Bible reading: Acts 19:1-9.

Message.

It must have been amazing to meet the risen Christ! The Gospels and the book of Acts give us accounts of several people who had the joy of that experience: the women early on Easter morning, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the frightened group huddled in the Upper Room, the fishermen on the lake at dawn. We may not precisely understand the nature of these appearances, but they convinced those who saw them. We are also given hints, both in John’s Gospel and Paul’s first Corinthian letter, that Jesus made other resurrection appearances, on one occasion to over 500 people. There was no doubt that the impossible had happened: Jesus had risen!

One person who never met Jesus in this way was, of course, Saul of Tarsus – which was something which he clearly regretted in later life. Indeed, i was only as the Christian faith spread and grew that he got involved – and then in a totally negative way. We read that he was present when Stephen was barbarically stoned to death for ‘speaking against Moses and against God’. And we know that Saul then set out to destroy the embryonic Church. After all, this heretical sect which said that Jesus was God had to be stopped before it grew too big.

Well, we all know what happened: as he travelled to Damascus on his mission of persecution, Saul apparently found himself confronted by Jesus. The accounts of what happened on the road vary (the story is told three times in Acts). But what is certain is that Saul met Jesus in a dramatic and life-changing way, and instead of being a persecutor became a witness to Jesus’ resurrection and an advocate for the new faith. Grounded, blind, confused and humiliated, he found himself on a new path which would not be an easy one to follow.

So: was Saul’s conversion instantaneous or was it a gradual process? The answer seems to be “a bit of both”. For we read that he immediately started to evangelise in Damascus – a source of bafflement to the local Jewish community who knew that, just days earlier, he he’d been trying to suppress and eliminate all talk of Jesus as the Messiah. The story as we have it here suggests that the Jewish authorities soon regarded Saul as a dangerous nuisance who refused to be silenced, so much so that they hatched a plot to kill him. Saul had to make a hasty night-time exit from the city, lowered down the walls in a basket, and made his way to Jerusalem where the believers were extremely wary of him – after all, they only knew him as a persecutor of the Church. Was he a spy, reporting back to the authorities? That was a possibility that couldn’t be ruled out.

The Acts story continues by telling us how Barnabas stood up for Saul with the result that he slowly became accepted by the apostles who obviously wanted to protect their flock; it also tells us how, just as at Damascus, Saul wasted no time in enthusiastically telling his story to the world, especially among the local Greek-speaking Jewish community. However Saul’s preaching was – shall we say? – not always welcomed and, once again, a plot was hatched to kill him; history was repeating itself. The Jerusalem Christians were terrified when they heard about this and decided that they needed to get rid of Saul as quickly as they could – he was clearly a liability, far too hot to handle! So, without further ado, they put him onto a boat and packed him of to Tarsus, his birthplace – a safe distance of 600 miles away. Saul could cool off there; the Jerusalem church breathed a sigh of relief.

The focus of Acts now shifts back to Peter; Saul doesn’t reappear for another two chapters. But then the church in Jerusalem hears some unexpected news: the Christians who had fled during the persecution which followed Stephen’s martyrdom (an event, you’ll recall, watched with approval by Saul) have started little churches all around the eastern Mediterranean area. And these churches haven’t just been attracting people from a Jewish background: Greeks are joining as well, apparently in great numbers. The Apostles aren’t sure what to make of this: they’re delighted to hear of people turning to Christ but they’re a bit worried that this is happening in an uncoordinated way and among what seem to be the “wrong” people. Clearly this has to be investigated, so they send Barnabas – not an Apostle but obviously a trusted senior member of the Jerusalem church – to investigate. He goes to Antioch and is thrilled to see what’s happening, but I think he also feels a bit out of his depth with all these Gentile converts. So Barnabas says to himself: “I need help – fortunately I know just the person who can help me, a man who believes that God has given him a mission to the Gentiles”. He goes hunting for Saul in Tarsus (both cities are in the top right-hand corner of the Mediterranean although still about 150 miles apart); he finds him, brings him back to Tarsus, and the two work together for a year before travelling to Jerusalem.

