If you think about it the Apostle Paul was and remains a really strange yet powerful set of paradoxes. To begin with, he was the son of a racially mixed marriage, which in turn entailed some sort of religiously mixed parentage as well. It seems that his mother was Jewish while his father was a Roman gentile. We know next to nothing about this family, except that Paul at an early age seems to have migrated to Jerusalem where he became a devout and serious follower of the Jewish religion. In his letter to the Christians at Galatia Paul, whose Jewish name was Saul, he insisted that he was trained by the scholarly Jewish scholar Gamaliel, and in the book of Acts of the Apostles we see him set out to persecute the early Christians.
However, as is also mentioned in the book of Acts, he is converted to Christianity by a vision in which he claimed that Jesus spoke to him and called him to become a follower. Because of this experience Paul eventually became the number one spokesperson for Christianity, organizing churches all over what is now Turkey and Greece, and eventually preaching in Rome itself. Along the way he wrote numerous letters to these churches and claimed his Roman citizenship. We know next to nothing for sure about when, where, and how he died. Moreover, he seems never to have had any family of his own. Many copies of his letters eventually came to comprise the majority of the New Testament.
Perhaps the most important and amazing thing about Paul was that in his missionary efforts he claimed that there should no longer be a difference between Gentiles and Christians. Thus, the early Christian churches sought to integrate Gentiles and Jews, not without a certain amount of serious difficulty. So, in the end Paul and Peter became the traditional co-founders of Christianity. Paul devoted his entire adult life to spreading the Christian faith, both personally and by means of his many letters to various early churches. He quite literally actually “invented” what became Christian theology by means of teachings and letters.
It remains a central puzzle in trying to understand Paul and his theological thought just why he came to see the Christian faith as he did. Not only did he teach that there should not be any differences between Christians and Jews but he also tried to overcome the differences between males and females, as well as those between slaves and free persons. He does not claim to have received any visions or teachings from others about such matters, nor does he claim to have received any direct revelations concerning them. Somehow he seems to have discerned that Jesus Christ, as he understood his teachings, would not have allowed such discriminations.
The biggest puzzle for me is his almost complete ignoring of anything having to do with what we would call the “Jesus of History.” His interest focused on what we call “The Christ of Faith”, on who and what Jesus was from a strictly theological perspective. He almost exclusively writes of “Christ” rather than ever saying anything about the person of Jesus. I find this extremely puzzling. He makes almost no references to Jesus’ teachings and next to none about his various activities. It is almost as if for Paul the Second Person of the Trinity, not the Jesus who taught, healed, and walked with the people of Palestine, was the person who mattered.
I must confess that not only do I find this perspective puzzling, I find it very disturbing. There is something wrong with a “divided Christ”, one who is of theological interest and value, but who is not humanly and historically of interest and value. Indeed, I fear that much of the history and theological thought of the Christian Church down through the ages has been lopsidedly “Christo-centric” at the expense of being short-sighted with respect to the implications of the idea of the Incarnation. Paul sacrificed the Jesus of history to the Christ of faith.

I must confess that I missed the date this year. Given our history as human beings we must all learn to pay special attention to this date. Women have been second-class citizens since the beginning. It is past time to set this right!! We are making slow progress but women are still “also rans” in far too many respects in our world and it’s time to renew our efforts to work for the equality of all people in the world, especially women. When I reflect on this theme my mind will always begin by focusing on the two most important women in my life – my mother, and my wife Mari.
My Mom, Virginia McGinnis, birthed me in 1933 as a single woman in Bellingham, Washington. She made and delivered sandwiches to beer parlors and pool halls while boarding me out to family friends for my first two years. Together we worked our way through the depression and World War Two with Mom running various cafes and restaurants and me not doing well in school. Eventually she became a huge success in our home town, well-known for her first-class meals and friendly manner.
Although I was something of a small-time delinquent, she managed to help me wend my way through various minor scrapes while always encouraging me to do my best. Fortunately, I did get better with my studies and succeeded as a high-school athlete. Meanwhile Mom endured several fruitless marriages and other relationships. She finally died of cancer at the age of 55 after seeing me graduate from college. I actually owe all and anything I have done and become to my Mom.
Two other women who factored significantly in my early life were the Preston sisters from Northfield, Vermont. Harriet was my grandmother and Clara, in whose farmhouse I was born, was my great aunt. They both were hard working, strong women who knew who they were and how to help others live well. I am fortunate to have known them both as a youngster, for they added greatly to my appreciation of women and the contribution they made in my life.
After two divorces of my own I finally found my wonderful wife Mari Sorri, a young student transplant from Finland. We have now been married over 40 years and in addition to feeling extremely blessed by her presence in my life, I must add that she has taught me a lot, both about what it means to be a full person and about what it means to be a male person. Together we have sought to build a relationship that is based on mutuality of respect and effort. Mari became an outstanding student and professor of philosophy, as well as a first-rate ceramic artist, a church administrator, and a highly successful Yoga teacher.
Along the way she has helped me learn what it means to live and love together in a fully mutual relationship. I well remember how, on our first date, when we went dancing, she spotted an empty table across the room and simply said “There’s one,” as she went directly for it, leaving me standing there with nothing to do but follow. Another time early in our relationship, when I placed my hand on her back to gently guide her across the street, she took my hand in hers and asked “What’s this doing here?” It was becoming abundantly clear that she needed no special protective guidance from me. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “So it goes.”
So, with the guidance of these two extraordinary women I have learned something of what it means to live responsibly in a life together as mother and son, as woman and man, as wife and husband. How grateful I am for the life and character of both my Mom and my wife. Three cheers for International Women’s Day !!!