January 25, 2007 - Conversion of St. Paul
“Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what to do.’” (Acts 9:6)
We don’t like to be told what to do, do we? Our idea of freedom is to be able to do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it. To come and go as we please. Saul was accustomed to telling others what to do. He was traveling to Damascus to round up Christians from the synagogues and bring them back as prisoners to Jerusalem. But God had other plans.
A flash of light. A voice from heaven. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Three days of blindness, led around by the hand. Baptism. Sight restored. Saul would learn the way of the apostle, what it meant to go where you are told, and what it meant to suffer for the name of Jesus.
If the Jerusalem church had formed a committee and drawn up a call list for a new apostle, Saul would not have made it. Yes, he was qualified. A Pharisee trained by one of the finest rabbis of his day, the top of his class. But in his ignorance, he persecuted the church, and in so doing, he persecuted Christ.
Nevertheless, Jesus had plans for Saul. He is reconciled to His enemies while they are yet enemies. Saul’s zeal for purity through persecution was raw material for the Holy Spirit who turned it into a missionary zeal for the Gospel. No one else in the New Testament brought the Gospel of Jesus to so many and so far away. The persecutor of the church, under the hand of God, became the apostle to the Gentiles.
We may think the sins of our past prevent us from faithful service to Jesus. Saul proves otherwise. God takes sinners and calls them saints; He takes persecutors and turns them into apostles. He takes us, with all the baggage of our past, and anoints us in Baptism as priests in His priesthood, sending us into the world to declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9-10).
We all need to be told what to do. We cannot and will not on our own trust Jesus Christ or come to Him. We must be, as Saul, on the road to Damascus or a little infant brought to Holy Baptism. We must be led by the hand to our own congregation on Straight Street and learn the goodness and mercy of God and the power of His Word that can turn an enemy of the Church into its leading apostle.
“Almighty God, as you turned the heart of him who persecuted the Church and by his preaching caused the light of the Gospel to shine throughout the world, grant us ever to rejoice in the saving light of your Gospel and to spread it to the uttermost parts of the earth; through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.” (Collect for the Conversion of St. Paul)