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The Third Sunday After The Epiphany In the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Scripture citation(s): Acts 26:9-21; Matthew 10:16-22
A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
on
Acts 26:9-21; Matthew 10:16-22
✛
Turning with Paul to Christ (A Sermon on the Ecumenical Movement)
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Saint Paul of course was not there when Jesus told his disciples that he was sending them out as sheep in the midst of wolves, that they would be dragged before governors on account of Jesus, that they would have to testify about Jesus before people who would have power to destroy them. This state of affairs exists because of Jesus: his arrival amongst us was the arrival of the true king of the universe, and thus, as king, he poses a threat to all standing governments; a threat, and a challenge: will they acknowledge him, or not? Say what you will about Herod the king, he was not lacking in the wit to grasp this. When the Wise Men of the East came to him looking for the king who had been recently born, Herod knew the threat at once, and took the necessary bloody action of killing off all the boys in the region under two years of age: Herod knew what he was up against.
And he stands thereby for all earthly authorities: Jesus’ coming is a threat to them, unless, of course, they have the humility to acknowledge Jesus themselves. Jesus thus knew, before he died, that his disciples left after him would face the same opposition, and would have to give testimony, and would bear from time to time the persecution that would ensue. Persecution, yes, but also (as Father Turner emphasized in last week’s doctrine class) glory. Jesus’ persecution is also Jesus’ glory. This, the bloody man impaled on the cross, this is the true glory of the king of the universe.
Saint Paul was not there when Jesus was preparing his disciples for this reality of their future lives because he was given by God the role of living through both sides of this story. As a zealous religious man, Paul sought out the followers of Christ to persecute them. “When they were put to death I cast my vote against them,” he said, later, in his testimony in court. That authority to punish by death was, of course, an extension of the authority of the earthly powers. But one day he met Christ—this is on the far side of Easter, so we may rightly say he met the risen Christ—who appeared to him as a blinding light all around, and spoke to him. In the Hebrew language, Paul heard himself being addressed: why do you persecute me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks (the goads). That encounter turned Paul around. Instead of being a persecutor of the followers of Jesus, Paul became a man who energetically sought to make more followers of Jesus. For some twenty-plus years, Paul went out as “the apostle to the Gentiles” to bring people from all the nations into discipleship in Christ. He stopped kicking against the goads.
And the result was that what Jesus had said to his disciples before he died, came true for Paul a few decades after Jesus’ death. Paul was dragged before the rulers, and had to give testimony about Jesus, the one who is the true ruler of all.
+++
This day, January 25, is called the conversion of Saint Paul. I’d like to linger a bit on that word “conversion.” In the middle of it is the word “verse.” Verse, of course, is poetry in general, but it has the particular meaning of a line of poetry. We sometimes call a portion of a hymn a “verse,” but I think it better to speak in hymns of “stanzas” and to reserve the word “verse” for a line. Consider a verse of a Psalm. Here is the archetype of what a verse is. A Psalm-verse has, right in the middle of it, a point of inflection, where the verse turns from its first part to its second. A verse, that is to say, is a turn. It’s where, in poetry, a turn is made.
“Conversion,” then, is “to turn” with the prefix “con-,” which means “thoroughly” or “together” or “with.” Let’s think about it as “with.” Conversion is to turn with someone, rather than continuing in a direction that is over against. Saint Paul heard Jesus tell him it hurt for him to kick against the goads. He was running against Jesus. In his conversion, he turned to be running with Jesus.
+++
I have been involved in ecumenical activities for most of my ordained life. (I was encouraged to join the New York ecumenical commission by Father Wright, our honorary assistant whose health has prevented him being with us for the past couple of years, and who remains in his retirement a highly honored member of the faculty of the General Theological Seminary; it is meet and right for us to think of Father Wright today on the conclusion of the week of prayer for Christian unity.) This is what I’ve learned: the ecumenical movement is about our integrity as witnesses to Jesus. Prima facie, it is an argument against Christianity that the churches are divided, and it is an argument against our integrity if we are indifferent to those divisions. Of course, from the earliest times, Christians in this world of finitude and sin have disagreed with each other about this or that point of theology, or about this or that implication of the gospel. And sometimes those disagreements were seen as being of such gravity that a sundering of fellowship was necessary. I do not dispute any of this, nor do I think any reasonable person could. In the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church, we pray “that all those who do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity and godly love,” a prayer that acknowledges there are disagreements and some of them are about truth and some of them require us to have less unity than we otherwise would. And yet it is a prayer of uneasiness about any state of division, and an earnest prayer that divisions be overcome.
To say it again, if we are indifferent to Christian division, if indeed we are rather at ease with the current state of the churches in the world, then any reasonable observer would be justified to wonder about how strongly we are committed to Christ. So let me offer one concrete suggestion, a way to practice an ecumenical spirituality. Let us speak about other Christians with charity, and when describing how their views differ from ours, do so in terms that are fair and honest. We should not be saying (for instance) that the pope tells Roman Catholics what to think, or that liberal protestants don’t care about the Bible, or that Pentecostals have no appreciation of church history, or that evangelicals don’t care about the actual lives of the poor. These are not ways that our brothers and sisters would speak of themselves. And they are ways of speaking that entrench the idea that the important divisions are within the Christian family.
But really? Could that be so? Today’s feast, it seems to me, makes it blindingly obvious that the most important, the most tragic, the most consequential division in the human race is the division between those who would persecute Jesus and those who would follow him. May I propose a semantic discipline? Remembering that “conversion” means “turning together, turning with,” let us not say of someone who has left one church to join another that she has “converted”; let us not speak, for instance, of “Anglican converts” from some other church. It is fine, it seems to me, in this world as it is, for some people from time to time to come into the Episcopal church from another church. I did it myself, and I’m glad I did! But I was not, in doing that, a convert. Let us use the word “conversion” most properly, of someone who ceases to kick against the goads and who turns to be with Jesus. Thank God Saint Paul was converted! And may we all be converted!
