Sermon by Lou - Jan. 24 - The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle

The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle

Acts 26:9-21

Have you ever had a Damascus road experience? Has God ever thrown you off your high horse, shone the bright light of God’s love into your heart, and told you to get off your rear end and do something, for God’s sake? Or maybe it was more of a gentle nudge, a lingering feeling, the still, small voice of God whispering in your ear.

Since I have been at St. Paul’s, I’ve had a lot of parishioners talk to me about hearing God’s call. One of them is now a priest, one is a deacon, one is half way through seminary, and two more are still in conversation. As Chair of the Commission on Ministry for our Diocese, I have heard from many more people about what they perceive as their call to ordination.

The mystery in this is that so many people think they have to be ordained as priest or deacon to carry out their call. Almost no one speaks to me about their call to lay ministry. This is very sad, since the first order of ministry in the Episcopal Church is lay ministry. The Catechism, found towards the back of our prayer book, defines the ministers of the Church as “lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.” It’s not an accident that lay people are listed first.

I hope you have heard me say on many occasions that we have all been commissioned for ministry at our baptism. We have been empowered by the Holy Spirit and ordained into the royal priesthood of Christ. All ministry, lay or ordained, flows from our baptism. God is calling all of us, but, thanks be to God, God isn’t calling most of us to be priests or deacon.

We are discussing this today because we are celebrating our patronal feast day, the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle. Paul’s conversion and call to ministry are incredibly dramatic. One minute he is in hot pursuit of another Christian to arrest and punish, maybe even kill, and the next minute he becomes an Apostle, launching a career of bringing the good news of God in Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.

I don’t know for sure why our forebears, gathered in what was called the Laceyville district of Pittsburgh 180 years ago, decided to name the then new church “St. Paul’s.” I imagine they felt it appropriate to name a new church for the person who started so many new churches, the person who was responsible for bringing Christianity to the gentiles and to most of the known world at the time. Perhaps they realized that without Paul, we might not even be Christians, although I suspect that if Paul hadn’t come along, God would have found someone else to do the job.

I think we should all be proud to have Paul as our patron saint, and we should strive to follow his example. Now admittedly, some people don’t like Paul. Paul gets a bad rap, primarily for statements attributed to Paul that are negative toward women.

Here’s an aside. New Testament scholars are confident that Paul personally wrote or dictated seven of the letters that bear his name: First Thessalonians, Galatians, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, and Romans. Most scholars are similarly convinced that Paul did not write 1st and 2nd Timothy, 2nd Thessalonians, and Titus. Many scholars believe that Paul did not write Ephesians or Colossians. And nobody thinks Paul wrote Hebrews.

Ascribing a writing to someone else was in ancient times considered an appropriate way to honor and continue the name of a great person, in this case the person who founded so many churches and influenced so many people in the early Christian movement.

Here’s the point: the negative statements about women appear in letters that were almost certainly not written by Paul. There are also three troublesome verses in 1st Corinthians, but scholars believe they were added later after Paul’s death as the Church became more patriarchal.

The record as shown in the genuine Pauline letters is that women were prominent and important in Paul’s ministry and the churches he began, not second class citizens.

There are many things I could say about Paul and his writings that could serve as models for us today. I’m going to focus briefly on two.

The first is the famous hymn to love, found in chapter 13 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

You have probably heard it read at weddings. Maybe it was read at your wedding. “Love is patient; love is kind; it is not irritable or resentful, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And now faith, hope and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love,” to quote my favorite parts.

In a time of hatred and distrust, of separation and suspicion, of barriers literally and figuratively erected to keep us largely separated from those who are not like us, Paul’s description of agape love, pure love, love made possible only by the love of God, reminds us that we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, that love heals, that God is love, and if it isn’t about love, it’s not about God.

I was reminded of the other Pauline passage Thursday evening as I was listening to Michael Curry’s sermon at the opening worship of the Trinity Institute conference on racial justice.

As one of the theological underpinnings of God’s call to justice, our Presiding Bishop quoted verse 28 of Chapter 3 of Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Today we would add there is no longer black or white, straight or gay, rich or poor, able-bodied or physically challenged, or other appropriate dichotomies you might want to include.

2,000 years later, Paul’s words still ring true, they still speak to us and address our situation, they still reveal God’s dream of love, mercy, and justice for every human being.

So whether God needs to get our attention with a 2x4, or with a gentle nudge, God is calling us. God is calling you. What exactly is God calling you to do? Only you can answer that, although Garrett, Michelle, or I would be happy to speak with you to help you discern God’s call.

But here’s what I do know. God is calling us to bring love and justice to a broken world. God is calling us to bring hope to the poor, the hungry, the abused, the outcast and marginalized. You sure don’t have to be a priest to do that.