Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, January 18th, 2009
Acts 9:1-14

There is an interesting dynamic with this famous conversion story – in parts of Christendom it is the pivotal, archetypal story. In other areas of the church, like ours, it is often seen as a scary, unfamiliar and easily dismissed story.

I remember reading about Franklin Graham’s rise to take over the ministry of his father, Billy Graham. Reading about his life journey in a magazine like Christianity Today – the Newsweek of the Evangelical Church – I learned that he was a rebellious son who returned to the church only after a long period of motorcycle riding, drinking, and general cavorting in the world. The story made a big deal of the fact that of all Billy Graham’s children, this was the one who rebelled the most and had the most dramatic and ‘life changing’ conversion back to the fold. When I looked further into the story, I discovered this “long period” was a couple of years when he was a late teenager and in his early 20’s.

At first I was offended by what seemed like a misleading story about his life – until I realized mostly it was telling his story through a different narrative lens – a lens which sees dramatic conversion stories as a critical piece of the journey of faith. It is a faith tradition rooted in the traditional version of this conversion story. There is nothing wrong with this view – indeed for Paul, this conversion was very real – so real in fact that he compared it to the resurrection appearances of the other disciples. It was life changing and the cornerstone the most significant movement within the early Church.

While we may not need, or may even rebel against, a spiritual narrative that sees a dramatic conversion as necessary, is there anything in this story of Saul that is valuable to us? I wonder if it is possible to see some intersection between this story, the life with live and the faith we profess?

As we explore it today – I would also invite us to think about how this story works in our lives – socially, internally, within our relationships. Is it a metaphor for some aspect of the human drama in which we live?

Reading and hearing this story again – and I confess it has been a while since I read this story closely – I see three movements

Fighting For One’s Life

What I am struck by as I reread the story is the amazing struggle and intensity within the first section. Threats, murder, followers of Jesus bound and dragged to Jerusalem. The text reveals an amazing struggle between some Jews and some followers of “the way.” These are people who not too long ago were in the same religious community. One has to believe that if this was intense as it appears, it was also an intense time within the subset following Jesus – as they tried to deal with and make sense of the strident opposition. In the context of the story, it seems like a potent time to declare one’s faith, an incredible time to build a sense of community.

While this is probably an historical story – it is in our bible because it is also a metaphor for us. It is a metaphor that matches some of our life experiences as we struggle internally with important but conflicting questions; struggle within relationships that are both life giving and life draining; struggle within our culture between different points of view, experiences of the world, and expectations of one another.

Some of the conflict is of our own doing, some of it just lands at our feet by surprise, much of it is a mixture of both. But we know this intensity – if not the actual experience of being bound – certainly in many other ways.

As we read it then, this first movement of fighting for our lives is something we know, is it not?

The second movement involves Saul being blinded by transcendence

We see this strident and threatening man walking with confidence and certainty to the city of Damascus. He eventually got to Damascus, but not the way he expected. “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him, and he fell to the ground” blind and speechless. After being felled he hears a voice from heaven saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

In knocking Saul down and calling his name, God seems to be saying, Why a life of destruction? Anger? Violence? Persecution of those who preached love and compassion and healing? Why does it take a blinding light to get your attention? To pull you out of your negative and unhelpful ways? Why do I have to knock you to the ground?

What I see in this part of the story is incredible vulnerability in the face of a transcendent
God. I see someone whose life path pushed him finally to the point of being knocked down. There is no doubt that he felt exposed, afraid, un-moored and unhinged.

And I wonder, what are the ways our lives and our life choices have put us into a very tight corner, have exposed us and stripped us of our imagined protection? What are the ways we act and live that persecute others that go against our own values?

The temptation with this story for Saul is to think that it needs to be dramatic. For some, it can be and in fact it needs to be.

But for others, this process of admitting and recognizing our vulnerability is much slower, much more subtle – but equally corrosive to our own soul. In his book, A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer uses the term “an divided life.”
• We refuse to invest ourselves in work – diminishing the quality and distancing ourselves from those we serve
• We make a living at jobs that violate our basic values, even when survival does not absolutely demand it
• We remain in settings or relationships that steadily kill off our spirits
• We conceal our true identity for fear of being criticized, shunned or attacked.

In the process, he writes, we lose touch with our souls and disappear into our roles at considerable cost to self, to others, and to the world at large…

Those of us who have face and admitted such divided life know that in the moment of discovery we feel just as blinded, just as vulnerable, just as out of sync with what our life can be as Saul’s experience.

Yet, the story keeps moving into the experience of blessing and redemption

This story doesn’t end with Saul knocked off his feet and blind and speechless. Saul is invited to participate in God’s offer of redemption. He is invited to engage with Ananias – in Damascus but one whom Paul now fears (and interesting twist on the beginning of the story that he has gone from creating fear to being afraid). God invites Saul to walk – still vulnerable – and to encounter one who will offer his hands in prayer, who will baptize Saul into forgiveness and grace, who will invite him into community (he was with the Damascus disciples for three days) and refreshment. Redemption for Saul was meted out in very tangible ways through a relationship with another.

It raises the wonderful and timeless question for us – are we open to God’s redemption? Are we open to participating in tangible ways in our own redemption?

About once a year we offer a service of healing in worship. While there is a great deal of mystery about the laying on of hands and prayers for healing, we do so in hopes that through our imperfect prayers and our physical touch, God can work God’s grace in new ways in our lives.

Some time ago, a person in this congregation who I didn’t know well at the time told me, a year after the fact, that offering herself for prayers of healing in this sanctuary was a life changing – and I would say redeeming – act. Walking up the aisle in this church was literally her Damascus Road – because to do so would be to publically and personally admit her need for healing around a difficult situation in her life. She said she felt very vulnerable, very raw, very unprotected as she walked up to a healing station. However, the act of prayer and laying on of hands and the sense of community combined to show her that there was a way out of her isolated pain and grief.

I am sure I haven’t captured her story completely, but what I heard was someone who took the risk to participate in God’s redemption in her own life. It required movement, trust in the face of fear, acceptance of her own humanity and the willingness to admit she needed redemption.

It was not maybe as dramatic as Saul’s conversion, but it was every bit as redeeming. Grace, when accepted and known, puts on a whole new path. Just as Saul had a good deal of relationship mending to do after his powerful experience, our redeeming doesn’t take away the work and pain and struggle of life. But it does offer us a new path – a path of transcendence, a path of hope, a path of new vision.

So I look at this story and I ask, where is this happening in my life? Where I am fighting hard to resist the overwhelming grace and joy life with God offers? Whether or not I am being as violent towards myself or others – how am I working overtime to distance myself from that very source and strength which can empower my life and give it focus? How am I resisting those who are worthy and willing companions?  Amen