Sermons

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We celebrate today the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, one of those great stories from the Bible which is so familiar that we’ve made some pretty serious errors in how we’ve received it. This is pretty common. The Christmas story is so familiar that we assume there were three wise men, while the bible never gives us the number—there were three gifts but an indeterminate number of magi. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is so familiar that we just know that the forbidden fruit was an apple, though this assumptions is not borne out in the text.

So it is with the story of St. Paul’s conversion, so I want to point out a couple of assumptions that we habitually get wrong about it. First, the Conversion does not come with an attendant name change. Common knowledge holds that Saul became Paul on the rode to Damascus, and that this name change indicates Paul’s change in character, much like Abram becoming Abraham in Genesis. This is not the case. Paul is still referred to as Saul for several chapters after the conversion story. The difference in how scripture names him has to do with his audience rather than the change on the road to Damascus. When he’s preaching to Jews, the Hebrew name Saul is used. When he’s preaching to Gentiles, the Greek name Paul is used.

Now that’s more a bit of trivia than something of theological significance, but the second mistake, I think, is more important for us to clear up, and it’s related. We have this vision of Paul changing his identity entirely at the moment of conversion- like Clark Kent turning into Superman in a phone booth, though in Paul’s case we imagine the change being from a purely evil character to a purely good character. Perhaps this is why we like the false name-change narrative.

I think this is the wrong way to view Paul’s Conversion. Those who have read much of St. Paul’s writing know that the characteristics which defined him during his life in Judaism—his pugnacious nature in particular—are still with him post-conversion. Paul doesn’t become a perfect person because he experienced Jesus on the road to Damascus. Rather, he becomes a person with a new mission, new goals, a new direction. Surely this new mission makes him a better person over time, but it’s a life’s work God sets him at. The transformative power of the moment of conversion is critical, but it’s a beginning whose implications will be borne out through a life of faithfulness.

So, Paul’s story does not mean that a personal conversion experience, a transformative moment, is the only thing that matters. Nor does it mean, and this is where I part ways with evangelicalism, that such an experience is necessarily normative. It is wonderful when it happens, but the Good News is more than “feel your heart strangely warmed once.”

The assumption that a once-for-all, affective experience of conversion is the “end-all-be-all” of Christian life stems, I believe, from both a misunderstanding of Paul’s teaching and of his experience on the road to Damascus. Paul’s response to seeing and hearing Jesus was not to say “thank God I’m saved, now my response to it for the rest of my life is neither here nor there.” Rather, he begins preaching the power of God to save all humanity, and indeed to redeem all Creation. Paul never says “accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, and every thing else just automatically falls into place” but he does write “run the race with endurance” and “[fight] the good fight… [keep] the faith.”

So, Paul’s Conversion and what it teaches us about conversion in general might be counter-intuitive for many of us. It seems that conversion isn’t only a one-time deal- God can continue to conform us more and more to the likeness of Christ as we strive with faith and obedience to do his will. Granted, I am perhaps more suspicious of religious enthusiasm than most, but for me I’ve found that the quotidian, rather “boring” approach of saying one’s prayers and trying to be loving offers a more stable foundation than the waves of emotion that may have as much to do with how much coffee I’ve had or how loud the Berlioz is on my boom box than anything pertaining to God’s movement in my life. One has to discern the spirits, and I find this to be a tricky business if I’m not rather calmly circumspect about it.

I don’t know about you, but I find this composed vision of Christian conversion a lot more comforting than being obsessed with whether or not I’m supposed to have a particular, ecstatic experience once-and-for-all, at least when it comes to obtaining spiritual provision for the “long-haul”. It seems not only a lot more comforting but a lot more in keeping with what the majority of Christians throughout the centuries have experienced.

Again, there’s nothing particularly wrong with a dramatic conversion experience; sometimes that’s what it takes and it’s a gift from God when it comes, as it did to St. Paul. But we can all experience what we might call the “second phase” of Paul’s conversion, whether or not the first is needful in any person’s life—we can all experience the gradual growth of stability and wisdom and confidence in God’s saving action.

