the time in Orthodox liturgy, the
apostolic reading is from a letter of St. Paul. In the Orthodox sacrament
of Baptism, the thrice-holy hymn is the words of St. Paul: “As many as
have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” from his letter to
the Galatians. In our theological discussions we casually toss around
phrases like “body of Christ,” “fruits of the Spirit,” “you are
the temple of the Holy Spirit,” and many others, without always giving
credit or at least realizing the revolutionary impact of these concepts of
St. Paul on us today. Even as theologians and seminarians closely examine
the words of St. Paul in their study of the New Testament, I believe, all
of us – hierarchs, clergy, and laypeople – would greatly benefit from
a close examination of the words and life of St. Paul. I would like to put
before you four possible avenues of study for our future Bible studies:
A
Model of Dialogue
The first is to
consider St. Paul as a model for dialogue with the “religious other.”
We know from the New Testament that St. Paul traveled from city to city in
the Mediterranean in order to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is
stating the obvious, but we cannot forget whom St. Paul addressed. In the
first place, as a Jew, he spoke to his fellow Jews, visiting the
synagogues and interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures for them in the light of
his experience of the Risen Christ. But as our model of dialogue, he went
to the religious "other" – the pagan temples and marketplaces
– and preached a radically new vision of faith. His dialogue was always
peaceful – even as he was frequently a victim of imprisonment, beatings,
and expulsions. He never coerced his audience into belief. He used the
tools of persuasion, the power of his argument, and the strength of his
convictions. While we will certainly always remember how he began his
preaching to the Athenians at the Areopagus, “Men of Athens! I see that
in every way you are very religious” (Acts 17:22), let’s us not forget
the end of the story, where it reads, “When they heard about the
resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, ‘We
want to hear you again on this subject’” (Acts 17.32). Paul’s
approach was powerful but not overbearing; he believed but did not condemn
those who believed differently or who did not accept his message. While
the Scriptures do not mention a second discussion in Athens, we can
certainly believe that St. Paul was willing to engage in what we would
call today "long term bi-lateral dialogue."
St. Paul's Call to Unity
A second avenue of exploration into St.
Paul is his continual call for unity in the Church. Even in those earliest
years of Christianity, human frailty and sin led to divisions in the still
fledgling Church. St. Paul was an ardent advocate for unity. To me it
seems that he could not fathom the possibility that Christians and the
Church could live in anything but unity. Here I think of his words to the
Corinthians when he admonishes them with the powerful question, “Is
Christ divided?” (1 Corinthians 1:13). And his exhortation to the Ephesians, “There is one
body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope when you were
called – one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of
all…” (Ephesians 4:6). We must confess and repent for the situation of
Christianity in our time, for we have not lived up to these words of St.
Paul. We have too easily allowed disunity to become the status quo. We have become more like those first Corinthians who
placed their loyalty to Apollos, Paul or Cephas, dividing the indivisible
Body of Christ, scattering the united community like Babel, rather than
being united in Pentecost.
A
Model of Communication
A third possible
area of exploration is Paul’s exquisite use of the means of
communication of his day. In our age of instant messaging and e-mail, we
have forgotten the power and the longevity of the humble letter. It was
St. Paul’s main tool for shepherding the flock and bringing people to
faith in Christ. We still read his words, nearly 2000 years after they
were written. The ecumenical journey of Christians began in the twentieth
century through the exchange of letters between church leaders. In 1920,
in the open letter “unto the Churches of Christ everywhere,” the
Ecumenical Patriarchate echoed Pauline themes and quoted from St. Paul by
stating, ‘love should be rekindled and strengthened among the churches,
so that they should no more consider one another as strangers and
foreigners, but as relatives, and as being a part of the household of
Christ, ‘fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the
promise of God in Christ’ (Eph. 3.6).” It was through the letters
exchanged between Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope John XXIII that began the
process of breaking down the walls of separation between the Orthodox and
Roman Catholic Churches. The letter-writing method of St. Paul still has
power.
St.
Paul as Traveler
The final possible
avenue of exploration is St. Paul the traveler. His famed missionary
journeys carried him throughout the Mediterranean to spread the Gospel and
to guide the Christian Church. Traveling on foot, by boat, and no doubt by
other means of transportation, St. Paul logged many miles. To put it in
our words, he was a “road warrior.” Listen to his itinerary in the
Epistle to the Romans, “Now however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the
service of the saints there. For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make
a contribution… So after I have completed this task and have made sure
that they have received this fruit, I will go to Spain and visit you on
the way” (Romans 15.25-28). In these journeys, we find St. Paul enduring
and willing to endure the many hardships of travel, including shipwreck,
to “serve the saints,” the members of the Church - all for the Gospel
of Christ. We can trace his footsteps throughout Asia Minor and the
Mediterranean world in his letters, gaining a better knowledge of those
communities and their struggles to live faithfully as Christians, and see
the places where he preached, taught, and ultimately faced martyrdom for
his beliefs.
In this coming
year, we will certainly be enriched in our Christian lives through the
study of St. Paul. He is the founder of our collective Christian heritage,
East and West, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. My humble
suggestions are merely first steps that each of us can take as we
celebrate the life of Paul. As we progress, we can move more deeply into
the letters themselves and the theological reflection they spawned in our
individual communities. As we progress, we can gather as Christians
together to study our varying traditions for interpreting his thought. As
we progress, we can examine the world in which he preached, comparing it
to our own situation. Our Churches can only benefit from studying his
life, his ministry, and especially his words.
|
