Acts
9:1-9a
1 Meanwhile Saul, still
breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the
high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that
if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them
bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus,
suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and
heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" 5
He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom
you are persecuting. 6 But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what
you are to do." 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless
because they heard the voice but saw no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and
though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand
and brought him into Damascus. 9 For three days he was without sight, and
neither ate nor drank.
It
was on the paved sidewalk between Brooks and Burns Hall at Samford when it hit
me. It was my first semester on campus, and to that day I had made a point to
attend every convocation each Tuesday and Thursday. I don’t remember any of
those first chapel services; I don’t remember who spoke at them, what sort of music
there was, that sort of thing, but I remember that particular day because I
chose to skip the service, to sit in my own private protest on a bench within a
stone’s throw from the doors of Reid Chapel. You see, that in that morning’s
service they were going to have a guest preacher who was…a woman. I sat on that
bench, gazing at the spire of that chapel, with the intention to pray for all
of those souls gathered in the pews. I was going to pray that they wouldn’t be
led astray by this false teacher, and I was going to pray for her own
repentance, that she would come to believe as I (and all good Bible-believing
Christians) did that women were to be silent in church and only men could
preach from the pulpit.
See,
I arrived on campus at Samford with all that I owned stuffed in the trunk and
backseat of a rebuilt 1991 Toyota Tercel, and while I didn’t own much, I did
have a well-worn, black, bonded leather King James Bible I was given on the
occasion of my high school graduation. I had read that bible the same way so
many from my fundamentalist, Southern Baptist church had. The prohibition of
women preachers was hammered home more than once by our pastor—mind you, not in
a particularly mean or ill-willed way, but from a place of his deep conviction
and his fundamentalist understanding of the Bible. So, when I heard that a
woman would be preaching from the pulpit of the chapel on campus, I knew I had
to sit it out, and the best thing I could do was pray for those who would have
to listen.
I
sat on that bench and prayed that God would open their eyes, that God would
show them what was wrong, that what was happening wasn’t right. I prayed God
would change their minds. You know what happened? As I sat there and prayed, I
heard something, felt something stir within me. It was simple what I heard,
what I felt, so simple I remember feeling a bit ashamed when I picked up my bag
and walked through the doors of the chapel. It was as if God had opened my
eyes, showed me that I was wrong, that what was happening was that someone whom
God had called had answered that call—the same way I was—and that person, who
just happened to be a woman, was about to preach the good news of Jesus Christ.
Who was I to say God couldn’t speak through her, especially if I believed God
was going to speak through me? In my pious pride, God disrupted what I was sure
was right, and God called me further down this long road of change, this road
of faith. I suppose it’s the same sort of road that runs along the way between
Jerusalem and Damascus.
We
know this road well, those of us who’ve hung around the Church long enough to
hear about Saul and how he became Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles. There
are three versions of this “Damascus Road” story: Paul tells one version
himself in Acts 22, and we heard the other of Paul’s versions earlier in the
service, recorded in Acts 26. This account before us now in Acts 9 is told in
the third person, from Luke (who likely heard it from Paul at least once). Over
the years of hearing this story, our collective imaginations have added a few
embellishments (a never-mentioned horse from which Paul doesn’t actually fall,
for example). We’ve also added a bit of wickedness to Saul, believing him to be
some sort of wicked and evil enemy of God, bent on destroying the movement
started by Jesus. In part, we’re not wrong. After all, Luke does say, “Saul, still breathing
threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high
priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if
he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound
to Jerusalem.”
However, before we’re too quick to condemn the old Saul as an evil agent of the
devil himself, I think it’s important to understand where Saul was coming
from—after all, we call this the “Damascus Road” story, but just as sure as
that road was going to Damascus, it was coming from Jerusalem.
And
what’s in Jerusalem? The high priest. The temple. The very center of faith and
devotion to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jerusalem is the geographic
embodiment of the ancient Hebrew faith. It’s the focal point of the faithful.
It’s from where Saul comes because he is a deeply devout Jew, one who has given
his life as a Pharisee, one who is committed to the pure, undefiled religion. Saul
is not a dark-cloaked enemy in some Marvel movie, seeking to destroy these
first Christians—the Followers of the Way—out of pure evil or a lust for power.
Saul sees them as the unfaithful, as those who are dangerous and corrosive to
the pure religion of Judaism. I do not doubt at all that Saul prayed for them,
that Saul prayed about them, that Saul studied the scriptures and sought
direction concerning these Jesus followers. In that devotion, in that prayer,
in that study, Saul reached the conclusion (affirmed by the high priest) that
these followers should be punished, bound, stopped at all cost. Saul may have
been breathing threats and murder against these early disciples, but for him,
such threats came from a place of devotion, a place upheld and affirmed by the
religion of his day, the religion grounded in the scriptures and ancient
traditions.
Saul
left Jerusalem on what seemed to him to be a mission from God. But something
disrupted his mission; something—someone—called him and nothing was the same: “Now as he was going along
and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He
fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you
persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom
you are persecuting.’" Leave
it to Jesus to disrupt a holy crusade!
I’ve
often wondered what must have been going through Saul’s mind: “Is this really
happening? Is this the devil trying to trick me? But…but…everything I’ve heard
about this Jesus is that he was wrong, a blasphemer! What does this mean for my
convictions now?!” Maybe he didn’t have enough time to think, like his whole
religious house was on fire and there’s no time to grab anything on the way out
but his zeal and devotion. Saul is absolutely rocked. It’s not just his mission
to Damascus that is disrupted, not just his crusade against the Followers of
the Way, it’s his whole life, and it starts with Jesus knocking him blind…so he
might come to see: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up
and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do…Saul got up from
the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led
him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without
sight and neither ate nor drank.”
