St Paul Sermon Series Week 6 - Richard's Sermon on Paul the Constant Traveller: Philippians 3.7-end

Paul Sermon Series No.6

Going the Distance       Paul the Constant Traveller

Philippians 3.7-end

At the end of last month I was sitting on a hot day in an Arabic Studies Seminar in the department of Oriental Studies in Oxford. It was a University Open Day and Iona is keen on studying Arabic. Alongside me, occupying most of one wall was a gigantic map, with titles and legend in German, of the journeys of St Paul. Since the seminar was rather more relevant to Iona than me, I made sure I looked again at the map. You have a map of those same journeys in front of you. It is a vivid reminder of just how much of Paul’s ministry was spent on the road, just what a constant traveller he was. The combination of a German map in an Arabic studies room in an English university might seem rather strange, but then again it reminded me of just what a traveller the gospel is. After all it has an Arabic base, not a European one and we should do well to remember that. Paul himself was from that hinterland between Turkey and Syria and would have considered Jerusalem as his spiritual home. We have just heard a crucial passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Philippi was a Roman city in northern Greece, ancient Macedonia, north of the city we now call Thessaloniki. They were his first European converts and, according to Acts 16, Paul only crossed into Europe because avenues in Turkey were becoming exhausted.

Paul and the gospel may have had an Arab base but he came to understand that the gospel, the good news, of Jesus Christ was for all people an in all times – the Jews and Gentiles of Philippi who became the first European Christians, the Germans who put together that map in what looks like the early years of the twentieth century, just as much as those looking at it now in a twenty first century British university, and you sitting here today.

And perhaps we might not have been sitting here today with those great journeys of St Paul, without his constant travelling. Around eight-twelve of the last twenty years of his life was spent on the road or in prison. Sometimes he stayed a few weeks in a particular place, sometimes up to two years, making a living for himself as a tentmaker while he preached the gospel and established those fledgling Christian communities. If you look at your maps you can see that his first journey  in A.D. 45 or 46 took him to Cyprus and into what was then called Galatia, inland Turkey now. A couple of years later a more extensive journey (c.A.D. 48-51) revisited some of those earlier destinations to strengthen the believers but also crossed to Greece. Then from c.A.D.53 Paul and his companions set out to gather a collection for the beleaguered parent church in Jerusalem. Then there was the final enforced sea journey to Rome that nearly ended in disaster as the ship was driven by a storm from Crete and wrecked on Malta. This doesn’t count the various journeys to Jerusalem or include the planned but probably never taken missionary journey to Spain. And all of this at a time when you couldn’t just hop on a train or plane and where danger on the road was never far away.

The churches founded and strengthened and written to and the money collected for Jerusalem in itself is quite a legacy. And there were times that Paul had to beat away adoring crowds who though that he and Barnabas were gods come to earth; and there were times when he was accused of starting riots; and there were times that he was thrown into prison; and there were times that he survived assassination plots against him; and there were times when he was beaten; and there were times when he and his companions fell out spectacularly. As Paul himself writes to the Corinthians (2 Cor 11.25ff)

Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. 

What on earth drove Paul to keep enduring such hardships and keep travelling onwards. He himself told us as he writes to the Philippians. It is nothing less than the ‘surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.’ The reason that Paul is so fired up with missionary zeal is because of the inner journey that he himself has taken and wants others to take as well – following the Jesus way in order to gain glory. The end of this third chapter of Paul’s letter to one of his most beloved congregations, is so crucial because it gives that insight into what makes Paul tick, what turned him into that constant traveller. He could have relied on his previous privilege or status. Just before verse 7 he reels off a long list of those things that made him an absolute twenty four carat, pukka Jew. He could have led his life relying on the privilege which all of that gave him. And yet he considers it all crap – and I use the word advisedly as the best translation of Paul’s word; it would have shocked his listeners as it shocks you now – in order to gain Christ and be found in him. Paul has so got under the skin of Jesus and Jesus has so got under his skin that, like Jesus, Paul has found that the journey which begins in giving up status and which involves suffering on behalf of others ends in glory. That’s why he regards what came before as loss and why he is continually travelling inwardly as well as outwardly, ‘pressing on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.’

