The Conversion of St. Paul (January 21, 2024)

And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Today we celebrate the Conversion of St. Paul. It’s a great feast during the Epiphany season because during Epiphany. During this season, we think about God’s great work in converting sinners, just like St. Paul, who calls himself the worst of sinners, was converted. We celebrate Christ as the light to the Gentiles and St. Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles. The Feast day is technically on Thursday but we are transferring it to today because St. Paul is our patron saint here at St. Paul’s. And so we gather today to celebrate God’s mighty work in converting one of the Early Church’s fiercest opponents into one of its greatest advocates. St. Paul is responsible for more of the New Testament than any other human author. What I want to focus on today is the role that St. Paul played as the Apostle to the Gentiles. In his role as a missionary bishop, he brought the saving proclamation of Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins to a people that the Jews of his day considered “outsiders.” We even see that the radical nature of Paul’s mission brought him into some conflict with St. Peter, as Paul details in Galatians 2.

The character of Paul’s preaching seems both simple and complex. It was simple insofar as Paul unflinchingly emphasized the fact that the redemption wrought by Christ on the cross is for every single person regardless of their sex, race, class, or any other external factor. At the same time, it’s also true that at times his preaching can border on the complex and cerebral, as anyone who has ever done a Greek exegesis class on one of his books can attest. Much ink has been spilled trying to properly understand St. Paul. In fact, St. peter even provided a warning for those who would encounter Paul saying, “our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures” (2 Pet 3:15-16). The problem Peter identified with Paul’s letters being difficult to understand is even connected to what is now called the Reformation which marked the division between Catholics and Protestants. Many of the theological controversies of the Reformation can be boiled down to the basic question, “What do we do with Paul?”

The Apostle Paul remains an important figure for us today because of the role he played in communicating the saving acts of God in Christ. Paul helped pave the way to ensure that Gentiles could be included as full members of the Church, fulfilling the promises made to Abraham that all nations of the world would be blessed through him, a promise that finds its culmination in Christ. But beyond the Jew/Gentile dynamic (though not in a way unconnected to it), St. Paul still speaks to us today by answering the question of how a sinful person can be in union with a holy and righteous God. The answer that St. Paul gave in his letters, and the answer he would give us today, is that union with God comes through the Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Incarnate Christ.

Jesus tells us that we must “pick up our cross and follow him.” To accept the invitation to eternal life that he offers us, we must participate in his death. This is why we say that Baptism is generally necessary for salvation: “know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” The essentialness of participation in Christ’s death is why Holy Communion is the pinnacle of our worship. Every Eucharist brings Calvary present to us. It brings us to heaven as Christ perpetually offers himself to the Father. In it, we receive Christ’s sacrifice for us while offering ourselves on the altar as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for what he’s done.

The way the story of St. Paul’s conversion was written in Acts 9 draws a strong connection between Paul and the crucified Christ. In the first part of the reading which tells of the encounter Paul had on the Damascus road as he was on the way to round up Christians to bring them back to Jerusalem, Paul gets knocked off his horse by a bright light as Jesus speaks to him: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” Paul’s persecution wasn’t of just a few disparate individuals; it was of the Church, the Body of Christ. By the transitive property, then, Jesus can say to Paul, when you persecute them, you’re persecuting me. Doing violence to the Church is doing violence to Christ.

As a result of this experience, Paul is blinded. When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see. He goes for three days in this state in which he also doesn’t eat or drink. In one sense, we might say his experience with the light “kills” him. At this point, the narrative shifts away from Paul to a figure named Ananias who is called by God to minister to Paul and preach the Gospel to him despite his initial reluctance out of fear and suspicion of Paul. “So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him, he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9:17). In ministering to Paul, Ananias implants the Gospel into Paul’s heart. Ananias’ preaching gives Paul the beginning of a theological language that helps Paul explain the radical and life-changing encounter that he’s had. Paul’s eyesight is restored, but the eyes of his heart are opened as well. And, as a result, he gets up, is baptized, and eats.

From there, we’re told the Paul spent time with the Christians in the city of Damascus, the same ones he was initially going to round up for persecution. And almost immediately, he begins proclaiming the Gospel about Jesus as the Son of God in the synagogues, confounding his audience. What happened on the road to Damascus changed Paul so profoundly. By baptism, Paul becomes identified with Christ. His three day stint of blindness resembles the three days Christ was in the grave. He proclaims Christ to the Jews which amazes them which mirrors the way the crowds were amazed when Jesus spoke. The point is not just that Paul converts and has a change of heart; the signifiant thing is what he converts to: a life centered around Jesus Christ and his cross.

In the Collect of the Day, we admit that Paul’s doctrine is worth emulating: “Grant that we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance, may show forth our thankfulness unto thee by following the holy doctrine which he taught.” What is Paul’s doctrine?

We can say that Paul preached a Gospel that is inclusive. It breaks down distinctions that divide people because it confronts us with the fact that we are all in need. It reminds me of the third of the Comfortable Words we read after the Absolution which is a quotation of 1 Timothy 1:15: “This is a true saying and worthy of all men to be received: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” But we leave off the end of the worse in which Paul says: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners…of whom I am the worst.” This is why self-righteousness is deadly; in it we fail to see our own need for grace, and in so doing, pass judgment against others that may exclude them, at least in our minds, from the grace of God.

We see the Paul’s doctrine is participatory. God’s saving grace regenerates us when we could not regenerate ourselves. This doesn’t make us just passive receptacles, but active participants with God in his mission in the world. “If any one is Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” Our lives are taken up into Christ where we participate in the life of God, and, therefore, are constantly in a state of transformation. By being brought into Christ, we become transfigured by sustained and intimate engagement with the divine.

The stated intention of the collect is a good one: we should imitate St. Paul insofar as he imitated our Lord and Savior.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.