18 Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days;¹⁹but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother.²⁰In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!²¹Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,²²and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ;²³they only heard it said, ‘The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.’²⁴And they glorified God because of me.<!– 2 –>

Paul and the Other Apostles

2Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.²I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain.³But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.⁴But because of false believers^* secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us—⁵we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.⁶And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those leaders contributed nothing to me.⁷On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised⁸(for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles),⁹and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.¹⁰They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was^* eager to do.

Galatia: a Celtic population in the midst of Anatolia

These precious details may be directly from Paul, who became so famous in the early church that his legend encouraged others to write in his name and the author of the Acts to make him a more orthodox hero than he had been. He wants his readers to know that he always behaved as an equal of the famous apostles, Peter, James and John. Paul admits that his ministry was controversial but that the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church agreed to it. The key phrase is “that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.” Paul says that having preached the gospel to the Gentiles so that they received it and lived it, he could never change it or regard it as insufficient: it had created new communities of faith. All of us who share that faith owe a debt of gratitude to Paul’s stubborness. He had discovered the faith of Jesus to be universal in scope, not as branch of Judaism but as a true “way” in its own right. On the other hand, he retained respect for the Jewish scriptures and traditions, and for the Christians in Judaea, many of whom were very poor compared with the standard of living of his gentile converts. To remember “the poor” meant to remember these Jewish-Christian communities. Paul kept this promise by organising a huge collection amongst his gentile converts for their Jewish brothers and sisters in Judaea, an astonishing and innovative symbol of the unity of these new communities “in Jesus Messiah.”

Paul was inventing some of the deatils of this universal faith, on his feet, as he mnistered and wrote Sometimes he got things wrong, we now think, but far more often he got them marvellously right. Spending time on his letters is never wasted.

Matthew 13:53-58

⁵³When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.

The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth

54 He came to his home town and began to teach the people^* in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?⁵⁵Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?⁵⁶And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’⁵⁷And they took offence at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house.’⁵⁸And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.

I have been and will continue to be a severe critic of my own Church of Scotland ( because I love it as my spiritual mother), so perhaps it won’t be seen as prejudice if I venture a direct criticism of the Roman Catholic Church, with reference to this passage. The doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary is not only non-biblical, but anti-biblical, both in its denial of the obvious meaning of this passage in Matthew and its elevation of virginity over faithful sexual love.

Bishop on a bad day

 That lack of respect for human sexuality as part of what the creator saw was “good”; and what Jesus lauded as the intention of God “in the beginning”, led to the celibacy of the priesthood, and just as certainly to the corruption of the priesthood evident in the revelations of priestly child-abuse in many countries. The undignified spectacle of self-satisfied, self-castrated ecclesiastical capons squawking about the sexual behavour of ordinary people would be comic were it not so sad. If Mary was virgin when she conceived Jesus, she certainly was not once she was mother of James and Joseph, Simon and Judas, and the unnamed sisters of Jesus. The cult of virginity in the catholic Church should be dismantled, priests should be allowed to marry; women should be ordained; and then the distinctinve ministry of those who remain celibate for the sake of their specific calling, could be recognised and celebrated. The clean air of human normality would blow through the church.

I’m sure this is not Protestant prejudice: most of the Roman Catholic people I know, think the same. There’s so much good in the Roman Church, so much that it has to teach other churches, that I hope it can rescue itself from this particular error. Matthew 13: 53-58 is not a bad place to start.