We begin a new sermon series under the general theme “A Passion for Christ.” I gather it is an attempt to highlight the work of the early leaders of the Jesus movement. It is interesting that the FCC Council decided to kick-start this series with Paul the Apostle. Scholars have come to the conclusion that Paul is actually the founder of the Christian Church although tradition tells us that it was upon this rock which is Peter that the Church was built and the new Pope is believed by Catholics to be in the direct line of succession.

We know that Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew. He did not intend to set up a new religion but to renew Judaism. He was inaugurating the kingdom of God where the Jews as God's Chosen People were to live under God's reign. The Christian movement evolved in history leading to the separation from Judaism and establishment of the institutional Christian Church. The followers of Jesus with great faith in facing the challenges of their time shaped the nature the Christian religion. It was Paul a Jew and along with Peter the Rock and James the brother of Jesus and other apostles who were martyred by the Roman Emperors. The blood of these martyrs is the seed of the Christian Church.

Paul in his letter to the Philippians 3:5 described his own ancestry: “Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel , of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the Church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

Paul had impeccable credentials. He was born Saul in Tarsus an important commercial center with a fine harbor. He was a Roman citizen by birth. He was a member of a Jewish sect that promoted purity and fidelity to the Law of Moses . According to Acts, he received training as a rabbi in Jerusalem under the renowned rabbi, Gamaliel. Paul spoke Hebrew and Greek. Like most rabbis he supported himself with a manual trade —tent making— probably learned from his father. It is clear that he never met Jesus while in Jerusalem.

His conversion came on the road to Damascus and he claimed that the resurrected Christ appeared to him and that was his claim to be an Apostle but not one the original Twelve. From Paul the Persecutor he became Paul the Apostle He suffered under the hands of the angry Jews and the suspicious Romans.

His passion for Christ is revealed in this litany of his suffering for the Gospel : “Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters: in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked; And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches. (Corinthians: 24-28).

Paul suffered martyrdom under Emperor Nero in Rome probably in BCE 64 or 65 and since he was a Roman citizen he was not crucified but beheaded.

When we recall such an account of the Apostle Paul – his passion for Christ that enabled him to bear the suffering of following Christ in spite of all the difficulties and challenges that he faced we know the high cost of Christian discipleship. How much have we paid? What are the scars that we can show in our following Christ?

In considering the work of Paul what are the lessons that we can learn. Paul the Apostle is credited for the rise of Christianity when he was committed to the mission to the Gentiles. Through his missionary efforts in the then known world he preached the gospel to the Jews in Diaspora who have integrated into the Greco-Roman culture and spoke Greek. The non-Jews or Gentiles were attracted by the members of this Jesus movement in the first century. They were attracted by their belief in one God whereas the pagan religions have a pantheon of gods including the Roman emperors in State worship. They were impressed with the strong morality of these Hellenistic or Grecian Jews who accepted Christ. Sociologist has given credit to the way the followers ministered to the poor and the sick and the widows and especially during the time of the plagues which ravaged the people. Gentiles proved to be receptive and joined the fellowship in the synagogues and in the early Christian communities. By the latter part of the century Jerusalem which was the controlling center of the Jesus movement at the beginning was displaced and the Jerusalem Church diminished in influence.

It was in the city of Antioch in Syria where tradition says the followers of Jesus were first called Christian (Acts 11:26 ). Antioch became the base for Paul's missionary journeys. It was there that Paul made his most important contribution to Christian theology. In the community in Antioch the controversy of circumcision emerged. It began with the relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians. Early Christianity was an exclusive fellowship with the common meal and the Eucharist (thanksgiving for the sacrificial death of Christ) at the heart of it. But the Jewish purity rules will not allow Jews to eat with Gentiles. Jesus had taught that purity of heart was more important than attention to rules, but this did not change the views of his followers. But at Antioch the accession of Gentile converts created a mixed congregation, in which the Jewish members were content to eat with the Gentiles for the sake of Christian fellowship. In Jerusalem , however the Christians had to be careful not to violate Jewish traditions and they must be seen to be faithful to the Law. Thus reports of the inclusive attitude of the Christians in Antioch were criticized. Some of the Jerusalem Christians who were converted Pharisees even held the view that Gentile converts should be required to accept circumcision and abide by the Law of Moses. Circumcision controversy was resolved by the first Church Council in Jerusalem which supported the inclusive church in Antioch . This was a victory for Paul and his stand on behalf of the Gentiles ensured that Christianity became not just a Jewish sect but a separate universal religion. Paul therefore played a decisive role in extending the Christian Gospel beyond the limits of Judaism to become a worldwide religion.

