Sermon: The conversion of St. Paul

Acts 26: 9-21

Galatians 1:11-24

Matthew 10:16-22

As I considered what I might share with you this evening, I realized that there were basically three avenues of thought that I could pursue. On one hand, I could preach to this great feast that we are celebrating, the Conversion of St. Paul, focusing our attention on those wonderful lessons that frame our liturgy. On the other hand, I could choose to address the topic that has brought us together, that majestic title so rich with ambiguity: "Covenant, Contract, and Commonweal: The Ordering of Community in a Litigious Age." And finally, of course, I could speak to the underlying goal of these Fellows Forums, to create a setting and a context where challenging and potentially divisive issues can be examined and discussed through the lens of reasoned theological discourse. As I pondered these options, I'm afraid that my homiletical eyes became bigger than my stomach and like a recent seminary graduate, I decided that I needed to find a way to wander down each avenue of thought, searching for intersecting by-ways. Unfortunately, the operative terms here may prove to be "wandering" and "searching."

The great feast that we celebrate this evening calls to mind one of the pivotal moments of Christian history, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. The first two lessons recall in Paul's own words that dramatic moment when the Apostle encountered the Risen Lord as he lay sprawled in the dust of the road to Damascus. The scene is so powerful, so vivid and tangible, that it is easy for it to become the window through which we view and engage the concept of Paul's conversion. In truth, however, we know that that singular moment, as dramatic and important as it proved to be, was only the first installment in the conversion of Blessed Paul the Apostle. It was, in fact, the catalyst that set Paul on the road of conversion, a journey that involved numerous stages and steps as he sought to integrate this incredible event into the matrix of his religious perceptions and prejudices, the complex configuration of his powerful personality. Paul's conversion was a life-long process that consisted of any number of revelations and encounters with the living Spirit of the Risen Christ. The conversion that we celebrate this evening was the result of a lifetime of faithful decisions and choices that Paul made, as he continually offered his life to the one he knew to be his Lord and Savior.

One of the most potent influences in the process of Paul's conversion arose from his indefatigable efforts to create and sustain communities of faith. In an important sense, Pauls faith was hammered out on the anvil of Christian community. The theological beliefs and understandings that came to encase his experience on the road to Damascus were formed and shaped by the tensions and conflicts that punctuated his ministry to these fledgling communities of faith. For better and for worse, Paul's vision of the Christian life and faith was forged in the heat of controversy as he sought to bring a sense of theological and political order to these nascent communities.

As I was pondering that fact, I came across Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers, his insightful study of the intertwining lives and ideologies of the founders of the American republic. Like all revolutions, Ellis notes, the American struggle united diverse factions in a common cause, leaders who discovered, after their triumph, that they had "fundamentally different and politically incompatible" notions of what the revolution was actually all about (p. 15). What distinguished the American Revolution from all others, however, was that this revolutionary generation of leaders found a way to contain and channel the "explosive energies" of their subsequent debates within an ongoing dialogue that became a seminal and integral force in the shaping of American institutions. The political history of the United States, Ellis goes on to argue, is simply future generations ringing the changes on these old debates, the inherent tension having become part of the very fabric of governmental order. The key point is that these debates are never resolved but have instead become an essential component of the national identity (p. 16).

As Paul discovered in the process of his conversion, the ordering of any society or community, whether it be secular or religious, entails the challenge of dealing with fundamentally different notions of the purpose and intent of the association, notions that are often theologically and politically incompatible. The "success" of any communal enterprise, or perhaps more accurately its very survival, depends on how well it is able to navigate the ship of state through these turbulent waters. The ordering of community is fundamentally about the ability to deal creatively and constructively with these inherent tensions.

To my very simplistic and naive way of thinking, contracts are the legacy of our Roman heritage, which has been such a subtle but consistent influence in the ordering of Christian community. The contract is a legal arrangement, enforceable by law, whereby we agree to commit ourselves to certain principles, rules, and regulations, and in return we expect to receive certain protections, privileges, and material benefits. A community defined solely by contractual relationships will always be a litigious one. When tension inevitably arises, it immediately follows the ruts of the contractual arrangement, moving along the tracks of judicial cause and effect until some sort of resolution is imposed by an interpretation of the purpose and intent of the contract. Within contractual relationships, the tolerance of tension is not great since the whole purpose of the contract is to predict, manage, and defuse any emergence of conflict. Covenants, on the other hand, leave so much undefined. When I asked my wife what she thought was the difference between a contract and a covenant, she responded that a covenant was a contract made with the heart. Freed from the thicket of legal obligation, covenants are defined by a mutual commitment of goodwill. Inspired by a common vision or goal, promises are made, well-intentioned heartfelt commitments. Within the covenantal relationship, when conflict emerges, the contractual channels of regulation and resolution are not there to redirect and diffuse the tension, and the fabric of the relationship itself must bear the full force of the struggle. The Hebrew Scriptures are, of course, something of a textbook on the volatile nature of this dynamic. It is also, I am sure, one of the reasons that the covenant of marriage has become so securely encased in a contractual framework.