Today we celebrate St Paul – one of the greatest of the Christian saints and martyrs. We are also still in that season of the year we call ‘Epiphany’.
Epiphany is a Greek word which speaks of ‘revelation’ – the sun’s rising that lights up a dark world; the drawing back of a proscenium curtain to reveal a bright stage set; entry into a dark room and turning on the light, when – in a flash – everything is revealed. And hence, of course, it means also that moment of mental or spiritual revelation - the Eureka moment - when our understanding lights up like a light bulb, and we understand what was (until that moment) a dark puzzle.
Originally, it was associated with Christ’s Baptism. John is baptizing one person after another, and suddenly there stands in front of him a man he has actually known since childhood, and in one of those dazzling moments of revelation, he sees the Expected Messiah, about whose coming he has been preaching. And the Holy Spirit comes down on Jesus in the form of a dove, and God acknowledges him from heaven. The look on John’s face must have been quite extraordinary.
It then became even more firmly embedded in Christian tradition, especially in the east, as associated with the visit of the wise men, who followed the light of a star until it rested over the place where Jesus was. They had a light leading them by night (like the Israelites of old as they travelled through the wilderness), but they were driven also by a light in their heads, which inspired their journey.
As Paul travelled to Damascus, he was fighting an inner darkness, long before he was physically blinded. He had been deeply troubled by the testimony and then the death of Stephen, who died under the hail of rocks while seeing a vision of God with Jesus at his right hand, and with words of forgiveness on his lips.
Paul’s mind converted his confusion into blind rage, and he lashed out at any Christian within reach, but, as he travelled to Damascus, his mind wrestled with a huge puzzle, until the Eureka moment when (like John the Baptist) he saw Jesus (now in his risen glory), and a light so brilliant that it blinded him and threw him to the ground, flashed like lightning both outside and inside his head. That epiphany utterly transformed Paul’s life, and the entire Christian mission to the world.
I want to look very briefly at two questions which I hear buzzing around at the moment. The first is the charge that Paul had such an original mind, and was so powerful in the young emerging church, that he transformed the original message of Jesus into something different.
On the side of the prosecution is the fact that he ends up as the author of about two-thirds of the New Testament, and some of his most radical letters pre-date the writing of the Gospels. That he clashed violently with many of the existing Christians (including Peter), there is no doubt – he says so himself. In essence, the young emerging church saw itself as a renewal movement within Judaism – much like the Reformation in 16th century Europe, which broke away from the existing catholic church, but only on the grounds that it represented the true gospel, not that it was replacing it with something different. Those first Christians did not see themselves as starting a new religion. They saw themselves as the new Judaism, which had been fulfilled and transformed in Jesus.
For Paul, it was top priority (and the specific mission with which he had been commissioned by Christ), for the Christian gospel to break out of its Jewish constraints, and liberate it for everyone. Jesus had died for the sins of the whole world. The message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ was for everyone, of every race and class and creed, male and female, Jew and Gentile (see Galatians 3:28).
Of course, he was not the only one to have this vision. Peter had had his extraordinary dream at Joppa (see Acts 10), and then had seen the Holy Spirit descend on the family of the Roman centurion Cornelius. Following this, the council of Jerusalem had been persuaded that the Christian Gospel was for everyone, Jew or Gentile (see Acts 15).
But for Paul, it became the central plank in his mission, and it can be argued that, if it had not been for Paul and the vigour of his mission, which broke out of its original roots, Christianity would not have spread across the world and so to us.
But to do this, Paul had to distil the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the coming of the Holy Spirit, into terms which could be universally preached and understood. It took him many years to think this through, but the result is truly faithful to the Gospels. Paul never, for one moment, loses sight of his original encounter with the risen Christ, and the fact that he (above all people) is a forgiven sinner, saved by the grace of God, and through personal faith in Jesus. He remained ever faithful to his Lord, and the original message in the Gospels. Far from supplanting Jesus and the message of the Gospels, he has expounded and liberated that message for the whole world. The debt we owe him is incalculable, and we celebrate him, his faith and his achievement, today.
The second point on which I want to offer a comment is this. In nearly every discussion we have in groups, I have noticed that (one way or another), the topic crops up about a personal encounter with Jesus. Many who have come to Christian faith dramatically, often call this their ‘Damascus Road experience’. This, in turn, causes difficulty to others who are clear that they are Christians, but who have never had anything approaching such an experience. When such people hear dramatic stories of how someone came to faith through a personal experience of Jesus, it’s easy to feel somehow excluded from a privileged inner circle who appear to regard themselves as better Christians than you. This can lead to much mutual misunderstanding, even resentment, not to say division, within the church. What could be more unhelpful?
I believe the answer is not to dwell on the past. You can imagine that, over more than 40 years in parish life, I have met many people who have told wonderful stories of their Damascus Road experiences, and have later gone off the rails entirely both in their faith and in their private lives. I have equally encountered many who could never point to a particular day or experience, but whose faith and Christian life have steadily – and manifestly – strengthened over the years until they became church leaders whom God honoured and used to his glory.
The focus, therefore, needs to be on the present, not the past. Not what happened at some time probably long ago, but where – in relation to our faith in Jesus Christ – we are today. We do not celebrate St Paul today because, one day long ago, he had an intense experience on the Damascus Road, but because he went on to devote his life (often under great hardship) to the mission of the church.
May I offer you as a text for today, as we celebrate his life and ministry, these pungent words which he wrote in his letter to the church at Philippi, and which are as relevant to each one of us now, as they were the day they were penned:
“One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining forward to what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too, God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.”
That ambition is well expressed in our church mission statement. It is to “Encounter God and grow in Him”. If each one of us will make it our prayer as we come to communion this morning, and our own personal daily prayer in the coming week and months, God will honour our prayers. Whatever our past experiences, we will encounter God personally and as a Church, and we will grow in Christian maturity and faith. And if that is our genuine ambition, God will do great things with us as He guides us forward into the future.
To finish - as we began – with Epiphany, let our prayer be that the wonderful light of Christ may shine ever brighter in our lives and in our church this year.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Do you think your Christian faith is the same as it was one year/five years ago? the same? stronger and more vibrant/weaker and more doubtful? Can you describe some of the reasons? What are your expectations for this year?
How do you plan to “encounter God and grow in Him” in the course of this year?
As you think about St Paul, his life and his mission, do you think he has a particular message for our Church now?
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