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Welcome to Hillsboro United Methodist Church! If you are searching for deeper meaning in your life that includes lasting relationships, spiritual growth and service to the world you have come to the right place. We offer a safe place in which to ponder important life questions within an atmosphere of support. Our hearts, our minds and our doors are open. We hope that as you visit with us that you will find a place to call home.
Sermon - April 18th, 2010
From Saul to Paul
Rev. Gwen Drake
Acts 9:1-20
Prayer of Preparation: We give thanks, O God of sacred stories, for the witness of your word today. Through Scripture you challenge our assumptions, increase our awareness, nurture our imaginations, and touch our feelings. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.
What do you know about Saul/Paul? Missionary? Letter writer? Saul was his Jewish name, his formal name. Paul was his worldly name. The church calls him the Apostle Paul. He wrote letters to churches he started…some of those letters were preserved well enough to become part of the New Testament. If you want to know more about his life—you can read the Book for Acts.
He is introduced in Chapter 7, at the stoning of Stephen, where the witnesses of the stoning “laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.” Saul stood there approving of the killing of Stephen, a follower of this radical new movement of people called Christians. Stephen was full of grace and power, who had a face like an angel, who spoke about Jesus openly, offending and enraging elders, scribes, and the high council, and executed by stoning. The day Stephen was buried, Saul was ravaging this new movement by entering homes, dragging men and women of the new faith to prison. This is the first thing we learn about Saul—he was a persecutor of the new Jesus movement that was undermining the authority of the Jewish Scriptures. The next thing we read about Saul is in Chapter 9: he was still breathing threats and murder, going to the high priest for a letter to take to Damascas to chase down more of the followers of this new Way to bring them back bound to Jerusalem. Saul was clearly committed to stamping out this new Jesus movement. From his own writings we have his first hand testimony that he "persecuted the church of God" (1 Cor 15:9; Gal 1:13).
This new movement, new way was so threatening to Saul and other religious leaders. The Scriptures and the Law was at stake. The unique status of Israel was at stake. The very core message of Christianity was dangerous to the delicate balance of the way things were. These Christians were trouble, big trouble and for the sake of preserving the people of Israel, they had to be stopped. Saul was on the road to Damascas to preserve and save the people of Israel.
However, something else happened on the road to Damascas. Paul flipped. He did an about face. The story in Acts 9 is complete with dramatic sound and light effects. When Paul himself recounted what happened later in Acts—not once, but twice, he left out the special effects, just reporting that the risen Christ, the appointed Son of God appeared to him. Paul only wrote about seeing the risen Christ in his letters, and being the least of the Apostles because he persecuted the church. Whatever, happened on the road to Damascas—it changed Saul’s mission profoundly.
Conversion may indeed miss the mark in describing what happened to him on the road to Damascas. He was more that recruited to the “other side.” He was more than saved. He was called by God to go and DO!
You see, Jesus did not complete what he was doing on this earth in his cut short life-time. Jesus was not going around appearing to people to develop a loyalty program of admirers and worshippers. Jesus was not the new Jerusalem idol. It was not about worship—it was about continuing the movement and passion and mission. This was about getting out there and being the hands and feet of Jesus.
On the road to Damasca, Saul was thrown to the ground, blinded by the light, and challenged by the risen Christ’s question, “Why do you persecute ME?”
Most of us “ordinary” Christians go through our lives without ever being knocked off our feet and blinded by a light. Most of us go from day to day, year to year, sometimes searching, sometimes convinced, rarely experiencing dramatic revelations that flip our lives around and upside-down, let alone the life of the whole church. Yet, this story is compelling. It calls to us. Maybe there is a part of us, deep inside of us that yearns for God to come crashing into our lives in a dramatic revelation. We yearn for meaning and fulfillment and purpose in our lives.
Saul, the Pharisee was caught in his own personal agenda of religious vigilantism. He was so outraged he took justice into his own hands. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan describe his conversion as “within a tradition: from one way of being Jewish to another way of being Jewish, from being a Pharisaic Jew to being a Christian Jew.” They call Paul “a Jewish Christ mystic” who “saw his Judaism anew in the light of Jesus.”
Saul was struck, blind, helpless on the road to Damascas. He was dependent on others to help him take the next step. God was not simply calling Saul to quit what he is doing to protect this new thing God was doing. With God, the picture is always big, very big, and each one of us is a precious part of that picture.
Saul, who began this mission to Damascas breathing threats and murder was meekly led by the hand into the city of Damascas, going without food and water for three days, into a tomb-like existence, no threat to anyone.
Then Ananias was brought into the story. Ananias was an ordinary believer like you and me. He was called by God to act with extraordinary courage and faithfulness. He was called to go to Saul and lay hands upon him when he knew exactly who Saul was. He went to straight to Straight and found Saul, addressed him not as the number one enemy of the church, but as “Brother” and Saul’s sight was restored. Saul ate. Saul was filled with the light of Jesus and the Spirit opened his eyes. He was given a new identity “in Christ.” The Jewish Saul became the worldly Paul, with a new mission of building a new community wherever he went. This new community would include the most unlikely people. He was converted and transformed and sent out. But it was not a religious conversation--meaning from Judaism to Christianity. He was converted from destructive, violent exclusiveness to a builder of a new, diverse community that included male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, young and old, and on and on.
Paul's is a very big conversion which many refuse to make. It can give me a feeling of “faith inferiority” because of all the times I have been knock off my horse I’ve yet to see a blinding light and hear a voice from heaven. (OK, maybe that’s a good thing!) So let me remind us of a few things: Paul’s transformation was a positive turning toward the future. We receive the same call. God finds a way to reach us. We may be stopped in our tracks, we may be knocked off “our high horse.” Or, God will find a way to enter quietly into our lives and turn our attention away from old angers, old prejudices, old convictions, old conclusions.
This story is about God touching two lives, Saul and Ananias, two unlikely people from diverse backgrounds. I challenge you to reflect on your lives. Look back on the times when you have felt the hand of God on your life or when a light switched on inside of you. At those times, you stood at a crossroads, you had a choice.
Also, it didn’t happen right that moment on the road to Damascas for Saul. It took some time. It took some help. It took Ananias, who was not, for all we know, a spectacular, charismatic leader. We never hear of him again. We all have those kind of people in our lives: people God has called and placed strategically here and there to remind us of our potential, our goodness, our specialness, our call. Without them, we would not be who we are today.
God calls us to be that gift for others. God does not hesitate to call ordinary, little known people like you and me to be courageous, to help another find their way in life. It is God who has the big picture. It is you and me who helps others, not in a way that takes away, in a way that builds up and believes and trusts and encourages.
We live our lives in circumstances that may be dramatic once in awhile. Mostly we live everyday and common lives. God's amazing grace is present and sufficient in every one of us and in all circumstances. And even if it takes us some time, God is with us all the way, in every moment of our lives.
Amen.