Introduction
Saul (also named Paul) on the road to Damascus is one of the
best known Bible stories, and also a difficult story to say what it means for
us today. Many Bible passages are harder to apply than we think. What the
author meant to say in the original contexts is one thing; what that passage
says to us today is another. In this case, there are several themes we could
look at.
We could examine the theme of Jew and Gentile in God’s reign. That would be a worthwhile
examination, and fits well with the larger story of Acts. The way that our hero
changes his name from Saul (a Jewish name) to Paul (a Roman name) reflects this
idea. At different times in his ministry, Saul-Paul acts as a Jew or as a Roman
citizen. In 1 Corinthians 9 he says that he uses whichever identity will help
to bring people to Christ (verses 19-23). In today’s passage, God sends Ananias
to Saul and God tells him that Saul is his chosen instrument to bring salvation
to the Gentiles. This is a good theme worth exploring, but we leave it aside
this morning.
We could look at the
relationship of Law and Gospel. As a Pharisee, Saul had committed himself
to the Law of Moses. That commitment fueled his anger when he set off on the
road to Damascus to kill anyone following “The Way”, this new sect of people
following the Rabbi Jesus. He saw correctly that Jesus challenged the central
position of the Law in Judaism and replaced it with himself, so he set out to
defend the law and to persecute Jesus’ disciples. Paul called himself a
Pharisee to the end of his life, but here in Acts 9 he changes from being a
Pharisee for the law (Philippians 3) to becoming a Pharisee for the gospel of
God (Romans 1.) This is also a good theme, but we leave aside it as well.
We could consider the
continued growth of the church in places like Damascus and Antioch. The
persecution in which Saul participated led to the growth of the church outside
of Jerusalem, fulfilling Jesus’ words in Acts 1:8—“You will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” God uses such
terrible events as persecution to bring about good results, which encourages us
in our own troubles. But this theme also we leave aside.
I want to look at something else: Why did God use miraculous dramatic phenomena to convert Saul? The
drama is there for a purpose. Why is it there?
Paul’s Conversion
At one level this incident is too unusual to serve as a model
for us. God does not strike most people blind as part of their conversion. When
our baptismal candidates tell their faith stories, we don’t have many who heard
a voice speaking to them from Heaven or saw a vision, while other people with
them heard the voice but saw nothing. Our faith stories would be more exciting
if they included the kind of supernatural phenomena that Paul experienced, but
in fact such things are rare. So why did God appear so miraculously to Paul,
and not to everyone else? Sometimes we may think that God does not appear to us
like this because God is done with miracles. We may think that we should not
expect to see such things today. I agree that we should not normally look for
miracles, but it is wrong to think that such things no longer happen.
Last week I was at a meeting in Ontario. As we ate lunch, a
visitor (I’ll call him John) started telling stories of an international church
he had pastored in an Arab country. The church was made up of expatriates with
no Arab believers, but over the years he said he saw about 20 Arab Muslims come
to faith in Jesus—mostly through dreams of Jesus. Here in one such story.
(Note: I may have the details right or not. This is as I remember the
conversation. John gave me permission to tell the story, keeping it anonymous,
but it is still his story.)
A man had a series of dreams in which he saw Mohammed.
Finally he called out that he wanted to follow him. Mohammed turned to him and
said, “Don’t follow me. Follow him”, and pointed to a shadowy figure. As the
man looked, the figure turned to him, and he saw that it was Jesus. (John
wondered what Jesus looked like, but this man could not tell him; only that he
knew it was Jesus.) One Sunday as he was driving home, the steering wheel of
his car locked up going through the intersection where he would normally turn.
The steering wheel then turned on its own accord, through several more
intersections, almost as if possessed. Finally he pulled off the road to find a
telephone and call for help. He saw a church across the road and went to it to
use the phone. It happened to be Easter, and John was conducting the Easter
Sunday service. He said that they all saw this robed and turbaned Arab enter
the service and sit down. When the service was over, John was greeting people
at the door, but did not see the man. After everyone else had left, John went
in to look for him. He found him prostrated at the cross. When he asked what
was happening, he heard the story I have told. That man became the first
Muslim-background believer in their church—because Jesus came to him in a
dream.
John told another story similarly miraculous, one of about
20 he had observed. I believe that God still acts in miraculous ways in our
world. Although such events are rare, they do take place.
A Hard Question
So why does God not intervene like this in everyone’s life?
Surely then everyone would be saved! This is a hard question, and we do not
know the answer. I can tell you only what I think is probably happening. God’s
normal path for all of us is to invite us to come to him: “Come all who are
worn out from carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew
11:28). Or, in the words that Jesus uses to the church at Laodicea (Revelation
3:20): “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and
opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” In
context, these verses are directed to Christians, but they express the
essential invitation Jesus gives to all. We have the choice to accept his
invitation. This is why Paul describes his own ministry as one of invitation in
2 Corinthians 5: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, and has
given to us the ministry and message of reconciliation. We are Christ’s
ambassadors, therefore I appeal to you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to
God!” (My own free paraphrase.)
Now for choices to be real choices, they must also be free.
If Jesus overwhelms us with his presence, so that we worship God by force, that
is not conversion. That is judgment. But God knows everyone’s heart, so when God
intervenes so dramatically, we can guess that the person involved was truly
seeking God with all their heart. I believe that was true for Paul. He had committed
himself fully to God’s Law because he wanted to know God. The Law says, “Love
the Lord you God with all your heart.” Paul did that, and God intervened
dramatically to turn him from the way of death to the way of life.
