Sermon by the Rev. Kate Ekrem for April 14 2013
Acts 9:1-19a
Many years ago, I met a woman, a new member of the Episcopal
Church, who said that what she loved about our church was that people were not
continually asking her the date and time of her conversion to Christ. She came
from a tradition – I can’t even remember what it was – where that was the norm,
and in many churches it still is. My friend found the fact that we weren't so
interested in her conversion hard to get used to, but refreshing, but I wonder if conversion isn't something we should think more about.
This
morning we read the famous story of Saul, who was later of course called Paul,
the author of most of the letters in the back of the New Testament. We read the
famous story of how he turned from unbelief to belief in an instant that was
like a flash of light.
How many of
us really get struck by lightening like Saul? A few, definitely. But probably
not most of us. So what about the rest of us? How do we get converted? Because
we all do. That’s what it’s about, to live a converted life, to live a life
that’s different that it would otherwise be because of your faith. We all have
to be converted, converted away from our self-centeredness, into
Christ-centeredness.
The
Damascus road experience was an as an “abrupt stop” for Paul. Everything he was
doing, on both a big picture level – living as a devout Pharisee – and on the
little picture level – going on his way to Damascus to arrest some Christians –
came crashing down around him in one moment. Everything he did before no longer
made any sense. Sometimes that happens to people, they have an abrupt stop in
their life. There’s no way to go forward unless you undergo a profound change,
unless you give up completely what you are doing and turn things over to God.
People who have overcome addiction sometimes talk about it that way. And when
that happens to people we know, we sometimes call it a Damascus road
experience.
However, few
people have that kind of event in their lives. Saul’s experience was not even
typical at the time. It gets a prominent mention in scripture because even in
scriptural times it was extraordinary and unusual. Saul himself was an
extraordinary person. Incredibly driven, a workaholic, just the kind of person
who completely pours himself into whatever he is doing, who has to be right all
the time. He though he was right, a good person, upholding his faith and
cleansing it of heretics. Most of the Jewish leaders of that time, for example
Saul’s teacher Gamaliel, thought that if they just ignored the Christians they
would probably fade away. Don’t waste
time on them was their point of view. Saul couldn’t do that. He was so driven, he had the arrest papers for people in
Damascus in his pocket before he even got there, just in case. Perhaps God reaches out to
him in a special way because he needs special help. Maybe nothing else would
have really made him stop and consider what he was doing – causing the deaths
of innocent people. God helps each of us, calls each of us, according to our
individual needs.
Paul’s
conversion is set next to the example of Ananias, whose house he goes to. Don’t
you love how Ananias talks back to God? God comes to him in a vision and tells
him to go see Saul, and Ananias is like, sure, God, but this Saul is actually a
pretty bad guy, I think you should reconsider. Ananias seems very comfortable
talking with God. Probably he did it from childhood. Probably he couldn't even
remember a time when he didn't know God. He never had a bolt of lightening,
just gradually grew into the understanding of Jesus and God that maybe a friend
or neighbors or parents had shown him. A very different conversion experience than
Saul’s. Not a lightening strike, but a life lived in a community of faith from
the beginning.
What exactly is conversion all about? You know, earlier I
said that Saul changed from unbelief to belief. But is that really right? Saul
was a religious, believing Jew – just like Jesus, just like the 12 disciples.
Saul certainly believes in God, he thought in persecuting the Christians he was
doing exactly what God wanted. Saul has faith, but faith in what? When Jesus speaks to Saul there in the middle
of the road, what does he ask him? He doesn't say, “Why don’t you believe in
me?” He asks, “Why are you persecuting me.” [Just as Saul already had those
arrest papers in his pocket, God already saw Saul s a forgiven person, forgiven
for persecuting others, and reached out to him despite his breathing threats
and murder.] Maybe Jesus is not so gently pointing out that saying that we have faith is not the
most important thing, but how we treat others, the compassion that faith leads
us to show the rest of God’s creation, that is where the rubber meets the road.
Maybe this was what Paul meant when he wrote “If I have all faith, so as to
remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2)– he
had a lot of faith in God as a Pharisee, but very little love.
Some people
argue that Paul wasn't really converted, he just came to understand his own
faith in God more clearly, more truly, more deeply. So I wonder what conversion, really is – for him and for
us. Is it leaving behind the old completely and doing something new, or is it
about growth and change, growing out of a childhood faith and embracing a
deeper, clearer understanding of God’s plan for us?
In some
churches, only adults are baptized because only adults can really know what it
means to make a commitment of faith, only adults can really convert. But in our
church, we baptize even the smallest infants who can’t even talk yet, who can
hardly claim a conversion experience. That’s in part because we believe
conversion is a life-long process, that should begin as early as possible.
Baptism is not just a one-time event. It’s something we have to return to,
reclaim again and again, as we fall short of the baptismal promises we make, as
we grow in faith and understand those promises better. In the end is not about
one time and date of conversion, but about a whole life and how it was lived. Saul
who became Paul’s story is recorded in scripture, is told over and over again
in the church, not because of what happened in that one moment, but because of
the life he lived afterwards, from that moment on.
May we do
such deed, both small and big, in our own lives, that our own stories of
conversion may be an inspiration to others, as Paul’s is to us.
_______________
works consulted included:
works consulted included:
”Saving Saul” by Heidi A. Peterson
The Christian Century, April
11, 2001 , p. 15
“I Am Jesus,
Whom You Persecute” by Kosuke Koyama, Christian Century, April 5, 1989 , p. 347.
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