Apology for Paul

Apology for Paul

In case you haven’t heard this before, according to the Outline of Faith in our Book of Common Prayer, the Church’s mission is to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” Seems clear, even obvious. But is it?

Looking only at the four Gospels: Jesus certainly seems to have envisioned an outreach to the nearby Samaritans, but they claimed descent from Jacob, which made them at least partial Israelites by blood. He occasionally commended the faith of Gentiles, the Roman Centurion whose servant Jesus healed, the Syro-Phoenician woman whose daughter Jesus healed after he called the Gentiles dogs. But when he sent the Twelve Apostles on mission trips, he ordered them not to go to the Gentiles but only to the lost sheep of Israel. It is clear from the Book of Acts that the earliest disciples of Jesus, all Jewish, stayed in Jerusalem because they assumed that what Jesus wanted them to do was to get all their fellow Jews to accept that Jesus was the Christ, God’s Chosen King, and then go to the Gentile nations.

Apparently, Jesus didn’t think they were moving fast enough. So, he chose the most unlikely person: Saul, whose “zeal,” by his own admission, to wipe out the Jesus movement was torturous and murderous — Saul, Saul, it must hurt you to kick against those spiked sticks like an ornery cow. What are you so afraid of? In one blinding instant, Saul realized that everything he thought God wanted him to do was wrong. What else had he been wrong about? Who else had he dismissed as “other?” (And if Jesus could get through to Saul, then we can pray that Jesus might yet to get through to some Immigration officers who will hear in the blinding light, “This is Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up for I shall send you.”)

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female – for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). This is the core of the Gospel that Jesus gave the man who, when he began his mission travels outside of the Holy Land, became known as Paul. It was Paul who pushed the Church beyond the boundaries of ceremonial laws, like circumcision, because those could not be justified by the new covenant that Jesus made with all people and sealed by his blood. And within the hierarchal and patriarchal strictures of his world, Paul pushed against them as best as he thought he could get away with.

Yes, he sent the slave Onesimus back to Philemon. But read closely his Letter in the New Testament, and you will hear bone splintering as Paul twists Philemon’s arm to send Onesimus back to Paul in prison. You rarely hear in our Sunday readings of how Paul empowered women in his ministry, for instance entrusting Phoebe with his Letter to the Romans, to read, answer questions and advocate for Paul to a local church that Paul did not found, and where many Jewish Christians were likely suspicious of Paul. Who was the first European convert to Christianity and supported Paul’s ministry from their wealth in purple dyes? Lydia. In a time when Roman men held the power of life and death over every person in their household, from the slaves to the wives, Paul made compromises to the culture, partly because he believed that Jesus was coming back in his lifetime, and that the distinctions he wrote of in Galatians, Jesus was going to do away with.

But it’s like saying that “all” are created equal, though many of the founders made exceptions, once you said “all,” the train keeps rolling. Paul established the principle that there are no “others” in Christ. And if he couldn’t get past some of his cultural prejudices, nearly two millennia later, we can approach this Gospel inspired by the same Spirit that inspired Paul and say: There is no longer black, brown or white, there is no longer straight or LGBTQ – for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And what did Paul risk for this Gospel? “From the Jews I have five times received forty lashes less one, three times I have been beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I have been shipwrecked, and once I spent a night and a day in the open sea; continually travelling, in danger from rivers, in danger from brigands, in danger from my own people and in danger from the gentiles, in danger in towns, in danger in the open country, in danger at sea and in danger from people masquerading as brothers.” And eventually, he died at the hands of the Roman Empire for the Jesus he saw in the sky asking what he was so afraid of. I dare say most of us would not be in a Christian church except for that encounter we celebrate today. Which makes Paul, with his limitations, worth celebrating and giving thanks for his conversion and witness.

January 25th, 2026

The Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle

The Rev. David Kendrick