April 22 , 2007 Third Sunday of Easter

See also: [2001] [2004] Earth Day Service

Acts 9:1-6 (7-12)
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

Acts 9:1-6 (7-12)
The conversion of Paul is one of the most dramatic episodes in the Book of Acts—so much so that Luke relates the episode three times!—and it has given rise to a whole genre of conversion stories throughout the Christian tradition. Paul-esque conversions are unexpected, overwhelming, instantaneous, and marked by a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn in one’s direction and way of life. Yet Luke’s narrative of Paul’s life-changing encounter with the Risen Christ has relational subtleties as well. Paul’s conversion does not happen in a vacuum, but is carefully set in social and missional contexts. Three days after appearing to Paul, Jesus calls to Ananias in a vision and sends him to heal and baptize Paul. Ananias thus provides the social context in which Paul’s extraordinary experience can be interpreted and made significant; the scales falling from Paul’s eyes when Ananias lays hands on him is both a physical healing and a symbol for Paul’s gaining insight into the meaning of the light and voice he encountered on the Damascus road. And it is important for Luke’s story that Paul can only come to this insight in the social environment provided by Ananias and the other disciples in Damascus. Moreover, Paul’s conversion is not intended for himself alone, but is to prepare him to be “an instrument ... chosen to bring [Jesus’] name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.” The encounter with the Risen One is intended not only to change Paul’s life, but through Paul to bring New Life to many others as well. These relational and missional contexts are essential to an understanding of Paul’s conversion experience—and, by extension, they are also essential to understanding Paul-esque conversion stories wherever they appear in the Christian tradition. While it is certainly true that many believers through the centuries have found their lives grasped, reshaped, and redirected by the Spirit of Christ in dramatic ways, it is always important to look for the larger relational and missional contexts in which those redirected lives are sustained and bear fruit.

Psalm 30
In the context of the other readings, this psalm of thanksgiving for rescue from illness and death might be linked to the experience of conversion. Just as Paul was blind for three days before being healed, just as Peter was willing to return to his old life of fishing before the Risen Jesus asked his love, so we may have the sense that our lives are caught up in “weeping,” yet celebrate the promise that “joy comes in the morning.” The theme of gratitude for healing, prominent in the psalm, helps illuminate an important element in the conversion stories in Acts and John.

Revelation 5:11-14
John the Seer hears two hymns in the worship of heaven, one sung by angels and living ones and ancients, the creatures of the supernal creation, and the other sung by every creature in the air and on the earth and in the sea, the creatures of the terrestrial creation. The Seer’s messages to the seven churches (see last week’s reading) and his message of encouragement to those who suffer for the faith in the present time (see next week’s reading) are thus set in a larger context—indeed, the largest context, the context of the entire created cosmos. The message of New Life in Christ, committed to the earthly faithful, echoes throughout the cosmos, as the Lamb who was slaughtered and now is in the midst of the throne initiates a conversion which is nothing less than New Creation.

John 21:1-19
If Paul is the “patron saint” of dramatic, one-hundred-eighty-degree conversions, Peter in this passage might be an example of a slower, more deliberate, “long-arc” conversion, such as in the Benedictine vow to “conversion of life.” The Risen Jesus asks Peter three times whether Peter loves him—one asking, as is often pointed out, for each time Peter denied Jesus on the night before the Crucifixion. And each time Peter replies that he loves Jesus, Jesus tells him to “feed my sheep”; that is, Jesus directs Peter to actualize his love through servant leadership in the community of faith. Moreover, this servant leadership is to be a life-long commitment for Peter; I think that is implicit in the otherwise rather cryptic contrast Jesus draws between when Peter was young and fastened his own belt and went where he wished, and the time to come when Peter will be old and someone else will fasten his belt and take him where he must go; while this may indeed be a reference to “the kind of death” by which Peter will be martyred, it is at least indicative of an expectation that Peter is to live a long life, growing old in discipleship and service. The specific commission given to Peter by Jesus is to transform the entirety of his life into love for Jesus through servant leadership in Jesus’ community of disciples. Thus Peter’s “conversion of life,” like Paul’s in Acts, has both relational and missional contexts. While it may seem less sudden and dramatic than Paul’s, not changing his entire life in an instant, it is yet a call to an ongoing and pervasive transformation of life in the love of Christ. The preacher might compare these conversions of Paul and Peter, and ask the congregation what relational and missional contexts call them, individually and collectively, to an Easter transformation in New Life.

Paul S. Nancarrow is rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. and canon theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota. He is a co-author of The Call of the Spirit: Process Spirituality in a Relational World.

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