Sunday, January 29th, 2012
The Rev. Peter C. Lane
Acts 26:9-21 & Galatians 1:11-24
I love our logo. It captures something critical about who we are as a parish, about what we are doing here. Most of you know this, so bear with me while I explain it again, but the logo is not just a river runs through it or something. That is the road to Damascus. The sun, the blinding light, represents the divine. That is the encounter between a human in history and the divine in history, the encounter between Saul and Jesus, the encounter between St. Paul & the Redeemer.
Now this is an annual meeting Sunday. The canons say you must have an annual meeting in January to vote on budgets and elect leadership. And let me tell you quickly… We had record giving for 2012. We have had two years in the black. We have a group of folk joining the vestry who are proven leaders at this parish. And we do need to invite more people to join us. But the specifics of the budget and the names of the leaders are only means to an end. SPR isn’t just another institution that needs to be furthered. It is a place where people encounter the divine, where people who have had such encounters come together. I’ve never been on the actual road to Damascus. I hope to someday travel near to there and see where Paul walked. But that is not the point. That road represents for us our roads. The road to a new elementary school. The road to another day of challenging work. The road to Mercy Hospital for surgery. The road to California for a daughter’s wedding. The road to the unemployment office. Those are our roads. The sun will rise on those roads, but not just the sun. I believe that on those roads, on our roads, we will encounter the divine. St. Paul encounters the redeemer. How about Peter encountering Jesus? How about Mike encountering the Divine? How about Lisa encountering God? As they say about Jesus in Godly Play, our children’s’ formation program, “There was once someone who did such amazing things and said such wonderful things that people had to follow him.”
Now our patron Paul, he kind of screwed everything up for us, because he had this dramatic, fall of your donkey, get blinded, go away for three years, you know, major conversion. I wonder if one of you is called to such a conversion? Most of us are called to little conversions. And there are ways of seeing Paul’s as a little conversion. In our Acts reading, you’ll notice initially he was a traveling, religious scholar, leader, provocateur. Then after the fall-off-the-donkey episode? He has passion for religion. He travels all over the place. He is a writer, a leader. He’s a religious scholar, leader, provocateur. Maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as we thought. I just love this Frederich Beuchner quote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Clearly St. Paul’s deep gladness was to be this great leader, great teacher, great expounder. We are not called to be that. We are called to be mothers and partners and doctors and community organizers. And we are called to be converted. Do you see what it says on the front of your bulletin? “The conversion of St. Paul the Apostle.” It is the conversion we celebrate. Well, let’s not just celebrate St. Paul’s, let’s celebrate our own.
To what are we converted? Now that is the question. It is one of the big reasons we gather together, why we give our money, why we volunteer time, and put up with the challenges of community, to know to what we are converted. Back to our logo. Who is the Redeemer? Who is St. Paul? Who is Jesus? Who are we? I’m not the pastor of this church because it is a great parish. It is a great parish. You are not here this morning because you are members of an important neighborhood institution. It is an important institution. You didn’t come here this morning to learn that Shoesmith School is having a pizza fundraiser. Although I am glad you are here so you can help out Shoesmith School. I’m here. You’re here. St. Paul is here because on the road to Damascus God intervened. I’m here because on the roads of my life, God intervened. “There was once someone who did such amazing things and said such wonderful things that people had to follow him.” I think you’re here because God intervened and calls you to conversion? Conversion to what? As one prayer puts it, “to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.” Together in prayer and song and over coffee we as who is Jesus and who are we?
We’re a people encountering the divine. In the face of the beggar. In the stories at the women’s retreat. In the prayers of the youth group. In the bread and wine taken out by our lay people to Pat and Cajsa and Laura. In yourselves, in that of God which is in you. We’ve all got our callings. We’ve all got our gifts. You know what Paul’s were. He was a zealot. He just was converted to a more generous understanding of God. Who is Jesus? Who are we? We won’t know by a Google search or find the answers on some secret blueprint. We are called to keep living life’s questions, to turn our ears daily towards God as we seek to respond to the encounter. We don’t know the specifics of our conversions. We do know they will be to openness, generosity, hospitality, truth telling, justice seeking, God praising, community forming, and abundant life. We’ll be converted to shaking hands with the janitor because he has value imbued in him by his Creator. Converted to standing in solidarity with the poor across the park and in Haiti because God has a preferential option for the poor. Converted to a belief that when we are sick or struggling or dying, we can know the optimism of a parish praying for us and the hope that no matter what happens we will not be separated from God.
What are we doing here? On our roads, we encounter the divine. And it changes everything. But the answer to the questions, “who is Jesus?” and “who are we?” are not simple and so we band together, living our conversions. We praise God and invite others and connect people and nurture faith and serve God’s world. Converted all the time, like our patron Paul.
Amen.
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