The Conversion of Paul

25^th January 2009 9:00am & 11:45am

Preacher: The Dean

Readings: Jeremiah 1:4-10, Acts 9:1-22, Matthew 19:27-end

Conversion of St. Paul

‘I have seen the Lord, he has appeared to me, he has manifested himself also to me.’

Paul uses these words taken from the Bible to describe his encounter with the Risen Lord. But what really happened on the Road to Damascus?

Today is the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, in which we celebrate our own conversion through remembering St. Paul’s change.

According to the Bible, Paul had left Jerusalem in great haste accompanied by some Temple guards. He was in a hurry to reach Damascus to arrest and imprison the disciples of Jesus. He was almost at the gates of that town when he was struck by a blinding light that throws him to the ground.

This is the dramatic scene of the conversion of St. Paul that we have always read about and that so many artists have represented down the centuries. And yet, if we examine carefully the passage in Acts, we find no mention of a horse or of a military escort. His traveling companions, who take this apostle’s hand and lead him into the town are not soldiers but fellow travelers who happen to be with him by chance; no restive horse, therefore, and no rattling of arms.

What in fact did take place on the way to Damascus?

From Paul’s references we gather that he did not understand his experience on the road to Damascus as a conversion or as an ordinary vision, as Luke the writer of Acts the Apostle understands it, but as a resurrection appearance in which he received his call to be an apostle. In fact, Paul never thought of himself as being ‘converted’, in the sense that he abandoned one religion for another. He remained a Jew but found fulfillment of his Judaism when he became a believer in Jesus as the Messiah and was sent as his apostle to the Gentile.

Therefore, we can say that the conversion of Paul was a very important stage in the life of the early church, especially to the gentile churches. The author of the Acts describes it not just once but three times. Today’s reading is the first description of it; we can read the others in Acts 22 and 26.

If we are patient enough to read and compare the three versions, we shall immediately notice that they describe the event using details both differently and contradictory. Let us look at the most obvious of these contradictions.

In the first version, Acts 9:7, which is today’s first reading, the men who are with Paul stop dumbfounded, they heard a voice but do not see anything. The second version (Acts 22) describes the event thus : ‘My companions saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who spoke to me.’. A few chapter after this (Chapter 26:13-14), Paul says, ‘I saw a light from the sky, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my traveling companions. We all fell on the ground and I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew : .. it is hard for you to kick against the goad.’

It thus becomes rather difficult to state who has seen, who has heard or who has fallen down.

The varying details are evidently not so important, but they do suggest that we are not to interpret the event, but as a faithful description of the event, but as a spiritual experience that changed the whole life of Paul, and this experience can still teach us many things today when we celebrate this Feast day.

At times we must change course.

Paul speaks frequently in his letters of his Damascus experience. One of his most significant references to it is what he write to the Galatians ; In his letter to the Galatians 1:12-16, Paul says, ‘You heard of my former way of life in Judaism, now I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it, and progressed in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my race, since I was even more a zealot for my ancestral traditions. But God, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles.’

Paul is not describing how he met Christ. He puts the stress only on the point : his discovery was a gratuitous gift from the Father, who revealed to him his Son and entrusted to him the mission of proclaiming him to the pagans.

Paul, and this is even more striking, never mentions in his letter anything extraordinary about the event of Damascus. He never talks about horses or soldiers and does not mention any other ‘prodigious’ phenomenon such as the blinding light, the fall to the ground, the mysterious voice. His description is very simple and realistic. What Paul recalls is the deep spiritual meaning, the turmoil it brought into his life, the interior enlightenment that derived from it.

According to the 2^nd letter of Paul to the Corinthians 5:16, Paul had known Jesus ‘according to the flesh’, in line with human logic and Jewish institution : Jesus was, for him, the one who had been defeated and accursed by God. Paul was expecting salvation to be the fruit of circumcision and of a strict and faithful observance of the law. After meeting the Risen Lord, all these criteria are overturned. In his letter to the Philippians 3:7-10, what he thought was a source of glory and pride became ‘rubbish’.

This discovery was a sudden striking and came about through God’s generosity. This is the only truth that Paul wants and likes to stress.

He was struck as if by a sudden lightning, and underwent a very profound experience of the Risen Lord. He was transformed from persecutor into an Apostle. What changed him was his encounter with the Risen Lord, an encounter that though in different forms we too experience.

Based on his experience which has entirely changed his life, Paul can claim boldly in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 9:16), ‘If I preach the gospel, this is no reason for me to boast, for an obligation has been imposed on me, and woe to me if I do not preach it.’

This statement is the synthesis of his ministry. It is his response to the command of the Risen Lord : ‘Go out into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature.’

Paul has understood that people will be saved through faith and self dedication – just as today’s Gospel says – and he knows that faith can come from the proclamation. This is why he dedicated all his life to preaching and thus at the end he could exclaimed in his 2^nd letter to Timothy (4:7-8) : ‘I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance.’

So, for Paul, conversion does not mean to ‘put into reverse’, but to make a ‘U’ turn. No one can re-live his past; the mistakes that have been made remain, they cannot be wiped away, but they can be ransomed by a change of course, by giving a new direction to our lives, by radically transforming our outlook and our way of judging, working and loving.

The scales that fall from the eyes of the apostle seems to mean the ‘veil’ that every Jew has in front of his eyes, the veil that stops him from recognizing that Christ is the Messiah of God. The Lord opened the eyes of Paul in a startling way, so that he in his turn may ‘open the eyes of all the nations that they may turn from darkness to light’. (Acts 26:18) This is a marvel that the Lord is ready to repeat for each one of us and is calling us to take up the great mission given by him – Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’ Then, our Lord is with us always, to the end of the age. Amen.