Here's the sermon that I preached this morning at
St Andrew’s Wickford:
Today the Church remembers the conversion of St Paul (
Acts 9. 1-22); a feast that has been celebrated in the Church since the sixth century but which became universal in the twelfth century. Paul’s conversion has become a classic Christian encounter with God, to the extent that the phrase ‘a Damascus Road experience’, meaning an extraordinarily dramatic conversion or a profound life-changing experience, has come into common usage.
Saul’s Damascus Road experience literally turned his life upside down as is symbolised by his fall. One moment he was up on his feet - a leader of others with a warrant from the High Priest to arrest heretics – the next, he was flat on his back in the road with God telling him that those he was persecuting were actually God’s own people – the body of Christ. In one moment, everything he thought he knew was shown to be false and the entire direction that his life had taken up to that point was reversed so that he goes from this encounter to preach the Christ whom formally he had persecuted. The story suggests that this is the power of God’s presence – encounter with God reveals the inadequacy of all that we have known up to that point and turns us around to receive and know the truth.
This is also symbolised by the light which shines in this story. In the Bible, Jesus is spoken of as ‘the light of the world.’ This light shines in the darkness of error and reveals truth. John 3. 18 – 20 says: “This is how the judgement works: the light has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil. Those who do evil things hate the light and will not come to the light, because they do not want their evil deeds to be shown up.” Saul comes into the light, sees that his deeds are evil, turns away from them and begins a new way of life signalled by taking a new name.
Through this encounter Saul sees: that Jesus is God; Jesus has been raised from death and is alive; and Jesus is in his people - the Church, which is the Body of Christ. Or does he? One of the strange aspects of this story is that in the story Saul does not see. He does not actually see Jesus - instead he hears his voice - and the immediate result of the encounter is that Saul is blinded and cannot physically see.
So, what is going on here? Is this encounter with God as straightforward as my earlier comments suggested? It may be that sight distracts us from hearing the still, small (perhaps inner) voice of God; that it is only once he has been blinded by the light that Saul can hear what God wishes to say to him. So, there may be an element of asceticism in the story – the closing off of physical sight in order to enhance spiritual insight.
We might also suggest that darkness, blindness, lack of sight and lack of knowing is actually essential to true encounter with God. As God cannot be defined or fully comprehended by human beings, it may be essential to true encounter with God to realise our inability to fully ‘know’ God and therefore to accept and rest in the darkness and blindness of our lack of knowing.
We also need to remember that his conversion experience was a beginning: Saul took some time to become Paul and some time to begin to understand that his call to preach -- to Jew and to Gentile -- the saving power of Jesus, the Son of God, was something that was a whole life's journey for him. Paul says in his Letter to the Church in Galatia, "God set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace ... Three years after (the Damascus Road conversion), I went up to Jerusalem." The preparation for this moment of his conversion was his whole life.
Finally, it is easy for us to think that to be effective our testimonies must be dramatic as was the testimony of Paul. The story of how the persecutor of the faith became the Apostle to Gentiles, including his Damascus Road experience, was and is a story full of drama and one which had huge impact in its day and has had since.
However, we should not, as a result, despise other less dramatic and more gradual testimonies of faith. My own story is one of growing up in a Christian family and of coming to faith as a child after hearing an account of the crucifixion at a Holiday Bible Club. That night I knelt by my bed and asked Jesus into my life. As a shy teenager very aware of my own shortcomings I later doubted whether I was good enough for God but in my late teens was shown Romans 5. 8, which says “while we were still sinners Christ died for us,” by a youth group leader and, as a result, recommitted my life to Christ. Over the course of my life, I have felt God leading me to develop the particular mix of community action, workplace ministry, artistic activities and relationship building that characterises my ministry today.
That simple, undramatic testimony will I hope be an encouragement to those of you here today who, like me, don’t have dramatic testimonies to tell but who nevertheless have real encounters with God and real growth in faith to share as part of our testimonies. When we do so, we are witnesses to Jesus and to the impact and effect that he has had on our lives.
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