Texts: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43
We have come to the end of our story; and what we find ought to astonish us. What we find is contrary to all human history, all human experience, we might even say, all human instinct. What we find is contrary to the evidence of our own eyes, our own ears, our own prejudices, and our own desires. What we find at the end of our story is that there is only one race, the human race – and that all divisions, all borders, all boundaries between us are human inventions, they are contrary to the will of God, and they are therefore sinful. To put it in modern terms, globalisation, or, to use a better term, universalisation, has been God's plan from the very beginning, is now and will be for ever more.
And at the end of our story we find something else, too. We find that, after Jesus himself, the hero of the story is none other than St Paul, whom the more modern-minded among us today usually look upon as more of a villain than a hero. Perhaps 'hero of the story' is not quite the right way of putting it. Perhaps I should say St Paul is the great narrator of the story, the one who explains the story to us. Others play their part, of course, - the four gospel writers, the writer of Revelation – but surely without St Paul we would still be wondering what on earth is really going on. Or would we? Would we have even heard of the gospel today if St Paul had never arrived in the story at just the right time?
So as we come to the end of the story this morning I find I want to spend some time on St Paul, and the role he plays in it – either as hero or narrator or both. Until the 20th century scholars used to say of St Paul that he found the answer before he was aware of the problem. What they meant was that St Paul' encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus was an encounter with the Saviour of the world, and it took place before St Paul knew that humanity needed saving. As a Pharisee, so it was said, St Paul had all the answers in his head. He wasn't concerned about the Gentiles – only the Jews were God's people, and God had provided for their salvation by giving them the Torah. Stick to that and all would go well for you. No problem – so why the need for a brand new solution?
But in more recent terms it has been argued that this picture of the state of mind of the pre-conversion St Paul is false. There was a problem. God had promised a future that was very different from the reality of St Paul's times. He had promised to gather his people from wherever they had been scattered throughout the world, and bring them home to Israel. Was that happening? No, it wasn't. Far more Jews were living outside Israel than inside. In many ways, the great return from exile had not happened.
God had also promised to come to his people and set them free. Had that happened? No, it hadn't. For hundreds of years Judah had been overrun by various invaders, and in St Paul's time, of course, it was under Roman rule. So there was another problem – another divine promise so far unfulfilled.
And there was something else. We can put up with an awful lot of hardship in the present if we have confidence in a better future. What sort of future had God promised for his people? At first sight it was a glorious one. Through the prophets God had promised to raise up a new king, to restore the House of David. Israel would re-live its glory days that it had enjoyed under its two greatest kings, David and Solomon. And so impressive would this new king be that all the nations of the world would bring their treasures to Jerusalem and bow down to Israel's leadership.
A wonderful vision for any Jew to hold on to, but there were two major problems with it. First, there was not the slightest sign that the world was moving towards it. And secondly, even if Israel was restored to political greatness as in days of old, how realistic was it to expect the other nations of the world to recognise her superiority over them. Rome was going to bow to the greater wisdom of Jerusalem?! Something wasn't adding up, and St Paul, being the highly intelligent and learned Pharisee that he was, would have known it better than most.
Then comes his encounter with the very early followers of Christ. Most of them, but not all of them, were fellow Jews. And St Paul was horrified. They were talking nonsense; and far worse, they were talking blasphemy. Their leader was executed as a criminal, and the Law said he was under God's curse. The Law said there was only one God and he alone was to be worshipped; but the Christians were worshipping their executed leader and insisting that he was God. The Law said Jews and Gentiles were to be kept separate, particularly at mealtimes, and particularly in the Temple; yet Christian communities were forming that included both Jews and Gentiles on equal times, and they were eating together. The Law said men and women were to be kept separate at worship; but in the Christian communities men and women were joining together for worship.
And so on and so on. No wonder St Paul was outraged; no wonder he felt compelled to do all that he could to stamp out this terrible heretical movement. But then he met the Risen Christ and his whole religious world was turned up outside down. We're told that very soon after this experience he went to Arabia (meaning the desert) and spent about 3 years there trying to make sense of his experience in terms of his faith.
And out of that profound period of re-thinking he began to see a whole new vision of what God was up to in the world. We often forget that he had never met Jesus, he had met Christians only as enemies to be exterminated, and he had very little knowledge of Jesus' teaching. But one thing he did know, even before his conversion: when Stephen was martyred for his faith, he forgave his persecutors and died praising God. How was such a thing possible?
And then the Risen Christ had come to him, had identified himself as "Jesus whom you are persecuting", and had called St Paul to become his follower. And with all that in mind St Paul sits in his desert tent somewhere and starts to think. Jesus had come to him at the very time when he himself was Jesus' sworn enemy. How strange is that? What can it mean? It can only mean forgiveness and love prevail over ignorance and hatred, even between enemies. In fact, it means that Jesus refuses to allow himself to be cast in the role of enemy. Enmity is abolished. But what would the world look like if there were no enmity in it?
It would be a world in which there were no divisions, no borders, no boundaries. And perhaps the penny dropped a bit further for St Paul, sitting in his desert tent, as he remembered those very early Christian communities that had so shocked him. They allowed no boundary between Jew and Gentile or between men and women. Were they not early signs of God's new way forward?
Where might it all end? And as St Paul pondered this, and read and re-read the Hebrew Scriptures, so his vision broadened and deepened. Had not God promised a new King whose kingdom would have no end? How could that be unless the King was divine? Had not God promised that all the nations of the world would pay homage to this king? How could that be if this were a mere King of Israel? Had not God promised to set the people free? How could that be unless all the people of the world were set free from all that drives us to threaten the freedom of others?
St Paul eventually emerges from his desert tent and starts preaching this wonderful vision. We have another breath-taking version of it in our epistle reading today. And again let me remind you that he is writing within 20 years of Jesus' death, before the gospels have been written, before any churches have been built, before the number of Christians had gone much above a few thousand, in a world divided between the monotheistic Jews and the polytheistic Graeco-Roman elite, a world in which the Emperor claimed divine authority for himself.
Despite all that, St Paul now sees Jesus as the image of God, the one in whom God is fully present. He says that all things in heaven and on earth were created for and through Jesus. He is the one in whom heaven and earth are united; he is the one in whom all enmity is abolished because in him God is reconciling all things to himself.
And he agreed with St Luke that all this was first revealed on the cross. In today's gospel reading, Christ is identified as king by the representative of the Roman government on the cross. To all that we will return in the New Year.
Today we simply follow St Paul in acknowledging Christ as king over all the world – one king and one people. That is the end of our story.
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