St Brendan's Anglican Church
 

January 25^th, 2011.
The Conversion of St. Paul,

Menachim, a Jewish father was troubled by the way his son, Benjamin, had turned out, and went to see Rabbi Goldberg about it.

'I brought Benjamin up in the faith, gave him a very expensive bar mitzvah; it cost me a fortune to educate him, then he tells me last week he has decided to convert to Christianity.

Rabbi, where did I go wrong?' pleaded Menachim.

'Funny, Menachim, that you should come to me,' commented Rabbi Goldberg. 'Like you I, too, brought my boy up in the faith, put him through University; that cost me a fortune, then one day he, too, tells me he has decided to convert to Christianity.'

'What did you do?' inquired Menachim

'I turned to God for the answer,' replied the Rabbi.

'And what did He say?' pressed Menachim.

'God said, 'Funny you should come to me..........'
Speaking of conversions, I want to talk this morning  about Paul the Apostle.
The beginnings of his story are an interesting jumble, and they highlight the cosmopolitan world that was the Roman Empire. He was born in an Asian city called Tarsus, now located on the southern coast of Turkey, in about the year 10. His parents were Jewish, and thought to be strict Pharisees. They were also Roman citizens. It is important to note that even though Judea was within the Roman Empire most Jews were not Roman citizens. Citizenship outside of Italy was an honor reserved for people who made great contributions to the Empire. Thus, we may presume that Paul's parents were people of influence and perhaps even moderate wealth.
 At the age of fourteen Paul was sent to Jerusalem to train to be a Rabbi. His teacher was a prominent man named Gamaliel. Rabbis, at the time, were also taught another trade. The idea was to keep teachers from becoming a burden on society. They also wanted to have something to fall back on during hard times. Paul was trained to be a tent-maker. Describing himself, he says, in Romans
“I am an Israelite, a descendent of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin”
He grew to be a man of firm convictions and fiery temperament. He always acted on his beliefs. Thus, when he was confronted with what they called “This Dangerous Heresy,” which Paul took to be a heresy to Judaism, he worked with all his might to quell it, and became known as one of the foremost of its persecutors.
Paul was present at the stoning of Stephen, and though he did not actually participate, he encouraged the violent act that destroyed the first of the martyrs. He then participated in general persecution including, "going from house to house, he dragged out the believers, both men and women and threw them into jail."
He then undertook a mission to Damascus. There he intended to continue attacking Christians. However, on the way, he had a vision. As written in Acts:" And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:  And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink."
It was shortly after this that Jesus commissioned Paul to preach His message to the Gentiles.
This meeting with Jesus made Paul a Christian. Even so, Paul always insisted that he remained both a Jew and a Roman. But before he could fully accept this message from Jesus, Paul spent some time in Arabia and then Damascus. Searching his soul, he undertook the mission he believed had been given to him directly by Jesus. He preached in Damascus for three years. His enemies were determined to kill him so he had to slip out of the city by night.
He went to Jerusalem and there gained official sanction from the elders of the Church, including Peter and James, to bring the message of Jesus to the Gentiles. Along with Barnabas, he then went on his first Missionary Journey to Cyprus, Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. During this journey they met many hardships. Paul was even stoned, though not killed, in Lystra.
It was an ironic twist that Paul underwent the same gruesome punishment he had sanctioned for Stephen and for the very cause Stephen had suffered.
Around 50 A.D. he returned to Jerusalem to report to the church elders. His visit provoked a dispute over whether Christians had to first become Jews. Paul said no. The controversy was temporarily resolved in his favor and he went on his second and third missionary journeys to Galatia, Phrygia, Macedonia and Greece. He even went to Athens where he argued with philosophers as well as pagans.
It was during this period that he met Luke, a doctor who would become a close adherent and would eventually write one of the gospels as well as the book of Acts. After his third missionary journey, Paul returned to Jerusalem where he ran into a dispute with the Sanhedrin. He was the object of a huge civil disturbance. For this, he was arrested and eventually brought to Caesarea. While there, he was questioned and tried several times, but his enemies could not seem to make their charges stick. Even so, he was held by the governor, Felix, who was afraid he might again create problems in Jerusalem. The next governor, Festus, seemed to be loathe to come to a decision on his case, so after over two years of house arrest, Paul invoked his right as a Roman citizen to demand a trial before the Emperor.
He was sent on the next ship to Rome. However, the ship met heavy seas and was wrecked on the Island of Malta. Paul prayed and was visited by an Angel and the entire crew was saved. Paul eventually took another boat and reached Italy. He was met by supporters and eventually made it to Rome.
The Acts of the Apostles is an original source that largely chronicles Paul's life up to this point, and describes the courage and determination with which he planted Christian congregations in a large area of the land bordering the Eastern Mediterranean. It is thought by some scholars that the book also may even have been a legal brief based on the recollections of Paul, and the diary of Luke, to help serve in his defense in his trial before the Emperor. Interestingly, neither the book of Acts nor Paul's surviving letters depicts the results of Paul's trial. It is known that he spent at least two years under house arrest waiting his audience with Nero. Extant literature close to the time indicates that Paul was either tried or executed by the sword or he died during the persecution that came about after the great fire, where Nero was reputed to have incited the blaze and to have fiddled during the conflagration in about 64 AD.
Some tradition also has it that Paul escaped the persecution and went on to continue his preaching in Spain. Whatever his end, it is certain that Paul was a great influence on modern Christianity, both through his missionary work and his writing. His letters, the earliest of Christian writings, reveal him as the greatest of the interpreters of Christ’s mind, and as the founder of Christian Theology. In Galatians 2, he writes “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”
Paul describes himself as small and insignificant in appearance. “His letters are weighty and strong” it was said of him, “but his bodily presence is weak and his speech is of no account” He writes of having a Disability which he prayed to God to remove from him, and quotes God’s reply,
“My grace` is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in Weakness” Therefore, Paul went on to say “I will gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." It has been said that, if it were not for Paul and a few others such as Barnabas, Christianity would have remained a small unknown branch of Judaism. Paul was indeed the leading missionary to the Gentiles.

He succeeded in making Christianity a universal religion, not just in the spiritual sense but also in the physical sense. Spreading the Gospel far and wide across the Roman Empire was Paul's mission. His missionary journeys brought him to Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia and eventually Rome.
There is no question that his Roman citizenship and his intense training as a Pharisee helped him immensely in this mission. He was arrested several times because of his preaching and several times was saved because of his elevated status within the Empire.
Besides being a fiery orator, Paul was also a capable writer. His letters make up the bulk of the epistles in the Bible. Because his writings were so treasured, they are among the most studied today. The words of Paul carry weight far greater than those of James or Peter, some of whose letters also survive. Paul's thoughtfulness, gentleness and steadfastness infuse his letters and they also infuse the close adherents of his words today.
Paul was a charismatic individual. He was a sure leader of men. Seldom did he doubt himself. He saw his mission as not only bringing the "Good News" to the Gentiles, but also to organize the Church so that it would grow, even when he was not present to urge it on. Thus, he created an organization and trained leaders. This organization would one day become modern Christianity as it came to supersede the original authority of the Church in Jerusalem.
Today Christians see Christ somewhat through the prism of Paul's teaching. Paul's follower, Luke, would write one of the Gospels as well as the Book of Acts. Paul was vitally shaped by a dramatic meeting with Christ on the Road to Damascus and it was this drama, coupled with his fervor that would mold Christianity for the next two Millennia.
Ultimately, it was Paul, who described himself as small and insignificant in appearance, who both physically and theologically made Christianity a "universal" church as a result of that meeting with Jesus on the road to Damascus.

Amen