Easter 3C
May 4, 2025
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
Every Sunday one of the most dramatic moments of the Eucharist is the breaking of the bread. The loaf of bread is held up and broken, a symbol of Christ’s body broken for us.
For a long time here at St. Dunstan’s we used real bread at the Eucharist, baked by faithful parishioners. But with the pandemic we went back to an earlier custom of using what one clergy friend calls “fish food,” the mass-produced wafers that admittedly seem a long way from real bread.
Then the priest held up and broke a super-sized host, or wafer, that had perforations that allowed it to break into 24 pieces.
Some of those pieces were triangles, some were trapezoids. They were mixed together on the paten with numerous small round hosts. I generally did not notice what shape I was putting into the hands reaching out in front of me as I gave out communion.
But one Sunday years ago, I placed a round host into the small outstretched hands of one of our younger members. “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” I said.
Two large brown eyes scowled back at me.
“I wanted a triangle,” a little voice demanded.
I quickly made the swap, thanking God I hadn’t already given out all the triangles!
That amusing altar rail exchange actually has significant theological implications, ones that are borne out in today’s reading from the Book of Acts.
The story is a familiar one – Paul’s dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus.
Christians today know Paul as one of the most ardent evangelists of the early Church. He devoted his life to traveling throughout the region, spreading the Gospel and starting churches wherever he went. He is also one of the Church’s greatest theologians, whose writings make up much of the New Testament.
Paul was unwavering in his zealous faith in Christ, despite being arrested, imprisoned, beaten, stoned, and eventually martyred.
But all of that comes after the events in today’s reading. Today we hear the story of Saul, as Paul was known before his conversion.
The first time we meet Saul is at the stoning death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Saul did not participate in the stoning, but he stood nearby and watched it with approval.
In fact, Saul was one of the most ardent persecutors of those who followed Jesus. He was harsh, arrogant and violent, a leader of the persecution of Christians in Jerusalem.
Scripture tells us that the day of Stephen’s death “a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem. Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.”
The Gospel is also spreading beyond Jerusalem, and Saul is determined to stop it. With the blessing of the religious authorities he heads off to Damascus “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.”
It is on the way to Damascus that the life-changing event occurs. Saul is knocked to the ground by a blinding light and a voice cries out, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
The voice belongs to Jesus, the very one whose followers Saul has dedicated his life to persecuting.
Surely Saul must have thought that his time was up, that he was about to become a victim of the very people he has been victimizing. If this voice really belonged to the risen Christ, then surely it was the voice of a justifiably angry God who now was ready for retribution as he demanded to know, “Why are you persecuting me?”
But Christ demands no apologies, repentance, or retribution. Instead he tells Saul to get up and enter the city, where he will be told what to do.
So Saul, who begins his journey with murderous resolve and strength, is led into Damascus blind and helpless as a child. There he is taken to a follower of Jesus named Ananais, who in a vision is instructed by God to baptize Saul.
Ananais protests, pointing out Saul’s history and reputation. God answers, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings.”
In an act of true bravery and discipleship, Ananais does as he is told. And as he baptizes Saul, Saul’s sight is restored and he immediately begins to proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God.
There are other stories of conversion in the scriptures, but Saul’s dramatic experience on the road to Damascus is certainly the most well-known, and has been held up as the paradigm of conversion.
There is much to learn from this story – that Christ has the power to change lives in an instant; that God often entrusts divine work to the most unlikely of characters; that no one, no matter how violent or sinful their past, is beyond redemption; and that conversion can happen at the most unexpected times and places.
But I think this dramatic story of conversion has also had a down side in Christian history – that the experience of Paul, as he became known after his baptism, has too often been held up as the norm for Christians, that it somehow represents an experience that all true Christians must undergo.
How often have you heard the question, “When did you become a Christian?” Typically the one who asks such a question believes that true Christians can point to a specific moment in time when they became a believer. For them, conversion is a dramatic, one-time, life-changing event.
For some people that is indeed the case. Maybe some of you have had that kind of experience.
But not all Christians have.
The truth is that God has an infinite number of ways to reach out to us. God deals with each of us as we are.
Saul was an intense, dramatic, larger-than-life type of personality. Subtlety would have been lost on him.
Or as Flannery O’Connor wrote of Paul, “I reckon the Lord knew that the only way to make a Christian out of that one was to knock him off his horse.”
That approach doesn’t necessarily work on everyone.
God does not take a one-size-fits-all approach to conversion. Just as the body of Christ we receive each week may be round, triangular, trapezoidal, or no discernible shape at all, Christ comes to us in many ways, shapes, and guises.
Although I would in no way denigrate those who have had Damascus-road experiences of conversion, for most people I know, myself included, conversion is a lifelong process, a series of experiences and learnings that gradually and continually shape us and turn us toward God.
That is the kind of conversion experienced by Dan Wakefield, which he describes in his book Returning.
“I was put off by the melodramatic nature of the label ‘born again,’” he writes, “as well as the political beliefs that seemed to go along with it.
“Besides, I didn’t feel ‘reborn.’ No voice came out of the sky nor did a thunder clap strike me on the path through the Boston Common.
“I was relieved when our minister explained that the literal translation of ‘conversion’ in both Hebrew and Greek is not ‘rebirth’ but ‘turning.’
“That’s what my own experience felt like – as if I’d been walking in one direction and then, in response to some inner pull, I turned – not even all the way around, but only what seemed a slightly different angle.”
Wakefield’s experience is what Writer Kathleen Norris means when she describes conversion as a process, not a goal.
“In living out my conversion as a daily and lifelong process, I treasure most the example of my grandmother, who dwelled in one marriage, one home, one church congregation for over 60 years,” she writes.
“Her faith was alive for anyone to see; her life demonstrated that conversion is no more spectacular than learning to love the people we live with and work among.
“It does not mean seeking out the most exotic spiritual experience, or the ideal religion, or the holiest teachers who will give us the greatest returns on our investment.
“Conversion is seeing ourselves, and the ordinary people in our families, our classrooms, and on the job, in a new light. Can it be that these very people – even the difficult, unbearable ones – are the ones God has given us, so that together we might find salvation?” Amen.