Feast of the Conversion of St Paul 2026

On the feast of Paul's Damascus Road encounter, James explores the most dramatic conversion in Christian history — asking what it means for a life to be turned inside out by a meeting with the risen Christ, and what this says to us today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And so, Heavenly Father, as we come now to reflect on your words to us this morning, send your Holy Spirit that we may be transformed into the image of your Son. Amen. We have before us this morning one of the great Epiphany texts of the Christian tradition, the conversion of Saint Paul. In this season of Epiphany, this is one of those moments where we see someone have an epiphany. But what does it mean to have an epiphany? And I'd like to pause for a moment and remind us of what that word means and what that word meant. I tried to say this every year, but I think it's worth repeating. Because the way we speak about epiphanies today in the modern era, and by that I mean not the last 20 years or 100 years, but that period in human history since the Enlightenment, the way we normally talk about that is not what was meant by the ancient world. When the ancient world said, I've had an epiphany, they did not mean what we tend to mean. Normally today, you know, if you went into the mall and asked people, have you had an epiphany recently? They would describe something like this: a moment of insight. Something just clicked for me, or something dawned upon me. I the penny dropped. The classic moment of epiphany in the modern era is Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. The apple drops on his head and he has a realization. He realizes something about the nature of gravity, and he goes off and uh invents the laws of physics. It's like an internal expansion of his understanding. That's what takes place. And so when us moderns think, oh, I've had an epiphany, we think, like, I don't know if this is such an old reference, I don't know if it will make sense to anyone, but in the Simpsons movie, uh, Homer Simpson is told he must have an epiphany. And he tries to have one by saying, Bananas are a great source of potassium. That joke made sense to one person, but I think it was probably worth it. In the ancient world, that's not what they meant by having an epiphany. It was not about you primarily having a bright idea, it was about someone or something breaking in from the external world and revealing themselves to you. God reveals himself, heaven interrupts earth, the truth arrives towards a people and it changes them whether they're ready for it or not. That's what epiphany meant in the ancient world. You can think of it like this: in a modern epiphany, our opinions or our thinking is changed. In the ancient world, an epiphany is a moment of an encounter that demands obedience. And the word obedience is important there. It's just like the word listen. The thing that the transition I'm trying to highlight happens with the word listen as well. When we say listen today, we think say something, listen to the words I'm saying. But in the ancient world, when you were told to listen, it was always implied and obey. We have to add that bit, but in the ancient world they didn't. So in Jesus' baptism, God says, This is my son in whom I'm well pleased, listen to him. I don't think God was saying, Hear the words that come out of his mouth. God was saying, Listen and obey. An epiphany demands obedience. And we see that, do we not, in Paul's epiphany. Before he becomes Paul, he was Saul the Jew, the Jewish uh rabbi riding to Damascus. He was not mulling things over, he was not looking for new perspectives, he was not spiritually curious, he was not seeking. Luke makes it very clear. Paul at this point was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He is certain and convinced about what he is called to do. And God reveals himself to Paul. He knocks him off his horse, leaves him blind in a flash of light, and he arrests his thinking. Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And Saul's response here is so helpful. He says, Who are you, Lord? Or you could read it the other way around, Lord? Who are you? Now that Lord is really important because Paul in this moment knows that he has been impacted by someone bigger and greater than himself. Paul immediately says, I cannot be Lord of my life in front of you. You are Lord, but who are you? If you're asking here this morning, who are you, Lord? Let me start by saying that is a totally legitimate question. Who are you? How do we find out about this God who has revealed himself? We turn to prayer and the scriptures. But all of us every day, maybe, should be asking that question, who are you, Lord? Because Paul certainly thought he knew who God was. He was a Bible nerd. He knew the scriptures extraordinarily well, and he was convinced about who God was. And then he had an epiphany, and it changed everything. Maybe every day we should be asking ourselves this same question, Lord, because I'm the carby Lord, your Lord, but Lord, who are you? And then we invite God to reveal himself to us again. But Saint Paul is not the only person who has an epiphany in our Acts reading today. Because Ananias, did you see, did you notice that in the narrative? It switches from Paul to a small room in Damascus where a man called Ananias is praying. And Ananias has an epiphany. God speaks to him. And what does Ananias say? Here I am, Lord. Or Lord, here I am. And this contrast between St. Paul and Ananias is really helpful for us. Because Ananias knows who the Lord is. And now he's ready to ask, Here I am, what would you like me to do? Where are you calling me to go? I'm aware that for some of us, the story of St. Paul's encounter can be quite disheartening because we never had a dramatic conversion experience. We never had that moment where we were knocked off our horse and made blind. I imagine most of us aren't in that position. We say, well, has God ever spoken to me? Has God ever revealed himself to me? Maybe we've just always known. We've always gone to church. We've always believed that Jesus is who he says he is. And maybe that's what happened to Ananias. He just gently and quietly came to faith in the Lordship of Jesus. But what Ananias' epiphany shows us is that it actually doesn't matter how the truth is revealed to you. The question is, will you obey the voice that speaks? Ananias says, Here I am, Lord, send me. What do you want me to do? And so whether you've always gone to church or whether you've had a dramatic