Sermon for 25th January 2026

The Conversion of St. Paul

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Acts 9: 1-22

Psalm 67

Matthew 19:27-end

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you,O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Of all the stories in Acts the conversion of Paul must be the most inspirational. Here is a man who begins, we’re told, ‘breathing threats and murder against the disciples’ and yet just a few lines later is with those same disciples proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God. One moment he’s a zealous and violent enforcer of anti-Christian prejudice and the next he wants everyone to share in his newfound understanding of what it means to inherit eternal life. Along the way and most significantly he spends three days ‘without sight’ until Ananias comes to relieve him. Those three days echo the three days that separated Christ’s crucifixion from his resurrection. And then Saul is baptised, stepping down into the waters of baptism to die and be reborn himself as a completely new person, as someone who preaches hope rather than hatred and rejects the violent and repressive behaviour that made him feared and hated by those early Christians.

Stories of transformation and redemption such as Paul’s conversion speak very profoundly to all of us. They give us a chance to think of our own dark places, the times when we ourselves have breathed threats and murder of our own, or times when we’ve been intolerant of others. But such stories show us that we don’t have to stay that way forever; we, like Saul, can be changed through being open to hearing God. One of my favourite texts to teach in school is A Christmas Carol- the idea of Scrooge the grumpy miser coming to terms with his failings through exploring his past, his present and thinking ahead to his future, and being transformed from miserly tyrant to loving and generous benefactor as a result of that journey of self-discovery never grows stale or tired because it suggests that human nature is never beyond redemption, that we like Scrooge can be transformed. The difference between Saul and Scrooge however is that whereas Scrooge lives in a fictional world of Dickens’s imagination Saul lives in the very real and brutal everyday world of first century Damascus. The fear and violence he inflicted was certainly real and was documented, not least by Saul himself when as Paul he came to write his own testimony. His epiphany takes place on a road which the story’s first hearers might have travelled themselves, and in battling against his own darkest impulses he is recognisably just as human and fallible as we ourselves are. And it’s also clear that just as he is transformed by listening to God in the person of the risen Christ today’s readings help us to see that we, like him, can overcome our darkest impulses and be reborn as better people, as people in tune with God and with our calling to live as Christians. But to do that we need to be able to be still and listen. We need to be prepared to give time to reflecting on what’s happening in our own hearts and minds, and to identify what needs to change.

Last Friday evening saw the final of series of Traitors – a TV show set in a fantastic gothic castle in which you’re either a faithful or a traitor. The faithfuls must find and identify the traitors, trying to avoid being murdered or banished in the meantime. Watching the programme, you’re gripped by the lies the contestants tell about themselves, the false narratives they create around themselves and around one another. It’s gripping television because of the way it dramatises some of our own darkest characteristics; our readiness to put ourselves first, our fear of being deceived, our distrust of those around us. Unlike Saul in our reading today however there’s no redemption. You are either good or bad, faithful or traitor, and you can never escape the role you’ve been given by the show’s producers. I think one reason for the programme becoming so popular is that for many people today this reflects their view of others, particularly in these present times when Artificial intelligence and social media encourage people to be suspicious and judgemental of one another, to think the worst, to persecute others for being just slightly ‘different’. It invites us to ask, am I a faithful or a traitor? What about that person I work with, or that member of my own family? Who can I trust?

Our gospel for today puts all our fears of that type into perspective. Peter’s approach to the Kingdom of Heaven and to Jesus Himself is very human in being totally transactional. I’ve done this for you, so what do I get in return? Can I trust you to reward me for all I’ve done for you? But Saul’s story shows us that God doesn’t work like that- Saul’s whole way of life has centered until now on persecuting Jesus’s followers, so he’s surely the very last person to whom God would entrust His message of love and forgiveness. But in our gospel Jesus announces that many who are first will be last, and the last will be first, meaning, I think, that everyone matters equally to God. The hierarchies we create on earth simply don’t exist as far as God is concerned. To us that seems unfair, but today’s readings invite us to be like Saul and listen to God. Because if we can do that amid all the noise of our own ambition, distrust of others and narrow earthbound obsession with what’s fair and unfair, reasonable or unreasonable we can, as Saul shows and Matthew tells us, leave behind the anxieties of the everyday and instead ‘Inherit eternal life’.

‘Eternal life’ isn’t some future prospect-it’s a way of living richly in the present, of being closer to God than we are to our own selves... When Jesus says his followers will be rewarded with eternal life for leaving behind their property, their families and their livelihoods I don’t think he’s calling for us to reject the people who are closest to us. Rather he’s inviting us to put our relationship with him first, a relationship which will enable us to live life to the full, which means a fullness which encompasses all those we love; to live life abundantly as Jesus puts it in John’s gospel. And if through prayer and stillness we can have our own Saul-like epiphanies and find our own personal way of listening to God we too may transform our relationships with everyone and everything around us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the holy spirit,

Amen