Acts 9.1-22

JIGSAW PATTERN OF FAITH

(Acts 9.1-22)

I was ordained priest in 1966 in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral by Stuart Blanch, then Bishop of Liverpool, and later, Archbishop of York.

I can see Stuart now, cycling around the city on his Moulton bicycle, since he could not drive. He was certainly the most unpretentious person I have ever known. He was also very laid back and wore his great learning with ease.

As Robert Runcie observed at the time of Stuart's retirement, he had the 'ability to travel light, uncluttered by pomposity and uncorrupted by ecclesiastical clobber. He always seemed to me to carry about him a sense of being a layman in Holy Orders, surprised to find that God had put him there.'

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In his book, Living by Faith, Stuart describes how he became a Christian.

In late 1942 he found himself stationed at a large RAF camp at Heaton Park, Manchester, waiting to be posted as a navigator/wireless operator. He was looking forward to going home for Christmas. However, upon looking at the notice board, he found he was to be on guard duty throughout the Christmas break.

Stuart picks up the story.

'l went back to the Nissen hut with its twenty iron beds now vacant, stoked up the fire in the tortoise stove and prepared for a long vigil. My duties were light, my responsibilities negligible and I had time on my hands. It rained incessantly, and the only concession to Christmas cheer was a suspicion of turkey on Christmas Day shared with a dozen other men in a mess designed for ten thousand people. I had time on my side and nothing much in my kit bag to fill it with.

'But I had a copy of the Bible, and I turned to it almost in desperation for some diversion. I read the gospels several times in the course of that week. My only previous acquaintance with them had been through hearing them read at school assembly and in church where I once sang as a choirboy. This was the first time I had actually read them in detail with my whole mind concentrated upon them.

'The reading of them filled me with a sense of awe and invested that particular Christmas with a glowing warmth that I hardly expected when I turned back from the main gate at the behest of the warrant officer. I was far from being a believer at the end of the week, but I could no longer happily be an unbeliever. "If this is not true," I said to myself, "then nothing is true."'

Like many people before and since, Stuart was able to recall the exact time and place at which he became a Christian believer.

However, when he looked back over his life he very quickly realised that many factors had brought him to this momentous occasion.

He says, 'Why did I have a Bible anyway? Why did I choose to read it rather than propping myself up at the bar? Why should I believe it anyway, given the serious doubts I had always expressed as a professing agnostic?' He concluded that, ‘It looks as if the source of my faith lay somewhere further back.'

He recalled conversations he had had with his parish priest, the loving, fatherly Vicar in whose church he had once sung. He recalled certain encounters at school with school masters whom he afterwards recognised to have been practising Christians. And so he came to recognise that the roots of his faith laid somewhere hidden in the past.

What happened in that barrack room in Heaton Park on Christmas 1942, was that Stuart was at last able to put in place the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle of faith, whereby he was now able to confess the Christian faith.

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Now I mention this because today (25 January) we recall the Conversion of St Paul. The story of that conversion is recorded by St Luke in the Acts of the Apostles 9.1-22.

Paul, or Saul as he was known before his conversion, was on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus, a journey of some two hundred miles, carrying letters of authority for him to persecute the Christians in that city.

We are told:

'Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came back, "l am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."’

As a result of that experience, he was blinded for three days and had to be led into the city of Damascus. So he who had intended to enter Damascus like an avenging fury was led by the hand into that city blind and helpless as a child.

As regards the historicity of that experience, there can be no doubt. St Luke records the incident no fewer that three times in the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul himself refers to it no less than four times in his various letters. Whilst the details may vary, the basic fact remains, namely that Paul started that journey as a doubter and finished it as a believer, in the same way as Stuart Blanch went into that Nissen Hut at RAF Heaton Park as a doubter and walked out as a believer.

What exactly happened, it is difficult to say. Luke has written up the experience in the same way as the visions at the beginning of his Gospel, with the usual features of dazzling lights and hearing words from the sky. In a similar way, a sign follows the message from heaven, just as Zaccheus was struck dumb. All we can really say is that Paul had a religious experience whereby he was able to put in place the final piece of the jigsaw of faith.

Like Stuart Blanch, the fuse of that explosion had been lit many years earlier, though at the time he was unaware of it.

For instance, we know that Paul was a student of that great rabbinical teacher Gamaliel in Jerusalem, and Gamaliel’s hesitancy in attacking Christians may well have influenced him.

We also know that as a Pharisee he would have been a passionate supporter of the Law, and would therefore have found it difficult to believe in one who had consistently fallen foul of the law.

But more important still, we know that he was a witness at the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, at whose feet those responsible for the stoning laid their cloaks. He would have heard Stephen pray for forgiveness of those responsible for his death. There can be no doubt that the manner of Stephen's death must have lodged in the unconscious, if not conscious, mind of Paul over the years, no matter how much he tried to silence its impact by more vigorous persecution of Christians. Finally, he could silence his mind no more, and so the floodgates finally burst on the road to Damascus.

In a similar way, Frank Morrison tried to silence his conscience in 1930 by writing a book to prove that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Like a whodunit, he tries to explain away all the facts surrounding the resurrection. However, when he comes to write the final sentence of his book Who Moved the Stone? he could not but conclude: 'There may be, and, as the writer thinks, there certainly is a deep and profound historical basis for that much disputed sentence in the Apostles' Creed "The third day he rose again from the dead". Yes, Morrison could silence his conscience no longer. He started his book not believing and finished up believing.

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And now, what about yourselves?

Was your surrender to Christ in your life sudden, like that of Stuart Blanch and St Paul, or has it been a gradual awareness? Or maybe you are still waiting?

To those of you who can name the time and place of your surrender, I would say, be thankful. Thankful for the certainty it has given you. Thankful for those who, unknown to you at the time, influenced your life to that deciding moment. Do not be smug. Do not think you are superior to those who have not had a similar experience. And finally, do not think you have already come to the end of the road of your earthly pilgrimage.

And now to those of you who are unable to name the time or place, I would say, do not feel inferior. Do not feel you are merely second class Christians. And do not think that those whose surrender was sudden are frauds and cheats.

And to those of you who are still searching for that final piece of the jigsaw of faith, I would say: Be patient.

We are all different and God deals with each of us in the way that suits us best.

And now to the God who in Jesus Christ, calls all of us to follow him, be all power majesty and might, this day and forever. Amen.