January 30, 2005 Sermon

Paul the Apostle
Acts 9:1-21

We must clear a tall hurdle in order to hold onto our faith in God. We must deal with the difference between how spectacularly God once changed the lives of believers, and how those changes seem to happen with a big yawn today. Or do they?

Abraham, Moses, David, Ezekiel, Mary, Jesus, Saul: each experienced the intense, awe-inspiring presence of God. Abraham met an angel who correctly predicted that he and his elderly wife would have a baby. Moses met a burning bush. A priest picked David out of a lineup and told him he was the apple of God’s eye. Ezekiel saw wild visions. Mary heard from Gabriel, God’s own trumpet. Jesus—well, we don’t know everything God said and did for him, but we do know it was quite a lot.

Then came Saul. Let’s call him Paul—for that’s what the book of Acts will call him. Saul and Paul are one and the same. Fresh from Tarsus , a great port city in Turkey and a new graduate of Pharisees’ school, Paul first appears to us as he holds the coats of the men stoning Stephen to death. The Jewish leaders had thought executing Jesus would make those pesky followers of his melt away. Now here comes Stephen, stirring them up again, openly claiming this ignorant carpenter from Nazareth is the Messiah! Stephen must be silenced. When they do silence him, Paul watches and approves.

Paul immediately starts a new Search-And-Destroy career. He searches for Christians and hands them over to the authorities for destruction. A devout Pharisee living in Jerusalem , Paul knew about Jesus’ clashes with his colleagues. He knew Jesus had often broken God’s covenant Law. He knew that the people were strangely drawn to Jesus, that many believed—against all logic—that he really was God’s Chosen Messiah. And he feared that the Romans would not long put up with any public unrest caused by these lying followers of Jesus.

So Paul started “breathing threats and murder against the followers of Jesus.” He dug the dirt on them, undoubtedly using informants and threatening Christians already in custody in order to get more names. He even went to the high priest and demanded a letter of introduction so he could take his crusade against Jesus’ followers on the road—to Damascus , the great city of Syria some ninety miles to the north.

We pick up the story as Paul walks toward Damascus . He sees a blinding flash of light and hears the voice of God. Those traveling with him hear that voice, too, as it asks, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

“Who are you, Lord?” he asks, and we can just imagine Paul thinking, “If the next words are, ‘I am Jesus’, I am toast.”

The next words were, “I am Jesus.”

But instead of burning to a crisp Paul lives to hear the full message: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” Paul obeys, though he suddenly finds he cannot see. For three days. Where have we heard of that time span?

Meanwhile, God has appeared to a follower of Jesus living in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord tells him to go find Paul at a fellow Jew’s house (a man named Judas, as a matter of fact), and to pray and lay hands on Paul so he can get back his sight. Ananias answers, more or less, “Are you out of your mind?!? No disrespect, God, but do you know what this Paul guy has been up to? And you want me to help him?!?”

To which God replies, more or less, “Go. This man is my chosen instrument. He will preach my name to the whole world. And he will suffer for it.” Ananias did not keep arguing. He did as he had been told. Paul got back his sight. He got baptized. And he “immediately began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’”

Two layers of doubt stand between Paul and his new career as the greatest evangelist in history. First he must overcome his own massive doubt that Jesus is the Messiah. Second, he must overcome the understandable doubts of the believers, who know him as the man most likely to threaten them. Both might seem like insurmountable obstacles. Together, they add up to a hurdle that only God could clear.

But clear it God does. It makes our hurdle look puny. You remember our hurdle: believing that God used to do spectacular things to get people’s attention, but no longer does. Can we believe that God still acts when we do not see obvious evidence? Can we believe that God still works in people’s lives—in our lives?

On this side of the hurdle we wonder whether we can believe the Bible. If these ancient stories tell of miracles and visions and things we no longer experience in our time, does that make those stories false? Maybe they’re myths, like the myths about Hercules, or about the Greek gods jumping in and out of human bodies and making mischief. Can we trust the Bible when the events it portrays simply do not happen any more?

Or do they? I asked that question back at the beginning of this sermon. Do miracles still happen? Do visions and signs from God still come to people? People testify to having seen angels. Do we write them off as psychologically needy? People testify to believing God gives them clear guidance on decisions they face. Do we think they’re fooling themselves? Or do we fear that we’re fooling ourselves?

My advisor in seminary, Richard Armstrong, served as pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis before coming to teach. He left the most prestigious pulpit in the state of Indiana, a congregation that included the Governor and sports stars and thousands of gifted, active members. He took a substantial pay cut to go teach. Why did he do it? Because, he often told people, God had spoken to him in a series of dreams. Troubled by these dreams, he sought his wife’s opinion. To his surprise, she told him to do it. He asked a few elders. They told him that if God was calling, he had better answer. Hundreds of churches, including this one, have been better served by their pastors because he did.

Now what do we make of a highly educated, thoroughly modern man who hears God in dreams and changes his life dramatically in obedience to what enters his head while it rests on a pillow?

And what do we make of it when miracles do not happen to us?

In both cases we usually do what seems logical: we quietly doubt God. It turns out that this hurdle I have mentioned is really more of a screen, a smoke screen we hide behind. We hide behind our doubts. We hide behind our questions about the Bible and dreams and miracles.

All the while, God waits patiently to convert us, to convert us to ministry just as he converted Paul. Paul became an apostle, a man sent out into the world by God to witness to the love of Jesus Christ. I believe God calls each of us to ministry. Together, we need to creep out from behind our screens and see the light. We need to let God go to work in our lives. The call may be loud and proud; it might be quiet as a whisper. Either way, a lifetime of purpose awaits us.

Paul became an apostle, one sent by God to minister in the name of Jesus. In our own small ways, we can follow in his footsteps.