Conversion of St. Paul - 1.25.2026

Elizabeth Swanson

On this feast day, the Church asks us to remember one of the most dramatic conversions in all of Scripture — and one of the most unsettling.

Paul does not begin as a seeker. He does not stumble toward faith. Paul is certain: zealous, disciplined, and faithful to his religious tradition and the authorities of his time.

Before Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, Luke, the author of Acts, uses Paul’s Hebrew name, Saul of Tarsus. Saul is a Pharisee among Pharisees — educated, observant, deeply formed in the law, and positioned at the very center of Jewish religious and civic life.

We first meet Saul as a young man present at the stoning of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Stephen, a deacon in the early church, debates in synagogues across Jerusalem, proclaiming that Jesus of Nazareth has come to fulfill the law. Stephen speaks with clarity and courage, refusing to yield to public pressure.

When that debate spills into mob violence, and the crowd drags Stephen out of the city, Saul does not throw the stones himself, but he weighs the arguments and decides that Stephen deserves to die. He consents and lends legitimacy to the crowd’s actions. Stephen’s faith costs him his life at the hands of people he loved enough to tell the truth.

That is where Paul’s story begins — not in ignorance, but in proximity to holiness. Not as an outsider, but as a respected insider, steeped in religious certainty and social power.

From there, Saul moves quickly. He becomes efficient. If you were a follower of Jesus in Jerusalem, you would have feared the knock at the door; feared being dragged from your home, imprisoned, silenced. Saul’s zeal earns him official authorization to pursue fleeing believers all the way to Damascus and extradite them back to Jerusalem in chains.

When Paul meets Christ on the road to Damascus, he is not converted from apathy. He is converted from zeal.

And that matters. Because Paul reminds us that it is possible to be sincere, devout, law-abiding, and profoundly wrong — and still be met and transformed by God’s extraordinary grace.

If we want to feel the shock of Paul’s conversion, we have to say this plainly: Paul was the enforcer. He was the one with papers and permission. He was doing what the state and religious authorities told him was faithful and necessary: separating families, destroying households, protecting a vision of communal purity he believed God required.

The point is not to excuse harm. Inexcusable harm has been done. But Scripture insists that God does not give up even on the enforcers.

At midday, on the road to Damascus, Saul is knocked to the ground by a light brighter than the sun. And the voice he hears does not say, “Why are you wrong?” It says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.”

A goad was a simple farming tool: a long, pointed stick used to guide oxen as they plowed a field. When an animal resisted the path set before it, the goad corrected its movement. 

So when Jesus speaks to Saul in this language, he is not merely accusing him — Jesus is directing him. The pain Saul feels is not the pain of punishment, but the pain of resistance — the pain of pushing against the very grace that is trying to lead him into truth.

Saul’s zeal, however sincere, has become misaligned with love. To kick against the goads is to cling to certainty when God is calling for conversion. Jesus’s words are almost gentle: this hurts you. Not I am hurting you, but you are hurting yourself by resisting where grace is trying to lead.

Saul’s conversion begins not with condemnation, but with surrender. He becomes blind. He fasts. He prays. He submits to the care of others. When Ananias tells him to rise, be baptized, and wash away his sins, Saul obeys.

And then, astonishingly, Saul takes up the work Stephen never got to finish.

Saul uses the very gifts that once made him dangerous — his zeal, his intelligence, his ability to navigate systems of authority — not to persecute, but to proclaim Christ’s love in synagogues and establish churches throughout the Roman world. And he becomes vulnerable to the same violence he once sanctioned.

Paul cannot undo what he has done. But he can begin the work of reconciliation. Paul must return to Jerusalem and face the community he terrorized. The Church must decide whether to receive him. It takes Barnabas’s courage and the Church’s endurance to risk believing this conversion is real. By God’s grace and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Paul spends the rest of his life spreading Christ’s message of love. 

Today’s Gospel reading gives us no illusion that following Christ is easy. Jesus tells his disciples they will be handed over to councils, flogged in houses of worship, and dragged before governors and kings. Families will fracture. Loyalty will be tested. But he also tells them not to fear, because when it comes time to speak and to act, the Holy Spirit will speak through them.

This week, many of us feel weary, angry, and heartbroken by the cruelty unfolding around us. Just yesterday, we added another name to the growing list of souls who have died through state-sanctioned violence in our own time. In the midst of such grief, I have been struck by the words of Bishop Craig Loya of Minnesota, who reflected on the early Christians accused of “turning the world upside down.” They were not stronger than the empire or more ruthless than their enemies. They were ordinary people who, fueled by the Holy Spirit, turned the world upside down by standing with those targeted and refusing to meet cruelty with cruelty.

That is not naïveté. Ours is a costly faith.

This feast marks the close of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What can we learn about Christian unity from Paul’s conversion? 

Saul of Tarsus saw a world divided neatly into us and them, the pure and the unworthy. But Paul came to see that in God’s kingdom, human beings are not divided into Jew or Greek, free or enslaved, male or female. We are all God’s beloved children, and nothing can separate any of us from God’s love.

Paul’s conversion shows us that unity is not an abstraction. It is what happens when God refuses to let enemies go their separate ways. God binds former persecutor and persecuted into one body and calls them the Church.

That kind of unity will unsettle us. It will demand humility, repentance, and endurance. It will ask us to remain in relationship long after certainty has failed and comfort has vanished. But it is precisely there — in that costly communion — that the Spirit speaks and the light breaks in.

Our call is to stop kicking against the goads. To remain present to God’s relentless guidance. To speak truth without fear, to resist cruelty without becoming cruel, and to trust that the same God who met Paul on the road to Damascus is still at work converting hearts, unsettling certainties, and turning the world upside down with love. Amen.