When we ponder this story,and link it into Saul – now Paul’s – retelling of it in Galatians, we soon realise that events didn’t happen as rapidly as we might have thought.  Indeed that’s true of the whole book of Acts, which is a sort of “Match of the Day” edited highlights version of early church history, stretching over about twenty years. For when we study the timeframe of Paul’s conversion, we discover that what appears to happen in weeks in fact lasts for more than a decade. Paul only goes to Jerusalem three years after his conversion and after a trip to Arabia; even then he spends just a fortnight with Peter and James but no-one else – it’s conceivable that he’s keeping his head down to avoid any confrontation with the Jewish leaders. He then goes off to other places but tells us that he was still unknown to the Christians back in Judaea; they only heard reports that their one-time enemy was now on their side, and rejoiced in the news.

Why am I going into all this detail, you may ask. Well, it’s partly to show you that piecing together the Bible isn’t always easy – that’s true, for instance, when we look at the versions of the Easter story we have in the four Gospels. The book of Acts does give us a vital framework of early church history but it’s not always easy to fit the New Testament letters, mostly written to local churches, into that framework. However it is a helpful thing to do, as those letters come to life when we realise that they’re not abstract theological treatises composed in a university library but real letters written to ordinary Christians who are trying to sort out real (and knotty) problems. In other words, understanding its history helps us to understand the Bible better and more readily interpret it for the world of today.

The main reason, though, for telling you this is that Christian conversion and discipleship are rarely instantaneous, they’re more of a long-term project. Think about Saul or Paul for a moment; his background as a Pharisee may well have prejudiced him against Christians who, he believed, were spreading false teaching about God. But it also gave him a superb spiritual foundation; he had a profound knowledge of what we can the Old Testament and, although he did need to learn how to interpret it in a radically new way, it would stand him in good stead for his later life as a Christian teacher. Although, as we know, Saul began evangelising or telling his own story straight after his encounter with Jesus, he still needed several years of reflection and prayer before he could begin his missionary journeys and take up his prominent role as a Christian leader and trouble-shooter.

The American professor of missiology (yes, there is such a thing) David Hesselgrave, who died in 2018, suggested that authentic Christian conversion could pass through several stages. These are (the alliteration is his not mine!):

Discovery – this is when a person starts to discover and become convinced that there truly was a person called Jesus, who God sent into the world to be the Saviour and Lord of humanity.

Deliberation – this is when a potential convert starts seriously asking themself, “Should I leave my old ways and follow Christ?”

Determination – this is the crunch point of decision: “Yes, I will repent and believe in Christ”. We might say that they have been converted.

So far so good – but now we come to Dissonance – which is when the new believer senses forces that are trying to draw them back to the old ways. Is it worth resisting them and continuing to be a Christian disciple? This is a crucial point in their journey.

The final stage is Discipline – when the person whose life we’ve been tracking commits themselves to serving Christ within the context of a church fellowship.

Another missiology professor says this: “Christian conversion is a process that involves more than just the moment of decision or commitment. It involves a series of events, experiences, and inner transformations which both precede and follow the decisive moment of conversion. Before cementing a decision, people may go through a period of spiritual seeking, questioning, and examination. They may encounter God’s grace through various means, such as personal experiences, relationships, and exposure to Christian teaching. These get them to a point of readiness to make a commitment to Christ”.

He goes on: “After what might be considered the moment of conversion, the pilgrimage continues as believers grow in their relationship with God. This involves ongoing learning and discipleship. It’s a process of deepening understanding and developing character. It means becoming more like Christ with the passing of time”. This, I’m sure, is what happened to Paul. He had an intensely vivid encounter with Jesus (and let’s realise that an experience like that is rare; for most people conversion is undramatic or may even go unnoticed, like when you reach the brow of a hill but only become aware later that you’re going down the other side. But that was just the start: Paul then spent years deepening his understanding of what it meant to follow Christ.

At this point I’m going to stop, because I want you to do some work: I’d like you to think how you came to faith. Ideally I’d have put you in small groups to do this, but I’m not going to do that nor ask you to say anything. Just think through these questions in your head for a few moments.

So: did you have a particular conversion experience or was your faith something that “just growed”? If it was the latter, was it helped by any significant events along the way?

Can you think of a specific time or point in your life when you realised you really did want to follow Jesus?

Were there any people who helped you on your journey of faith – e.g. parents, teachers, friends, ministers, godparents – or anyone else?

Were there any moments when our dedication to Jesus took a big leap forward – or was profoundly challenged?

Let’s gather our thoughts together and pray.