I have obviously spent much time thinking about Paul these days. One of his endearing traits is his love of his hometown, Tarsus, "an important city" as he describes it. However, once he left it for further studies in Jerusalem did he ever really live there again? Acts 11:25 seems to indicate that he went back after his conversion while he waited for some word as to what would happen next, but this could not have been an extended stay.

In so many ways Paul was the first of the moderns, we rootless people who agree with Thomas Wolfe that you can't go home again. (When we do go back, it isn't the same. I hate to walk down the street where I grew up and see strangers sitting on "my" front porch—even after these many years.)

Paul found a way around this by being at home everywhere. With only his letters for guidance, we can see a man who could love the highway town of Philippi, would spend months in the wildly international port of Corinth, would preach in sophisticated Athens, and would find his way to the heart of the empire, Rome itself, and not be a stranger.

Paul found something far stronger than the vaunted Roman peace to allow him to be an eager resident of the great and small cities of the empire. He had here no lasting home but he did have a place where a Christian community existed. He made home by arriving in a city, unpacking his leather-working tools, setting up shop in the marketplace and heading for the nearest Christian household. This he did in Ephesus, Galatia, Jesursalem...

Home for Paul was not a place but an attitude, a belief that Christians who gathered to break bread and share the word were family and he would be welcomed by them.

I know we live in a totally different culture, but as traditional definitions of home pale before our moving vans, our church communities more than ever have a role to play in welcoming the stranger, remembering that "where two or three are gathered in my name I am there among them." I see this as so important in our cities with fluctuating populations.

Perhaps the church steeples are the only familiar objects in a sea of newnesses. I would love to see them assume new roles as anchors for shifting populations come for two or five or ten years, places to unpack our modern "tools," places where each would hear "I was a stranger and you welcomed me." Paul, once of Tarsus and later of the world, would probably add, "Me too."

And for this to happen we all need to become part of the welcome and the living together. Why can't we?