encounter, that's not the point. In the ancient world, an epiphany resulted in obedience, resulted in going off and doing something. And what are Ananias and Paul called to do? Well, in both cases, God's call is costly. For Paul, uh, Jesus says this I myself will show him what he must do to suffer for my name's sake. And really, the rest of the book of Acts is about Paul's life and his ministry journey and the way he goes around the ancient uh world, proclaiming the good news of Jesus and being persecuted for it, being punished or by the religious authorities or by the Roman police, experiencing huge hardship to follow the call of God. Ananias's call to costly discipleship is no different. God is asking him to walk into the house of a man who has come to Damascus with the authority to arrest people like him. This is real danger that Ananias is being asked to go into. So for both Paul and Ananias, the call to obedience is a call to costly discipleship. Come and follow me, and I will show you what you must suffer. Go lay hands on a man who wants to imprison you and maybe worse. So we must reflect this morning not just on what it is to have an epiphany, but what it is to be called to costly discipleship. Because becoming a Christian, having Jesus as Lord of your life is not about making minor adjustments and spiritual improvements, fiddling around the edges of an otherwise unchanged life. Becoming a Christian is about total surrender to someone who is bigger than you, who deserves to be the Lord of your life, because let's face it, most of us have made a complete mess of it when we've tried to be in charge of our own lives. What does this look like practically? Hannah and I were reflecting the other day on uh we just tried to do an audit of the toys in our living room and we managed to take a number, you know, three or four tote bags worth of toys to uh the charity shop uh because some of them the kids had aged out and others were just uh no longer appropriate. And I remembered three and a half years ago when we first moved into that house and we didn't have any children, and Hannah was pregnant. I remember us as we were designing the living room saying to one another, wouldn't it be nice if there was a space in the house that was for adults, where adults could talk to one another that could be ours? And I see the parents in the room laughing at me, and I deserve to be laughed at because more fool me, we just happen to live in George and Ruth's house these days. This is their environment. They have, over the course of three years, wormed their way into every aspect of our life and taken over. This is their house now. When I first married Hannah, I wasn't allowed to bring her breakfast in bed because she was worried there would be crumbs uh in the sheets. Now we have Cheerios in bed every morning with the kids and we just sleep in Cheerios dust. I mean that's not an exaggeration. When God becomes Lord of your life, he worms his way into every single aspect and takes it over. This is my life now. And so that means you can no longer do those things that you used to do, and you must start doing these things that you don't want to do. Let me give you another example. The building of this building. A hundred years ago, this was just a parish church. I say just, I'm not trying to uh denigrate parish churches, but it was a parish church only. And the only bit of it that existed is the bit that most of us are sitting in right now. This was the building. And the call to be the place where the bishop's seat lived resulted in that. Walls had to be knocked down, new walls had to be built, huge amounts of resources had to be spent expanding this building so that it could fit the call of God upon its communal life. And so when Christ comes and says, Come and follow me, he's inviting us to completely expand and change our world. Certain doors will be closed forever, no longer available to us. We will find other worlds of our other rooms in our life open that we didn't even know existed, and someone has to be built from the ground up. Probably for most of us, we are not being called to a life of sacrifice to the point of death. But all of us are being called to a life of discomfort, where the things we want to do we are no longer allowed to do. And the things that we are being asked to do, even if we don't want to do them, God is inviting us into that costly life. What about the call of Jesus on your life today? What about the call of Jesus on us communally today? How is he calling us to change and be changed in this moment of epiphany? To grow, expand, suffer, and repent. And in closing, I'd like us to just take a moment to think about our gospel reading very briefly. Peter voices what maybe many of us are feeling right now to Jesus in classic Peter style. Look, we've left everything to follow you. What then will we have? Look at all the sacrifices that the early disciples made. Because fair play, they did leave everything. Boats were abandoned on the shore of Galilee, families were interrupted, futures were made uncertain, and there were further costs to come. And Jesus does not deny those costs, but he reframes them. Anyone who has left houses and brothers and family, mothers and sisters, fields in my name and for my sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. This is the great beauty of God's economy, that as long as as you feel you are sacrificing because of the call of God on your life, you are invited into a world of greater riches, more a hundredfold, anything that you might be willing to give up. Saul gives up his certainty, power, his status, his reputation. Ananias gives up safety and control. The disciples gave up their livelihoods and security. And in that process, they received a hundredfold anything they might have thought they were giving up. So Paul does not lose his life on the road to Damascus, but he finds it. Ananias does not lose his life in obedience, but he discovers a brother in Christ. The disciples might lose everything physically, but they inherit more than they could possibly have asked for. We're like an ignorant child that wants to go and make mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is offered in a holiday by the sea. We are far too easily pleased. So, friends, in this epiphany season, would we see again the image of Christ? Would it come to us from the outside and radically change us? Would we be called again to live as the people of God? And would we know in our costly discipleship that we are being offered more than we could possibly imagine? Amen.