Sermon for Epiphany 3, Conversion of St Paul, – 24th January 2021:Acts 9, 1-22; Matthew 19, 27-30
Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
January 25th is the date on which the church universally celebrates the famous ‘conversion’ of St. Paul. Today is close enough to that for us to bring that celebration forward by 24 hours.
This date is one of two in the year when churches dedicated to St. Paul can celebrate their Patronal Festival, or a ‘name day’. The other is when the Blessed Apostle is linked with his fellow Roman martyr, the Apostle St. Peter. That is June 29th.
Is it too much to hope that on the Sunday nearest to 29th June, St. Paul’s Athens might celebrate our Patron, gathered together in church for worship, followed by a party outside in the church garden? Who would have thought that something we have taken for granted for so long, would be so much longed for? Let’s wait and see.
The Apostle’s conversion to belief in Jesus as Lord is a ‘by-word’ for a change of mind, change of heart, change of perception or direction in life. You hear people speak of ‘my Damascus moment’, or ‘my Damascene change of mind’. It can often mean as little as ‘when the penny dropped’ or as great as a total transformation of life, and anything in between.
What we know from the book called Acts of the Apostles, and from Paul’s own writings, is that Paul, known in his Hebrew name Saul, had a mandate to try and eradicate a dangerous Jewish movement, a movement that was challenging all known conventions of Judaism. Saul had been nurtured and formed by these controls, and under the tutorship of Gamaliel, Saul was an expert on Jewish scripture and law. We know that he was a Pharisee, that group that emphasized strict adherence to the Jewish laws. Interestingly this religious group of Jews already believed in resurrection from the dead.
We also know from the Acts of the Apostles that Saul supervised the stoning to death of the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen.
However, while still on his mission to stamp out this Jesus sect, Saul has his powerful experience of the risen Jesus. What the nature of this experience is cannot be described in graphic detail, but its result is a complete overturning of everything Paul is – how he had been formed, behaved, believed. Jesus, whose followers Saul was happy to persecute, was now Saul’s Lord and God. Little wonder though that some little Christian communities were suspicious of him to begin with, as his reputation had gone before him.
Known to us by the Greek version of his name, Paul, this convert to the Jesus Way, becomes one of the major influences in working out who Jesus is, and what God did in Jesus. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who compiled their ‘gospels’ were unknown to Paul, as he lived and wrote his letters to the churches of the Mediterranean and Asia Minor before these gospels were written.
Imagine that! If you or I were asked where we get most of our information about Jesus from we would most likely refer to the gospels, whose narratives put together, with variations, the life of Jesus. Paul and the small believing communities he visited and wrote to did not have these resources. Paul was working out his Damascene experience in the light of the Judaism that had formed him, and against a social backdrop that was very fixed – male and female, Jew and Greek, freeman or slave. One of the greatest discoveries that Paul made was summed up in one word ‘freedom’.
We will return to that word in a moment. Some of us, in a few weeks time, will be studying a book together written by Rowan Williams. It is called ‘Meeting God in Paul’. Please start to consider if you would like to be part of the Zoom study group. The books have arrived and we can have 12 members in the group. You can buy the book from me for €10,00. The book gives us a crisp and concise insight into Paul’s writings – his understanding of Jesus – his working out of great religious themes in the light of his new faith.
In one of the reviews of the book, David Suchet, that incomparable Hercules Poirot, says, ‘This is a most important and much needed book. It releases St. Paul from the box of popular misconception and introduces us to Paul as a powerful evangelist who welcomes all who want to follow Christ, and wishes to bar none.’ Those who study the book together will share in these insights. Advert over!
Let me return to the word ‘freedom’. There are two very major factors in the background of St. Paul’s world – social exclusion, and religious exclusion. What happens to Paul blows both of these to smithereens.
The world of St. Paul was neatly divided into social categories. You were either male or female. Nothing strange there, but there were very clear distinctions about what freedoms women did not have compared to men; property ownership, inheritance, marital equality. Only men could be citizens, and only men could vote in any public assembly. There were conventions around sexual morality that distinguished men from women – for example a woman could be stoned to death for adultery; not so the man involved. It was always the woman’s fault.
There were distinctions too, in Paul’s world, between Jews and Gentiles. Jewish men had a special ‘covenanted’ relationship with God, whose outward sign was circumcision – this was a sacred act. The world was divided between those who were Jews and those who were non-believers, gentiles. At the Temple in Jerusalem there was clear social/religious distinctions also – first you entered the Courtyard of the Gentiles, then there was the Courtyard of the women (Jewish women that is), then the Jewish men, then the priests, then the Holy of Holies.
There was also a sharp distinction in society between free-born men, who could be citizens, and slaves, who had to be the property of a free-born citizen. Some societies had a process whereby a slave could gain freedom – or even purchase freedom (this is part of Paul’s language about the death of Jesus) – but these were never on equal footing as a free-born citizen. St. Paul was free-born, and indeed had the additional privilege of being a Roman citizen, and a Pharisee. Paul was everything socially that set him apart from the majority of the populace. Society and religion were hand in glove in perpetuating religious and social exclusion.
It is all blown apart when Jesus enters into the life of Paul. We cannot underestimate what Paul is doing when he says that in following Jesus, there is neither male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or freeman.
Whatever else happened to St. Paul on the road to Damascus he realizes that who he is (his very self- identity) comes not from earthly citizenship, gender, social or religious conformity, but ‘by the grace of God, I am who I am’. This totally liberates Paul from everything that has held him in chains up until now. The enslaved Paul is now the true free-man.
He understands now that God extends his welcome to all people through Jesus, and in living ‘in Christ’ all are included, none excluded.
Both of these words, welcome and inclusion, are not unfamiliar to us. In our own church life we might even say that they are sort of ‘buzz words’. No Christian congregation is going to put its hand up and say – yes, we are exclusive, or no we are not welcoming. We appreciate that both welcome and inclusion are desirable, and we do all we can to tick the right boxes. What St. Paul expresses for us however, goes far deeper. When we say we are welcoming, are we really saying, ‘glad you are here; we will be kind to you; you will go away feeling that we are nice people; glad you won’t challenge us to change in any way.’
This is to express human welcome – Warm but controlling. God’s welcome does not control, it is unconditional. When we claim to be inclusive, are we expressing nothing more than an objectifying of another person? This is not God’s inclusion. Paul’s insight is that in God’s inclusion we have to say of another person, you are part of me, and without you our body is incomplete.
St. Paul’s message to the early churches, and to us in our churches in our own day, is profoundly challenging, but asks us the simple question ‘are you free, or are you a slave’. Do we know what it is to have freedom in Christ? Before we get the wrong impression of what freedom means – as Rowan Williams would say, ‘’Jesus frees me from thinking that the constraints of this or that society are identical with the will of God. It is because of this that I can now look at my neighbour with new eyes, with something like awe’. (Meeting God in Paul p39).
So for our Apostle Paul, freedom from the religious law is not the same as antinomianism, freedom from human society is not a license to a ‘free for all’. We are profoundly tied in the freedom that allows each of us to flourish, and allows our neighbor to flourish, welcomed by God and included in Christ.
This is ground-breaking stuff in Paul’s time. It is ground-breaking stuff in any age.
Let’s end with a few words from this man Paul. ‘I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8, 38-39).
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