Thursday, January 25, 2024

25 January 2024 - seeing the light


At the feet of Gamaliel I was educated strictly in our ancestral law
and was zealous for God, just as all of you are today.
I persecuted this Way to death,
binding both men and women and delivering them to prison.

Today we celebrate the conversion of Saint Paul. In his writings he constantly emphasized the primacy of grace over human effort or the law. We can see why this was so important to him and how he began to learn it from what we read about his own conversion. Before this conversion experience he had credentials, having been training "[a]t the feet of Gamaliel". He had zeal for God. But these facts not only did not lead him to support the early Christian movement but instead made him its most fierce opponent.

On that journey as I drew near to Damascus,
about noon a great light from the sky suddenly shone around me.

We see again and again in Scriptures the surprising ways in which grace can break through unexpectedly into a human life. Another prominent example was the calling of Matthew by Jesus. In both cases the conversion was not really a result of individual preparation or the logical culmination of what they were actively seeking. Instead, grace broke in, unannounced and unexpected. This should give us a great deal of hope for those who currently seem distant from the Lord. It may well be that he is waiting for just the right moment to knock them down and shine his glorious light on them.

I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me,
'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?'
I replied, 'Who are you, sir?'
And he said to me,
'I am Jesus the Nazorean whom you are persecuting.'

Saul thought he was persecuting a misguided Jewish sect. But it turned out he was persecuting Jesus himself, and that in persecuting any member of the body he was persecuting the body as a whole. No wonder, then, that the importance of the unity in diversity of the body of Christ became a favorite theme of his. During his conversion he began to learn that Jesus was not merely a figure of historical interest, but one still alive and active in the world, and in particular, through the members of his body. Jesus was more than a deceased prophet whom one might honor. He was the living Lord who could command.

The Lord answered me, 'Get up and go into Damascus,
and there you will be told about everything
appointed for you to do.'

An interesting aspect of the conversion of Saint Paul is how nothing from his previous life was apparently wasted. Even things which he would come to view is egregiously offensive sins, even that he persecuted the Church of God, only served to make him a a more convincing and persuasive witness. That he had faults but was overwhelmed by grace made him the perfect individual to testify about that grace to the world.

But Ananias replied,
"Lord, I have heard from many sources about this man,
what evil things he has done to your holy ones in Jerusalem.
And here he has authority from the chief priests
to imprison all who call upon your name."

Like Ananias we are often quick to tell the Lord why his plans are unworkable or dangerous. We'd happily substitute any safer alternatives we can construct. But sometimes the Lord wants us to take a risk to be a part of his plan for other people. It wasn't that Ananias needed to be convincing or persuasive. All that was needed from him was presence and compassion. But without him helping to open the eyes of Paul and guiding him to receive the Holy Spirit who knows how his conversion might have ended. Let us trust the Lord when he shows us how to cooperate with his plans. And let us never doubt that his grace might reach even the most hardened of sinners.

We are all meant, each in our own way, to a part of the same mission for which Paul was was a chosen instrument of the Lord. Paul himself would remind us that "In him we were also chosen, destined in accord with the purpose of the One who accomplishes all things according to the intention of his will, so that we might exist for the praise of his glory, we who first hoped in Christ" (see Ephesians 1:11-14).






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