United Parish of Bowie: Sermon -- Damascus Road (Acts 9:1-20)

Biblical Reading:

9Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest ²and 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. ³Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. ⁴He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? ⁵He asked, Who are you, Lord? The reply came, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. ⁶But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. ⁷The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. ⁸Saul 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. ⁹For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

¹⁰Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias. He answered, Here I am, Lord. ¹¹The Lord said to him, Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, ¹²and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight. ¹³But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; ¹⁴and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name. ¹⁵But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; ¹⁶I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. ¹⁷So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. ¹⁸And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, ¹⁹and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, ²⁰and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, He is the Son of God.

Acts 9:1-20

The foundational stories of our faith community are often stories of radical change. Abraham was told to uproot his family and move to an unknown land. Mary's life changed with the announcement from an angel… In the gospel, all sorts of people's lives changed as they encountered Christ throughout his life and ministry. After Jesus was crucified, eleven men changed because they were convinced that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead. And our scripture today is one of the favorite conversion stories in the whole bible. It's the story of Saul, who became Paul and eventually wrote quite a few of the books of the New Testament.

If you've read the book of Acts, you've met Saul before and before this point, none of it was in a good way. At the end of chapter seven, a man named Stephen was stoned to death after he gave a particularly stinging critique of the council of religious leaders. And according to the text, the men who were stoning Stephen laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul," who approved of the stoning. In this part of the book of Acts, Luke tells of a time was a time when the persecution of Christians was escalating and Saul wanted to be right in the middle of it. Chapter 8 continues by telling us that he ravaged the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, and committing them to prison." And at the beginning of our passage, we get more of the same: Saul was breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He went to the high priest and asked for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found anyone who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bind them up and bring them to Jerusalem. As he started down the road to Damascus, his plan was to find anyone and everyone who proclaimed Christ and tear them down. He probably would have preferred all of them to meet the same fate as Stephen. By the time this story would have taken place, the vast majority of the people who wanted to silence Jesus by having him crucified would have also wanted to silence his followers because they kept telling the stories of his life, and worse, they kept telling anyone who would listen, that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Saul probably wasn't the only one who wanted to take justice into his own hands by hunting down Christians, but he was a special case because his plans weren't the end of what happened on the road to Damascus. It was there that Saul's life changed direction.

As he was walking He saw a light and heard a voice. He was blinded and knocked down to the ground. He didn't eat or drink for three days. It's quite a conversion story… in fact it's pretty incredible. And the first thing that struck me as I read the story of Saul's dramatic conversion is how little Saul actually acts in this story. He's mentioned, nearly every passage has something either about him or happening to him, but it's almost as if he's just along for the ride. There was nothing he did to deserve it, there was nothing he did to make it happen. He sure didn't ask for it, and in reality there was nothing he could do to keep it from happening. Whether he liked it or not, the power of God, the grace of God, was at work changing him, forming him… remaking him into something that he didn't yet know. Flannery O'Connor said about Saul, I reckon the Lord knew that the only way to make a Christian out of that one was to knock him off his horse. Even though a horse wasn't mentioned in the passage, she was right on because she realized that this conversion story, just like every other conversion story is about what God is doing.

And you know, the more I thought about it the more I realized that Saul's story is pretty tough to relate to… The account we get is pretty distant from most of our experience. I mean God is God and God can do whatever God wants to do. So I'm not going to say that God can't or God won't work in dramatic ways. In fact I know that there are some pretty dramatic stories even within this congregation… but I think it's safe to say that most of us go through our entire lives without ever being knocked down to the ground and blinded by a light from heaven. There are other things that impact and shape our lives and some of them are pretty major. But for the most part, we breathe in, we breathe out… we live common lives. Every day we go about our normal business… The days stretch into months which stretch into years, and the years go together to make up a life. We can look back and see how God has been at work at various points in time… and our stories of conversion, our stories of formation, for better or worse take place in the little things that happen in life as much as in the big things. So often, our conversion is more like a series of small steps that add together over time as we're formed into the people we're constantly becoming and as Christians we trust and we believe that God is at work even in those little moments.

So for those of us who never have been knocked down by a blinding light, I think it may be easier for us to relate to the other person mentioned in the story of Saul's conversion… Ananias. His role was much less dramatic… He didn't become a world renowned preacher. He didn't write any books of the bible. He never was knocked over and didn't see the blinding light. In a lot of ways Ananias was an ordinary Christian who was called, and who answered. That's something we can all aspire to. And to make it even closer to home, it took some convincing for him to answer… When the Lord called his name, his first response was a good one… Here I am he said. But when the Lord told him to go and find Saul… he said, um… you want me to do what? Do you know who this guy is? Ananias had heard of Saul. He knew that Saul was someone who had it out for the disciples, and he knew that Saul was on the way to Damascus to bind and imprison any Christian he could get his hands on… of course what he didn't know was that one day that Saul, who became Paul would write if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; Ananias didn't know the entirety of the good that would result from his actions, and yet he did go as he was called to do. It took a little reassurance and he may have been justifiably afraid, but he went. There was no way he could be sure that things were going to turn out alright, but he went. And that's the important thing… and then when he got there he went an extra step. He didn't just go and lay hands on Saul like he was told to do, he also extended an undeserved courtesy and an offer of forgiveness. Brother Saul he said. No longer persecutor… no longer murderer… no longer bringer of fear. Because of who Jesus is and because of what the Lord has done, even Saul is a brother. It's no wonder that reconciliation became a major theme in Paul's life and writings… because that was his first experience of what Christian fellowship meant. So when Paul wrote There's no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female you are all one in Jesus Christ. It was because someone had first shown him that grace.

To be sure, the story isn't about Ananias, but Ananias did play a role in Saul's conversion on the Damascus road. If the story stopped there, we would probably still celebrate it as an amazing bit of intervention to protect and keep the disciples safe. But the story doesn't stop there. The road to Damascus isn't just a story of conversion… it's also a story of call. What God was doing was bigger than keeping the disciples safe from a particular persecutor and it was bigger than Saul's personal conversion experience. He went through a period of being blind, being helpless, being utterly dependent on other people to do pretty much anything and when he was able to see again, he saw differently. When he got to the city, just as he had planned to do, the goal of his journey had already changed. What God had in mind was the mission to the gentiles… Saul went through an incredible conversion in order that he would become an instrument for God's purpose in the world. Conversion and call go together hand in hand. Sometimes it's dramatic, and easy to see…when we encounter Jesus in the dramatic moments in our lives, that encounter always changes us… but like I said, often our conversion is more like a series of small steps that add together over time as we're formed into the people we're constantly becoming. And when it happens like that, in the smaller, more mundane ways, not only is it harder to see in the moment, it's also harder to recognize the call that comes along with the conversion. So what do we do?

We ask the question, where is God in this. When our hearts are restless, when we find ourselves searching and feeling like there has to be more than the normal routines, when we're ready to try something different in the hopes that it gives a greater sense of purpose or deeper sense of meaning to our lives, that's where conversion starts… that's where we realize that the story's only partly about us… that's where we're invited to pay a role in what God's doing in the world. And so we ask where is God in this? Conversions begin all the time and we need them to happen all the time so that we can continually reorient toward God's hoped for future. And as God finds a way to reach us, whether we need to be knocked down like Saul or whether we need to be reassured like Ananias, that future comes a little closer to reality as we respond like Ananias, Here I am Lord and as we respond like Paul, sharing God's love to the ends of the earth. Amen.

The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on the Third Sunday after Easter, April 25, 2010.