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Sunday May 18, 2008 "Changing Sides" Acts 9:1-19 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 5/20/2008 12:50 PM | Preaching about Paul is a tricky business. It’s tricky because we don’t always know what to make of him.
Here’s the first thing: he’s got two names! First, he’s Saul, then he’s Paul. C’mon, Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel, Simon becomes Peter, Saul becomes Paul. Enough already! For our purposes today, let’s all remember that Saul is the name before the incident on the road to Damascus and Paul is the name after the incident on the road. But I’m going to call him Paul, all the time, because, well, I’m easily confused.
Here are some of the other tricky things about Paul:
His letters to the various churches carry some of the most beautiful messages of encouragement we can imagine. Some of our best loved and lyrical passages are attributed to Paul’s hand. His role of mentor to Timothy and champion of Philemon inspire us to reach out to, to be guides to others.
But then there is what I call the “hostile” Paul. His admonition for women to be quiet and subservient. His defensive posture in response to those who question his motives in gathering a monetary collection from the churches. His dismissal and seeming contmept of those Christian leaders who are at odds with his interpretation of things.
So, his behavior and his words may inspire and anger us at different times. His declaration of his own apostleship may seem like braggadocio, yet his steadfast willingness to suffer any pain and humiliation in the name of Jesus speaks volumes to his commitment.
If all this wasn’t enough, there is the issue of how to preach Paul’s example. That is, a lot of preaching is by design aimed at helping us to understand how we can appropriate the example of the actors in scriptural stories and how we can learn to be better Christians by following their examples.
Abraham and Sarah, for example, give us hope that it is never too late to serve.
Jacob and Joseph show us that youthful arrogance can turn to righteous behavior in later life.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, shows us that trusting in God for God’s purposes can yield amazing results.
Peter shows us that fear is natural and that God forgives our fear, and can embolden us to move forward confidently.
Thomas shows us that our doubts will be honored, if we will keep an open mind.
We can use these folks as examples because we can see something of ourself in them. We are normal folks who sometimes get scared, who sometimes get a little full of ourselves, who sometimes doubt, who sometimes are bewildered, who sometimes think we have seen it all. We are normal folks who, hearing these stories of other normal folks know that, we too, can serve God with all our baggage and human frailities.
But Paul? What do we have in common with Paul?
There is no doubt that Paul is an important part of our heritage, our story, our faith journey. It could be argued that no one had a bigger impact on the spreading of the Good News of Jesus Christ than Paul. And one could argue just as persuasively that the existence of the church is largely due to his ministry.
The Book of Acts chronicles the beginning of the church, and certainly Paul was not the only one working in support of the church. But no one had to work harder to gain the trust of the followers of Jesus Christ and no one had as dramatic a turn in their life as Paul. Peter took the message to Rome. Thomas took the message to India and Ethiopia. Others spread the news to far flung corners of the known world. But Paul is the one we know about. Paul is the one whose story made it into the New Testatment.
Paul was a devout Hebrew, born and raised in the tradition of Torah. He was a scholar of the faith and a committed protector of the faith.
When the leaders of the temple declared the heresy of those who claimed Jesus as the messiah, Paul became their aggressive agent, ruthlessly rooting out and even killing those who opposed the temple leadership.
And then came that fateful day.
Struck blind on the road to Damascus, Paul encounters the risen Jesus, who tells him to go to Damascus and he will be dealt with.
Helpless to do anything else, Paul is led into Damascus where a man named Ananias waits. Ananias has been visited by God, too. He is told to go to Paul, to lay hands on him, to heal his blindness, because God has chosen Saul for a most important missionary role.
Ananias is skeptical. “I know of this man,” he tells God. “He’s out to make us suffer. He is our persecutor. He is evil.” God replies, maybe with a bit of a chuckle, “Oh, leave him to me…I will show him what it means to suffer for my sake.”
So, Ananias visits Paul and tells him that God has need of his witness and cures his blindness. And with that, Paul the apostle is born.
I ask again, how are we supposed to connect with this story? What do we have in common with Paul?
Paul is a religious scholar. Paul is a zealot. Paul pursues his zealotry with a single minded purpose unknown to others. Paul seems to embrace the notion of the ends justifying the means in many phases of his journey, both before and after the episode on the road to Damascus. Struck blind? Talking with Jesus? Turned 180 degrees in his efforts? Sorry. Nothing like that has happened, or is likely to happen to any of us.
I think that we need to step away from our search to find our common ground with Paul and his conversion story. If we wait to be struck blind in a dramatic display of God’s power and authority, most of us will be waiting for a long time. If we use Paul’s conversion as some sort of shared template for the universal notion of conversion, we may well be left wanting and confused.
I don’t think this story is there to tell us what the physical act of conversion looks like. Oh, I have friends who argue that the conversion of Paul is indeed the model for all conversion: it comes out of the blue, at an identifiable point in time, with a dramatic and noticeable change in our hearts and behavior.
I disagree. For some, conversion is a process, not a point in time. For some, conversion comes in a quiet moment of reflection, not in a brilliant flash of recognition. For some, conversion isn’t even understood as conversion until well after our lives have changed.
God reaches us in different ways, the dramatic and the subtle, the complex and the simple. God reaches us where we need to be reached. God speaks to us in a language we understand. God finds us where we are and gives us what we need.
And Paul needed to be struck blind. Paul needed a flash of light that knocked him to his knees and left him helpless. Paul needed the drama of three days of darkness and the voice of Jesus to come to him. Paul needed to have an anvil dropped on his head, followed by a swift kick in the pants. Okay, so maybe there was no anvil and no swift kick, but it probably felt that way to Paul.
