The Conversion of St. Paul

"Conversion on the Way to Damascus" by Caravaggio

Before our daughter was able to read, she knew several stories by heart. The stories were favorites that we read to her again and again. When I dared to skip a page or change a word, she would always protest, "That’s not what it says. Read it right!"  

The conversion of Saul is like that for us – it’s so familiar that even those who have never read it often know it by heart and take it to be the shining example of religious conversion. No detail can be left out. Here we have a person who had been the main persecutor of the young church becoming the church’s #1 missionary and preacher. It’s a surprising, dramatic reversal. He gets a new name: Saul becomes Paul. He’s completely changed and becomes this larger-than-life hero. Poof, it happens, like Clark Kent changing into Superman!                                

But actually, much of that is a misinterpretation. The name Paul, for example, is just the Greek form of the Hebrew “Saul.” It’s not a new name. And Saul’s transformation into the great missionary and teacher Paul is not instantaneous or very heroic, no matter how dramatic it may be. And the main message of Paul’s conversion story is not all about Paul. It’s about Jesus.                          

What I mean by that is this: we think of this conversion story of Paul’s as some sort of religious norm. That Jesus changes your life in a big, dramatic way. And if that hasn’t happened to you, then you must somehow be lacking in faith.

Some Christians say if you haven’t had a conversion experience, a time when you accepted Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, an event or day that you can point to when you got saved…well, then you aren’t really saved.

I’ve told you before about my seminary professor who was in the airport one day and struck up a conversation with a guy sitting next to him. The guy found out the professor was a Christian and asked when he had been born again. The professor gave him the date of his baptism, whereupon the guy says, “Oh, that. No, I mean when you were converted, when you got saved! You know, born again.” The professor went on to say that his whole life has been one of being born anew every day, because he was first born again in baptism.      

Conversion, as my professor rightly understood it, was something that happened every single day in a thousand little ways as God turns us from our sin and toward his glorious light using the most ordinary of means: bread, wine, the preached word, the fellowship of believers, the declaration that our sins are forgiven for Jesus’ sake.

This is what changes your heart, this constant faithfulness of God, the day in and day out commitment that God has for you. This is how you are converted. It’s like a bud slowly opening into a flower—who can say the exact point the bud becomes the  flower? We just know it happens.  

This daily conversion is not very dramatic. Some may even say it’s boring. People long for spiritual excitement that makes them feel uplifted and feel saved. But the fact is, in your baptism and here at this Altar, you are converted, changed, born again, saved. Day in and day out. Every Sunday.

The challenge is to trust that when God says “your sins are forgiven” then they are. When God says, “this is my body given for you,” that it is. Take him at his word. When does God ever lie? 

I do not doubt the sincerity of those Christians who have dramatic faith experiences or conversion experiences like Paul’s. But I do question the idea that we all have to have a radical occurrence or we’re not really faithful, or not really Christian. After all, look at Ananias in the story—he is a convert to Christianity, too, but his relationship with God is conversational, matter-of-fact. Ordinary, Everyday. When God calls, Ananias doesn’t have to ask “Who is it?” Ananias talks with God, and in the end goes to speak the message that will release Paul from blindness and set him on the road to become the chief missionary of the church. 

The story of Paul's conversion, and the reason there is a festival in the church year devoted to it, is not because it is the religious norm. As a matter of fact, the reason it is reported in such detail is because it is so unusual. No, the reason we celebrate Paul’s conversion is because of what Paul did after his conversion. The Bible shows us that Paul is a dramatic, ambitious man set on making his career out of persecuting this upstart heretic group within Judaism, a group that would later become Christianity. Paul is a tireless worker, with clear goals and a purpose. What God does on the road to Damascus is harness Paul’s energy and ambition and single-minded devotion--for the Gospel. And to get the attention of this determined man, God had to be dramatic. 

Sometimes God is that way with us, too. I have long said that God has to speak to me with a sledgehammer. That’s fun to say, but I’m not particularly proud of that—it means I’m good at listening to God. My call to the ordained ministry had dramatic elements in it—a series of vivid dreams, a miraculous scholarship to the seminary just when I had decided that I couldn’t afford to go-- but I am convinced those things happened only because I had ignored the ordinary signs and means that God was using to get my attention.                                                                       

You see, the really dramatic thing about Paul’s conversion is not the light from heaven, the blindness, the voice from above…the really amazing thing is that there is forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus. That if God can forgive the man who murdered Christians in the name of righteousness, and use his zeal and energy for furthering the Gospel…can he not also forgive you and harness your talents, too, for his kingdom? Paul is notable for what he did and said after his conversion, after his baptism. He is remembered for his clear and simple witness to Jesus: “he is the Son of God.”                                                                                                                

Is that not also where you are? Where we are as a congregation? Faced with the task of proclaiming Christ as boldly and as simply as possible, so that all will hear and understand. Is that not the goal of all our talk about conversion of hearts and lives, that God changes us in order to fill us with his Spirit? Yes, indeed.                    

Washed clean of our sins in baptism, fed at this table, with the Word of God ringing in our ears and minds, we go out of here to say with Paul, “Jesus is the Son of God.” We go out of here to show in our lives that there is such a thing as forgiveness of sins. We go out of here, having regained our sight, and filled with the Holy Spirit. We go out of here new people, born again. We go out of here converted in the most basic of ways. We go out of here showing Jesus to people who need to know that their sins are forgiven, that there is love for the unloved, hope for the hopeless, life for the dead. Amen.