JOURNEYS OF PAUL: TRAVELING

Today I want us to reflect a little on how each of us got here. Not our mode of transportation this morning, but how we came to be and came to develop in such a way that we end up spending Sunday morning in Christian worship.

I got here because my father ran away from home at age 16 and worked in the coal mines of Kentucky for two years, and then passed back through Knoxville, and met a coach who got him back in high school to play football, which is where he met Eleanor Oliver, which is how I came to be born. My mother’s family was Methodist and there was a church a half of a mile away.

How did you get here? What people had to meet? What influences of family or friends or mentors or chance events had to be in place for you to turn out so good and so smart as to choose to be here today?

Well, one of those factors from the distant past was the Apostle Paul. If Paul had not been Paul, chances are you would not be you. At least not in your faith.

So in these next weeks we will be looking at this mentor from long ago, whose spiritual DNA is woven into our lives.

Paul was an impact player. When he started out persecuting the church, he wasn’t going through the motions. And when he saw the light (as we mentioned last Sunday), he reflected it. And when he was sent (that’s what an apostle is: someone who is sent), he really picked up and went.

There are two strands of original DNA that have formed the church over the years. One is the DNA of the apostle Peter, remembering Jesus word play that “your name means rock and on you I will build my church.” Peter is the saint of organization and hierarchy and apostolic secession. His influence is stationary, conservative, tangible, and durable. He was in management.

The other strand of DNA is from Paul, the one who forced the church to accept Gentiles on an equal footing with Jews, and paved the way to spread the message throughout the world. Paul is the saint of evangelism, of expansion, of inclusion, and lived on the brink of chaos. When he wasn’t being shipwrecked, he was being stoned, beaten, jailed. For Paul it was a good day when he was only vilified, denounced, and thrown out of town. His influence is explosive, episodic, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. He will change your heart, and break it, and heal it, all in the same day. Paul was in marketing and sales.

According to the Bible, Paul undertook three missionary journeys to spread the Gospel, and tradition tells us of a fourth to Spain. He seldom stayed more than a year in one place.

From time to time I meet people with that kind of geographical restlessness. In Somerville, I met Cathy who resisted war by not paying all her taxes. She moved every two years, which was just about the time the IRS took to put in place a garnishee on her wages. And Libby, who would take a job and build up her department, get bored, and change jobs. Moving every two years was just fine with them. It was in their bones.

I share these stories in order to contrast them with many of us. A sense of home and permanence is a high value in this church. As I have visited in your homes, I’ve heard stories of 30, 40, even 50 years in the same place. We collectively are more like Peter than Paul. We value place. Travel is for vacations, not vocations. And since geographical journeys often point toward spiritual journeys, we have to ask if any of us have at least the heart of the spiritual traveler.

What I want to hold up today is that, for us to be the church, we need both kinds of DNA. If we only had our mother’s DNA, we wouldn’t be who we are. If we only had our father’s DNA, we wouldn’t be who we are. And if our church only has the DNA of Peter, we won’t be the church that God is calling us to be (and that we say we want to be). So we tell the stories of Paul, because deep down in at least some of us, there is a Paul waiting to be liberated and empowered.

I heard just this last week of a congregation that felt called to start a new church. The location was two hours away! About one twentieth of the congregation covenanted to travel every Sunday, four hours round trip, for two years to help start this church. They took their pledges, and their spiritual gifts of teaching and organization, and came back occasionally to the parent church with their stories and testimonies.

By the end of the two years, the new church had about a thousand members, and the parent church, excited and energized at home, had grown by 20%. Some people had discovered their inner Paul.

This evening our Youth Group starts up again. They’re a great group of kids and they have wonderfully responsible counselors. But the occasion reminds me of another church I served who had great kids and counselors who would get the kids all excited about activities and then not show up. The counselors would not show up. So the church effectively had no youth group.

But we did have a youth band. One guy played a guitar and another was learning the drums. There were a couple of gals who would get the microphone in their face and really wail. From time to time others would phase in or out. They practiced every Wednesday night and showed up every Sunday morning, sometimes even sick, but they were loyal. They represented all but about two of the youth in the congregation.

And I heard someone say (in their presence): “Too bad we don’t have any activities at church for you.” As if what they were doing was nothing. The person who made the comment was living out of Peter, where youth activities had to take the form it always had in the past. The kids, meanwhile, went out and found a bass player. They were living out of their inner Paul. They were traveling in spirit.

There is a new church up in New Hampshire that was looking for rental space and the only public space available in that little town on Sunday morning was the local bar. And we’re not talking high end here. It was a dive. The doors open at 10 AM. Some of the regulars drift in at 11:30 and have coffee to start their day. Free! And the regulars feel comfortable in that space, so some of them started coming at 10. The new church starter told the story with fear and trembling to the District Superintendent. Not to worry: the superintendent had discovered his inner Paul.

So I am going to ask you today: have any of you felt any restlessness for the sake of the Gospel? Have you reflected that what we have to offer here is more than another community organization? That we are talking about the meaning of life? Have you yearned (if only for a moment) to share the blessings of faith in Christ with someone else? Have you wished that God would show you how to bring others into a fellowship that is inclusive, hope-filled, love empowered like the one you experience here? That’s the other part of your DNA at work. That’s your inner Paul.

Let your inner Paul take you on a journey.