Paul not only had the passion to promote the inclusive nature of the Christian community but continue to nurture its growth. In Galatians 3:28 he proclaimed our unity in Christ: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

In his letters to the various churches he encouraged and advised them to deal with the problems that they faced. For instance, the church in Corinthian had to confront the question about associating with immoral persons. There was the problem of leadership for rival groups were claiming the authority of different teachers like Peter or Cephas, Apollos, and Paul himself. Paul's teaching on freedom from the Law had been abused to justify licentiousness. There were problems of marriage and divorce . The question of which food a Gentile Christian might eat was causing problems of conscience. There was disorderly conduct at the Eucharist or Lord's Supper . He regulated the practice of speaking with tongues . He taught about the gifts of the Holy Spirit which includes his famous chapter on love Chapter 13.

The inclusiveness of love was to take priority over the exclusiveness of belief.    However---and this was an important however---Christian love was also to require sensitivity toward other Christians whose beliefs and practices are different from our own.

In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.

However we do have problems over some of the advice he gave which may not be applicable in our time. Paul was essentially writing letters and not intentionally writing timeless truth or even Scripture. What he wrote is historically related, culturally conditioned, socially constructed and theologically determined. He wrote to the church in Corinth to settle their grievances against one another without going to the secular courts. Accept the social status that you are in and do not be concerned even though you are a slave. He also wrote “It is well for a man not to touch a woman” and it is well for the unmarried and the widows to remain unmarried as he was. He seems to have lots to say about women in church and society. When speaking of women, Paul clearly reflects the culture of his time. "Women are to be silent in the church...for it is a shame for a woman to speak in church" (1 Corinthians 14:34 -35), and women are to dress in modest apparel, avoiding  " braided hair, and gold or pearls or costly raiment (I Timothy 2:9). On Christian conduct, we must recognize that the socio-political and cultural situation of Paul is different from that of today.

Paul is quoted as Scriptural truth on issues related to gender and sexuality. There are only three passages in the New Testament the concerning the issue of homosexuality. Two of them were written by Paul himself and the one from Timothy by one of his followers later. It was upon these three passages that the Christian church developed its homophobic stance and regard homosexuality as sin and incompatible with Scriptural teaching..

Let us look at I Corinthians 6:9. The two Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai have been translated differently at different times in different versions of the Bible in English. The King James Version in 1611 regard them to mean those who are effeminate and abusers of themselves with mankind which was close to the Greek meaning. It was in 1946 that the Revised Standard Version took them to mean homosexuals or sexual perverts. Then in 1978 the New International Version translated them as male prostitutes and homosexual offenders. It was the New Revised Version which renders them as male prostitutes and sodomites. It must be noted that the word homosexual was not used in the earlier period. It was only 1869 that German, Kentbeny, introduced for the first time the term homosexual and it was in 1180 that the word sodomy was first used. Homosexuality in terms of committed and consensual sexual relationships between two adults of the same sex was not understood as such by the people in those days.

