Paul Sermon Series No.6
Going the Distance Paul the Constant Traveller
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 jo urneys 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 jo urneys 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 Phil ippians. Phil ippi
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 Phil ippi 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 jo urneys 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 jo urney 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 jo urney (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 jo urney 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 jo urneys to Jerusalem or include the planned but probably never taken
missionary jo urney 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 jo urneys, 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 Phil ippians. 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 jo urney 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 jo urney 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 jo urney sketched out by St Paul here is the same jo urney 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 Phil ippians 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 Phil ippians 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 Phil ippi .
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.
And colonising earth was what kept Paul travelling.
‘Paul’s missionary jo urneys 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)
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