York Minster

May I speak in the name of the blessed and Holy Trinity, One God in three persons.

I’m not entirely sure that St Paul and I would have got on. He is a fascinating figure. All that fire and passion of persecution dramatically changed and redirected to establishing the early church. While he famously had his ‘Damascus road’ conversion, I’m not sure that it altered his personality. The skills he used to persecute Christians across Israel became the very same skills he used to empower a network of emerging churches. He brought the same intellect and debating skills to defend the Christian faith as he’s used to undermine it.

The reason I say that we might not have got on lies in his attitude towards women. While there’s the spectacular statement of equality – ‘in Christ there is neither male nor female’ – there is other stuff about wearing hats in church or, worse still, speaking in church. Today many men are wise enough to know that comparing any experience to childbirth is likely to get short shrift. I’m not sure whether St Paul had ever seen a child being born (perhaps he had) but he is happy to compare his role in birthing new churches with the travails of pregnancy.

In our second reading Paul writes to the Galatians:

My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, I wish I were present with you now and could change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

Well, it’s a nice idea, but I’m not sure St Paul knew what it is actually like.

But I acknowledge that he did know something of the blood, sweat and tears involved in growing churches and the deep frustration that Christians often seem to have a hard time agreeing with one another.

There’s a reason that the time of giving birth is called ‘labour’ and, like other aspects of life, doing anything good can be costly and painful. St Paul certainly found it hard labour to form Christ in people so that their spiritual birth would lead to healthy growth. Sometimes I think that there are Christians so fixated on the birth bit that they forget that birth always leads to growth. Being ‘born again’ must mean that we embark on a journey to develop and change.

Despite my reservations about it, the metaphor of childbirth has merit. When we are born we enter a new community, and we share in the life of a new family and friends. Christ is formed in us as we learn what it means to be part of the church, and how we mature to serve God in one another. Perhaps the most exciting thing I find in the Gospels is that the Church often becomes the community for those who have been excluded elsewhere. Time and again Jesus welcomes the stranger; the wounded; the sick; the mad; and the maimed. The people pushed out into the wilderness and laden with the sins of others. It is for these – it is for us – that Jesus says ‘draw near with faith’.

Many years ago George McLoed, founder of the community on Iona in Scotland, is said to have written the following words of invitation to communion:

Come, not because you are strong, but because you are weak.

Come, not because of any goodness of your own, but because you need mercy and help.

Come, because you love the Lord a little, and would like to love him more.

Come, because he loves you, and gave himself for you.

This is the community into which St Paul and all apostles, ancient and modern, invite everyone to be born into – born into a new community of faith. Not because of virtue or strength, but because God already loves us and calls us.

The Catholic poet Elizabeth Jennings once wrote of seeing the “priest as midwife and as mother”, which is odd because the Catholic Church has an all male priesthood. Yet, as with St Paul, perhaps it is only the language of birth that can describe the radical power of what God in Christ creates in each of us.

If the church fulfils its calling, this is our great labour of love, to open our doors to all those in this life who, simply and solely, know their need of God.

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‘The language of birth’ – The Revd Canon Maggie McLean, Missioner