Three days without sight and nothing to eat or drink. I
get that Jesus’ appearance may have knocked him blind, but why nothing to eat
or drink? Maybe he was physically sick, or maybe this encounter with Jesus was
so disruptive, so jarring, that Saul couldn’t bring himself to eat or drink, as
if sustenance was secondary to discerning what this all means, what to do now,
what to do with everything you’ve ever heard, been told, everything you’ve ever
believed. It really is nothing but disruptive, this call to change.
I mean, that’s what it is, right—a call to change? Saul
was once a threat and murder breathing Christian-hater, and now he’s been
confronted by the very Jesus whose followers he seeks to silence. Saul
eventually becomes Paul, easily the most important follower of Christ—in
history. Saul becomes Paul: change. This “Damascus Road Experience”
becomes the example of Christian conversion (a word that literally means
“change”), but not everyone experiences one, right? Not everyone has a past
life of squalor and addiction. Not everyone has baggage weighed down with guilt
and shame. Not everyone has skeletons clattering in their closets of past
violence, hatred, or betrayal. No, some folks were born pretty good and just
keep right on living as pretty good, right? I’ve always thought these sort of
folks sometimes like to manufacture some great sin in their lives from which
they’ve turned: like the kid who stood up to give a testimony of how he had
wasted his life in sin because he skipped Sunday school one time when he was
nine because he wanted to stay home and watch cartoons.
But here’s the thing: we hold up Saul’s “Damascus Road
Experience” as the example of Christian conversion, of changing
from one wretched, vile sinner to a saint on fire for God, but for Saul/Paul,
it was something else. It was a disruptive call that forced him to change from
what he had always known, what he had always believed to be righteous
and holy, what he had understood from the scriptures and the ancient
traditions of his faith to what he had believed was just the opposite. Saul
doesn’t go from being some washed out heroin addict to a Harvard educated
preacher; this isn’t a spiritual “rags-to-riches” story. Saul is confronted by
Jesus, confronted with the deeper, wider truth of who and what God is in
Christ, and it strikes him blind, robs him of his appetite, because this call
to change is disruptive as it shakes the foundations of everything we’ve built
our lives on.
Yes! The gospel calls the prisoner
out of prison to the pulpit (as it has done with our friend Vic Jackopson).
Yes! The gospel calls a murderer from his murdering ways into the life-giving
light of God. Yes! The gospel calls sinners to be saints, but the gospel also
calls those who think they’ve got it all figured out to realize that God is
always just beyond the horizon of their certainty. And that ever-widening,
ever-deepening reality that is God calls us to change, or better, to grow.
To realize, like Saul, that God in Christ is bigger than our certainties and
traditions, that God is calling us always on, never wanting us to settle for
right where we are, for what we believe to be all there is, for what we think
we have figured out. The call to change is a call to grow, and friends, growing
is hard. It’s uncomfortable, painful, and most of the time, just not something
I want to do. And do you know why? Because, if you ask me, most of the time I’m
pretty sure I’ve got things figured out; I’m pretty sure I’ve been around the
block enough times, I’ve read enough, heard enough, been affirmed enough that I
don’t need to know or grow anymore. I’d like to think I’m in about the same
place as Saul when he left Jerusalem: full to the back teeth with conviction,
backed-up by the Bible, and affirmed by the powers-that-be (at least the
powerful and well-known ones).
Here again, Saul would come to
understand that even with all that he was, all that he had, all that he knew,
there was still more, still farther to go. He would eventually write to his
beloved Philippians: “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.” Can I
contextualize this a bit for you? Essentially Paul says, “If anyone has
bragging rights when it comes to being a godly person it’s me: dedicated as a
child in the church, born to a family of deacons and preachers, baptized after
my first Bible School, perfect attendance in Sunday School, chair of the
deacons, head of the class in seminary, a teetotaler, prayed-up with every
verse of the Bible committed to memory.” Paul was bold enough to say he was
“blameless” under the law. Is there any room left at the top for someone like
that? Can they be any better, have it any more together? Well…yeah, because the
call of the gospel is the call to change, to grow, to constantly have our
complacencies disrupted.
Yeah, Paul says, “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.” But do you know what he wrote
right after that? Do you know what this blameless, Sunday school superstar,
literally “holier-than-thou” man wrote after listing all the ways he had his
religious life together? “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.”
Do you hear what he’s saying? No
matter how together he thought he was, no matter how sure he was of himself, his
faith, his life, his knowledge, no matter what he had to back it, the
affirmations from the priests, the proof texts of scripture, the centuries of
tradition, Paul counts it all as garbage in the light of Christ’s disruptive
presence. Paul counted it all as nothing, willing to lose it all—all that he
had given his entire life for—for the sake of just knowing Jesus more.
I wonder…what are you willing to
give up in order to know Jesus more? What are you willing to count as garbage
in your own life so that you may answer Jesus’ call to grow, to change? Are you
willing to give up more than just the usual stuff—distractions, wastes, habits?
Are you willing to even count all that you believe to be certain to follow his
call, to walk closer with Jesus? The call to change may be the hardest call to
heed; it may be the most disruptive call on our lives as it will inevitably
cause us to question even that which we’ve held on to for so long, that which
has kept us so comfortable for so long. The gospel of Christ, the good news
that God would intervene in history, take on flesh to die for the sake of love,
forgiveness, and redemption is a gospel that call us ever on, despite the
disruption it may cause. Because the truth is, everything—every single thing—we
hold on to, everything we think we’ve got figured out, everything we think
keeps us from the love of God, everything we think weighs us down or keeps us
tied up—it’s all garbage compared to just wanting to know Jesus. So, what is it
that keeps you from answering his call today? Whatever it is, it’s no better
than trash. Give it up, and answer the call of Christ, the same call that
invites us to this table this morning. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment