Founders’ Banquet
Essay Posted June 29, 2007 by James E. Nelson
June 29, in the Orthodox Church, is the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul and June 30 is the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles. The word “synaxis” literally means “gathering.” A synaxis often follows a major feast and honors those involved in the event. The logic of the synaxis is most clear at the Feast of Theophany (called “Epiphany” in the West), which celebrates Jesus’ baptism. Following Theophany, there is a synaxis in honor of St. John the Baptizer; his synaxis occurs the day after Theophany because of his role baptizing Jesus. In the case of the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles, it is the last shebang growing out of Pentecost.
Pentecost is the culmination of the Pascha (Easter) Feast, which lasts fifty days following Pascha. Of course the number’s not arbitrary. Jesus remained on earth for forty days following his resurrection, teaching and strengthening the disciples. On the fortieth day he ascended into heaven but told the Apostles to remain in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came. Ten days later (at the time of the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, which gets its name because it comes fifty days after Passover—Pesach is Hebrew, and Pascha in most other languages, but renamed Easter in English) the Holy Spirit came in power, and the disciples were sent out to evangelize the world.
But the task of evangelization cannot be done without spiritual preparation; the battle cannot be engaged without boot camp being completed. So the Orthodox Church observes one of its four major fasts from the Tuesday after Pentecost through June 29, culminating with the Feast of Peter and Paul, the chiefs of the Apostles on June 29 and the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles as the original missionaries of the Church on June 30.
The feast of Sts Peter and Paul is an especially big deal among the Antiochian churches because Peter was the first Bishop of Antioch (A.D. 37-53) while Paul was the original missionary, being commissioned by the church at Antioch and sent into Asia Minor, and later Greece, and finally to points further west. The Church of Antioch is pre-eminently the Patriarchate of Peter and Paul. It’s why so many Antiochian Churches are named “Sts Peter and Paul Orthodox Church.”
But these two feasts which bring the Apostles’ Fast to a close are important for a very different reason for this former Protestant. But I have to start at a different spot in order to explain the significance.
There was a very strong anti-Catholic sentiment within Protestant fundamentalism during the first half of the twentieth century and that sentiment lingered during the time I was becoming acquainted with Fundamentalist sensibilities. I had a couple of teachers at Bible College who railed against “popery” (as they liked to call it) and Mr. Freeman, in particular, was convinced that the Pope was the Harlot of the book of Revelation. He often went into lurid detail about the harlotry of popery.
But my experience of “popery” was on a different front. Beginning with a one year stint in a small, fundamentalist mission doing church development in western Montana, I became acquainted first hand with Protestant popery, that is the one man shows that make up so much “ministry” in the Evangelical and Fundamentalist world.
Actually, my first experience with the big-time Protestant personality shows was a road trip four of us collegians made to Denver to see Francis Schaeffer’s “How Should We Then Live?” World Tour, book signing, and trinket sale. While our secular friends attending secular universities were traveling to Denver to see stadium rock bands like Cheap Trick and Foreigner, we made the trip to witness the Evangelical equivalent: Franky Schaeffer’s dog and pony show in honor of his dad’s latest book. The book was good, but Franky had turned it into a multimedia and personality smorgasbord that was breathtaking in its scope.
Many of the Protestant personality popes worked very hard to counteract the downside of the personality based ministries. Both Billy Graham and Francis Schaeffer, for instance, worked closely with local churches in all their crusades and rallies, but in spite of the efforts the organizations were built around the man.
This was also the halcyon days of Christian radio and the beginning of Christian television, so the field grew crowded with major radio and television personalities vying for the spotlight. Each built a following and seemed to have very little accountability to anyone except a small cadre of hand picked friends that often formed a sort of private spiritual advisory board. (In this day and age, we might call them “the posse.”) Typically the family business was taken up by the next generation, sometimes with a modicum of success, often with the ministry fading from view without the powerful personality of its founder, and occasionally ending in disaster when the child took the Protestant personality cult to its logical conclusions.
Of course Protestant popery — one man ministries and personality-based organizations — continues unabated and seemingly unabashed by the regular reports of misdeeds and heresy. We never seem to grasp the profound dangers of putting so much power and prestige into the hands of a single individual.
And this same sensibility is why it is important to this former Protestant that the Orthodox Church saw fit not to give Peter and Paul separate feast days, but to honor them together, followed directly by the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles. Peter and Paul were (speaking from a strictly human perspective) competitors. Peter was the champion of Hebrew Christianity (the circumcision party) while Paul was the champion of a more universal Gentile Christianity (the uncircumcision party). Paul rebuked Peter publicly for his stance. Peter called Paul’s epistles indecipherable. And yet, the icon of Peter and Paul shows them in a holy embrace offering the kiss of peace to each other.
The true church (and here I’m not referring to Catholic, Orthodox, or Church of Christ, but rather to the place where God is truly present) is, in the end, always a joint effort. Just as God is unity in diversity in the perfect fellowship of Trinity, so the church is a body, it makes decisions by a group effort, and it’s leadership is always pluriform and conciliar in nature. Lone Wolves are invariably popular among the sheep, but they’re not the sort of shepherd the True Shepherd chooses
The Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles is sort of like the Founders’ Banquet of the Orthodox Church. (And notice it is “s - apostrophe,” not “apostrophe - s”—we’re talking about multiple founders here. I suppose the truly spiritual will argue that Jesus is the founder of the church, and the truly spiritual who are also sticklers for the theological truth will counter that the Founder is the Son and the Holy Spirit acting in accord with the will of the Father who sent them. But this misses the point. Every fundamentalist institution from Moody Bible Institute to Big Sky Bible College notes that Jesus is their founder, and yet when the Founder’s Banquet rolls around, it’s old D.L. Moody and Si Forsberg who get honored. And rightly so. They did the leg work to get the whole thing going. Similarly, the Apostles are representative of that group of people who paid attention when Jesus said, “Stay in Jerusalem for a few more days.” They’re the one’s who got to work after the Holy Spirit came upon them at that first Pentecost. They rightly deserve our honor and respect for the task that they did.
But the “Founders’ Banquet” is not just in honor of Peter, the Prince of Apostles, nor James, the brother of Jesus, who was the first Bishop of the church (and notably, not an apostle), serving in Jerusalem and a martyr for Jesus Christ, probably in A.D. 62. No the “Founders’ Banquet” is for the Twelve Apostles: Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John, Philip Bartholomew and Thomas, James, the son of Alpheus, Matthew, the tax collector, Simon the Zealot, Jude, also known as Thaddeus, and of course, Paul, formerly Saul of Tarsus, an apostle untimely born. Of course Peter and Paul are given special honor for their special roles, but they never worked in a vacuum, so they are never put on a pedestal in the Orthodox Church. Rather, they are the two rivals, who in the end offered each other the kiss of peace and worked in divine harmony to further the Gospel of Christ. Far from being lone wolves, they are the icons of what it means to live in the bonds of love and unity without giving up what they believe is important.
It’s a message this former Protestant needs to be reminded of year after year. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Copyright © 2007 James E. Nelson (Just Another Jim). All Rights Reserved.
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