Sermon for The Conversion of Paul
Sunday 25th January 2009
Jeremiah 1. 4-10
Psalm 67
Acts 9. 1-22
Matthew 19. 27-30
Ever since Christmas, so it seems, there have been countless
articles in newspapers and magazines urging us to change our
lives in some way. Lose weight, detox, get fit, spend less, live a
greener lifestyle! I‟m sure that many people make New Year
resolutions in good faith, but all too often their good intentions
are short-lived! But some of this year‟s crop of articles seem to be
encouraging us to make longer-lasting changes. One supermarket
magazine urges: „Change your life in 2009‟. The article promises
to help you to fulfil your hopes and dreams and find a new
purpose in your life! It‟s full of challenges:
Never let go of the big vision
Believe in yourself
Dare to dream
Make a journey of self-discovery
On the 3rd January the government launched the „Change4Life‟
campaign which aims to prevent people from becoming
overweight by encouraging them to eat better and move more.
Who needs „Change4Life‟? Go to the Change4Life website and
you will find:
“We all know it can be hard these days to live a happy, healthy
life but Change4Life can help. After all, none of us are perfect.
The way we live in modern society means a lot of us, especially
our kids, have fallen into unhealthy habits. Even the best of us
can make small changes.”
Change is the watchword, too, of the new American President,
Barack Obama, and his supporters. The central assertion of
Obama‟s election victory speech - that America must change and
can change – was reaffirmed this week in his inauguration
speech.
“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They
are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a
short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met. On
this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear,
unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”
So the call to change is very much in the air over all the Western
world at the start of this New Year.
The plea to make whole-hearted and long-lasting changes in the
way we live is fundamental to Christian teaching. When Jesus
calls people to follow him - as he called his disciples 2000 years
ago - there is clearly an expectation that life will be very
different. We must be prepared to turn our backs on anything
which might come between Jesus and ourselves, be it material
possessions such as houses or land or money, or even close
family relationships.
When we turn to Christ the change in us must be more than a
shallow makeover. It‟s more than skin deep. The call to „repent‟ is
the call to make a complete change, to turn away from sin to
newness of life. We‟re challenged to search our hearts and minds,
to root out any tendency to selfishness, pride and hypocrisy, and
replace them with compassion, humility and moral integrity.
Remember how Jesus criticised the Pharisees as hypocrites and
„blind fools‟, on the outside ritually clean, but inside full of greed
and self-indulgence, on the outside upright and virtuous citizens,
but inside full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Remember how
Jesus drew a small child to him and said: “Truly I tell you, unless
you change and become like children, you will never enter the
kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
If we‟re looking for a positive role model for life change we need
look no further than St Paul. Here‟s a man who was sailing
through life, a man of means and status, educated as a Jew but
equally at home with Greek literature and philosophy, a man with
a purpose in life and the authority to fulfil it. In Paul‟s own words
he was brought up and educated in his youth as a strict Jew,
living within the ancient Jewish law. He was, as he himself said,
„zealous for God‟. Now the dictionary defines „zealous‟ as „filled
with intense enthusiasm‟ or „fervent‟. But for the first century Jew
„zealous‟ meant something closer to a holy war. As a youth, Saul
(as he was then known) was something of a hothead. His „zeal‟
led him to persecute the first Christians. As the book of Acts tells
us: “ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging
off both men and women, he committed them to prison”.
But when Saul encountered the risen Christ on the road to
Damascus he was forced to adopt an entirely new perspective.
As a good Jew, Saul had believed that at some time in the future
God would reveal himself as the one true God of the whole world
by sending the Messiah to defeat evil and rescue the people of
Israel from their enemy. To Saul, Jesus of Nazareth seemed to be
an anti-Messiah, who had failed to defeat Israel‟s pagan rulers
and had challenged the authority of the Jewish law. But now,
seeing the resurrected Jesus on the Damascus road, he knew him
to be the true Messiah. Now, he believed, God had already
intervened in the world and would reign supreme. The one true
God was now made known in Jesus. Saul became Paul, „a servant
of Christ, set apart for God‟s gospel‟, his task to proclaim the
good news that „Jesus is Lord‟ to the Gentiles. As Tom Wright
says: „a herald of the king‟.
Paul became a changed man – and not in name only. The zeal
which the young Saul had expressed in anger and violence,
became in Paul a zeal for Christ, expressed as warmth of heart
and spirit and eagerness for the cause. Where Saul had
recognised the true people of God only by their strict adherence
to the Jewish law, for Paul faith became the all-important sign.
But above all, Paul saw that the cross of Jesus revealed the love
of God. The gospel he proclaimed was the good news of the
grace of God, a gospel of love.
“God‟s love has been poured into our hearts” wrote Paul to the
church in Rome. “God proves his love for us in that while we
were yet sinners Christ died for us.” And nothing, “in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord.”
Paul was an ordinary human being who overcame immense
difficulties and challenges to fulfil his calling as a Christian and as
a missionary. He wrote of his own physical weakness „a thorn in
the flesh‟, his body „a clay vessel‟ subjected to beatings,
imprisonments, sleepless nights, hunger, cold, toil and hardship.
He experienced danger at sea - was shipwrecked three times -
danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger in the city. And
yet Paul not only endures but rejoices in his suffering. To the
church in Corinth he wrote: “I am content with weaknesses,
insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of
Christ”. And to the Colossian Christians: “I am now rejoicing in
my sufferings for your sake”.
Few of us, if any, can claim to have an experience like the one
that Paul had on the road to Damascus. And yet, if we listen, we
can hear the compelling, persistent voice of Jesus calling us to
follow him. He calls us to turn away from the material attractions
of this world. He calls us to turn away from blindly following
those who profess to lead and teach today. He calls us to turn
away from the pursuit of wealth, self and personal ambition.
Jesus calls us to make whole-hearted and lasting changes in the
way we live. He calls us to love him with „all our heart, and with
all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength‟. He
calls us to express our love for him in our relationships with other
people – relationships which are based wholly on love and peace
and justice.
Few of us, if any, are called to endure the kind of hardships that
Paul endured. And yet the call of Jesus is not an easy call to
follow today. Like Paul before us, we are ordinary people with
ordinary human weaknesses. It‟s hard to hold onto our faith in
the face of some of the tough situations which life throws at us.
It‟s often hard to remain faithful when we feel ourselves to be out
of step with the people around us. To borrow President Obama‟s
words: “the challenges we face are real. They are serious and
they are many”.
So perhaps we need to follow some of the advice of those
modern advocates for „change‟. We should accept Change4Life‟s
observation that „none of us are perfect‟ but „even the best of us
can make small changes‟. The supermarket magazine
recommends „Never let go of the big vision‟ and that, for us, is
perhaps the best advice of all. We must hold before us, as Paul
did, the vision of the crucified and resurrected Christ. To proclaim
for ourselves that „Jesus is Lord‟. To grasp, as Paul did, God‟s
promise of eternal life and the certainty of his all-embracing,
perfect love.