This is truly beyond our understanding. This is mystery in
its fullest sense. When we push this idea out to its logical end, either Paul
freely chose to follow God—and so he initiated his own salvation, or God chose
Paul without Paul’s choice—and so God initiated his salvation. Would God save
Paul against Paul’s will? I don’t believe so. Dare we suggest that somehow Paul
earned God’s grace? Of course not. Both choices, it seems to me are wrong.
Paul himself describes what happens this way (Philippians 2:13):
“Therefore, my dear friends, … continue to work out your salvation with fear and
trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to
fulfill his good purpose.” Work out your salvation—seek God with all your
heart. God works in you—we can do nothing without God’s grace.
The question comes back now in a different way. We can see
why God does not always save people this way—God leaves us with a choice to
respond to the divine invitation. But why did God save Paul this dramatic way? Again,
we really don’t know, but again I have a guess. The Pharisees were a major roadblock
to the spread of the gospel, because they wanted to keep Gentiles outside God’s
reign. By bringing Paul into Christian faith, God opened the door to the whole
Gentile world. You can see this in the angel’s words to Ananias, “This man is
my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to
the people of Israel.” Similarly in the story I told of the Arab seeker, there
is a major population of our world who are closed to the invitation Jesus
gives; their dramatic conversion through dreams breaks through the barriers
that people have erected against the gospel.
I think, then, that God uses such dramatic conversions to
open doors to the gospel so that more and more people can hear the invitation
to come to Jesus and receive life. I don’t know this. Isaiah asks us who can
know the mind of God (Isaiah 40:12-14), and I certainly cannot say that I do. I
am only guessing, based on the simple truth that we do know: God wants to save
sinners. God wants to save everyone. Hear God’s words to Ezekiel (33:11): “As
surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death
of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn
from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?” Again, as Jesus said
about Zaccheus (Luke 19:9-10): Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to
this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came
to seek and to save the lost.” Jesus came to save, not to condemn. You see that
we can refuse the invitation, but Jesus desires no one’s death. Jesus wants all
people to come to him and receive life. That is why he came to Saul so
dramatically.
Years later, Paul remembered this coming with gratitude (1
Corinthians 15: 3-10): “For what I received I passed on to you as of first
importance: that Christ died for our sins …, that he was buried, that he was
raised on the third day …, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the
Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and
sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have
fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of
all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I … do not even
deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by
the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.
No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was
with me.”
Bring It Home to Us
So what do we do with Saul’s conversion today? What is God
saying to you and to me this morning?
Some simple points.
1. Jesus, Be the Centre
Every one of us has placed
something at the centre of our lives. For Paul, it was the Torah, Law of God.
For you and me it may be our membership in the Mennonite Church. It may be the
good name of SMC—or of one of the families here. It may be a commitment to be properly
Evangelical, or Anabaptist. I must tell you and remind myself, anything other
than Jesus at the centre becomes an idol and can separate us from God. You
don’t have to be a renegade to push God away. All you have to do is put
something other than Jesus at the centre of your life. I plead with you this
morning, keep Jesus at the centre. Nothing else will do. A Spanish song I have
come to love says, “Solo Dios basta”: Only God can fill us; only God can
satisfy.
2. Jesus, Do This in Us
Sometimes we think that we can make
this change—from one centre to another in our lives—on our own. We can’t. You
cannot on your own place God fully at the centre of your life. Something else
will always come in, and we cannot save ourselves. It is just not possible. Sometimes
we call ourselves “Jesus-followers”. Our own congregation’s mission statement
echoes this language: “Steinbach Mennonite Church is faithfully following
Christ in worship and service by making disciples, building community and
reaching out to the world.” We are Christ-followers. But this image contains a
weakness; it can suggest that you and I just need to follow Jesus, and that we
have the strength to do this. We don’t.
This past week we had a course on
Anabaptist history and Theology at Providence. One of the members of the class
recalled several different people in his congregations who said something like
this near the end of their lives: “I hope I’ve been good enough to go to Heaven.”
Ouch! Our hope of salvation rests in Christ’s work on the cross for you and me,
not on anything we can do. I remember C.J. Dyck teaching the same course at
AMBS about 35 years ago. One day in class he told us about an old Amish Bishop
he had visited. C.J. asked him, “Brother, is your salvation by grace, or must
you earn it with your life?” The old Bishop replied, “Oh brother Dyck, it’s all
by grace! It’s all by grace!” He was right. This leads to my last thought.
3. Christ IN You
Conversion for Paul—and for us—is a
complete change of heart and mind. We are reborn (to use the image from John’s
gospel) so that Christ lives within us. Paul describes this mystery in Colossians
1 as “the mystery
that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now revealed to the
Lord’s people.… This mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
The mystery revealed in Paul’s conversion
and in all of us is that Christ lives in us. Whether you come to Christ in a
quiet way through your parents’ upbringing (my mother came to Christ at age
five), or whether God breaks into your life with dreams and visions and
lightning flashing—in every case it takes a miracle. Whether you come from a
life of addiction or a life of good deeds, it takes a miracle. Whether you come
from a life of heartbreak and pain or a life of ease, it takes a miracle. Whether
you come from a life of fighting for justice or a life of success in all you
do, it takes a miracle.
For Christ to live in you and in me takes
the miracle of God’s grace. One thing for certain that the story of Saul-Paul
tells us is that God will do whatever it takes to bring you to faith and give
you new life. In the end, the Damascus Road is for everyone.
Steinbach Mennonite
Church
22 May 2016
Acts 9: 1-19
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