So, let’s not focus on the actions that took place, because those are not universal experiences by any stretch. I think we can leave it at: God gets people’s attention in a variety of ways. God needed to do something BIG to get Paul’s attention, and he got it.
This does not mean there are not some universal lessons concerning “conversion” that we might learn from this story.
First. Paul’s conversion was not from one religion to another. He was not a Pagan Sun worshipper who was converted to Christianity. No, Paul was a Jewish man who remained a devout Jewish man. There is no repudiation of his past when he is converted. He remains a pious Jew and an outspoken teacher of Israel. Likewise, many of us are “converted” to Christianity, even when we have been raised as Christians. To me, while the language we use is that of conversion, this is more about our awakening to an understanding of God in our life and where that leads us.
This is one of the difficulties of this text and of Paul’s conversion. Even the title of this sermon can lead us places we should not go: “Changing Sides.” Paul was and always would be a strong follower of God; Paul’s Judaism was not an obstacle, but an aid to his understanding of the messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth. Too often I have heard people preach this passage with an anti-semitic tone. Too often I have heard rejoicing that Paul had left the misguided path of his Jewishness behind in order to embrace Christianity. Too often I have heard this story used as an argument that it was the evils of Judaism that led Paul to persecute the followers of Jesus, and that when he left that evil doctrine behind, he became our greatest apostle.
It just isn’t true. The Hebrew people were not wrong: a messiah would come. And just because we have a different interpretation of who that messiah is, that does not make the message of our Hebrew ancestors suddenly wrong, and most importantly, it does not make them evil.
Paul’s actions on behalf of the temple leadership and their interpretations could easily be interpreted as evil. Torture and murder in the name of God is not an interpretation I could ever embrace. But before we condemn the Hebrew people and Judaism, we must look at the times Christians have carried out the same sort of zealotry in the name of Jesus. The crusades, the 100 years war, the actions of those calling themselves the Aryrn Nation, pronouncements that AIDS is a curse from God: all of these things were carried out in the name of Jesus. Are we then to condemn all Christians for the actions of a few?
No, when I conceive of Paul “changing sides”, I conceive of his actions alone. For embedded in his conversion is a universal factor to which we must pay attention: God’s message is a positive one and so when we come to an understanding of God’s purposes in our lives, there is a tendency for us to stop acting against something and to start acting for something.
Think about the most devout God fearing folks you know. Think about those whom you respect the most. Think about those from whom you learn the most about living the Christian life. Are they negative folks? Do they spend time trying to tear down others, and others beliefs? Or are they positive folks, preferring to spend their time in promoting what they find to be good and right with the Godly life?
Paul was not perfect, and he could get downright hostile at times, even after his conversion experience. He did not always succeed in being the positive bearer of God’s good news. He lashed out at his detractors, at times calling them dogs. We cannot downplay this side of the Apostle Paul. His words have been obstacles to some who have struggled with embracing the Christian life. But his overall message is focused on what he found on that road to Damascus, and that awakening led him to try to live a life that built up the cause of Jesus Christ. Even to the point of suffering and death, Paul did his best to promote all that he knew to be positive, good, right and true. And like Paul, we will not always get it right. Even after our own awakening, our own conversion, we will stumble in how we relate to others. But Paul’s experience shows us how important it is to try.
Second, the striking comparison of the “before” and “after” of Paul’s confrontation on the road is amazing. On the road to Damascus, Paul is striding confidently, with a great purpose, with the authority of the temple leadership behind him, a man among men who needed no one to guide him. After he is struck blind, he is helpless, unsure what is happening, not able to fend for himself. The sight of Paul being led tentatively into Damascus by a companion on each arm must have been an incredible one to those who knew him. But it is indicative of what we all go through in our faith walk. There are days when we are strong, confident and self-assured. There are also the days - many, many days, if we are truthful – where all we can do is rely on those around us to lead us, to guide us, to help us find our way. The universal fact of conversion is that we cannot do it alone: we need each other. We need the church.
Finally, the universal truth of conversion that Paul’s story points to is that conversion is always a means to a missionary end. That does not mean that all of us are called to be mission travelers like Paul, although some will. It means that we are converted for a calling. Our conversion leads us to take action, of some sort.
Big and small, dramatic and simple, this is a pattern we see over and over again in the book of Acts, indeed in all the books of both testaments of our Holy Bible, and in those people of faith that are all around us. Those who have come to understand their purpose in God’s plan, those who have been converted to God’s purposes, exhibit a personal transformation that never collapses into righteous self-satisfaction.
What then are we to do with this passage?
First, I think we should give thanks for Paul’s conversion and his ministry to the world. His witness transformed lives and the very world he lived. His ministry helped to facilitate the rise of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Second, we should use his conversion story to do some self examination: We need ask ourselves, where we are in our faith journey? We may have not been struck blind, but have we “seen the light?” Are we willing and able to give up some of our own self-aggrandizing ways and lean on others when we need them? Are we committed to building up the church of Jesus Christ rather than tearing down those who do not believe? Are we ready to act in faith so that all might hear the good news?
We don’t always know what to make of Paul. With all his sin and human frailties he is a difficult man to follow. But we should pay attention to his life and to his message. His goal was to encourage. His story seems to be saying “If God could use me, God can use anyone. And when you are touched by God, be ready to act in God’s name.”
The evangelist John Wesley wrote that Paul’s message of encouragement was not the message of a perfect man, but it was a message that could be distilled into a simple statement: “Do all the good you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”
May it be so, for you and for me, as long as ever we can.
Let us pray: Lord, we thank you for Paul’s witness, for his imperfections, for his message and his life. Help us to dig deep to find that place where you touch us at our core. Help us to be agents of your will, so that we might be partners in building up your church, your world, your kingdom, today, tomorrow and every day. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. | | | Permalink | Trackback |
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