Sermon for the 26th of Janurary - Conversion of Saint Paul

We gathered together last week for the annual service for the week of prayer for Christian Unity. And so I’d like to reflect a little on the church and about the importance of unity, as well as honouring the Conversion of St Paul.  

Firstly, week has been a chance to celebrate the way in which churches have set aside differences and come together, particularly over the last 100 years. And it’s important to do this because it seems de rigueur to sneer at religion and the church.

In movies like Babette's Feast and Chocolat, the church is portrayed as a place of moralistic, repressed people who never have any fun and who don't really believe or live out what they say they do.  And there are those who view religion as the root of all evil. The German Reformed theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, at the turn of the c.19 called them the ‘cultured despisers of religion’. In their view, religion is for the uneducated, superstitious masses.

Whilst acknowledging that the church has had, and still does, plenty of problems, perhaps we can pause to honour and give thanks for the Church and for faithful Christians living out their faith.  Being followers of Jesus, we are part of a global community of faith. And the point is that week by week, there are the thousands of small acts of kindness that stitch communities together.

Those parish activities of lunch clubs, craft clubs, and study groups, may easily be mocked, but they punctuate the day for the elderly and isolated, as well as for people wanting to engage with the big questions of life. So this week has been a chance to celebrate the church in its many expressions.

What about this theme for this evening? It’s been questioned whether it should actually be called the conversion of St Paul, because his life changing encounter on the road to Damascus, doesn’t mean that he does a complete about turn in his life. He doesn’t discard his belief in the God of Israel, he doesn’t reject as false the Covenants of his people with their God. Rather, what’s happening is a new configuration that the encounter with the Risen Christ provokes. It affirms all that he has been committed to, and all that he has been seeking after, and this is given its true expression in Christ. And the hope is that in our coming together in Christ, we will discover the fullest expression of who we are as human beings, and as followers of Christ.

Paul sometimes gets a bad rap, for a variety of reasons.  But he says in his letters some of the most radical teaching at the time. How about this as a vision of church: Galations 3.28

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus

Today we might add: straight, gay, bi, not sure, single, married, divorced. Rich and poor; neuro-divergent…

Imagine a church with that sort of inclusive perspective…. a wonderful vision of what the church might be. A place where we may be united but different.

Pope Francis encourages us not to be afraid of difference. The desire many of us have to move beyond tribalism and silos in our world, and for unity in the Church is so significant.  Difference needn’t be seen as a threat.

This week, the Bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, delivered a brave sermon at President Trump’s post-Inauguration service in Washington National Cathedral. At heart, her sermon was a call for unity. Unity doesn’t mean agreement, she said, political or otherwise, but the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division, a unity that serves the common good…. It is not conformity.

Speaking truth to power she said: ‘I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.’

 And the challenge extends to us in our church here today. Let us hold to a vision which sees difference, not as a threat, but rather as an enrichment. Because, to repeat St Paul’, ‘we are one body, including Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female’, and so on.

This expansive vision is an inspiration to us in the United Benefice.  It might offend some religious insiders, but it was Jesus’ vision. Jesus came to include the outsiders in God's love. To quote the poet, Rilke, let us live our lives ‘in ever-widening circles, that reach out across the world, each one bigger than the last one’. 

 Let us be a house of welcome and inclusion for those on the spiritual fringes, to those who are different to us, and to those who society too easily dismisses. Then we will truly be a house of prayer for all people.