There are some Bible stories that are so familiar to long time church goers that they can lose their power. The story of Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus is one such story – it’s even an expression you will hear in regular media or conversation, people have a ‘Damascus moment’. But as is often the case, the story still packs a punch, even all these thousands of years later, even all this distance from the Middle East.
In this story Paul is referred to as Saul, his name in Hebrew. Paul had a foot in two cultures, the Hellenistic Greek, in which his name is interpreted as Paul, and the Hebrew, Saul. In called Saul by his Hebrew name it’s as if Jesus is reminding Saul of who and whose he truly is. One of God’s people, part of God’s story.
Jesus said of Saul, “…he is an instrument whom I have chosen.” (Acts 9:15) Imagine being chosen as an instrument of Christ, to make God’s will and way known to the world. Imagine if I were to tell you, the people of Comox United Church, and maybe some of you who have never darkened these doors before, that you are vessels of God’s work in the world, people chosen to voice God’s nature in the world. No expression of unworthiness would get you off the hook, no uncomfortable wriggling about your inadequacy. Remember that Jesus called Saul of all people – someone who had set out with murder in his heart to persecute Jesus’ followers.
Paul was a Pharisee, part of the religious class considered the most accurate interpreters of the laws of Torah. “As [a] political and religious force in Israel, the Pharisees were in a position not only to interpret law but also to [transmit] new law.” (Roetzel 48) Paul was a very well educated, cosmopolitan, professional and deeply religious Boomer. And he was an enforcer.
We first meet Paul on the road to the city of Damascus. He is chasing down believers of the Way, a messianic movement within Judaism that believes the risen Jesus is God’s Messiah (Act’s 4:26). This belief was both religiously and politically dangerous. There was deep division within the Jewish community as to whether Jesus was indeed the Messiah that they had been waiting for. And it was politically subversive to declare that God, not Caesar, was ruler of the world. And before we claim any sense of superiority over those who would kill each other because of religious differences I’d remind you of the long running disputes in our Christian heritage regarding who represents the true faith.
After his experience on the road to Damascus Paul traveled all over the Mediterranean world preaching passionately about the Good News of Jesus Christ, about the new heaven and the new earth which had broken into our history with the resurrection of Christ. Small churches sprung up where he visited, and when he moved on he wrote letters to the followers he left behind, letters that form much of our New Testament. He was at the height of his church planting career between the years 54 and 58, maybe 20 some years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
But before all that, he was struck down on the road to Damascus. Like a quarter back on his way down the field Paul is tackled from behind, brought to the ground and rendered unconscious by a force he didn’t see coming. His resulting religious insight was not the fruit of thorough thinking, not the conclusion to a carefully worked out hypothesis, but a theophany of such light and such force that he is knocked to the ground and left blinded. In a daze he hears a voice calling to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Paul is puzzled, to say the least. “Who are you, Lord?” he asks, acknowledging at least that he is in the presence of some great power. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” comes the reply. “But get up and enter the city and you will be told what to do.”
No wonder Paul blacked out. The risen Jesus, the one Paul denies exists, the source of the religious and political turmoil that Paul is trying to stamp out, is speaking. To him. He is blind sided, the wind knocked out of his lungs, his eyes occluded by the light, by a new truth, a new world, a new creation. Not only is it true what they say, God has raised Jesus from the dead, but even more than that, it is true what they say, God’s love embraces all. Even the persecutor.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city and you will be told what to do.” Notice the power of this word, but. You Saul, are a violent man. You have participated in the arrest, torture and murder of my followers, but…I call you still. But – you too are embraced in the grace and love of God and you too are called to serve the One who has come. But – get up, and I will tell you what to do.
For the first time in my years of preaching on this passage I noticed this phrase: “and though his eyes were open, but he could see nothing.’ (Acts 9:8) It reminded me of the work we are doing here at Comox United, indeed the work so many congregations are doing these days. Our eyes are open, we know we have work to do, we know we’re undergoing an enormous shift and encountering enormous challenges – our eyes are open to that – but we can see nothing, we struggle to see the path before us. You’ve been there for a while but here’s the good news – the way is opening, all the work you have been doing with the Visioning Team is coming to fruition, and I truly believe that sight will be restored, is indeed being restored right now. You are beginning to recognize your place in the story of our faith.
Paul had always been a learned and faithful Jew. He lived within the narrative of the Old, or the Hebrew Testament, a narrative of creation and covenant, salvation, and end times. He lived, as Jesus did, as a participant in that narrative – not standing outside the story as we tend to do but living within the story as people with a place and a purpose.
“The main point about narratives in [Paul’s world] is not simply that people liked telling stories as illustrations of, or scriptural proofs for, this or that experience or doctrine, but rather that [the] Jews believed themselves to be actors within a real-life narrative. (N.T. Wright, Paul, p.9)
Paul’s experience is that with the resurrected Christ appearing and speaking to him on the road to Damascus the story has run beyond the last page and he, Paul is a character in a new chapter, a new chapter not yet completed. A new creation, a new heaven and a new earth have opened up, and Paul falls forward into the future of God’s promise fulfilled.
All of Paul’s authentic letters struggle to write a continuation to the narrative, to identify a new path that follows the Way of the past but travels into an unknown horizon. “Paul [now] believed…[that his] role within the overall purpose of Israel’s God…was to call the nations, urgently, to loyal submission to the one who had now been enthroned as Lord of the world.” (Wright, p. 157)
As Paul recovered from his epiphany experience, Jesus promised to tell him what to do in this new time. And Jesus continues to tell us, to lure and lead us beyond the end of the world as we know it and into the future of God’s people, God’s church, God’s promise fulfilled. We too are instruments of God’s future. We too are characters in an as yet incomplete chapter of God’s story. With the resurrection of Christ it is time for the people of God, in solidarity with the Spirit “…to improvise a way through the unscripted period between the opening scenes and the closing one.” (Wright, 172) It is time for you, the people of Comox United Church, as an Easter people in this eternal season of Easter, to know yourselves part of a larger, history encompassing story, and to acknowledge that a new chapter is being written. And, as unnerving as this may be, through the risky grace of a noncoercive God, you hold the pen.
You do not do this blind. Your eyes are open. Over the last few months we have been thinking about who you are called to be and what you are called to next. You have voiced your ideas and your dreams to the Visioning Team. Soon both they and the search committee will report to you what they’ve heard you say, and you will determine next steps in your lives together, as God’s instrument in the world. Your vision is being restored. Be not afraid.
What a wonderful time to be part of the church, a time in which you are part of the unfolding story, a part of the new creation. May we too follow the Way, picking it up from our past and discerning it into our future.
Amen