A Little Glimmer of Light, Deep in the Dark
A Homily for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul
Today is the Feast Day of the Conversion of St. Paul. This is the day we are remember the story of Acts 9, where the Pharisee Saul, on his way to Damascus to continue oppressing and killing Jews who have taken up the call of Jesus, is met by a blinding light and the voice of Christ, calling him to repent. Saul does so, and the rest is history, as they say.
I am glad this Feast Day is falling this week; I know I need it. As I’m sure many of you are aware of, this has been a long and trying week here in America, as the first days of the new Trump presidency have been a whirlwind of executive orders and wild public statements and sweeping changes to government programs and just generally bewildering and chaotic and overwhelming moments, one after another after another. Layered over this is the fallout of the sermon of Bishop Budde earlier this week, and the statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops this morning condemning the new administration’s orders on immigration and the death penalty and climate action. This seems to be the beginning of a fraught moment in American history, one that surely portends great changes in how our nation works, and conceives of itself, and lives together; for my part, I’m increasingly less and less confident that we won’t experience some kind of violence in our political sphere over the coming months.
Through all of the happenings this week, my feelings of despair and heartache have become quite acute. I like to try to keep my head above the news of the day, for the sake of my own mental health and for how I like to present myself as a person to the world. I like to be on an even keel in my life, for myself and for others. I try to take a long view of history and political happenings as much as possible. And I’ve really come to abhor partisanship, and want to keep myself as free of the taint of it as I can. But, this week has gotten to me, to my shame. I have found myself unable to tune out the firehose of news and statements and outrage and just general bullshit that is the largest by-product of this new administration. I’ve gotten in Facebook fights, something I just always come out of feeling really icky and shameful about.
But, despite the voice in my head telling me to be above all this, I can’t help but feel great alarm, despair, and most of all, fear, for my friends and loved ones and people all around me who are already being directly and indirectly affected by the actions of the new administration. I hurt for them, and I want to use my voice and my very being to push back against those who want to sow fear and chaos and division, in whatever way I can. I told my wife Tabitha last night that I feel ready to fight, actively, despite my pacifist tendencies. I was reminded this week that a commitment to nonviolence doesn’t mean a commitment to inaction or an invitation to violence, but an active and at times forceful response against violence and injustice; those words heartened me, and maybe gave me an unfounded warrant to be more active than I usually am.
What I’m trying to say is, this week got to me, more than I like to admit. It made me feel emotions and contemplate actions I’m not proud of, as a person of faith. So, reading the story of St. Paul this morning left me with some glimmers of hope, and a little extra measure of peace.
Now, for those already cringing away, let me assure you: I’m not about to twist the story of St. Paul’s conversion into a pious hope that maybe Donald Trump will see the light, and turn away from his harmful actions and statements. Nor am I using this story to seed the same hope about his many millions of followers. I can state up front, this reading will not be quite so shallow. I recognize, after more than eight years of this Trump “moment”, that the folks standing on the other side of this divide are not about to be swayed easily or through the use of logical reasoning or religious exhortation. If they haven’t left Trump at this point, then I know there is little hope that anything you or I say or do will. I know this kind of slavish political devotion can be turned to extreme and unfathomable ends. History shows us that, and its why I worry so much. I hate the prospect of seeing loved ones and friends put in the position one day of cheering and urging on truly abhorrent and shocking acts and policies, beyond what we’ve seen. I fear that they are on that path, and nothing we can do will take them off of it. Certainly, my little Pauline sermon here won’t change that. They’ve got to figure it out on their own. We’ve got to be prepared to fight back against it, in some way.
Nevertheless, I do want to share a little hope, for those of us feeling alarmed. I think we all need it right now. I know I do.
Saul was a real rough guy, in his pre-Jesus days. He was there at the stoning of St. Stephen, earlier in Acts. The story describes him as “laying waste” to the house churches in Jerusalem, enacting a reign of terror by going house to house, dragging followers of Jesus out and taking them to prison. Later, as he embarks on his mission to do the same to the Christians of Damascus, he is described as “breathing threat and slaughter.” Saul was, in short, not just a religious extremist; he was a terrorist, sanctioned by his sect to enact violence and sow fear in the hope of blotting out all who followed the words and the way of Jesus in Judea and Samaria.
And yet, even he was stopped in his tracks by the words of Jesus, eventually. Even he heard the words of love and mercy and compassion, and they cracked open his own closed-off and hate-filled heart. He repented, he converted, he embarked on a new mission, putting his large well of zeal behind the planting of churches and making of disciples.
Can you imagine being one of those early Christians, and knowing the reputation of this religious terrorist, a man who had imprisoned and killed scores of your religious brothers and sisters, of feeling the fear of him every day; and then having him show up at your house church one night and declaring himself changed and on your side now? How would you take that? I’m a pretty trusting and forgiving person myself, but I know I would struggle. I would harbor resentment and anger about the things I knew he had done. I don’t know if I would ever fully trust him. I would always feel that there was a chance his zeal for this new thing would wane, would be turned elsewhere, that this seed of violence and anger could never be fully contained, and would spill over into some new form of extremism some day.
Again, I’m not going to turn this towards a morality tale of being prepared to accept the conversion or repentance of those we are feeling in opposition towards right now. I don’t have it in me to feel that way at this moment. The hope I read here, in the story of Paul seeing the Light and becoming the most effective and theologically powerful voice in the early church - one that inspires me more than any other today - is more diffuse than that. It is just merely the hope of a better tomorrow, of a belief in the better angels of our nature. If Paul could see the light, then I like to hope that there is some at the end of this tunnel, for everyone. I have hope that, yes, some folks will turn away from the path they are on. But, more than that, I have hope in us, that like the early church, we are not going to lose our way, we are not going to abandon all that which we hold to be true and good and beautiful. We are not going to give in, to fight back with violence and anger and hate when Saul bangs down our doors. Our way – this Little Way of love, and mercy, and justice, and peace – is The Way, that which undoes the ways of the world, which undoes the violence and anger and fear and hopelessness all around us. It is The Way which meets the way of death head on, and defeats it, and in doing so, doesn’t vanquish our enemies and condemn them to eternal death and torment, but extends the hand of friendship and welcomes them back into the embrace of our loving and Crucified God, who himself forgave his tormentors and torturers.
This little glimmer of hope may not feel like much right now. The darkness is deep around us, pressing in. I feel like Sam and Frodo in the tunnels high above Minas Morgul, the deathly darkness of Shelob enveloping them like some living thing:
“Drawing a deep breath they passed inside. In a few steps they were in utter and impenetrable dark. Not since the lightless passages of Moria had Frodo or Sam known such darkness, and if possible here it was deeper and denser. There, there were airs moving, and echoes, and a sense of space. Here the air was still, stagnant, heavy, and sound fell dead. They walked as if they were in a black vapour wrought of veritable darkness itself that, as it was breathed, brought blindness not only to the eyes but to the mind, so that even the memory of colours and of forms and of any light faded out of thought. Night always had been, and always would be, and night was all.”
But, night is not all. Like Frodo, we carry a Phial of Light with us that can break up and push back that Darkness, not in our pocket, but in our very beings, like the Light that enveloped and filled Saul on that road two thousand years ago. That Hope is the power of Love, as practiced by Jesus and inherited by us. Let us push back against the Darkness, like Paul did eventually, by remembering the words he wrote, years after his conversion, the Light in him undimmed and the Zeal untamed, contemplating the work yet to be done:
“That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next…None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love.”
Amen to that.