Feast of the Conversion of S. Paul

Acts 26:9-21
Galatians 1:11-24
Matthew 10:16-21 + In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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THIS MORNING three conversion stories— a scientist, St. Paul, and a mugger:
Francis Collins recently resigned after a long tenure leading the Human Genome Project, which revealed the genetic code for human life, reading and ordering the three billion DNA letters of the human genome, an accomplishment likened to splitting the atom and going to the moon.¹  Besides his numerous scientific accomplishments, Collins wrote The Language of God, a book discussing his search for meaning, his conversion to Christianity, his struggle with faith especially after a man broke into his daughter’s apartment and, while holding a knife to her throat, raped her.  Like Job, Collins discovers how the horror, the suffering, may lead to personal growth.

Collins described himself as an “obnoxious atheist” when he was in graduate school studying mathematics, chemistry, physics, the things he considered to hold all the answers.  He says, “Frankly, I was at a point in my young life where it was convenient for me to not have to deal with God.  I kind of liked being in charge of myself.”  This changed when he proceeded to medical school and encountered people suffering terribly. 

One of my patients, after telling me about her faith and how it supported her through her terrible heart pain, turned to me and said, “What about you? What do you believe?”  And I stuttered and stammered and felt the color rise in my face, and said, “Well, I don't think I believe in anything.”  But it suddenly seemed like a very thin answer.  And that was unsettling. I was a scientist who was supposed to draw conclusions from the evidence and I realized at that moment that I’d never really looked at the evidence for and against the possibility of God.

This terrified Collins.  It undermined his world-view.  He began to read and think about the world’s religions.  He started chatting with a local minister who gave him C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.  After the first three pages, he decided that “his arguments against faith were those of a schoolboy.” 

In The Language of God, Collins makes several arguments for God, but he cites two as being most compelling.  First, he asks in essence, “What was before the Big Bang?”  He can’t imagine how nature could have created itself.  He concluded that there has to be something outside of nature.  Second, he points out how all the laws of nature have precise, constant values that allow life.  He says,

If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a million million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it.  Matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people. That’s a phenomenally surprising observation. It seems almost impossible that we're here. And that does make you wonder -- gosh, who was setting those constants anyway? Scientists have not been able to figure that out.

 But Collins recognizes that human beings don’t get argued all the way into faith, that logic and reason have limits.  The witness and support of other people are essential.  For Collins, he also had a numinous experience while hiking in the Cascade Mountains.  He fell on his knees, acknowledged God as God, accepted Jesus as his son, and gave his life to that belief.  Although I am unaware that I’ve ever had a dramatic religious experience, I find in Collins’ story similarities to my own story, the transformation from atheism to Christianity.  My conversion had much to do with a gradual thinking through the big questions and recognizing that my old answers didn’t add up or really even address the questions squarely.

Conversion usually is gradual, and not sudden.  But a sudden, dramatic experience is the more conventional way we think about conversion.  St. Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road is the classic conversion template.  St. Paul’s conversion is significantly different than Collins’ conversion in an important aspect.  Paul was already a believer.  He took religion and God very seriously.  His conversion is the kind of conversion each of us seeks, and hopefully continues to experience – moving to a fuller, deeper faith, a more mature relationship with God.  Conversion is not a one-off event.  Rather, we pray for it to be a constant in our lives, God re-directing us back to him.

Again, conversion is usually not a hugely dramatic moment, but a gradual evolution.  Conversion re-directs our lives, but our personality remains pretty much intact.  Real conversion takes what is good in us and unleashes its power.  Paul was a passionate, dedicated, zealous man before the Damascus Road and after it.  But now he had a fuller understanding of his purpose in life, of God’s plan for him, and a more intimate relationship with God.  Paul did not understand himself to be leaving one religion and becoming part of another.  He saw continuity with the past, but that his God was doing something new and was calling him to be part of it.  The Damascus Road was God’s call to Paul to be part of his work. 

Conversion is not about us.  It’s not about God making everything in our lives rosy; it’s not about becoming prosperous and successful; it’s not about living with certainty or a clear conscience or comfort and ease.  Conversion is about God, what God calls us to be and to do.  This often requires more from us – more demands, more sacrifices, more conflict, more uncertainty.  Conversion doesn’t exempt us from suffering, doesn’t protect us from misfortune, doesn’t eliminate disappointments.

 What did Paul’s conversion lead to?  He writes the Corinthians about how much he’s endured:

. . . far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.  Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.  Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.  And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches. (2 Cor 11:23-28)

Paul’s troubles increased.  Life got tougher, as well as richer,  as he became more dedicated to Christ.

