Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Paul Kolbet, January 28th, 2024 (The Feast of St. Paul Apostle)

No one seems to know why when our parish was founded in 1849, they named it after St. Paul the Apostle. For a church incorporated on October 31st, All Saints’ would seem to be the more obvious name. There not only was not another All Saints’ in Brookline at the time, there was not an Episcopal church with that name in the whole diocese. In fact, this is church is so old, they largely had their pick of names. Working through all the names, they picked St. Paul’s Church. So on this Feast of St. Paul, let’s think together about why they may have picked that name to define this place for all the generations they certainly intended it to be here as they put stone upon stone.

St. Paul explains himself today in his letter to the Christians in Corinth, Greece: “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew…. To those under the law  as one under the law…. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law … To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9). How this worked was that although Paul likely, in his own life, observed kosher food laws much like Jesus did, when he was invited to eat with Gentiles who did not, he ate whatever was served to him by his host. If his hosts observed kosher food laws, so did he. About Circumcision, which was a clear identity marker at the time distinguishing one people from another, Paul counseled flexibility. Paul travelled all around the Mediterranean between Jerusalem and perhaps as far West as Spain and did his work in the language that worked best for the people his was with. Paul had his critics who complained that he lacked principle. How was this shape shifting apostle even trustworthy who was “all things to all people?” Paul mentions in his letter the Galatians quite an argument with St. Peter himself who at the time was drawing harder line. Paul, nevertheless, held his own and continued the work he felt called to as “apostle to the Gentiles,” or in other words “apostle to those traditionally left out of the covenant with Abraham.”

What did that work look like? It was a new thing. Paul moved from city to city, set up his own little tent-making business and gathered people around him, staying only long enough to establish in that city a new kind of community, one he called the “ecclesia,” a Greek word for being “called out from.” It would be a new social space in each Roman city that would function by its own rules and have a sort of independence to it that is distinct from other spaces. Normally, in Roman cities and likely in America today, there are only two kinds of spaces. There is the private personal family space of the household on the one hand, and the public space of the state on the other. The public and private each have their own force and individuals have to negotiate the competing claims made on nearly every aspect of their lives by their families and their publics.

Paul’s Christian ecclesia was to be a kind of third space that wasn’t necessarily in competition with the other two (the private and public), but one with enough substance and distinctiveness that it could be a place for those “called out from” the other two spaces. It was an alternative to both of them and could serve as a kind of refuge in the world, a place where everybody is welcomed, where everyone is fundamentally the same, and that is often not true of other two spaces, the public and the private.

We translate Paul’s “ecclesia” in English as “church” and because of that we usually think of buildings rather than people. Paul’s ecclesiae had no buildings and met in homes and his word for church referred to people rather than a place. You might think then that the whole original notion of “called out from” is lost in translation, but it lives on in other ways. When you are on the St. Paul’s campus and refer to the room we are in right now, what do you call it? We call it the “sanctuary.” We likely don’t ask strongly enough, “By coming here, what are we seeking sanctuary from?” But there is an element in a lot of people’s stories about why they are here, that they found and continue to find this place, and the people who have welcomed them in this space, to be a refuge, a sanctuary, a place of safety, in a world that continues to have its own perils whether those arise from the public or the private. St. Paul’s remains I kind of distinctive third space.

For this reason, it turns out that St. Paul’s turns out to be the right name for this place. St. Paul’s had already thought a great deal before I arrived about this task of being church, of being that welcoming third space beyond the public and the private. Have you ever noticed all the words on the front of the doors on the Aspinwall for all the world to see stating boldly and specifically the welcoming nature of this space. That statement of welcome is something of a contemporary American rephrasing of the ancient church mission. It is a rephrasing of a Biblical passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians chapter 3. Paul says, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

The rest of Paul’s letter to the Galatians shows that that mission was a tall order in a deeply divided Roman world and the final words of that letter are “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters.” They would need that grace and we do too. Paul himself was frequently persecuted by those who felt threatened by his churches. He was shipwrecked several times, sometimes with soldiers who held him in chains. He was beaten and imprisoned multiple times while still writing letters full of faith and hope from there. He ended his life welcoming countless visitors who came to him in his death row cell in Rome the years before he was executed.

Contrary to what Paul’s critics said, his “all thing to all people” did not mean that Paul lacked principle or conviction. His letters in the New Testament are there for all to read and are full of both. What it did mean is that as he followed the risen Christ to strange city after strange city, place after place, person after person, his first word was, “Yes,” a deeply affirming, “Yes.” He joined people where there were, as they were, and said, “Yes.” One of Paul’s sayings is “In Christ every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’” (2 Cor. 1:20). After that they would walk together on a path of faith, repentance, forgiveness, and hope, but it all began with that initial, “Yes.”

Here a story about what Paul’s “all things to all people” looked like. The book of Acts tells a story of Paul being imprisoned in Philippi. While he was in his cell, during the night there was an earthquake and at first light the soldier assigned to guard him saw the doors of the jail wide open. That soldier immediately turned to take his own life because he assumed the prisoners had escaped and that he would be executed for his lapse in duty, but then he heard Paul shouting out to him not to worry, they remained in the open cell out of concern for the guard’s life. Paul then baptized that man and his whole household (Acts 16) and that family became part of the beginning of the church in Philippi, Macedonia.  Paul, in his own words, “though free with respect to all, became a slave to all.”

We live in a time of division, a time of “them and us.” Those divisions seep into our minds and souls. They cleave families and all public spaces. It makes this project of the local church, of those “called out from” as challenging for us as it was for Peter when confronted by our Paul. There has always been lots of pressure to pull the third space of the church into one of the other two spaces. Neither of those two spaces necessarily respects the independence of the church. And whenever the church becomes the property of this or that private family or of this or that state, it becomes narrow rather than broad, loses its best identity, and the ability to be the sanctuary it was designed to be.

May our St. Paul’s Church always remember its purpose to be a place for those “called out from” and be true to the founding spirit of its patron, and extend our “yes” to more and more people, as this sanctuary remains a refuge for all who seek it. Amen.