A Modern Parable.

        A modern parable will bring home to us the revolutionary nature of Saint Paul's witness. Think of a strongly traditional Greek Orthodox family in cosmopolitan New York, or Boston, the Athens of America. Imagine them to be American citizens having established roots in American business and society, yet powerfully attached to their own religious and ethnic heritage which for them is a single, undifferentiated unity. Their ties with Greece are such that they send off the son to study in Greece and be thoroughly infused with the Greek Orthodox mindset and way of life. While in Greece the young man visits the Holy Mountain of Athos and has a profound religious experience. Suddenly the young man has a changed heart and a new set of priorities. What really matter to him now are Christ, the Church as His mystical Body, the Liturgy, and the theology and spirituality of the Church Fathers, all of which, according to his awareness, are only dimly perceived by his fellow Greek Orthodox living in an immensely rich culture of religious and ethnic traditions.

        The young man then returns to America with a new vision and with glowing convictions about the opportunity of Orthodox mission in this free and open society. He tries to arouse local Greek Orthodox congregations to the same grand vision. He tells them that in order to have a true and vigorous Orthodox mission, they must have a renewal of identity centered on Christ and the fundamental Orthodox truths, which defines in any case their true baptismal identity, and not an ambiguous kind of sociological identity based on their sense of peoplehood and on their humanly justifiable pride in their ethno-religious culture and language. To be sure, he is not at all opposed to the rich ethnic heritage for the Greek Orthodox; only the mission of Christ and His Church have for him an incomparably higher priority. He welcomes converts into the Greek Orthodox Church and points to them as being the first fruits of a renewed identity, a renewed humanity in Christ, just as in the case of the Book of Acts when the flow of Gentiles into Christianity transformed the identity of the nascent Jewish Christian Church.

        For him, all this would be consistent with Orthodox theology and history, since Orthodoxy itself has made several great moves into new nations and cultures over the ages. Indeed, such renewal of baptismal identity centered on Christ and His Church, even at the risk of losing some precious cultural traditions and gaining new ones, is exactly the essence of the matter and the pledge of the future destiny of the Orthodox Church in America for the glory of Christ. Such a zealous man, you can imagine, would create quite a stir preaching his message to Greek-Americans and all at once trying to relate to family, friends, converts, and the general public.

        While the parable is not analogical in every detail, it gives us an illuminating perspective in which to understand Saint Paul and his personal and theological struggle with faith and culture. Born in Tarsus, arguably the Athens of the Eastern Mediterranean, he was of a family of “Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5), apparently well-established, and possessing Roman citizenship (Acts 22:27-28). He learned Greek there but went off to Jerusalem for high Jewish studies, where he joined the strict party of the Pharisees, if he were not already a member of it (Phil. 3:5). But while heavily involved in the persecution against Christian Jews who were “hellenists,” that is, spoke Greek and were raising issues about the Temple and other Jewish customs (Acts 6:1,8-14; 9:1-18) he was granted a Christophany, a vision of the risen Christ, which transformed his whole life and simultaneously called him to a new mission in the Gentile world (Rom. 11:13). The person of the risen Lord was such a powerful reality for him that he could say, “For me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:23) and “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). From Law-centered he became Christ-centered. The Christ-focus was so immense that the Apostle came to view all other values, whether Jewish or Hellenic, as relative, including the Mosaic Law, and he was willing to live out the consequences. Some twenty years after his call and conversion he could still write that he counted all things, including his attainments in Judaism, a “loss” and “refuse,” in order “to gain” Christ and to continue to pursue the “surpassing worth” of Jesus his Lord (Phil. 3:8-9).