We also often overlook another crucial part of Paul’s conversion.  Soon after the Damascus Road, and before Paul began his ministry, he – like Jesus – went out to the wilderness.  Paul went to Arabia, possibly a time for prayer, silence, preparation, a time to explore his inner life, to become more self-aware. (Gal 1:17-18)  Paul’s world-view had been radically shaken.  He was now about to preach what he had been trying to eradicate.  He had to work through the implications of his previous misconceptions.  He had to consider how it affected his identity.  He had to re-think his reading of the prophets, of Israel ’s history.  He had to mourn the passing of his former life.  Paul’s three years in the wilderness, his prayer, helped him to develop a passionate intimacy with Jesus: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2:20)  For Paul, this is the essence of Christian life.²  It steeled him for taking on Christ’s mission and ministry.

This period of prayer and reflection was crucial, and prayer, reflection, self-awareness come with any real spiritual conversion and renewal.  In speaking about prayer, Collins says,

I’ve never heard God speak. Some people have. I don't think prayer is really a way that you try to manipulate God's intentions and talk him into something. I don’t think he’s going to find me a parking space when I’m having trouble finding one. Prayer is really a way that you try to get in touch with God. And in the process, you learn something about yourself and your own motivations, often discovering things about yourself that you don’t necessarily want to discover.

But through prayer we also learn about God’s love for us, that nothing  – neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation – nothing can separate us from God’s love. (Rom 8:38-39)

When Paul finally left Arabia and returned to Jerusalem, he had evolved, matured.  He was ready to begin his ministry to the Gentiles.  When we have epiphanies, when we learn, when our conversion deepens, when there’s renewal, we don’t stay in the same place.  It throws us for a loop, and not only us, but it also throws those around us for a loop.  It’s often unsettling both when we change and when someone we know changes.  In our relationships, we have to allow people to change, to see things in new ways, to behave in new ways, to have different goals.  That’s threatening, but we want to welcome it and to learn from it.  This is what a Christian community is all about, and not only to tolerate it, but indeed to seek it, to encourage it, to support it.  Do we allow people to change?  Do we really welcome people becoming more committed, having a deeper life in Christ?

My third conversion story is that of mugger.³   He doesn’t come to Jesus, but there’s a change of heart.  Julio Diaz, a social worker in his early thirties, usually stops on his way home from work to have dinner at his favorite diner.  One winter night last year as he got off at his regular subway stop in the Bronx, a teenager approached him on the empty platform and pulled knife.  Diaz gave him his wallet.  As the teen walked away, Diaz called, “Hey, wait a minute.  You forgot something.  If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

 This puzzled the mugger, and confusion, puzzlement often happens on the path to conversion.  The mugger asked, “Why are you doing this?”  Diaz replied, “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need money.  I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you . . . want to join me. . . hey, you’re more than welcome.”  Diaz sensed the teen needed help.

The mugger accepted the invitation.  They got a booth in the diner.  As they sat there, the manager, the dishwashers, the waiters would drop by and say ‘hi’ to Diaz.  The teen asked, “You know everybody here.  Do you own the place?”  “No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz said.  The teen said, “But you’re nice even to the dishwasher.”  “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?” “Yeah, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the kid said. 

When Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life, he only received a sad face.  The teenager couldn’t answer.  He had nothing to say.  That’s heart-breaking – a young man with no prospects, no dreams, no hope. 

When the bill came, Diaz said, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ‘cause you have my money, and I can’t pay for this.  So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”  Without even thinking about it, the kid returned the wallet.  Diaz paid the bill and gave his dining companion $20.  And he asked for something in return – the teenager’s knife.  He gave it up. 

That’s a beginning, a glimpse hope, a turn away from darkness to light, and so a beautiful story.  Diaz was still out $20 and the cost of his mugger’s dinner; he still may have been scared, angry about being so vulnerable, about being threatened, about the injustice.  But he was still able to put himself in his mugger’s shoes, and he must have left that diner feeling good.  The love, the service, the mercy we show to one another is its own reward.  That’s conversion, and the cost of conversion.  That’s what changes lives.  That’s what brings others to Christ, and that’s what deepens our life in Christ.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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¹ The Collins story is largely from Steve Paulson, ‘The Believer,’ Salon.com, August 7,2006.

² This paragraph largely from Garry Wills, What Paul Meant, Viking (2006), pp. 26-28.

³ ‘A Victim Treats His Mugger Right,’ StoryCorps: Recording America , NPR, March 28, 2008.