Conversion of St Paul - January 28, 2001

St Paul's, Bound Brook NJ

Reading: Acts 26:9-21

It began,
as it always seemed to do,
in Jerusalem,
and it ended,
as always,
in death.
Not on a cross, this time, not on the hill called Golgotha
but death none the less,
in a city far away
at the hand of soldiers.

It began in Jerusalem,
just a simple visit
to report back to the leaders
what had been done
in these past months of travel.
He brought with him stories
of brand new churches
still wet
with the water
of baptism,
of people transformed and communities changed,
of faith begun
and faith renewed. But he brought with him too,
though not by his choice,
people left behind by the changes,
bitter
and angry
at the promise
of this new teaching,
teaching
which threatened to turn
their faith
and their world
upside down.

It was supposed to be a preemptive strike, a declaration
that whatever this new faith was,
it wasn't in conflict with the old. But as he stood in the temple,
busy with his own prayers,
his opponents grabbed hold of him
and dragged him outside,
shouting accusations
and threatening to kill him.

It wasn't until
the whole city
erupted into violence
that the soldiers intervened.
They looked for the center of the trouble,
and found Paul,
and because they didn't know what else to do
they handcuffed him and carried him away.

That's the beginning
of the story
that led to Paul making the speech
we heard in our epistle today, a story
that began with in Jerusalem
and ended
in his death.
Paul is held prisoner, in one way or another
for the rest of his life. He is transferred from one jurisdiction to
another,
forced to endure
trial after trial,
and what we have
in the last few chapters of the book of Acts
is a record of that time.

By the time we get to today's reading,
he has survived a planned ambush
and defended himself in court
four times. There has been no verdict;
he has been in prison
for upwards of two years.
Finally, in desperation, he appeals to the Roman emperor
and what we heard read today
are his words before the local authorities
as they try to put together a case
for sending him to Rome.

And what Paul does
when he's given the chance
to speak for himself
what Paul does
is to give his testimony,
to tell the story
of his conversion.

It's one of the great stories
of the Christian faith.
Saul, paragon of Jewish virtue,
young, learned, a rising star
in his religious tradition
and defender of the faith,
meets Christ
on the road to Damascus,
and in that instant
experiences a turnaround so dramatic
that the place it occurs
has come into our own language
as a metaphor
for any great
life changing event,
a Damascus road experience.
Paul turns
from persecuting Christians
and cursing Christ,
to becoming a Christian
and proclaiming Christ.

But testimony
and conversion
are dirty words for many of us,
especially in the Episcopal Church.
They stir up images
of TV preachers
and tent revival meetings,
of coercion
and blame
and failure.

If the statistics have any truth in them
most of us here
probably grew up in the church,
even if we wandered away for while.
We might have wandered across from another denomination,
but faith has been wound throughout our lives
in one way
or another.
Few of us
can point to a Damascus Road experience,
and even when we can point to some sort of turning point,
it's rarely attended
by bright lights
and voices from heaven.

We go to meetings with our Christian brothers and sisters
from other traditions - or more likely, watch them on TV -
and as they confidently point
to dramatic acts of God in their lives
we sink in our seats
feeling like
second class Christians.
Or we may take the moral high ground,
and argue that we Episcopalians
have no need for such drama,
because we are securely confident
that we were "done"
as babies
and that's all the conversion that's needed.

Perhaps part of the problem
is that we get confused
about what this testimony, this conversion,
is actually all about.
Take a look for a minute
at Paul's speech.

>From the very beginning, it seems that
for all that Paul is the one on trial,
he is not
what is really at stake.
When Paul is asked
to speak for himself
what he really does
is speak for Christ.
"Listen," he says,
"I know what it is
to be against Christ. I spent my life
attacking his followers. And it was one day,
when I was on a journey
chasing those followers into exile
that I met Christ, Christ himself.
I didn't see him, just a blinding light, and a voice from nowhere
the voice, it said, of Christ.
I thought
I was going
to die.
But instead, that voice
gave me back my life.
It told me
to stop my attacks,
to change my ways,
to testify
to Christ."
And Paul goes on
not to tell us
what happened to him -
though we know the rest of the story
from another place in Acts -
Paul goes on
to tell the essentials
of the story of Christ,
of darkness and light,
of repentance and forgiveness,
death
and life.
For all that Paul is speaking for himself, he is speaking
for Christ.

Because what happens
when Paul meets Christ,
is that his story
is caught up into Christ's story,
his life
is place in a whole new context
of Christ's life.

And so conversion
at it's very heart
is about how our lives
are caught up
into Christ's life,
and testimony
is simply our chance
to speak out
for Christ.
What we do,
we do
in the name
of Christ.
What we say,
we say
in the name
of Christ.
Conversion and testimony
are about our hands
becoming Christ's hands,
and our words,
becoming Christ's words.

And there's no first class or second class about it. Whether we have a
dramatic conversion like Paul
or a quiet growth in faith
from the time our parents placed us as tiny babies
into the care of God,
the story we tell is the same,
our life
caught up into Christ's life.

I think we sometimes miss it,
when we are busy baptizing babies.
We get so caught up
in the beauty of the occasion,
that sometimes we miss
the importance of the words.
This morning, baby Samantha
was baptized. When her parents and godparents
presented her, they promised to see that she would be brought up
in the Christian faith and life,
that they would do all they could
to help her grow
into the full stature of Christ.
You, in this community, promised
to do all you could
to help them.
And I signed her
with the sign of the cross,
to show
that is marked as Christ's own
for ever.
Sometimes
those words aren't very clear. We use formal, prayer-book language
when perhaps we need to make things
a whole lot clearer.
Because what we did
this morning
was to make her story
part of Christ's story,
to tie her to Christ
for ever.
She and Christ
are bound together,
and us with them.

But even that
is not all.
Baptism
is about water,
and water
is about all sorts of things.
We mostly think of water as good.
It quenches our thirst, it helps things grow,
it keeps us alive.
But water is also dangerous - as you know all too well.
Too much water
means floods and destruction,
too much water
can mean death by drowning.
And baptism
is about both the promise
and the danger
of water.
Because in baptism
we talk about dying
with Christ, and rising again,
drowning
and resurrection.
In baptism
we follow Christ
to his death
in Jerusalem,
and in baptism
we follow Christ
to resurrection
and a whole new life.
And so, after each one of us was baptized,
we were welcomed by the congregation with these words:
"Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share
with us in his eternal priesthood."

We have a story to tell -
our hands
becoming Christ's hands,
our words,
becoming Christ's words,
our lives
caught up into the
fullness
of the life and the love
of Christ.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
28 January 2001