Scripture: Acts 9:1-17

Transcription

1 A Terminator Turned Topsy-Turvy + Sermon No Easter Sunday, March 31, Peachtree Presbyterian Church, 3434 Roswell Rd NW, Atlanta, GA 30305; 404/ Dr. Victor D. Pentz Senior Minister + Scripture: Acts 9:1-17 Since the earliest days of Christian persecution in the Roman Empire, Christians have greeted one another in a special way on Resurrection morning. When two Christians meet, one will say, Christ has risen! The other person responds, He is risen, indeed! Let s try it. CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED! One Easter morning, my friend Sean got out of bed, walked into the kitchen and said, Boy, am I hungry! His small son David looked up from his seat at the kitchen table and said, I am hungry, indeed! Sean asked, David, are you making fun of what we say in church? David answered earnestly, No, Daddy, but our Sunday School teacher said if you really feel something, you should say, Indeed! We are indeed delighted that all of you are here to worship today. As you walked in, you should have been given a beautiful hand-painted butterfly made in China. I hope this gift will serve as a reminder that in a month, on May 5, Peachtree Presbyterian Church will be hosting a Missions Conference, and in that forum, we will have the opportunity to talk about Peachtree s extraordinary mission in China to bring improvements in the area of rural medicine. I hope you will be able to attend our conference and learn more about this tremendous ministry. You may be interested to know that there are six species of butterflies floating around the sanctuary today. From the very beginning of Christianity, the butterfly has been a symbol for Jesus Christ. In the beginning, Jesus was a humble caterpillar, an ordinary carpenter. Isaiah says, He had no form or comeliness, no beauty that we should desire him. On Good Friday, he entered into the cocoon of the tomb for three days. Then on Easter morning, Jesus burst out of the grave arrayed in all his glory as the risen Son of God. This morning I hope that these butterfly pins will symbolize for all of us the new life that Jesus Christ can bring through the power of his resurrection. Imagine waking up one morning and reading the following headlines in the Atlanta Journal- Constitution:

2 Dateline, New York: In a hastily-called press conference, the president of Pepsi today shocked the world by announcing that he actually preferred the taste of Coca-Cola. The now-former Pepsi boss said, Coke really is the real thing. It just tastes better. How likely is that headline? Or how about this one: Dateline, Hollywood: Today the rock star Madonna announced that she was resigning from show business in order to become a nun. She will be joining the Little Sisters of Charity and will auction off her worldly possessions at a giant yard sale in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Or how about this one: Dateline, the White House: Today President Bush called reporters into the Oval Office to announce that he is becoming a Democrat. A smiling Tom Daschle stood at his side. As hard as these scenarios are to imagine, I will tell you that the about face made by a man named Saul on the Damascus Road long ago was no less dramatic. Saul s fateful moment is recounted in Acts 9:1-21: Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord? Saul asked. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, he replied. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do. The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything. In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, Ananias! Yes, Lord, he answered. The Lord told him, Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight. Lord, Ananias answered, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name. But the Lord said to Ananias, Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show -2-

3 him how much he must suffer for my name. Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. All those who heard him were astonished and asked, Isn t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests? On Resurrection morning, this is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Would you join me in prayer? Lord, on this glorious Resurrection day, we pray that your heavenly presence would descend upon us and fill us with your life, your light, and your love. We pray that the entire world might know our Easter faith, and we ask this in the name of him who is alive forevermore, Jesus Christ. Amen. The man on the road that day was not a nice man. His heart was as hard as the road he traveled. We might even think of him as a sort of Middle Eastern terrorist. A terrorist is defined as someone who uses terror as a weapon against unarmed civilians. Saul had been an accomplice in the public murder of a man named Stephen. Now he was traveling from town to town, rounding up men and women who were suspected of being Christians, having them beaten and thrown into prison for no greater crime than believing that a Jewish carpenter had risen from the dead. But one day the terrorizer was turned topsy-turvy on the road to Damascus. Suddenly a light shone from heaven and knocked him to the ground, and a great voice said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Saul asked, Who are you, Lord? His question is amazing when you think about it. For his entire life, Saul had proclaimed himself a fervent believer worshiping, defending, and even killing for God; yet he did not know God. Someone once said, In the end, the great division is going to be among those people who know about God and those who know God. Who are you, Lord? Then Saul got some very bad news. The voice replied, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Oops. You can imagine that there followed a long silence. As Saul lay sprawled in the dust, he surely felt that everything he had ever held to be truth had suddenly been cut out from under him: his righteousness, his Jewishness, the law. But in this upheaval lay the seeds of a new life and truth. As someone has cleverly remarked, What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Creator calls a butterfly. As Saul lay in that deathlike state, he was transformed into a new person by the resurrection power of the risen Lord. -3-

