by CCW | 27 January 2013 15:28
The story of Paul’s conversion is told to us three times, twice by Paul himself. All three accounts are given by the hand of another, namely, St. Luke, in his Acts of the Apostles. Three accounts might seem a bit much!
But only because Paul, it seems, is too much. It is the nature of strong personalities that they repel as much as they attract. They challenge our understanding and for some that is just too much. For many, whether within or without the Church, Paul is derided and despised, mocked and scorned. A figure larger than life, he is, at the very least, controversial; his epistles, challenging. There is a real struggle when it comes to the praise of Paul. And yet struggle lies at the heart of all conversion.
Without struggle there can be no conversion. The conversion of St. Paul is, above all else, a struggle. It is, in short, the breakthrough of the understanding that happens through the collision of opposing points of view.
The struggle concerns the integrity of the images of salvation in the Scriptures. How to reconcile the glory of the Messiah with the sufferings of the crucified Christ? The entire personality of Paul is taken up with this question. Something new has come into the world which challenges the older understanding of Israel. That something new is the Way of Christ.
Certainly, Saul who becomes Paul – his conversion results in a name change – looked for a Messiah, but not one who would die for our sins. Rather, Israel herself was the Suffering Servant, the true Israel who would be faithful to God by doing the law, who would bear the iniquities of others, who would be herself the acceptable sacrifice for the redemption of the world and who would then be raised up and exalted by the coming of the Messiah in whose glory Israel hoped to share. But the sufferings of the Servant are the sufferings of Israel, not the sufferings of the Messiah. To the Messiah belongs only the glory.
Saul actually persecutes the Way because the glory is held in utter opposition to the suffering. He persecutes the Way because the will to righteousness – our doing the law – confronts the grace of Christ without which “all our doings are nothing worth”. Jesus unites in himself the sufferings of Israel and the glory of the Messiah; he is both God and man.
His conversion is the breakthrough of the understanding. He recognises that the glory of the Messiah is precisely and most fully realised in the sufferings of the crucified Christ. It is not a question of the glory giving way to the suffering or the suffering being denied in the face of the glory. No. The glory is in the suffering and the suffering belongs to the glory. This changes how we view suffering and hardship. Suffering and hardship become a form of testimony, both to the sufferings of Christ and his glory, and to our participation in each.
Without the struggle there can be no conversion. And with every conversion there is repudiation and recapitulation. Paul does not become other than himself, but more fully himself. His life is put on an entirely new foundation – the foundation of grace. Paul understands that he has encountered the Risen Christ. His experience on the road to Damascus is a breakthrough moment, a uniting of opposites.
Classically understood, the vision of the Risen Christ bears the wounds of the crucifixion, the wounds of Christ’s suffering now made glorious. The past is not eclipsed; it is recapitulated. Paul is blinded into sight – into this sight, into this vision and understanding. It is as if he has come out of Plato’s cave, the great classical image of the confusion of opinion that belongs to the human condition, and has been blinded by the light, “a light above the brightness of the sun.” In that light, there is a new understanding of the darkness within, the darkness of human folly and wickedness, as well as a deeper understanding of the mystery of God.
His conversion is a breakthrough of the understanding in which his life is put upon a new foundation. “Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord”. There is an end to the restless alteration between darkness and light. Like Janus, the Roman god imaged with two faces each looking in the opposite direction and after whom January is named, there is a looking back and a looking ahead.
Paul’s challenge in his conversion is our constant challenge, the challenge to struggle with the high things of God revealed in the witness of the Scriptures. Only so might we honour “the things that are written for our learning” that Paul honoured. Only so might there be that breakthrough of the understanding which is conversion and which continues in that constant re-consecration of our hearts and minds to the things of Christ. Conversion is more than a moment; it marks the beginning of a whole way of life. That life is about our seeking the light of understanding, “a light above the brightness of the sun,” as Paul tells us, for it is the light of God. There is, after all, “nothing new under the sun,” as the Old Testament philosopher, Ecclesiastes, reminds us. What is new is “a light above the brightness of the sun,” the light of God that has come into our world.
Fr. David Curry
AMD Service of the Deaf
January 27th, 2013
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2013/01/27/sermon-for-the-conversion-of-st-paul-200pm-service-for-atlantic-ministry-of-the-deaf/
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