A pile of stones
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
A pile of stones: 30 January 2011: am: The Very Revd Frank Nelson
- Psalm 67
- Acts 9: 1 - 22
- Galatians 1: 11 - 16
- Matthew 19: 27 - 30
On a beautiful sunny summer’s day last week, I added one small stone to a growing pile of stones out at Makara Cemetery. Among those who had already placed stones was Clare Winter. Later she signed my copy of her newly released biography, telling the story of her survival as a Hungarian Jew in the horrors of Auschwitz, her journey to Wellington and her long career as a violinist in the NZSO. The short stone-laying ceremony at Makara, marking the United Nation’s International Holocaust Day on 27th January each year, took me back to Munich and an afternoon spent in Dachau. Now a museum to the horrors of the Holocaust, those who died and those who survived, two things in particular struck me. The first was the piles of small stones placed on a memorial there – by visitors like me whose knowledge is second hand, or visitors like Clare Winter who survived the genocide. The second was the lighted candles in a chapel at the far end of the grounds of the former death camp. Quite intentionally Carmelite nuns now live and pray in these unholy places – a quietly reverent symbol of light in the darkness.
That visit to Dachau came at the beginning of our pilgrimage to Greece in the Footsteps of St Paul. His story, recorded in the Book of Acts, begins with a pile of clothing laid at his feet by the martyrs, the witnesses who picked up stones with which to kill Stephen – the first Christian martyr. It’s ironic that the killers of Stephen who laid their clothes at Saul’s feet were called martyrs – the same word later used to describe people like St Paul and countless others who died for their faith in Jesus Christ.
It’s hard to believe that Saul and Paul are the same person. The opening words of the story of Saul’s conversion on the Damascus Road, read from Acts chapter 9, describe him as ‘still breathing threats and murder’, while Jocelyn Marshall’s hymn calls him a ‘self-righteous zealout, persecutor of Christ’s flock’. Yet it is this same man who, travelling extensively through what we now know as the Middle East and the Mediterranean, preached a Gospel of God’s forgiveness, love and acceptance, urging and encouraging Christians to put aside their differences, to open their lives to one another, and to work for God’s realm of justice and love.
I gained a new appreciation for Paul as we travelled through Greece last year. It was a profoundly moving moment to stand alongside a beautiful running stream in ancient Philippi anointing members of our tour party, knowing that this may have been the site where Lydia, celebrated as the first Christian in Europe, was baptized. Under a scorching sun we photographed what might have been the prison from which Paul and Silas escaped after the earthquake, and where the terrified jailer, with all his family, came trembling to ask for baptism.
An hour’s bus ride took us to Thessaloniki where Paul spent several Sabbaths teaching, arguing and explaining the necessity of the Messiah’s suffering and death on a Cross. How foolish it all seemed to the Jews he met with. How could it be possible that the Messiah should die on a cross, a common criminal? Was Paul already mulling in his mind the words he would later write to the Corinthians? That the cross is a ‘stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks – but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ (is) the power of God and the wisdom of God.’
Fleeing for his life from Boerea, Paul arrived alone in Athens. Having studied the writings of Plato and Aristotle, read the history of Herodotus, and the plays of Aristophanes in Greek in my undergraduate days, and after a whole morning wandering about the Acropolis, I found myself standing on the Areopagus with a new appreciation for Paul’s courage. How does one take on hundreds of years of learning, thinking and culture, on one’s own? In Acts 17 we find these words of Paul: ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”’.
You can’t travel in Greece without noticing the stones. Not only is much of the terrain rocky and steep, but stones are piled everywhere – some as uncompleted modern buildings, most piles of rubble from buildings and cities of yesteryear. In the ruins of ancient Corinth, I used a large stone, once part of a building, as an altar on which to celebrate the Eucharist. Overshadowed by the hill dominating the city, and with our ears still ringing from the stories told by our guide of the honour with which young women embraced prostitution as a sacred act, we read from Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthian Christians. Among the passages that cause us moderns trouble are those that tell the women to keep their hair covered in church. It was not those troubling and difficult to understand passages we read that day, but the story of the institution of the Eucharist. Such familiar words: ‘the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”’
At each place it seemed we gained a deeper understanding of St Paul struggling to articulate his new faith and belief in a way which would make sense to his listeners. Long before contextualization became a buzz word, Paul was doing just that – making the Gospel relevant to the people he spoke to. In his letters, written over a period of perhaps twenty years, he worked out his beliefs, the core of the Gospel – that God’s Grace is found in Christ crucified, that Christians are called to ‘put on Christ’, to become Christ-like, to acknowledge that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. (In a flashback to Dachau I found myself thinking – could I have been a Nazi? Could I have been a stone thrower?) Paul wrote words which have challenged and inspired and brought comfort to people for twenty centuries: ‘There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ,’ ‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,’ ‘And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.’
Today, on this our Patronal Festival, in a Cathedral, dedicated to St Paul, and acknowledged by us as a sacred space of worship, hospitality and education, we are challenged by the conversion of St Paul. Using words attributed to St Peter, the other great Apostle often linked with St Paul, ‘Come to him, a living stone … precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.’
Note: Footnote References are available in the hard copy.
