Galatians 1.11-16a Matthew 19.27-end
May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Today the church remembers the conversion of St Paul. It is arguably the most dramatic and celebrated conversion in scripture, famously captured by the Italian artist Caravaggio, who depicts Paul blinded by the light splayed out helplessly on the dusty road to Damascus with his horse towering above him. We all probably know the story well. Paul, the zealous Pharisee was on his way to Damascus to arrest early followers of Jesus, when suddenly he was poleaxed by a blinding light and heard the voice of Jesus challenging him and then giving him explicit directions to continue to the city and wait for further instructions. St Luke refers to Paul’s conversion no less than three times in the Acts of the Apostles and it is undoubtedly the pivotal event in the establishment of the early church and the Church as we know it today.
In our reading from Galatians, Paul gives his interpretation of his breathtaking conversion, in which he states that God had set him apart from before he was born, called him through His grace and revealed His son to him, in order that he could proclaim him among the Gentiles. But at the heart of this divine interruption into Paul’s life, is the revelation to Paul of the astonishing grace of God and it is this unexpected discovery of the reality of the gift of God’s grace given to him, even him, that I want to reflect on this morning. Because in his moment of blinding light, Paul not only met with the living Lord Jesus as the voice that interrogated, instructed and restored him, but through it, he also experienced the power of God’s grace overwhelming and transforming him.
Grace is not a word we find often in the gospels, but Paul uses it frequently. He often begins his letters with the greeting ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ and ends with ‘grace be with you’. For Paul, who saw himself to be unfit to be an apostle, his theology was steeped in God’s transformational grace which he understood to be God’s ultimate gift both to him and the world and inseparable from his understanding of salvation and faith.
But, what is the meaning of God’s grace? How did grace transform Paul from the one who persecuted the early followers of Jesus, to the one who preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentile world and risked everything to fulfil this calling?
Put simply- Grace is the generosity and love of God that overrides our unworthiness, our faults and failings, our guilt, and invests us with worth. God’s grace treats us with dignity as His children and offers us new life in Christ. Grace is the superabundant generosity of God towards us and His creation. And here’s the thing, God does not wait for us to ask for it, but has taken the initiative in sending us Jesus, the ultimate act of God’s self-giving love, who broke into our sometimes cruel, suffering and fraught world, and through the cross, has given us all access to God’s divine grace as a free gift, unconditional and rooted in God’s love for us. This is what Paul powerfully encountered on the Damascus road.
Throughout the gospels and the history of the Church, the power of God’s grace to transform lives is evidenced again and again. Jesus embodied a ministry of God’s grace, transforming the lives of the lost, the broken, the stigmatised, the tax collectors and prostitutes and revealing the gospel truth that nobody is outside the sphere of God’s boundless grace. It was divine grace, which led to the end of St Augustine’s inner turmoil after reading Romans Chapter 13 and his subsequent request for baptism by St Ambrose. It was the interruption of God’s grace which strangely warmed John Wesley’s heart and led to his conviction that all humankind had a radical need for grace. Grace energised his itinerant ministry as he preached to hundreds gathered in the fields and towns often shouting ‘God’s grace…for all’ to joyful cheers from the crowds.
There is then, a dynamic power about the realisation of God’s grace - yes for me, even me! But I think there is need for caution here too. These moments of divine interruptions of grace are not about a once and for all experience that settles everything. Our journey with God, will always make costly demands of us. The Christian life is surely one which involves self-discipline, resilience, acknowledging our weaknesses before one another and before God, and must include a desire to grow in holiness, and become more like Christ. And secondly, there is a danger that such moments are all about me and my experience, putting me rather than God’s love at the centre of it all.
For Paul, God’s gift of grace was not something to hold on to just for ourselves, but something to proclaim and share with others. Paul’s conversion experience powerfully revealed to him that God’s grace is free and undiscriminating, because it claimed even him, and gives everyone the same degree of worth because Christ died for all. But although this gift of grace might be free, it is not without cost. As John Barclay puts it ‘it is a free but demanding gift’. And as we know, Paul’s subsequent life demanded that he risked everything for the gospel.
After his experience on the Damascus Road, we are told that the Lord said that Paul would be shown how much he must suffer for the sake of His name. The truth about the cost of discipleship echoes through the gospels. And it is undoubtedly true that the transformation wrought by God’s grace must bear fruit. How we live out our discipleship matters. All of us are called to demonstrate and share God’s amazing gift of grace in our lives. So, as we share in the Eucharist today, we are, by God’s grace, all here as children of God, and we can give thanks with Paul for the gift of Christ Jesus, God’s gift of self-giving grace to the world. Amen.