In other words we can reach the stage of spiritual maturity Paul himself wrote about in his Epistle to the Ephesians, not being as “children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine”, chasing spiritual highs as if they were a drug, but “speaking the truth in love… grow[ing] up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” This life, the life of a Christian, may start with a dramatic, burning bush, or it might not. In either case, the end-point, I think, is full of peace, a down-to-earth sort of joy, and quiet confidence. It may come sooner or it may come later, but that is the promise we have when God grants us continual conversion.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When I was a junior in college I did a semester abroad at the University of St. Andrews studying theology and philosophy. Being in Scotland (and despite the fact that there seemed to be more English than Scottish students) St. Andrews is naturally a rather Presbyterian institution. So when one evening I attended a fancy dress party (meaning costumes, not black-tie) put up by some of my fellow theology students,I decided to try to cause a stir by going as a very Romish version of St. Peter (bishop’s mitre made from cardboard, two ornate keys in one hand, and a scroll in the other reading “tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam.” (“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”) This did not cause any of my fellows to lash out with a denunciation of my popery, though, which I’m sure caused John Knox to spin in his grave. Sic transit gloria reformandi!

In addition to being the feast of the Confession of St. Peter, today is the first day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, so I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time focusing on what I was trying to get my Scottish Presbyterian friends to react to—namely, the interpretation of this morning’s gospel which hold that here Christ was granting universal, metropolitical authority to St. Peter’s successors, the bishops of Rome. Some will claim that it is just that straightforward and others will claim that here Jesus is referring to Peter’s confession not his person as the rock upon which the church is built. I tend to think the reality is more complicated than either extreme view. In the interest of full disclosure, I could have probably been a relatively functional if not perfectly happy Roman Catholic before the first Vatican Council defined papal infallibility in 1870, so any possibility of my “swimming the Tiber” (as we sometimes call conversion in that direction) was foreclosed more than a century before my birth. In all events, it being the week of prayer for Christian unity, it is more profitable for us all to remember that whatever issues of doctrine and discipline may divide us (some of which are important and ought not be minimized and others are things indifferent to the Gospel), all Christians are united at a fundamental level by our baptism into the Body of Christ, and our profession, along with Peter, that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God.

We’re not going to heal the broken Body of Christ at an institutional level this morning. God is the only one who can do that, and I suspect he won’t do so fully until the end of time, when he establishes the Kingdom for eternity. We can however, pray for a change of heart. We can pray that God would take our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh, softening our dispositions toward all of the Good Shepherd’s sheep. I don’t just mean this vis-à-vis those with whom we have religious disagreements, but those with whom we find ourselves at enmity on any issue.

You’ve probably gathered that one of my problems is I think I’m right all the time. I know I’m not, but let’s assume for a moment I am. Well, if so, I know that sometimes I’m so right I’m wrong. I’m so convinced that I have it all figured out that I fail to show grace and gentleness and forbearance to those I think wrong. Maybe you struggle with the same difficulty. Maybe you, too, can have all the correct opinions, but your heart hasn’t been softened.

Well, I think Peter had that problem, too. In confessing Jesus to be “the Christ, the Son of God” he showed he believed the most important fact it is to believe. But he still had a hard heart. He still thrice denied our Lord. He still needed to be reconciled to the risen Christ, by being thrice asked whether or not he loved him and thrice reminded to care for Jesus’ whole flock. Only by being thus softened could he become the solid rock upon which the church could be built.

I especially need to remember this. In this morning’s epistle, Peter is exhorting priests directly. (Our translation this morning rendered it “elders”; the word is πρεσβυτεροι, and he means here those ordained to the priesthood.) He is exhorting me and my colleagues, as a priest himself, to lead and serve you willingly, eagerly, and gently. I hope I mostly do that, though I know I don’t always. But (there’s always a “but”) this doesn’t mean everyone who’s not a priest gets to be peevish and prickly and petulant. Sorry. Peter is telling me to be a gentle shepherd so you can become more gentle, too.

The blessed irony, here, is that a soft heart enables a stern constitution. In learning love and gentleness from his master, Peter is given the strength and courage to proclaim the truth boldly before the religious authorities who could make his life very difficult or even end it. We didn’t get the context for Peter’s sermon in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles this morning. To make a long story short, Peter and John had been arrested after performing a miraculous healing and preaching the Good News, and after a night in the hoosegow they’re called before the council. Instead of making nice in the hopes of getting released, instead of saying “sorry to cause a scene, your honors” Peter preaches to them. The council confers, says “we’ll release you if you promise to stop preaching” and Peter says “too bad, we’re gonna keep doing it.” This scares the council, and they release him and John despite their contempt of the court. Peter goes from being the smart kid in the class, to the frightened denial at the passion, to a tearful reconciliation, to taking a remarkably courageous stand when the need for strength and bravery are called for. All this, because he permitted Jesus to give him a change of heart. May the Lord so soften our hearts and then set them on fire.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Those who attended our adult Sunday School series on the Book of Revelation may remember that we talked about the fraught nature of water, and particularly large bodies of water (seas and oceans), in the ancient world. While water is necessary for life, while forty years in a desert is less than ideal, water was reckoned the realm of chaos and the demonic.