4 Let me ask you a personal question. Why are you here this morning? Have you come here to take part in the festive annual celebration of a religious holiday, to listen to beautiful music and be inspired yet again by the thought that hope springs eternal? If that s all you re here for, I want to raise your expectations. If Jesus Christ, risen from the tomb and eternally alive, could come down and give Saul a Damascus Road experience, doesn t it follow that this morning he can give us a Roswell Road experience? Is Jesus alive or isn t he? I admire people who wear the bracelets that say W.W.J.D. They are making a fashion statement that tells the world where they stand. But this morning I want to suggest that the real question we should ask on Easter is not What Would Jesus Do? You could ask that about any dead guy. How would Handel conduct this piece of music? How would Sherlock Holmes solve this murder mystery? How would Dizzy Dean pitch to that batter? This morning we should be looking up and asking Jesus, what are you doing? (Randy Rowlands). In his power as the risen Christ, Jesus looks down and comes among us to say, I am as near as your breathing, and I am transforming you into new people by the power of my resurrection. We live in a world that adopts the attitude Once a caterpillar, always a caterpillar. For example, we give batteries of tests to children. Teachers look at the test results and say, Well, these results tell us what sort of child we re dealing with here. I can predict the path this child will most likely be on for the rest of his or her life. That is so wrong! As Christians, we believe in the transforming power of God s love in our lives. I agree with the Harvard pediatrician who said, If you want to see what a child is going to be like at the age of take a good long look at that child at the age of 18. God is not done with any of us yet. Humans and caterpillars have one thing in common. We are showcases for the transforming power of the Living God. People today long for transformation. We want our lives to be changed miraculously in an instant. Last week I did a double-take as I read the Sunday New York Times magazine insert. The magazine contained an article about the founding of Starbucks. In the article, the founder described the experience that made him want to start the Starbucks coffee empire: The founder of Starbucks had his Saul-onthe-road-to-Damascus epiphany in 1983 after he had gone to a tiny coffee bean store in Seattle and was handed a mug of freshly brewed coffee. He said, I took a small, tentative sip. My eyes shot right open! I felt as though I had discovered a whole new continent. That was strong coffee. Some of us buy coffee in order to feel a momentary sense of transformation from the caffeine. We also buy clothes in the hopes of transforming ourselves in some way. I was talking with one of our church elders who told me that he has been very concerned with the way his teenage daughters have been dressing recently. He told me that he said to them, I don t care how Britney Spears dresses, there will be no bare midriffs in this family. Whenever you get dressed, I want you to -4-

5 make sure you ve got your top pulled all the way down so we don t see any tummy! His daughters said, Yes, Daddy. But my friend the elder told me that a few weeks later, he was at a Buckhead restaurant waiting for his daughters to arrive. They walked in, and oh, my goodness, there were four inches of tummy showing! He was very upset. He cried out, I told you you re not supposed to dress that way! He was so upset that he pulled up his shirttail to expose his own midriff, tucked it in in back, and sat down again. Friends, the transformation we re talking about today is not a change in our outward appearance. On Resurrection Sunday, we are talking about a profound inner transformation of our motives and our desires, made possible by the death of God s Son on the cross. Only God can make this change in us. When we try to change ourselves, we engage in what someone has called first order change. That means we just try harder to do what we ve already been doing. We say, I m going to be better next week than I was last week. When a caterpillar eats a lot, he just becomes a fat caterpillar, nothing more. But what we are talking about on Easter is a change so dramatic that we refer to it using the same word that describes a caterpillar turning into a butterfly a metamorphosis into Christlikeness. In fact, the word that Jesus uses for change is metanoia, which comes from the same root word. Metamorphosis changes a creepy little worm into a glorious butterfly. How does God do that in our life? He does it by turning us upside down and inside out. There was Saul sprawled in the dust. Up to that point, Saul had been the CEO of his life. He had been in charge of his world. He would say, Jump, and people asked, How high? on their way up. Now he was struck blind. In that state of helpless dependency, he was taken by the hand and led into Damascus, where, the Voice said, You will now be told what you must do by the very people you have come to persecute. But he was astonished to find that when he arrived in Damascus, the people welcomed him with open arms. A man named Ananias came over, put his arms around Saul s shoulders and said, Brother Saul, you are now on our side. You re one of us. Did you ever notice that it is often in our times of greatest weakness that the love of the resurrected Christ touches us in a special way? A woman in our church told me that her 34-year-old cousin, a young mom, recently had a radical mastectomy because of breast cancer. She has been undergoing chemotherapy and has lost all of her hair. Our church member told me that as this young mom sat in her living room one afternoon, her four-year-old daughter walked in carrying a glass of water. The girl said, Mommy, I want to make your hair grow. Let me water it. In the love of that little girl, this young mom felt the love of the risen Christ. In our moments of suffering and in our moments of weakness like Saul and like this young mom we sense him coming to us with his greatest power. Do you have a place of weakness in your life this morning? Are you caught up in a struggle in your marriage, or with your family, or in your job, or with a friend? Perhaps you are struggling to trust God with some huge issue you face in life. Maybe you can sympathize with a cartoon I once saw. It -5-

