If you would like to read through the Daily Office, complete with prayers and hymns, I use this almost every day.

January 25th, 2017

Epiphany III-Commemoration of the Conversion of St. Paul

(Ps. 19; Isa 45:18-25; Phil 3:4-11-2:10)
The readings are a bit different today as we focus on the dramatic conversion of Saul of Tarsus to become Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles.

Philippians 3:4-11

even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul has a certain intensity, doesn’t he? I mean, I find myself reading this passage and thinking, “Woah, Paul…I mean…it’s ALL ‘rubbish’?” He was super credentialed. He not only knew the Law, he was zealous for it. Paul was passionate.

I am helping to lead a training with HopeSprings about how we can do “wholistic” (i.e. concerned about the wholeness of people) ministry, and we talked about passion the other night. We tend to equate passion with zeal and drive, and this is certainly true. However, the original use of the word passion was in reference to suffering (think, the Passion of the Christ).

In Acts 9:16, when the Lord is speaking to Ananias, he says of Saul (about to be Paul) that he will show him how much Paul “must suffer for my name.” Paul’s passion (zeal) was transformed into a suffering for the sake of Christ and others.

When we choose to follow Jesus today, we embrace passion, our passion (suffering) of holding loosely to things which often define us (education, social status, bank account, denominational affiliation, family heritage, etc.) even, by comparision, considering them “rubbish” (a G-rated translation, to be sure) to the value of being in relationship with Christ. When we want to be what JEsus is about, the other things just don’t matter like they once did.

What is God inviting you to reconsider in your own life? In what ways does your own identity inhere within the things many would value? What is God saying to you about who you are, right now?

Imagine what our own callings could look like were we to value connection and relationship to Jesus more than these things.