The 25th January is the day in the church calendar when we remember the conversion of Saul into Paul. However, first I would like to share a story with you called The Making of a Saint.

Johnny was out shopping with his mother one morning in the high street. Feeling a bit bored, he happened to look up at the windows of the nearby cathedral. He wasn’t very impressed. From the outside, they looked drab and dull and a bit grimy. He said as much to his mother when she came out of the supermarket.

‘Just let’s go inside,’ she said to him. So they went into the cathedral, and his mother took him to where the big stained – glass windows were.

At first, Johnny was entranced by the magical coloured patterns on the stone floor of the ancient church. They seemed to dance in front of him as the morning light streamed through the mighty windows.

‘Look at that,’ he pointed to the dancing image on the stone floor. ‘What is it, Mum?’

‘Well,’ his mother replied, ‘actually, that’s a saint. See the window up there, which looked so dull from the outside? There is a saint up there in the stained – glass, and the light is shining through her and making her picture dance for us here on the stone floor.’

Johnny stored up this information in his heart, and the two of them went home for dinner. A few days later, Johnny’s class was having a religious instruction lesson. The teacher was talking about saints. ‘What do you think makes a saint?’ he asked the class.

Johnny’s hand shot up. ‘A saint is someone the sun shines through,’ he explained, ‘and when that happens, the stones come to life.’

Let’s not beat about the bush here. Paul’s conversion story on the road to Damascus is one which is still widely known and well documented. Saul the Jew and Pharisee held the Temple and the Law as precious. Saul witnesses the speech of Stephen. He looks after the coats of the witnesses as they kill Stephen, making Stephen the first Martyr. He heard Stephen’s last words: “Lord, set not this sin to their charge.”

Saul persecuted Followers of The Way (or to use the name of today Christians). He sought them out with this aim and so, having got the relevant papers from the Sanhedrin, he walked the 140 miles from Jerusalem to Damascus. Although officers of the Sanhedrin went with him, being a Pharisee, Saul could not have anything to do with them and so walked alone with his thoughts. The journey took them through Galilee which may well have made Saul think of Jesus. In addition, it is likely that Saul’s thoughts also included the calm way Stephen accepted his death and his last words. Before they reach Damascus the road climbs Mount Hermon with the city of Damascus laying in the plain below. 

That region had a characteristic phenomenon of electrical storms being created by the hot air of the plains hitting the cold air of the mountain. As Saul reached this point there was just such an electrical storm and, out of the storm came Jesus Christ saying “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul asked who was speaking to him and the reply was, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting but rise, go into the city and you will be told what to do.” Saul got up but could no longer see and had to be led into the city of Damascus. He could not see and did not eat or drink for 3 days.

The conflict between Saul and Jesus’s followers was at an end. Saul surrendered completely to Jesus. Up until this moment Saul had been  doing what he wanted to do. But from the moment Jesus told him “Go into the city and you will be told what to do”, Saul would be told what to do. A Christian is someone who has ceased to do what they want and who has begun to do what Jesus wants.

Saul enters Damascus and Ananias enters the scene. Ananias received a message from God that he was to help Saul and would find him on the street called Straight. Ananias knew who Saul was and would have been apprehensive about this task, but he did what God told him to do. 

Some say that the prayer of Stephen was a key element of Paul’s conversion and so is the brotherliness demonstrated by Ananias. As soon as Ananias sees Saul he greets him as “Brother Saul” in a perfect example of Christian love. In Christ, Saul and Ananias, people who had been on opposite sides, came together as brothers. Once Saul’s sight was restored to him he was baptised, took food and recovered his strength. Saul became Paul, a brand new person in Christ. 

Paul immediately began witnessing in Damascus in an act of great courage. Paul was saying “I am a changed man and I am determined that those who know me best should know it. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.” He then went to Arabia. Paul had experienced a shattering change and went to be alone with God for guidance and strength for the new and very different life that now lay ahead of him.

Paul underwent true conversion. True conversion to the Spirit of Christ, is a deeply spiritual and deeply necessary phenomenon. It is a conversion to grace, and a transformation to truth, and those things can cost a lot. And true conversion is always, always, a conversion to the future, not to the past.

True conversion is not being converted backwards, into some worldview that simply repeats the errors of history. It is being converted forwards, into the future, into an entirely new way of seeing the world. Many of us today need to be converted to something new! To a vision of true unity, for instance, where there is neither male nor female, neither Gentile nor Jew, neither Muslim nor Christian, neither black nor white. 

Faith is not static! Conversion is implicit and necessary in the ongoing life of Christians; once we are converted we have to be converted over and over again. To model grace to the world, we also need to model how to be converted – how to change, gracefully, over and over again.

As Paul says in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”