Preached at Christ Church, Worton; St Mary’s, Potterne; and Christ Church, Bulkington
Romans 9.1–5; Matthew 14.13–21
“…I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people…”
Last April, a French nun was attacked near the Old City in Jerusalem, attacked from behind and shoved to the ground by a man whom she had done nothing to provoke and couldn’t even see. It’s increasingly common for Christians in Jerusalem, whether foreigners or local Palestinians, to be verbally abused, spat at, or even beaten up by Jewish extremists. But this incident was caught on camera. The next day the Israeli authorities charged the man with religiously aggravated assault. The case has not yet come to trial.
This incident came to mind when I read this morning’s Epistle reading from St Paul’s letter to the Romans. You see, St Paul hadn’t started as one of Christ’s followers, but as someone who constantly persecuted them. His worst moment was when he stirred up a lynch mob that stoned poor St Stephen, the first Christian martyr. By the time he wrote today’s first reading, about fifteen years later, he had been on quite a journey. Whenever I see one of those extremist leaders of the West Bank settlers being interviewed on TV, I can’t help thinking of Paul, back in the days when he was still Saul. Indeed, the place where St Stephen was probably stoned is no more than a mile from where the nun was attacked last April.
None of us emerges into the world as an island. We all have a backstory – family, ancestors, nation, perhaps even more than one nation. These backstories are all complicated. Our family stories all have their dark moments – the relation nobody wants to talk about, the cousins who studiously avoid one another at weddings. Of course, every country has episodes of shame in its history as well as episodes of glory. The story of the Church is one containing much wickedness as well as good – when we encounter members of other faiths, we need to remember that.
Christianity emerged into the world from Judaism. Except for Luke and Acts, the entire New Testament was written by people who, like Christ Himself, lived and died as Jews – Jews who happened to come to faith that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. But none of them ever thought of themselves as being anything other than Jewish, and indeed there was quite a battle in the first two decades or so of the Church about whether Gentiles – in other words, people who weren’t Jews – could become Christians at all unless they became Jews first. St Paul argued that they needn’t do so, and Paul won the argument in the end, but we can hear echoes of it throughout his writing.
