The sermon that faithfully confesses the conversion of Saint Paul focuses on the converter, the Holy Spirit, and the means He uses to change unbelievers into believers: The Word in all its forms.
One more red day in the short sea of green this Epiphany. One more opportunity to celebrate a saint should your calendar bear it, and especially if your church should bear the name of that saint. I have served at many churches with the “Saint Paul” moniker in my time. This is likely a professional hazard that attends being a Lutheran sort of preacher, since Lutherans just love, love, love Paul. I, in fact, have an Orthodox friend who once accused me when we were in graduate school together, “You Lutherans!” “What?” I asked him. “You Lutherans,” he continued, “you think you’re the only ones who really understand Paul!” To which the only reply I could reasonably make was, “I know!”
But I digress. This Sunday is the day the Church commemorates the conversion of Saint Paul. It is every January 25, and since that happens to fall on a Sunday this year, it presents the chance to teach all who attend Sunday service about Paul as a person with a testimony, to give thanks for his missions and his ministry, his work with the Gentiles of the first century Mediterranean, and his contributions to the corpus of New Testament literature, but above all to appreciate how God works. And how God works is always in surprising ways. He brings down the proud and exalts the lowly. He fills the hungry with good things and the rich He sends empty away. Kingdom talk always plays the opposite game like this. It is further illustrated in black and white in the gospel lesson that is interestingly chosen for this day, the bit where Peter complains after the camel/eye of a needle lesson, where Jesus’ promise, “With man this is impossible, but all things are possible with God,” appears to wear thin on the disciple. What about us? We have left everything! What will we have (Matthew 19:27)? Jesus assures Peter and the twelve that they will sit on thrones and judge the tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28) and then promises a hundredfold return for everything they have given up for His name’s sake and promises eternal life (19:29). 19:30 is the signature of Kingdom talk: “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” I encourage the preacher to spend time in study on this phrase. Look for all the cross references in your English study Bible, and in your Greek New Testament. This topsy-turvy Kingdom is not what you or your hearer expects or sees. This God in Christ is always full of surprises. But notice that the gospel lesson is chosen with the surprise of Saul in mind.
And God choosing Saul of Tarsus is one of the biggest surprises of the first century. The earliest Christian community, including Peter and James and the Jerusalem church, must have been reasonably freaked out. Here is the man who ran the coat-check at the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:58). Here is the man making house calls to purge Judaism of the Christian heresy (Acts 8:3). Here is the man running a Pharisaic inquisition sanctioned by the high priest (Acts 9:1-2). His reputation precedes him (Acts 9:13-14, 21). By his own admission he persecuted the Church violently and tried to destroy it (Galatians 1:13). But Saul/Paul is God’s choice: “He is a chosen instrument of Mine to carry My name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of My name” (Acts 9:15-16).
This topsy-turvy Kingdom is not what you or your hearer expects or sees. This God in Christ is always full of surprises.
This Paul is God’s chosen instrument, set apart, in fact, before he was born to have God’s Son revealed to him in order to preach to the Gentiles (Galatians 1:15-16). The answer to the curiosity regarding “God’s inscrutable, hidden will” in this regard is ever and only to rely on His revealed and amazing grace, which Paul proclaims, and upon which Paul founds his faith and his testimony. God called Paul by His grace (Galatians 1:15). The conversion of Saint Paul is a reminder, not of the zero-sum game of “God’s sovereign choice,” but it is an illustration, rather, of the great reversal, the great surprise, the love of God our savior for all people including the Gentiles (who are particularly the audience of Paul’s evangel), and including Paul himself, chief of sinners, persecutor of the Church, but God’s chosen instrument.
The beginning of the assigned Galatians pericope follows Paul’s protest that his gospel is not man’s but God’s; that he is not interested in pleasing people, but bound to Christ (Christou doulos, Galatians 1:10). Indeed, his gospel came by direct revelation from Jesus Christ and not any one person, from James or Peter or anyone except for Jesus Himself (Galatians 1:12). The central theme of reception from the outside, the gospel extra nos, the externum verbum, suggests itself as a very fruitful line of preparation for a sermon on these texts. The basics of Paul’s preaching, distilled in Ephesians 2:8-10, are illustrated well in his own person and conversion. Paul was saved by grace, through faith. This is not of himself, it was the gift of God, not of any of his own works, so he has no reason to boast in himself. He is God’s chosen instrument, His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the good work which God prepared in advance that he should walk in it.
The Christ delivered in the assigned pericopes is the Christ in His glory, the ascended Christ, the Christ returning for judgment, the Christ glorified by His people because His erstwhile persecutor is now His evangelist. What does it mean to glorify God? It means to give Him thanks and praise. The best way to do that is to repeat to Him what He has done, to confess His person and work, to “same say” the reasons He did what He did. This is a day not to celebrate Paul as much as it is to celebrate the work God does through him, concentrated in the proclamation of the dead and risen Christ to the Gentiles. The Christ of the Matthew 19 gospel lesson best brings this to bear: Many who are first will be last and the last first (Matthew 19:30). In Matthew, Jesus sends His disciples to all the nations (Matthew 28:19), with promises throughout his gospel that the Gentiles are a special focus of God’s love in Christ. Not only is Christ’s great reversal made manifest in the person of Paul, but it is also the work he is called to: To proclaim the mystery revealed, the Gentiles are in, those who were last, now first. The Kingdom come in Christ breaks down the dividing wall (Ephesians 2:14) and in Christ all are one. There is no more Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, man nor woman. All are one in Christ (Galatians 3:27) and all are baptized in the one baptism (Galatians 3:26; Ephesians 4:1-6).
The Damascus Road experience of Paul is miraculous and immediate. In that respect, it is different than what most of your hearers have or will experience in their lifetime; not the stuff of promise to hold out for your hearer. But the Damascus Road experience is also similar to that of your hearers. Consider this, in both cases, the risen and ascended Christ has revealed Himself to the sinner to kill and make alive. The immediate experience of Saul/Paul compares to the mediated experience of your hearers in that the Word they receive is external, outside of them. It is a word that changes their identity (think the word of absolution, the word in baptism). It is a word that transforms their vocation, their responsibilities coram Deo and coram hominibus (before God and man). The sermon that faithfully confesses the conversion of Saint Paul focuses on the converter, the Holy Spirit, and the means He uses to change unbelievers into believers: The Word in all its forms. Ask yourself as a preacher what God is doing in Christ and how He is doing it, in the life of Paul and in the life of your hearers. Deliver the Christ at work through His servants, then and now, and you will have given your hearer precisely what Paul himself did in the ministry following his conversion: Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:1-5).