Naturally, this found a prominent place in the imagery of the Apocalypse, considering it was written at a time when the great anti-Christian power, Rome, expressed its violent might on the Mediterranean, which they called mare nostrum—“our sea.” It’s why that book leaves aquatic life out of its vision of the totality of life represented by the four living creatures and why the New Jerusalem is not surrounded by raging waters but by a sea of glass.

This aquaphobia is not by any means unique to apocalyptic literature in the Jewish and Christian traditions, though. The realm of Leviathan is separated by the firmament at creation, and the immense power of the Creator would have struck ancient people profoundly when they learned that his voice moved over the waters, a place where even the angels would fear to tread. In short, best to stick to dry land, because for an ancient person, the seas were not only a place of natural peril; they were literally a realm given over to the demons.

As a child, I was fascinated by something that happened every year on Epiphany in our city. The local Greek Orthodox church had a service at the port at which the priest sprinkled holy water into the river to bless it. I thought this was strange; of course I found a lot about Orthodoxy a little strange, unlike what we completely normal Episcopalians did. (It didn’t occur to me then that to the hordes of Southern Baptists in town, what we “normal” Episcopalians did was probably just as strange, if not outright degenerate.) What, I thought, did this guy think he was accomplishing by sprinkling a few drops into so large a body of water?

Well, he was blessing it—I have no doubt now, effectively—in the same way that Christ blessed all water when the baptist helped him fulfill all righteousness so long ago at the Jordan. He has subdued the realm of chaos; no longer must a firmament separate it from us. He has cleansed the waters that they may cleanse us in baptism. And in that holy sacrament we are submerged into a death like his that we might be lifted out to breathe new life, in this world and the next.

In his commentary on Matthew, St. Hilary of Poitiers wrote the following:

In Jesus Christ we behold a complete man. Thus in obedience to the Holy Spirit the body he assumed fulfilled in him every sacrament of our salvation. He came therefore to John, born of a woman, bound to the law and made flesh through the Word. Therefore there was no need for him to be baptized, because it was said of him: “He committed no sin.” And where there is no sin, the remission of it is superfluous. It was not because Christ had a need that he took a body and a name from our creation. He had no need of baptism. Rather, through him the cleansing act was sanctified to become the waters of our immersion.

You see, in the Incarnation we have a two-way street, as it were, an equal and opposite reaction. In condescending to the material world, God has lifted nature up to the spiritual realm. This he does with water. This he does with bread and wine. This he does with flesh and blood and hearts and minds, enlightening us with wisdom from on high and the very righteousness of God.

I’ve been asked before if I go to church when I’m on vacation, and I say “of course.” But why? Sometimes I say, “well it’s just nice to sit in the pews with my wife” or “I like to sing hymns” or “I’m up anyway” or something like that. But that’s not the reason. I hope you’ll forgive me if this sounds “arch” or something, but I mean it 100%. What I want to say, what I rarely screw up the nerve to say but probably should, is this: If you knew a miracle was going to happen somewhere at 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning, wouldn’t you show up for it? I believe that’s what happens here, so I’m not gonna miss it. Christ giving himself for us in bread and wine, lifting the common elements of material existence up to a heavenly table and sharing his own substance with us? Gee whiz, I wanna see that! Christ taking a fallen creature and, with the application of a bit of water and the triune name creating something new and beautiful and luminous? Count me in!

On this Sunday we have the option in our prayer book to replace the Nicene Creed with the renewal of baptismal vows, and the pious practice of asperging the faithful with Holy Water at the conclusion of that renewal has become more-or-less assumed. (I’m not sure if that is strictly rubrical, but the bishop always does it, so I think I won’t get in trouble). After the reaffirmation of what we believe as summarized by the Apostle’s Creed, and the renewal of those promises which rehearse what we ought to be doing about it, that sprinkling highlights something even more important. Yes it’s terribly important that we believe the right things, and it’s also pretty important that we try to live in such a way that those things affect ourselves and others for the good. But even more important, I think, is what we have been made through no effort of our own, simply as a free gift of God’s grace, effected by a little water and the name of the Holy Trinity. We have been made something new, we have been raised to the divine life, we have been called beloved children with whom the Father is well-pleased, and I, for one, am here for that.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.