Romans 1:26-27 is the infamous passage for condemning gay and lesbian same sex acts. In the Greco-Roman society the love of an older man for a very young man was known as pederasty and is condemned for its sexual exploitation and lust. This is what was known by Paul at that time. In this passage the sa me sex act implies a choice made because the word exchange or gave up was used. Anyone who sought same-sex intercourse was deemed to be making a free and deliberate choice against his or her natural desire for the opposite sex. It was therefore regarded by Paul to be unnatural. This was in line with the thinking of the secular philosophers of that time

It was insatiable lust and sexual exploitation that was condemn ed. That Paul describes same sex acts to be a consequence of idolatry begins to make sense when we remember that in his time and culture it was the practice of cult priests and priestesses of the fertility cults to submit to sexual acts with either gender as part of the worship of their deities . We would all agree with Paul's condemnation of such behaviors, in the same way that we would condemn heterosexual behaviors involving cultic sex, prostitution or sexual abuse of minors.

The concept of sexual orientation as we know it today did not exist then. Paul's words are "exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural." As a Jew in the Greco-Roman world of male domination over the female, Paul also found it demeaning and degrading for a male to take a passive role, the one that was "naturally" the woman's. And it was just as bad for a woman to usurp the dominate role that was naturally the man's.

This passage from Romans comes from a whole discourse about the Gentiles who refused to let the one true God be their god and this is the primary or root sin. As a consequence they engaged in the kind of same sex acts that prevailed at that time by both heterosexual and homosexual. His teaching was not about homosexuality as we understand it today.

Paul in Romans 1:22 speaks out against idolatry: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools: and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worship and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

After this came the passage of same sex partners. Then it was followed by Romans 1:29 which lists out other consequences of idolatry: “…wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious towards parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” He ended up by saying: “that those who practice such things deserve to die.” Same sex act is not the only consequence of idolatry and it was performed by those whom we identify today as homosexuals and heterosexuals.

Even when Paul talks about the natural order there are other things that he regarded as unnatural. For instance in I Corinthians 11:14-15: “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory.” So it is natural for everyone to let one's hair grow as long as it will. Paul's knowledge of sexuality is limited by time and circumstance. It would be naïve on our part to ignore the scientific data available for us today and resort to Paul to provide the definitive answer to what we call today as homosexuals.

With such an interpretation of Scripture there is really no Biblical basis for condemning homosexuality and regard it is a sin. Sexual orientation takes place for the homosexuals as well as the heterosexuals. This cannot be changed so easily or conveniently. That is why I have difficulty when I talked recently to someone who claims to be an ex-gay but gay friendly or affirmative. If one can become an ex-gay and chooses to get married to a member of the opposite sex what happens to sexual orientation. Can one chooses his or her sexual orientation. If there are genuinely ex-gays there could also be ex-straights. What a publicity I would get if I now claim and declare myself to be an ex-straight! I was confused also when some gay activists are trying to de-gay their institutions by removing all connections with the gay issue or with other gay organizations so that will not be seen as part of the gay scene. This is placing themselves and what they do in a closet and trying to project the image that they are not gay movements. It is about time that the gays must have the pride and be proud to being gay.

In evaluating the ministry of Paul the Apostle we have to recognize that he was responsible for the rise of Christianity in the Greco-Roman world. He was able to relate the gospel to the history and culture of the Gentiles in that situation and to transform it. He had a great passion for Christ. From a persecutor of Christians Paul became a Christian martyr. Paul was a man in a hurry and his priority was in responding to end times where God will deliver the people in the form of rapture. There was a sense of urgency and he was in an unsettled situation facing persecution. He did not was to be distracted by other issues of sex, marriage and family. The important issue is the renewal of Judaism and the conversion of the Gentiles with the coming of Christ which he believed to be imminent. Although he fully expected end time within his own lifetime it did not happen . However, the foundations were laid for Christianity to develop which separated itself from Judaism and subsequently spread around the world.

Those who have the passion of Christ and seek to follow Him will be encouraged by Paul when he wrote that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” I Corinthians 13:7. He has taught us that in both prosperity and his adversity we are to be thankful, to be patient, to be joyful in the hope that does not fail or disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts. Romans 5:1-5.

This is the legacy of Paul the Apostle. This is where his passion for Christ has led him.