The Rev. Austin K. Rios
22 January 2023: Epiphany 4
Two notable events are converging this week that speak to the fullest contours of our life in Christ here in Rome.
The first is that we are in the middle of the week of Prayer for Christian Unity—a week dedicated to strengthening the united witness and bonds of affection in all the churches throughout the world that proclaim Christ’s reign.
In practical terms, this means that as your rector, and an ordained representative of St. Paul’s, this week is always a very busy one, filled with events at the various Christian churches and communities around the city.
These events can often lead to deeper friendships and understanding among the churches, and they serve as a visible sign of our desire to be united in prayer and one with Christ.
This afternoon at 5:00, you are invited to participate in one of these events: The Churches Together in Rome Unity Service, held this year at St. Andrew’s Church of Scotland, not very far from our location here at St. Paul’s.
We will pray together, worship together, and enjoy fellowship together, and I hope you may be part of that experience.
The second notable event is the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the laying of our cornerstone here at St. Paul’s.
The actual date of the anniversary is January 25th, but since the week of Prayer for Christian Unity concludes with a Papal Vespers service that evening, we’ve transferred our celebration to next Sunday.
We will celebrate this anniversary at a shared, multilingual Eucharist at 10:30AM, with Bishop Mark joining us as our preacher and several members of the Heads of Ministry of the Convocation in attendance, and then we will worship with invited ecumenical and diplomatic guests at a Solemn Evensong at 6:30PM with music being offered by the St. Paul’s Youth Orchestra and an expanded St. Paul’s Choir.
I hope you make plans to join us for one or both of these celebrations next Sunday—we are looking forward to a full house and I personally would love for our guests to experience the fullness of our community and to be welcomed and invited into our common life in the way that only each of you can do!
The confluence of these two events and today’s reading from our patron saint’s letter to the fledgling church in Corinth have caused me to reflect this week on the narrow path we are called to travel as Christians.
On the one hand, we are called to celebrate and honor the many gifts that we have been given—those particular blessings that arise from our innate personal abilities, our families and countries of origin, and our specific locations of geography and denomination that make us who we are.
We are called to celebrate fully that we are St. Paul’s Within the Walls Episcopal Church, that we have been a community of faith since 1859 in Rome and have been worshipping according to the order of the Episcopal Church in this location for 150 years.
We give thanks for our founders, including The Rev. Robert J. Nevin who was first rector of St. Paul’s, for their commitment and vision in raising up not only these lovingly restored stones that make up our house of worship, but also the community of saints who cared for lost souls, wounded veterans, the spiritually curious, and refugee guests throughout these many years.
But as we celebrate such wonderful particularities, we would do well to remember that these unique gifts that God has given us are not intended to magnify their own glory nor our own.
These gifts have been entrusted to us so that we might join them with the gifts of others in the larger Body of Christ for the greater glory of God.
There is a fine line between acknowledging and celebrating the unique gifts God has given us and tilting into idolatry and division because of them.
When we see our gifts and our particularities as reasons for smugness and superiority, the goodness God has given us begins to turn bad, like hoarded manna in the wilderness, and the life-giving channels of our contribution to the larger Body get severed by sin.
If you wonder whether this is a recent dilemma or contemporary challenge, be encouraged—it is not!
Our patron saint Paul is addressing this very matter in his letter to the Corinthians today, and 2000 years of church history reveal that we are always wrestling with both our better and fallen angels.
Paul begs the church members to put aside their unhelpful pride over who baptized them and which human conduit might hold their allegiance, and instead give their energy and gifts toward the larger mission and proclamation of the good news they have in Christ.
What better message can come to us in the middle of the week of prayer for Christian Unity?
Instead of saying, “I belong to St. Paul’s” or “I belong to Santa Prassede” or “I belong to Ponte Sant Angelo” we would do better to recognize that we are all one Body in Christ, worshipping and working together in diverse and hopefully complimentary ways that share God’s light to the nations.
Holding these elements of our identity in tension—the unique calling and giftedness we have received and the larger calling we have to be one in Christ—is not easy.
For me, walking on the narrow path that honors both comes down to a question of ultimate allegiance.
As a baptized member of the body of Christ, my ultimate allegiance is to Christ alone, and to the world-changing message of transformation, grace, and redemption that the united, universal Church, which is his Body, is called to proclaim.
If my celebration of particularities points to belonging within that larger Body and mission, then such festivities can be wonderful and necessary moments of connection and remembrance.
But if I find my ultimate allegiance slipping toward anything less than Christ—like defending cultural or worldly markers of distinction, or saying that I have no need of other members of the Body of Christ because they don’t worship as Episcopalians or as members of St. Paul’s, or by failing to recognize my shared heritage and destiny with all the children of God—then I hope to be quick to ask for forgiveness and return to the road that leads to where Christ is.
As we celebrate this important 150th anniversary here at St. Paul’s, and as we lift up the unity of the Church this week and in the year ahead, I encourage you to spend time reflecting on your own navigation of this narrow path.
Are you able to fully celebrate and share the many particular gifts you and we have been given by God, while also knowing that they have been given so that the Lord may be glorified and the proclamation of the good news we have in Christ might resound throughout the world?
Are you giving your ultimate allegiance to Christ alone, and willing to let all other allegiances be subservient to his call on your life?
We come to this place each week to learn how to do this hard work together, and we give thanks for the ability to gather here in a church that was erected 150 years ago to promote this Gospel.
Let us build upon the strong foundation we have been given and proclaim through our united witness and actions that in Christ we are many—many gifts, many nations, many languages, many cultures, many generations of the Church—and yet, thanks be to God, always one in our allegiance and calling as the Body of Christ.