Dramatic and Sudden, or Subtle and Slow-Moving | A Sermon on Conversion
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on the Sixth Sunday of Easter (C), May 22, 2022.
Acts 16:9-15
Conversion. This is, unfortunately, one of those church words that is often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misused. And, because of this, it risks being lost to many traditions, including our own.
The word conversion comes from Latin and means “to turn around.” Kathleen Norris writes of conversion in her book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, in this way: Conversion. “It denotes a change of perspective but not of essence: a change of view but not location.” [1]
This echoes Plato (yeah, that guy), who wrote that “conversion is not implanting eyes, for they exist already; but giving them a right direction, which they have not.”
Growing up in the deep South, conversion meant something a little different, something a little more specific, and conversion experiences were a tried-and-true conversation starter. In these parts, we all too often ask, “What do you do for a living?” In those parts, we asked, “Do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” Or more to the point, “Are you saved?”
These questions generally either elicited awkward silence (which would immediately put you on a prayer list) or a conversion story. The story of a day or even a moment where the decision was made to repent of one’s past life and follow Jesus Christ into a new life –often leading to Baptism, where one would be washed clean of previous sins and granted the gift of rebirth. Born again.
Scripture is full of conversion stories.
Consider Lydia.
A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us . . . [and] The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly (Acts 16:14).
We are told that Lydia was already a worshiper of God and was active in her worship when Paul and company came among them. She began to listen. And, over time, that listening migrated from head to heart. We are also told it was the Lord who opened her heart to listen. And that she was moved to seemingly immediate baptism and to action. This is conversion.
And now consider Paul. A prime example of conversion. Paul, who earlier in Scripture, was struck blind by an awesome light and a question on the lips of Jesus: Why do you persecute me? This moment changed his life completely and fueled his work as a missionary –a missionary for a religion that he, in his previous life, had persecuted. A missionary that ultimately brought his words to Lydia’s ears. This is conversion.
Conversion is dramatic and sudden, and it can also be subtle. It can happen in on a particular day, in a moment, and it can be a lifetime in the making and the claiming.
I’d like to share a story from Barbara Brown Taylor, a story that deeply resonates with my experience. In An Altar in the World, she writes:
Earlier in my life, I thought there was one particular thing I was supposed to do with my life. I thought that God had a purpose for me and my main job was to discover what it was. This thought heated up while I was in seminary, where I attended classes . . . with other students who knew exactly what they would do when they graduated. Upon request most of them could deliver articulate accounts of their calls to ministry . . .
I did not have a single clue what I would do when I graduated. I did not even belong to a church. So I began asking God to tell me what I was supposed to do. What was my designated purpose on this earth? How could I discover the vocation that had my name on it?
So, she prayed without ceasing, finally finding that an abandoned fire escape served as a marvelous place to ask her question of God. And she did. Again and again. She continues:
Then one night when my whole heart was open to hearing from God what I was supposed to do with my life, God said, “Anything that pleases you.”
“What?” I said, . . . “What kind of answer is that?”
“Do anything that pleases you,” the voice in my head said again, “and belong to me.”
At one level, that answer was no help at all. The ball was back in my court again, where God had left me all kinds of room to lob it wherever I wanted. I could be a priest or a circus worker. God really did not care. At another level, I was so relieved . . . Whatever I decided to do for a living, it was not what I did but how I did it that mattered. God had suggested an over-all purpose but was not going to supply the particulars for me. If I wanted a life of meaning, then I was going to have to apply the purpose for myself. [3]
This too is conversion. A change of perspective. A shift of the eyes and the heart, orienting them in the right direction.
For many of us, conversion is a process –less the stuff of burning bushes, visions, and hearing loudly and clearly the voice of Jesus, and more the sometimes slow, yet always rewarding, stuff of discernment, which has more to do with conversion than we might expect.
Discernment, simply put, is listening with our hearts to God’s call in our daily lives. Asking with our open hearts what God is saying to us in moments large and small, extra-ordinary and mundane; in silence and in conversation, through the familiar friend and trusted confidant and the stranger, perhaps even those we deem enemies.
After the events of the past week, and month, and, frankly, years, there is a great need for discernment and for conversion. Both individually and collectively.
Repeatedly, the question we ask as individuals, as people of faith, is: What am I meant to be doing in the face of all this hurt?
This is a question asked of me and my fellow clergy colleagues quite often and yet, confession, it is a question that we are also asking ourselves.
What should I be doing –here and now? What is God calling me to do?
The answer, my friends, is probably something like, “Anything that pleases you. Just belong to me.”
If we belong to God; abide in Him; trust and listen faithfully for Him, then the rest will surely follow.
Getting there –to a point where we believe and trust that God is with us and for us -that is perhaps the most important conversion we could claim. For some, it may happen all at once forever more. For others, including me, it’s a daily affair made more perfect through practice.
I don’t believe that there is only one call for you. Or for me. I don’t believe there is only one moment of conversion, but many invitations to orient our hearts and lives towards Jesus. But we do have to move through our fear and put in the work. In the words of Norris:
Maybe the real scariness of conversion lies in admitting that God can work in us however, whenever, and through whatever means God chooses. If the incarnation of Jesus Christ teaches us anything, it is that conversion is not one-size-fits-all. Christian conversion is, in fact, incarnational; it is worked out by each individual within the community of faith [2].
Conversion. A shift of perspective.
Not what are you calling me to do, but who are you calling me to be.
Not what do you want from me, but what of me can I give to you and to this world.
Not what is beyond myself, set aside for when I get myself together, but what is inherently myself –created for a time such as this.
So often we wait for clarity, for God to dramatically intervene, pointing us toward the one true call of our lives. And then we are dismayed by the silence that meets us, the heavenly chuckle, the suggestion that to follow Christ you must follow Christ wherever and whenever He leads you –even if the path is a winding one and the destination unclear.
We want a clean intervention where only a messy and sometimes slow coming conversion awaits. We want to get to it, to get on with our good works, when sometimes we’re asked to wait, and to trust, and to simple abide in God.
And that’s the Good News. We belong to God. God who, as our collect reminds us, has prepared for those who love Him such good things as surpass our understanding.
This is a God in love with us and in pursuit of us. Of you and of me.
A God who has gifted us a life-long invitation to conversion, one that greets us with the sun every morning and never rests, even when we must. Maybe you understand this, find this to be true. Maybe not.
Even so, this is a God is loving you and redeeming the world through you. And me. Whether we know it or not. Like it or not. Believe it or not.
Amen.
* Image is the St. Lydia stained glass window in House of Hope Church, St. Paul MN.
[1] Kathleen Norris, “Conversion: The Family Story,” in Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 37.
[2] Ibid., 42.
[3] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (HarperOne, 2009), 108-110.
