Paul is an interesting fellow. Probably not a man with a lot of friends - not one you'd tend to get close to. In school, he was the bookish kid who was so single-minded, he scared people. He saw everything so clearly, in black or white, which is probably one reason he loved his books - everything is cut and dry, reasonable, and sure. He was demanding in his relationships - unreasonable, people would say. He held expectations of people that no one could live up to.

I have a cousin a bit like that. In high school, he read Vigil and Homer in Latin, and laughed at the jokes! In seminary, he excelled in Greek and Hebrew. Then, on his internship, he discovered kids in an inner-city ministry. After that, it was the only ministry he would consider. He became a radical in the midst of Missouri synod conservatives, right in the heart of St. Louis. Rather than compromise, he left the ministry to homestead in the upper regions of Canada, and work with troubled kids among the Innuit people. In his case, it has worked out all right - although it has meant a very different lifestyle for his kids, who know a lot more about the wilds of Canada than they do about things we take for granted - like indoor plumbing and television.

Some intellectuals like Paul can even be dangerous. Lenin was a great mind who, taking the thoughts of Carl Marx, applied them to Russian society, sparking a revolution in which tens of millions died in the name of a classless society.

Paul studied at the feet of the greatest Jewish scholar of his day, Gamiel. He was the heir apparent, one of the most brilliant minds of his time. He says of himself, "I was a Pharisees Pharisee," the cream of the crop, a giant intellect who attempted to bring that intellectual rigor to reign in the life of those around him. He saw the slovenly religion and thought of first century Judaism, and became determined to apply the purity of the law, striving to enforce it in as rigorous a way as possible. It was said that, if all Jews could, for a moment, keep the whole law, Messiah would come. If that were the case, Paul was the man to bring it about.

He saw the mantle of Pharisaic Judaism being passed to him. He saw the new sect of Christians as a threat to Judaism, and set out to destroy them, to cleanse Judaism from this plague, and restore faith. In many ways, he was Peter's opposite - sharp, well-educated, methodical and organized. Yet he was like Peter in one important way - he was totally dedicated to his task, a zealot. The difference was that Peters dedication was to Jesus; Paul's, to an ideology.

It is always dangerous to make an ideology the center of your life. Reason, Luther noted, is a great whore that can go to bed with any idea. No thought, no idea, no ideology is big enough to hold a life. Ideologies, as we have seen in our time, are terrible masters - they reduce people to things and demand the destruction of anything or anyone that stands in their way.

So we find Paul hunting down and killing Christians to purify the faith - first Stephen, then others, as he works his way toward Damascus, a center of Judaism in his time. Then, suddenly, along the road, something happens to him. A blinding light, a revelation, that literally knocks him to the ground. And life is never the same, because Paul is never the same.

Paul never becomes popular. The leaders of the early church distrust him, but are finally convinced by the fruits of his ministry - yet he has continuing disagreements with them, with Peter, as well as Mark and others. He remains, throughout his life, the center of controversy; and at the end of his life, as he sits in prison awaiting execution, he notes that nearly all have left him.

Yet, as he sits in that jail cell, his life is filled with a joy he never knew before. His letters to the churches are animated. His intellect sings the praise of his Lord, to whom he gives the glory, and for whom he is happy to even give up his life. He is the great defender of the church, its greatest theologian, the writer of fully half of the New Testament.

We face a crisis in our church - one other mainline churches also face. It is the crisis of ideologies that threaten to divide and destroy the church. In the name of purity of doctrine of practice, some are willing to divide the church, to drive out the impure, to cleanse the church.

The Missouri synod throws out all who are not creationists, and those who recognize the ministries of women through ordination. Southern Baptists throw out those who do not take a "literal" approach to scripture. A group in our own church has split over the recognition of the ministry of the Episcopate. Some split over abortion rights. Others are waiting for the discussion of homosexuality. The church is divided left and right, and Jesus is pleading, as he did to Saul, "Why are you persecuting me?"

It's easy to divide over issues. It's harder to stay together with people with whom we disagree. But God isn't concerned about issues. There was no issue God deemed important enough to have his Son die for. He sent him to die for people. People are what is important to God. That is what Jesus continually taught. That was the continual focus of his ministry: people and their faith in a Father who loved and welcomed them whoever they were, wherever they were. He said that our job is not to divide the holy from the unholy - that is God's job alone. Our job is to proclaim the grace and love of a Father who calls us, whoever we are and wherever we are in life; and to hold up before one another the promise of God inherent in ever human being - to help us see in ourselves and in each other what we cannot see alone - the image of God that is in us. We are to help one another grow into that image by loving and supporting one another, calling each other into greater and greater faithfulness.

I remember when the issue of women in ministry came up in the church. Some men were afraid women would take over the church. Can you believe that? Where had they been? They must have been in denial! Now I see wonderful women out there doing great ministry, and I'd challenge anyone who says they aren't faithful ministers doing the Lord's work, and that he hasn't blessed their ministry. Just look at Pastor Larson down the road at St. Timothy's, or my own sister! I wish we had many more pastors like them! Yet for many years, our ideologies, our theologies prevented them from doing what God had clearly called them to do.

I've got to say something some folks aren't going to like. I've counseled with women considering abortions. I've counseled with more gay Christians than I can number. I'm not afraid of either destroying the church. What I am afraid of, however, is ideologues that are willing to sacrifice people for the sake of their cherished ideas.

This ministry God gives us is too precious to spend our time biting at one another's heels. We have a whole world out there that we are called to convince that they have a heavenly Father who loves them and holds them in his gracious arms. So far as I've seen, in my twenty-five years of ministry, the church hasn't done too good a job of convincing them. Instead it has been content to spend the majority of its energies devouring its own weak and wounded. That's not faithful.

One of the great themes of Epiphany is discipleship. It's time for the church to be the church, to take up its mission in earnest. It's time we stopped fighting one another, and start embracing the world God so loved. It's time to quit dividing people and start uniting them in the arms of their heavenly Father. It's time to change from being an ideological church to becoming a confessional one - one that recognizes and confesses its unity in Christ, that recognizes and confesses Jesus as its only Savior and Lord. The time is today. The mission starts now.