Micro Conversions
You are the Christ, the Son, Son of the living God.
Today, we celebrate the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul,
two towering figures in the church.
They both come from very different paths.
Both come from very different experiences,
but both ended up at the same place of conversion,
of recognizing Christ as the living God
and devoting their life to witnessing to God’s love.
In both cases, they were martyred,
and that is why I am wearing red,
because they were both martyred for the faith.
They literally laid down their lives in proclamation of the faith.
But you know, Peter and Paul were not perfect people.
We remember Peter's famous threefold denial.
There he was, the closest of the apostles,
and he himself denies Christ.
And then Paul, who was once called Saul,
was a persecutor of Christians.
He had Christians tortured and beaten
and killed in the name of righteousness.
But they both had this incredible conversion.
Paul's dramatic conversion on the way to Damascus
and and Peter's conversion at the sight of the risen Lord
and promising to follow him forever.
But here here is the important part,
they both came to the same conclusion that
Christ is the son of the living God.
And somewhere in there,
they had such a powerful experience,
that they were never the same.
They never turned back.
They never flinched from that moment of conversion.
You and I are also called to follow Christ in the same way,
To make that statement for ourselves,
“You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”
Hopefully, few of us would be
called to give our lives for that,
but one never knows what is in store for
the younger ones among us here.
The older ones, I think we have put in our time and
when we arrive at the gates of heaven is not too far away,
hopefully far enough though.
Most all of us will not have a dramatic conversion like this,
but we will have micro conversions.
We will experience something that catches our attention.
Something that we have never seen before,
and then we will become softer, gentler,
more forgiving, less judgmental.
Now, here is the really important part,
these micro conversions only happen
if we have our eyes open,
if we are open to seeing a new way,
if we are open to hearing God in our life in a new way.
And I promise you that those moments
are happening all the time,
but most of the time we do not hear and do not see
because we are so easily distracted
by what is going on in our life.
And so, it is so hard to stay focused on them.
But I want us, first, as we set this table today,
to recognize those micro conversions
that are happening in our own lives.
They happen because most often somebody else
has done something that has just caught our attention.
It is for a moment, there is somebody's extraordinary act of kindness
that has caught our attention and thrown us off.
Or some moment of extraordinary beauty in nature,
the way the sun glistens over a glassy sea,
or just a flower seeming to blossom
in a moment that catches our eye.
And if we are ready, we see that, and we give glory,
and there is a little bit of conversion that happens in our soul.
Now, part of our role when we come to the table each week
is to be part of this virtuous circle of micro conversions.
That we participate in other people's conversions
by the way we are extraordinarily kind
in that one singular moment.
That we do not say something
that we we have in our head to say,
and instead we say something kind, something gentle.
That we do something just outside of our normal course
where we let the Lord direct us.
We ask a question of a stranger.
We embrace somebody who looks like
they desperately need that hug.
I will say we had a whole flurry of micro conversions
this week in the Vacation Bible School.
The young men and women,
the teenagers that are have been part of that all week,
they are doing it day after day.
I saw it moment after moment, day after day.
After a long day, they are still sitting there
with smiles on their faces,
selling these cookies for charity.
They reach out and are playing with these little toddlers
well beyond their area of exhaustion.
They smile when the kids laugh,
and they engage with them doing these silly activities
for no other reason other than
that they believe that the Lord,
that Christ is the Son of the living God.
So, my friends, those are just simple little actions
that stack up and stack up and stack up.
And I believe wholeheartedly that while
those kids did it this week,
it is our turn to do it this coming week.
In every person we meet and in every situation we come across,
we have got to be open to this Son of the living God
and to become part of the Son of the living God.
Whether it is a hand on the shoulder to
someone who has lost somebody in grief
or just merely looking at somebody
and noticing them and saying,
“You look great. You look great.”
My friends, this week,
let's not look for some massive conversion,
but let's look for micro conversions.
And more importantly,
let's become part of the micro conversions for others
so that we can all say with gusto,
You are the Christ, the Son, Son of the living God.