It’s no coincidence that the journey sketched out by St Paul here is the same journey that he celebrates Jesus taking a little earlier in this letter in what we call ‘The Song of Christ’s Glory’, a version of which we sing in the hymn ‘At the name of Jesus’. Jesus lays aside his status with God to take human flesh for our sake. He leaves behind former status and endures suffering on behalf of others. Therefore God raises him to glory. Paul believes that he himself is called to go the distance with Jesus, to so travel the Jesus way that he may obtain the prize of glory.

And then comes the point of all of this, for the Philippians and for you and I  also.

‘They must learn to imitate him, as he is imitating the messiah. But how can they imitate him? They have not been zealous jews, eager for the Law. No, but they all have their own status, their own personal or civic pride. And even if they don’t have any (because they are poor or slaves or women – though some women, like Lydia, were independent and free), they all have the standing temptations to lapse back into pagan lifestyles. So whether they are Romans reverting to proud colonial ways or simply people who find themselves lured back into sensual indulgence, all must resist and find instead the way of holiness and unity that is shaped by the Messiah himself, by his choice of the way of the cross, by his status as the truly human one, the true embodiment of the One God.’ (T.Wright: Paul, A Biography p.279)

And Paul calls out the same message across the centuries to us – to travel the Jesus way in order to find glory, to press on towards the goal; perhaps to turn our back on status or a love of possessions or new experiences. We may not be called to suffer as Paul did but we are called to lay aside our status, our pride and to turn our back on the temptations that drag us from God, because that is the road to glory. We may not be called to suffer as Paul did but we are called to expect apathy or mockery or a lack of understanding or hostility and to know that it is all part of getting under Jesus’ skin and him getting under ours.

Paul reminds the Philippians that they are citizens of heaven. The term ‘citizen’ was a very loaded one at that time and in that place. Roman citizens, of course, had special privileges, and it was the goal of many a freed slave or subject from across the empire to become a Roman citizen. And it would have been doubly resonant in Philippi. This was a city, established by the emperor Augustus from army veterans. As well as a projection of Roman power a colony would have been seen as an outpost of Roman culture, full of Roman citizens bringing the Roman way to a foreign place. They may have lived in Greece but they were Roman citizens and their true home was Rome.

The term citizen is a loaded one now also. In a world where migration and instant communication mean so many are on the move, the notion of ‘to where we belong’ is an important one. As we head towards Brexit there is much discussion about belonging. The detail of the settlement will need to flesh out in law whether EU citizens living here (and vice versa) will effectively still be EU citizens living under EU law or British citizens living under British law. And that has led to far more existential questions about belonging. Where do you think you belong? Are you European or British or English or a global citizen. Teresa May famously said at her speech to the Conservative party conference in 2016. ‘If you believe that you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what citizenship means. The writer David Goodhart has coined the terms ‘Somewheres’ to categorise those who have strong local and natural attachments; and ‘Anywheres’, global villagers who value autonomy and mobility. Crudely put, the former were more likely to vote Leave and the latter to vote Remain.

St Paul knew about the power of identity and the power of citizenship – he was a Jew from Asia Minor who was also a Roman citizen – but he knew that the journey we take is essentially one of colonisation. Those who call themselves Christians, followers of Jesus, those who travel the Jesus way are primarily citizens of heaven living on earth and aiming like the Roman citizens in the Roman colony of Philippi to project God’s kingdom into where they live; aiming to bring the ways of the kingdom to Allerton or to Wedmore or to Heath House etc; aiming to live as if these places are outposts of heavenly culture. We may live on the Isle of Wedmore, we may live in Britain, we may live in Europe, we may live as global citizens, but our true home is God’s kingdom.

And colonising earth was what kept Paul travelling.

‘Paul’s missionary journeys were not simply aimed at telling people about Jesus in order to generate inner personal transformation and a new sense of ultimate hope, though both these mattered vitally as well. They were aimed at the establishment of a new kind of kingdom on earth as in heaven. A kingdom with Jesus as king.’ (T.Wright: Paul, A Biography p.106-7)