Sermon: Eucharist - First Sunday after Trinity

The Revd Canon Dr Nicholas Thistlethwaite is Sub Dean & Precentor

Preacher:: Nicholas Thistlethwaite
Date:: Sunday 6th June 2010
Service:: Eucharist
Readings:: Galations 1:11-24

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11)

It may just have been one of the most significant moments in the intellectual, cultural and (of course) religious life of the West. Whatever it was that happened to Paul – or Saul of Tarsus, as he was then known – on the road to Damascus, there are grounds for claiming that the consequences affected western civilisation profoundly for the next fifteen centuries, and still influence the way we think today.

Such moments are rare. It used to be argued that the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 was one such, on the grounds that scholars fleeing to the west from Byzantium brought with them manuscripts of classical Greek texts unknown to their western counterparts. This (it was claimed) sparked off the Renaissance, with its recovery of ancient learning, language and art that prepared the way for the modern world. Well, we now know that the causes of the Renaissance were much more complex than that, but no one would question that the Renaissance was one of those watersheds in western culture, which affected radically the way we think, see, and express ourselves.

The French Revolution was another watershed. The ideas it promulgated of liberty, fraternity and equality administered a fundamental shock to social order throughout Europe and North America, and continue to be influential today.

It is relatively easy to see how the Renaissance or the French Revolution brought about a seismic change in the intellectual, cultural or political landscape of our world. But how is this true of Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus?

No one can know what would have become of the fledgling Christian Church without Paul. We know very little about those early days, but it is quite possible that the sect of the Nazarenes, confused about its identity, uncertain in its leadership, fragile and (probably) quarrelsome, would simply have merged into the kaleidoscopic religious culture of the eastern Mediterranean, or even been extinguished by persecution or internal dissent. Was it a Jewish sect or a new movement? Should it follow the lead of James in Jerusalem or apostles who had moved out into the wider Roman world? Did you have to be a Jew to be a Christian? Did Christians have to observe the Jewish law?

Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus (however one accounts for it) called into the service of the Church a man who had the determination, the intellectual toughness, the energy and the sheer imagination to turn an obscure Jewish sect into a movement that would eventually run like wild fire through the Roman world. It is notorious that history is written by the victors. Perhaps Paul’s role has been exaggerated by Luke, the writer of Acts and a friend of Paul, and by the fortuitous survival of Paul’s own writings. But few doubt that he was the driving force behind an audacious mission that sought to spread the Christian movement throughout the Roman world or that he was remarkably successful in doing so.

The message that Paul hammered home, time and time again, as he journeyed around the Mediterranean world, was that the man, Jesus of Nazareth, was the Messiah, the Christ. This was the Gospel he proclaimed in synagogues and public squares, on board ship and in court rooms. It was the revelation that had come to him on the road to Damascus when he came to believe that this troublesome man (this blasphemer) who had suffered an ignominious and deserved death on the cross was a living reality, raised from the dead by the power of God. And that could only mean one thing: that Jesus was the Messiah.

Paul uses the word ‘Christos’ (which is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew title, ‘Messiah’, meaning the anointed one) no fewer than two hundred and seventy times in his letters. In his hands, ‘Christ’ ceases to be a title (like ‘king’ or ‘lord’) and becomes a name. ‘Jesus Christ’; ‘Christ Jesus’: these are the forms in which Paul uses the word.

If we ask, what is Paul’s Gospel, it is summed up in those two words: Jesus Christ. As he writes to the Corinthians: ‘For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified’ (1 Cor. 2:2). This is all he needs to start telling his story – to proclaim his Gospel.

Hardly ever does Paul quote words of Jesus. Hardly ever does he describe events in Jesus’ earthly life, part from the crucifixion. Unlike the four evangelists, whose Gospels are extended narratives, transcriptions of sayings, descriptions of miracles, accounts of conflicts and misunderstandings, before they reach the climax of Calvary, the Gospel according to Paul focuses sharply on the death of Jesus, and, beyond it, on the resurrection as confirmation that Jesus was the Messiah, and hence Jesus Christ. The heart of his Gospel is that Jesus becomes the Messiah when the suffering of the cross is in some mysterious way vindicated (justified) by his resurrection. As he writes to the Christians in Philippi: ‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death’ (3:10). By sharing in the death of Jesus, the Christian can share, too, in his resurrection life.

And that is ‘good news’ (gospel). It is good news for Paul in a particular way, because it means that if life in all its fullness (its indestructibility) is available through a faithful relationship with Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, there is no reason why the Gentile world should not be admitted to this saving relationship through faith. This realisation was the foundation of Paul’s controversial mission to Gentiles. It was also the reason we can claim that his revelation on the road to Damascus was so significant for western culture, leading, in centuries to come, to a Judaeo-Christian view of the human condition coming to dominate intellectual debate and enquiry for a thousand years.

The Christian faith doesn’t always sound like ‘good news’ to those beyond its boundaries. It can seem intolerant, blinkered, narrow- minded, self-obsessed, unintelligent, kill-joy, and out of touch (and that’s only the Church of England). We must always remember that the message we have for the world is ‘good news’, and if it doesn’t sound like that to others, then something is wrong. Jesus Christ is our Gospel. Jesus Christ is good news, however much we are guilty of misrepresenting him.

Let me end with words of Pope John XXIII, from his opening address to the Vatican Council in 1962. They stress how vital it is that the Gospel is presented attractively if it is to have a converting, transformative effect on human lives.

Our task is not merely to hoard this precious treasure, as though obsessed with the past, but to give ourselves eagerly and without fear to the task that the present age demands of us – and in so doing we will be faithful to what the Church has done in the last twenty centuries … this authentic doctrine has to be studied and expounded in the light of the research methods and the language of modern thought. For the substance of the ancient deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. (Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII, 431)

I think that St Paul – who found a new way of presenting the relationship between God and his Creation by forging together an old faith and a radical new movement – would have endorsed that.