The Feast of the Conversion of St Paul
24th January 2010

St Paul's Ministry

The Conversion of St. Paul is a high point in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke's narrative of the life of the early Church. So vividly is the story told that it remains firm in our minds and we recognise it when we see it depicted in stained glass windows. The great light, the man stumbling on the ground and the confused faces of the co-travellers.

St. Paul would often refer to it in his missionary work. He had extraordinary gifts of oratory and wonderful skill in discerning how to connect with the minds and hearts of the people he addressed. Often they would listen as he spoke well into the night. But his own story must have been particularly powerful, as personal stories so often are. It was the story of a man who with integrity and dedication had doggedly followed one path in life only to be dramatically challenged and almost broken by a new revelation; and then to embrace that new revelation of truth and serve it with the same commitment as the first.

St. Paul is an enigmatic figure. In my childhood Bible there was a picture depicting him as a boy watching the ships come and go from the harbour at Tarsus where he was born. It reminded me that this great missionary was actually a human being; it also presented a thought about another aspect of St. Paul, that he was a figure of the world - a cosmopolitan who could move anywhere and among any group of people, find friends, identify those with resources to help establish the new churches and make contact with people of influence. He was a Roman citizen by birth and this would open doors and win respect. Perhaps that picture of his childhood showed him thinking beyond the boundaries of his own community and contemplating where one day those ships might take him.

The successors of St. Paul today are not the maintainers of the status quo but the ones who explore new possibilities, can get alongside the complex and diverse groups within our own society, can tell their own stories of faith and connect with those who want to have their own story to tell. St. Paul was not easy to relate to: some clearly loved him, others found him intolerant; it is often like that for people like him. But today we in the Church need our pioneers, our missionaries, our travellers, ready to take the faith beyond our boundaries; they need us too, to pray and support them. But in other ways we are called to be St. Paul when we meet people who may well only find faith or contact with the church because of us and no-one else. We all need to understand our faith so that we can share it and answer the difficult questions we might face - that is why courses like What do Christians believe? and Emmaus and Alpha help. But we also need to think about our own story, our human story of coming to faith, so that like St. Paul we can share our faith not just with words from our minds, but also from our hearts.

Amen

© PCC St Martin's and St Paul's Canterbury 2008 - 2010