One unnaturally born

was how St Paul described his status as the Apostle to the Gentiles. All the other apostles had been with Jesus during his time on earth. They had walked, talked, eaten, travelled and ministered with him. Importantly too, they had been called by Christ to follow, and been witnesses to his resurrection from the dead. St Paul could say none of these things. He did not meet Christ during his earthly ministry. He did not meet him during the period between the resurrection and the ascension.

St Paul’s journey began as Saul, a namesake of the first great King of Israel, the one anointed by the prophet Samuel, and charged to lead God’s people in unity to victory over their enemies. King Saul’s reign was to end in failure and defeat, and death on the slopes of Mt Gilboa. Saul the Pharisee from the new Testament was to be similarly slain, in Spirit, by a blinding light on the road to Damascus, where he would join the heretic group he had formerly been zealously persecuting. After receiving healing, anointing, and baptism from the hands of a hesitant Ananias, Saul renounces his old Hebrew name, and takes a Greek version of it. Saul becomes Paulos, and retreats to Arabia for three years to try to make sense of what God has done with him, and who this Christ is who has so roughly turned his life upside down. Everything he’d been taught would need to be reconsidered.

The consequences of that reconsidering cannot be understated. The earliest written evidence for Christ in the New Testament are not the gospels, but the letters of Paul. (1&2 Thessalonians can dated fairly securely to AD 51, not twenty years from the resurrection.) Much of later Christian theology is built using the bricks supplied by St Paul. (For example St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Karl Barth.). The good news of Jesus came west from Asia to Europe through the work of many Christians as they travelled through the Roman world, and chief among these was the convert-teacher-pastor-evangelist-writer Paul. St Luke’s account of Paul’s life and ministry is the focus of the Book of Acts, being the account of the growth of the early church and how the Christian faith leapt the boundaries of its Hebrew heritage as the young church discovered that the Spirit of Jesus was God’s gift, starting with Israel, for the whole world.

This coming Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul. At Checkendon in our communion I’ll be exploring a little more about the life and ministry of this remarkable man. Do join me!

Worship Services for Sunday 25th January

9.30am Holy Communion at St John’s Stoke Row with Revd Kevin Davies

11am Holy Communion at St Peter and Paul, Checkendon with Revd Kevin Davies.

Midweek zoom service: Wednesday Evensong at 5.00pm  410 935 129

Church Council ahead!

St John’s church council meets tomorrow (21st) in church (note change of venue) at 7.30pm.  Checkendon church council is a week today (27th Jan) at the Old Rectory, at 8pm.

Your church council is the body responsible for “the building and the money” and the lay officers (churchwardens) are given authority by the Bishop to work with the clergy and church council to further the church’s mission. Each church, being a unique group of people in a unique place, works out its own “mission” and together we try to do what Jesus is asking of us at that particular moment. Saul, on his horse, had believed that he was on a mission from Jerusalem to prosecute those in certain synagogues who’d started to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. But, off his horse, and sightless, he heard a voice. “Who are you, Lord?” he asked. I’ve always found it terrifying that Saul, (soon to be St Paul) at that point did not know the voice of Jesus, and needed to have it spelt out. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Let us pray that those who are deaf and blind to God’s voice in the world (wherever and whoever they may be) may see the light, and that our own footsteps, horsed or not, may be sure and firm.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father be with you all.

Your Rector, Canon Kevin.