Christ in Paul’s Eyes
The Journey of Conversion
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Surely the biblical writer who most helps us discover the Christ Mystery is the Apostle Paul. Letters by Paul or influenced by him form one third of the New Testament. Paul is a foundational teacher for what became Christianity. [1] Yet he hardly ever quotes Jesus. Paul never met Jesus. He did, however, encounter the risen Christ.
This is not as strange as it may seem at first. After all, the Jesus that you and I participate in, are graced and redeemed by, is the risen Christ who is no longer confined by space and time. God raised up Jesus and revealed him as the “Anointed One” or the Messiah (Acts 2:36). I believe it was not until the Resurrection that Jesus’ human mind fully realized he was the Christ. It seems to have been an evolving awareness, as “he grew in wisdom, age, and grace” (Luke 2:52) and lived in faith just as we do.
The entire biblical revelation involves gradually developing a very different consciousness, a recreated self, and eventually a full “identity transplant” or identity realization, as we see in both Jesus and Paul. The sacred text invites us, little by little, into a very different sense of who we are: We are not our own. Your life is not about you; you are about Life! We gradually find ourselves part of the Great Vine, eventually realizing that we have never truly been separate from that Source (John 15:1-5). Once we are consciously connected to the True Vine, our life will bear much fruit for the world.
Paul seems to understand this well because it happened rather dramatically to him. He writes, “I live no longer, not I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Like Paul, the spiritual journey leads us to know that Someone Else is living in us and through us. We are part of a much Bigger Mystery. We are recipients, conduits, and gradually become fully willing participants in the Christ Mystery (which is not to be equated with simply joining the Christian religion).
No biblical writer had yet named what theologians now call “Trinity,” but Paul has a deep intuitive conviction about the Trinitarian flow—Love—passing through him. He comes to know that he is hardly “initiating” anything, but instead it is all happening to him. This is the same transition we all must make. Like the divine conception in Mary, we will eventually realize it is being done to and within us much more than us doing anything. All God needs is our “yes,” it seems, which tends to emerge progressively as we grow in inner freedom.
This understanding gives us an utterly different sense of self; this person is truly a “sounding through” (per-sonare) much more than an autonomous being. This identity transplant is true conversion. It is not about joining a new group or church; it is coming to know a new and essential self that is interconnected with everyone and everything else. Just as in Paul’s conversion, it takes quite a while for the scales to fall from our eyes (see Acts 9:18), with plenty of help from friends like Ananias (Acts 9:17) and others, lots of failures (1 Corinthians 11:17-22), and long quiet retreats in “Arabia” (see Galatians 1:17). His is the classic pattern of real but gradual transformation.
Paul’s Conversion
Monday, February 25, 2019
All of Paul’s major themes are contained in seed form in his conversion experience, of which there are three descriptions in Acts (chapters 9, 22, and 26). Scholars assume that Acts was written by Luke around 80-90 CE, about twenty years after Paul wrote most of his letters. Paul’s own account is in the first chapter of Galatians: “The Gospel which I preach . . . came through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:11-12). Paul never doubts this revelation. The Christ that he met was not the Christ in the flesh (Jesus); it was the risen Christ, the Christ who is available to us now as Spirit, as “an energy field” that we eventually called the Mystical Body of Christ, or what I call in my new book “The Universal Christ.” [1]
Paul describes his life pre-conversion as an orthodox Jew, a Pharisee with status in the Sanhedrin (the governmental board of Judea during the Roman occupation). He was delegated by the Temple police to go out and squelch this new sect of Judaism called “The Way” (not yet named Christianity). “I actually tried to destroy it. And I advanced beyond my contemporaries in my own nation. I was more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers than anybody else” (see Galatians 1:13-14).
“Saul [Hebrew for Paul] was breathing threats to slaughter the Lord’s disciples. He had gone to the high priest to ask for letters addressed to the synagogues that would authorize him to arrest and take to Jerusalem any followers of the Way” (Acts 9:1-2). At this point, Paul was a black and white thinker, dividing the world into good guys and bad guys.
“Suddenly, while traveling to Damascus, just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground, and he heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The voice answered, ‘I am Jesus and you are persecuting me’” (Acts 9:3-5).
This choice of words is pivotal; Paul must have wondered: “Why does he say ‘me’ when I’m persecuting these people?” Paul gradually comes to his understanding of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12) as an organic, ontological union between Christ and those who are loved by Christ—which Paul eventually realizes is everyone and everything. This is why Paul becomes “the apostle to the nations” (or “Gentiles”).
This enlightening experience taught Paul nondual consciousness, the same mystical mind that had allowed Jesus to say things like “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40).
Until grace achieves that victory in our minds and hearts, we cannot comprehend most of Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings. Before conversion, we tend to think of God as “out there.” After transformation, we don’t look out atreality as if it is hidden in the distance. We look out from reality! Our life is participating in God’s Life. We are living in Christ. As Paul tells the Colossians, “your life is hidden with Christ in God” (3:3). Paul is obsessed by this idea. It undergirds everything he writes. Paul is the great announcer of what is happening everywhere all the time much more than he is the architect of a new religion.
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