HAS YOUR EXPERIENCE BEEN LIKE ST. PETER OR LIKE ST. PAUL?

 

GIVEN AT ST. LEONARD CHURCH

Someone asked Jesus, "Lord, will only a few people be saved?"

Luke 13:22-30

Are you saved? Have you been “born again?’ Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior? If you really want to make a Catholic squirm and sweat and doubt his or her religious upbringing, just corner one and rattle off that set of questions!

When I worked in the Bible Belt, down in the southern part of the state, Catholics, including myself, were often bombarded with those kinds of questions. More than one Catholic was left confused and bewildered. Our counterparts could date the precise hour they were “saved,” while Catholics just stood there puzzled and confused.

The question presented to Jesus in the gospel today, as well as the story of St. Paul’s conversion, gives us a perfect opportunity to talk about these questions. Does one have to have dramatic, certain and dated conversion experience or can one grow toward God in an extended process, sometimes without a clear beginning and certain end? In Scripture, we see both types of conversion experiences: St. Paul with his definite and certain experience of conversion at a particular moment and St. Peter with his long and extended process of conversion, with fits and starts, over time.

Many of our fundamentalist brothers and sisters look to St. Paul as their hero and ideal. His conversion experience was dramatic and decisive. It was a shattering and clearly memorable confrontation with the person of Christ on the road to Damascus when he was on his way to hunt down Christians and kill them. After this dramatic u-turn in his life, he fanatically embraced and defended what he had recently persecuted and attacked. His conversion experience was so dramatic that the story is retold three times in the Acts of the Apostles and referred to three more times in various New Testament Letters. When it came to his conversion, St. Paul could remember the spot, the day, even the hour that it happened.

St. Paul’s emphasis on personal and individual faith, his emphasis on dramatic decision and change, and his evangelistic zeal have become the prototype and model of many Christian conversions, especially for fundamentalist groups. Many of these groups attach a certain spiritual superiority to this type of conversion, leaving many people who have not has such an experience feeling inferior and second rate.

Roman Catholics, while respecting St. Paul’s experience, look to St. Peter as their hero and model. St. Peter’s conversion experience was very different. Peter does in fact make a profession of faith, but like many of us, it is the climax of a long and gradual insight into the person Jesus, often with fits and starts. Later in the same gospel, St. Peter denied that he even knew Jesus and abandoned him on the cross, only to come back later with a zeal and courage he had never experienced.

Even though some would like to suggest that everybody has to have a definite conversion experience that can be dated, the New Testament does not suggest a single stereotype for an authentic Christian conversion experience. Nicodemus, for example, who triggered the discussion with Jesus about what it means to be “born again” is an ambiguous illustration of conversion. We do not know whether Jesus persuaded Nicodemus or not. All we know is that he turned up to help out at the burial. The fact is that the New Testament balances the dramatic conversion of Paul with the gentle and more subtle changes in people like Peter, Zaccheus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Lydia, Timothy and a whole list of saints, martyrs and converts.

Roman Catholics have often dismissed as silly emotionalism the dramatic and decisive conversions of fundamentalists, while fundamentalists have often dismissed the long and gradual conversions of other believers. However, the fact is that the church has always welcomed both kinds of conversion experiences. In other words, it recognizes that God calls us all in a variety of ways. If you have never been “knocked off your horse” during a dramatic conversion experience, you need not feel inferior or apologetic. We all answer God’s call in our own way and in the way and at a time we are called, whether it is like St. Paul or St. Peter! So, it’s not one way or the other, but it can be either! Conversion, turning toward God, is a mystery and the variety of conversion experiences testify to the fact that God uses a variety of ways to call his children. St. Peter and St. Paul, missionaries for the same Lord, were called in different ways and responded to their calls differently. Both are part of the same church, both shared the same baptism and both served the same Lord!

With all that said, the fact remains that all of us, sooner or later must choose or reject Jesus and the path he invites us to walk. Nor can we let ourselves off the hook simply because others, even highly placed religious leaders, have failed to live up to their calls. Jesus calls each of us by name and each of us must respond to that invitation, no matter what others may do or not do! As Jesus told St. Peter in the gospel, regardless of what others say about him, the question still comes to us individually, “And, you, who do you say that I am?” In the words of St. Paul, when we have competed well in the race, when we have finished and kept the faith, God will rescue us from every evil threat and lead us safely to his heavenly kingdom.