6 showed two caterpillars talking to each other. A butterfly fluttered over their heads, and one caterpillar said to the other, You ll never get me up in one of those things! It is when we are in the grip of our fears that God can show us his greatest power. The other day I was with a longtime friend who is not a Christian. He has successfully evaded all attempts to turn him into a Christian. He is my project; I hope you all have projects people like that. My friend doesn t live here in Atlanta; he flew in for business. I picked him up at the airport, and we went out to dinner. I asked him how things were going in his business. I asked about his wife, and then I asked about his little sons, How are Tyler and Sammy are doing? He started talking about his little boys and how they are just starting sports. His boys are strong, happy, and healthy and as he was talking about them, tears began to stream down my friend s face. He got so choked up he couldn t speak any longer. I sat and watched as this man, who is not a believer, wept with gratitude for his children. I said, Bill, you have a very big problem. Who do you thank for the blessings that you enjoy in your life? There are many people in this world who have a problem with evil ; you have the problem of good. You have so many undeserved blessings. Maybe your Roswell Road experience this morning will come when you get knocked flat by the sudden realization of how blessed you are by the goodness of God. That is the risen Christ seeking one more avenue into your heart to love you into being a new person. That transforming power is the Bible s major evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Yes, the tomb was empty; yes, Jesus appeared to Peter, and to the twelve, and to five hundred of the brethren all at once; but the weight of the Bible s argument for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ lies in the number of people who said, I met him, and I ll never be the same again. How do you explain how a band of defeated quitters, who got scattered to the wind on Good Friday, could come together a few days later and launch a movement the likes of which this world has never seen before or since? There was something that made Jesus Christ more alive after Good Friday than he was before Good Friday. When this man, Saul, went from being the leader of the Stop the Church movement to the leader of the I want a church on every street corner movement, what happened? This nasty little terrorist went on to become the world s foremost acknowledged expert on the subject of love, so that even today, no bride considers her wedding complete until she has read the love poetry of this very man, who says, Love is patient, love is kind, it is not irritable or resentful, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things...and the greatest of these is love. Many people here today could stand up and tell their stories. Numbers of you would say, I ve met Jesus, and my life will never be the same again. You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart. This is the day when we Christians spread our wings and show our colors. Last year on Easter morning, if you recall, I gave out little crosses that many of us have carried in our pockets throughout the year. This year, we gave you something to wear on your lapel. I want to challenge every one of you -6-

7 Christians here today: in the coming week, will you wear that butterfly all day long for at least one day? People will ask you, What s that for? You could cop out and say, I m really into butterflies. I hope you don t do that. I hope you will answer, Oh, this is a symbol for Christians of the new life we have in Jesus Christ. They ll say, Oh, that s nice. And you will say, Indeed. Would you join me in prayer? Lord, we thank you for our Roswell Road experience, for the magnificent metamorphosis that you can bring about as our Risen Lord this very morning. Help us to show our true colors as Christians with our butterfly. We pray that the butterfly we wear, but most of all that the life we live behind that butterfly, will let the whole world know that Jesus Christ is alive forevermore. Hallelujah! Amen. -7-