Sermon: Conversion of S.Paul.  Face to Face with Christ

Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

 Poor Dr Beeching gets blamed for everything. Wherever there is a closed railway line or a derelict station, people say, That was Dr Beeching. He is commemorated here in Ruthin by a house in Well Street built over the former railway line and named Beechings. Even railways that closed down years before the Beeching era are now remembered as being terminated by him. But in truth, Dr Beeching was not the first to close a railway. His work focussed and completed a process which had been going on for a hundred years. Even some of the earliest railways were in debt from the day of their opening, were never completed as originally designed, and were either absorbed into larger railways or abandoned entirely within a short time. Yet now we say, That Dr Beeching - he is responsible for all these closed railways.

 This year the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth is being celebrated. All over the country school teachers will be telling their impressionable pupils that Darwin was the person who proved that Christianity was wrong and science was right, that evolution was true and the Bible was false. This will be unfortunate, leading young people either to reject Christianity or to follow it in a strange creationist form which rejects science. An article in the January issue of the BBC History Magazine puts the record straight. Most of the challenging and revolutionary ideas attributed to Darwin had been around for years before him, and had been taken on board by sensible religious people. For decades the most enlightened writers in the fields of science and religion had accepted that much of the Old Testament, and Genesis in particular, had to be read in a metaphorical sense. The article ends by saying, The fact is, it is possible to believe in God and evolution. Many people wrote to Darwin to ask him this question and he became rather tired of answering it. Yes, he would reply, of course you can believe in both. And to demonstrate this he supplied lists of prominent scientists who did exactly that. So Darwin, like Dr Beeching, is now surrounded by myths. The truth is, that he made an important contribution to a debate which was in existence before his time and has continued since.

Could the same have been the case with the Conversion of S.Paul? As he was marching along the road to Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground. But was this really his first encounter with Jesus ? Was it the first time he had been seriously challenged by the Christian faith ? As a youth Paul had been brought up in Tarsus at the feet of Gamaliel. Gamaliel was one of the most open minded Rabbis of his day, and he is on record as having advised his colleagues to listen to what the Christians were saying and consider seriously whether their movement might be from God. Did none of Gamaliel's fairmindedness rub off on his young disciple ? Did he never wonder whether the Christian faith might be true ? Then, as a young man, he was present when Stephen was stoned to death, the first Christian to give his life for Christ. Paul, then called Saul, held the coats of those who stoned Stephen. Was he completely heartless ? Was he entirely untouched by Stephen's courage, by his vision of Jesus standing at God's right hand ? Yes, he went on to be a cruel persecutor of the Christians. But people sometimes hate and oppose in others an orientation which they are conscious of in themselves but they cannot come to terms with it and they do not know how to deal with it. Perhaps the Conversion of S.Paul was not something totally new to him, but rather the culmination of all his hopes and fears, the day when the dam, built up throughout his early life, finally burst.

 This is the second of three sermons  forming part of the Investing in Mission programme which all the parishes in the Diocese are using this year. The sermons run concurrently with the five discussion meetings, and the third of those is scheduled for next Sunday evening. Having read the story of S.Paul's Conversion and wondered how far Paul was dramatically affirming and committing himself to the Christ he had known but steadfastly tried to avoid for years, we may ask, is the Investing in Mission programme really new ? Is it not what we, along with other parishes in the Diocese, have always tried to do?

 Absolutely right. This Collegiate Church of S.Peter in Ruthin has survived and prospered for 699 years because generations of people here have invested in mission. They have given freely of their time, their energy and their resources to ensure that the good news of Jesus Christ was proclaimed and known in this town, that the Christian voice was not muzzled in public discussion, and that the Christian mind was not absent in corporate decisions. They have also preserved, nurtured and beautified this place as a focus of God's presence in the town of Ruthin. The Investing in Mission programme recalls us to this primary vocation, that we may invest in the mission of the future as others invested in the mission of the past. In the first of the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2, the Ephesian church is told, You have abandoned the love you had at first...Repent and do the works you did at first. This is what the people of S.Peter's and S.Meugan's are being called to do through the Investing in Mission programme : not to abandon the love for the Church which was here at first and has brought us, under God, to where we are, but to do again the works we did at first with our eyes fixed on Jesus and our hearts filled with the Holy Spirit.

 Dr Samuel Johnson said, Man needs more to be reminded than instructed. That was what S.Paul thought too. After his Conversion he did not immediately go to Jerusalem to be instructed in the Christian faith as if he did not know it. He went into the desert to be reminded, in the solitude, of what had been in his heart for many years without his recognizing it. Now he had come face to face with his Lord, and he allowed this experience to permeate his whole being and fill him with energy and fire and love. Investing in Mission will not instruct us much, but we pray God that it will remind us of our first love, our primary vocation, and encourage us to recapture that love and pursue that vocation again so that the Church will be strengthened, empowered, and made new.