Jeremiah 1: 4 – 10; Acts 9: 1 – 22; Matthew 19: 27 – end
How often we hear the phrase ‘a Damascus Road experience’ for a sudden change of heart or direction. The slave trader John Newton’s conversion in 1748 could perhaps be described in this way. It was also highly dramatic, taking place as it did during a storm at sea, although it did not result in a complete and instantaneous transformation. In our reading this morning we heard Luke’s very dramatic account of what happened to Paul on the Damascus Road. But why is this event so significant that we mark it on our church calendar rather than just remembering St Paul? And what resonances might this familiar story have for us today?
Paul was Jewish, from the tribe of Benjamin, and his Hebrew name was Saul after Israel’s only king from this tribe. According to my studies, the name Paul was not given on his conversion, but was probably a second name to be used in his dealings with a Graeco-Roman public. Paul was born in Tarsus in Cilicia as part of the Jewish diaspora, but was brought up in Jerusalem. He was educated by Gamaliel, a well-known Pharisaic teacher of the Jewish law. His persecution of Christians came about through his own conviction and zeal. The ideal of zeal against religious renegades had many precedents in the Hebrew scriptures. Philo of Alexandria, a first century Jewish thinker and writer, commented on “thousands of vigilantes, full of zeal for the laws, strictest guardians of the ancestral traditions, merciless to those who try to abolish them.” In these words there is, surely, a chilling resemblance to those Islamist extremists who seek to uphold by violence their particular interpretation of the requirements of the Koran. Not content with persecuting the Christians in Jerusalem, Paul was on his way to Damascus to pursue them to areas of the diaspora where they had been forced to flee.
But he doesn’t get there – or at least not as he planned – because according to Luke, God simply poleaxes him on the road. We have a nice picture of him on our pewsheets falling off his horse – though he might have been on foot!
As portrayed by Luke, what happens to Paul is not just a conversion. It’s a visionary encounter with the risen Christ. This is how Paul describes it himself in his letter to the Corinthians (1Corinthians 15:8). Completely unexpectedly the grace of God breaks into his life. Instead of condemnation for the way in which he is persecuting the Christians, Paul soon receives his own commission to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles. This experience of the literally overwhelming grace of God shapes everything about his theology and future ministry. Later, he simply writes off all of his best efforts at keeping the Law and ensuring that others do so – as rubbish when compared with his experience of the risen Christ (Philippians 3: 7 – 11). All of his energies will from now on go into preaching a Gospel of the grace of God, convinced that God in Christ is doing something new, although he also expends much effort on explaining how it can be foreseen in God’s dealings with His people Israel.
Most of us don’t have experiences like Paul’s, although some do, and John Newton was one of them. Luke’s account of the Damascus road event is about the calling of Paul as an apostle and is not intended to be paradigmatic for all Christians – although some have argued that it should be. I find the part Ananias has to play in the story more personally challenging. Ananias, the quiet and faithful disciple who suddenly knows beyond all doubt that he has to do something which requires great courage. Imagine what it might be like for a Christian in the Middle East right now to know that God has told them to go and pray for an IS commander. That’s the scale of courage required here. Ananias is understandably initially unwilling. But he plays his part in the drama. For all of us, like Ananias, there is the constant possibility of being called to something new and surprising. The God of grace may bring unsettling new possibilities at any time. Are we ready for this – and how would we respond?
Paul’s story is a violent one, both in the persecution he unleashed before his conversion, and in what he suffered as an apostle. We may feel uneasy about stories of dramatic conversions, of visions of the risen Christ. Our faith may be rather quieter than this. But we too have the experience of encounter with our risen Lord week by week as we celebrate the Eucharist together. Paul experienced a quite literally blinding light on the road to Damascus, but as he himself later wrote:
“(For) it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4: 6).
Whether or not we can pinpoint a moment of conversion for ourselves, the same God who created the universe lives in our hearts through Christ. The grace of God has broken into our lives too. As John Newton put it:
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
Like Paul and Ananias and John Newton too in their different ways we too may be surprised by what comes next.
Amen.