ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

TRINITY 5, 2006
Evensong & Benediction
Fr Alan Moses

I wonder sometimes, when we are reading the Letter to the Romans in Church - as we have been in the last few weeks at Evening Prayer - what those early Christians in Rome made of this theological blockbuster - with its often complex treatment of great theological issues of grace and faith, justification and righteousness which have continued to tax the Church’s best minds ever since - arrived in the post from Corinth and was read out to the assembled believers.

After all, this letter came from someone who had never been to Rome, although there were people there who knew him, and doubtless others who knew of his apostolic ministry.

As Paul draws the Letter to a conclusion, he himself seems to recognise this problem:

“…on some points I have written to you rather boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles…”

Paul is sensitive to the fact that, unlike his other letters in the New Testament, this one is not written to a church which he has founded. So, he combines diplomacy, even flattery: - “I myself feel confident about you, my brother and sisters, that you yourselves and full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.”

with the clear statement of his apostolic authority: the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”

He may not have founded the Church in Rome, or ever have visited the western part of the Empire, but he sees his apostolic mandate as reaching out to include mission to that part of the world. It is not that he is wanting to come to Rome to wield authority over the Church there, but he is planning to extend his mission to Spain and he sees the Church in Rome as a staging post to, as well as a potential source of support to which he can appeal.

He describes that apostolic mission in terms of the worship of the Temple. When he speaks of himself as a “minister”, he uses the word ‘leitourgos’, from which we get our word liturgy. He speaks of his ‘priestly service of the gospel of God.’ This does not mean that he spent all his time saying mass and hearing confessions, but that he saw his ministry as being part of the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing the nations to God as a perfect offering. Here, where a good deal of time is spent doing ‘priestly’ things, we are reminded that these things exist, not simply for the spiritual comfort of those who already belong, but for a wider purpose, so that “the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”

So he speaks of the mission with which God has charged him and to back up that claim, of what God has already done through him: “In Christ Jesus, I have reason to boast of my work for God.”

“…I will not venture to speak of anything except what God has accomplished through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God,…”

He speaks of his missionary strategy: “I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written,


‘Those who have never been told of him shall see,
and those who have never heard of him shall understand.’”

Again, there is a note of reassurance here. The gospel has already been preached in Rome and the church there is firmly established. Paul is coming to them because he believes that he is being called to extend the mission beyond them to the west, to the edge of the known world.

He has preached the Gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum - the province on the east coast of the Adriatic. There is no room for him to work in the east anymore. We should not take this too literally. Paul can hardly have preached in every single place in the eastern part of the empire. But his method was to preach and evangelise in key centres, establish churches and leadership there, and then to move on, leaving those churches to continue the work, spreading out to other places.

The demands of Paul’s mission in the east have been , he says, “the reason that I have so often been hindered from coming to you.” Soon he will be free to come, but there is one last task to perform. First, he must return to Jerusalem, “in a ministry to the saints”, taking with him the proceeds of the collection he has been making in the churches of Greece for the poor of the Church in Jerusalem.
When he had met the apostles, the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, still seen as the mother church, and his mission to the Gentiles had been affirmed, they had asked that the new churches not forget the poor of the church in Jerusalem. Paul records that this was something he was glad to do. The collection figures largely in his correspondence. The churches in Achaia and Macedonia, he says “were pleased to do this” - “to share their resources with the poor among the saints at Jerusalem.”

Paul sees this not merely as an act of charity, but as a thank offering for the spiritual blessings these Gentile Christians have received from the church in Jerusalem. It is also a means of building communion between churches - especially between the still largely Jewish church in Jerusalem and the increasingly dominant Gentile ones elsewhere.

Here, in a church which has been established a good deal longer than that in Rome, a church where we might even be bold enough consider ourselves “as full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another”, we might profit from thinking of our giving in ways which draw on this.


We give to the life of the church in our parish, perhaps to the restoration appeal, as a thank offering to God for the spiritual blessings we have received in this place; those bequeathed to us by our forebears. We give so that those who come after us may enjoy the blessings we have received from the grace of God.

We do this not simply for our own benefit, but to support the ongoing mission of the church so that
“those who have never been told of him shall see
and those who have never heard of him shall understand.”

Through our giving to the Common Fund of the Diocese, we help to support the work of mission in parts of our city where “the poor among the saints” simply cannot afford to pay for the ministry of the church on their own.

Through our mission projects, we also give to “the poor among the saints” - in Africa for example, which we will have an opportunity to hear about from Brother James Anthony of St. Cyprian’s College in Tanzania at the Mission Supper on Thursday. Just as Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, could look forward to the support of the church in Rome for the next phase of mission, so those responsible for the mission of the Church in our time have a right to expect our support .

Paul made it to Rome in the end, but not quite as he had hoped. Instead he came as a prisoner to be tried before the Emperor. Tradition has it that he was executed there but his letter survived to assure us of the grace of God and to challenge us to share in his mission. It has continued to disturb ecclesiastical establishments which is perhaps why the Roman Basilica of St Paul is “Outside the Walls”.