The Good News

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Acts of the Apostles, blind obedience, blinded by the light, christians, conversion, Good News, humility, light, love, Risen Christ, Saul, St. Paul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, theophany, turning

Today is the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, an event that in today’s world would be characterized as “doing a 180.” Paul, one of the most diligent persecutors of Christians was “blinded by the light” in a miraculous theophany. He could suddenly see nothing with his physical eyes so that he would turn inward and see with spiritual eyes the pain he was inflicting on people. His conversion, the total turning of his life to the opposite direction, was startling.

I find the inner exchange that he had at that moment with the Risen Christ quite interesting. Others saw the light but the voice that was only for him did not give him a command but rather asked him a question: Why are you persecuting me? In Paul’s account, (ACTS 22) he responds in the manner of a schooled debater with his own question: Who are you, sir? When the answer came that the voice belonged to Jesus, whom Saul was persecuting in the Christians, it seems that the ego that was Saul was smashed instantly as he answers with another question: What shall I do, sir? Humility entered with that question and the great apostle Paul was born from the enemy Saul. He needed to take the hand of his companions and walk in blind obedience for the next three days.

Paul was used to giving orders. I wonder how he would have responded if the voice he heard was one of commanding power rather than one that engaged him in a conversation. For the rest of his life, Paul was asking and answering questions in conversation with God as he went about spreading “the Good News” of Christ. That good news was the message of love and not condemnation that I believe Paul was blessed to understand in the way Christ treated him. Perhaps my interpretation of things is a bit far-fetched; being thrown to the ground by a flash of lightning certainly isn’t an amiable way to get someone’s attention, after all. I would argue, however, that it does point up the possibility that God treats each of us as loved in a way that we, as individuals, can understand. And that is, to me, very good news!

Lightning Strikes

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Acts of the Apostles, blinded by the light, conversion, Damascus, Deuteronomy, faith tradition, Paul, preaching, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, tolerance

Yesterday I was speaking about the Acts of the Apostles, the book of the Christian Scriptures that follows the four gospels, taking up the life and times of “the Way” – the early days of Christianity after Christ. I said there are great stories in that book, mostly stories of heroism and conversion and the development of community by those who carried on the mission of Jesus. Some of the accounts speak of people who had been in contact with Jesus himself and some were affected by the lives and witness of those first followers. It was a time of growth like ripples in a pond, reaching out to more and more people who “heard the word of God and kept it.”

Today, however, we have one of the most familiar and miraculous stories of conversion in the early Christian community (Acts 9:1-20). Everything in Paul’s story defies common sense. He is a persecutor of Christians on the hunt for anyone who declares belief in Christ. Suddenly, on his way to Damascus, he is struck down and blinded by a light so bright that he has to be led along by the men traveling with him who heard a voice speaking but saw nothing. At the same time Ananias, a disciple in Damascus, was getting instructions from the Lord about what was happening to Saul/Paul (God changes names sometimes when calling us to new life). The rest of the story sees Paul becoming “the apostle to the Gentiles” who travels the known world preaching and writing to the burgeoning communities of Christians, encouraging them to live in the love and fidelity that Christ still calls for in our time.

Paul’s story always makes me reflect on the different ways in which people come to faith. I was born into a Roman Catholic family and nurtured in the faith at Catholic schools and then a religious order of Sisters of St. Joseph, so my path was set from the start. Happily, I came to adulthood in a time of renewal in Christianity, after the Second Vatican Council, that “opening of the windows” to let in the Spirit of God, led by “Good Pope John” (now Saint John XXIII). Thus, slowly but surely I learned that the similarities in all denominations of Christians far out-weighed the differences. Experience and study have finally brought me to the conclusion that the Shema proclaims in the book of Deuteronomy (DEUT 6:4-9) that is the centerpiece of morning and evening Jewish prayer services: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The freedom in adhering to a faith tradition for me gives me a framework for living but also comes from a recognition that regardless of how we name the motivating force for our life, we are in essence all one – brothers and sisters on this planet who are connected and responsible for the good of all.

That last statement is a big leap from the days when my forbears were thinking that the Catholics were the only ones going to heaven. The amazing thing is that my Methodist friend across the street for whom I worried every day was told that I was the unfortunate one because she would find only Methodists when she got to heaven! I am much happier to know that all of us are linked and that conversion ought to be a waking up to whatever causes us to be more universal in our loving, more tolerant of difference and more determined to make the earth a home for all creation that brings peace to all beings.