The Netherlorn Churches 7 th August 2011 The Church Reaching Out No. 6 Change of Heart Ezekiel 1:22-28; Acts 9:1-22 Decisive Moments This year s summer Sundays have seen the Netherlorn Churches considering the Book of Acts under the heading of the church reaching out. One feature of these services has been a discovery that the world of the Bible and the world of today are not so far apart as we might think. Last week we were considering the first recorded African Christian, traditionally described as the Ethiopian eunuch but in fact from Sudan - recently in the news with the emergence last month of South Sudan as an independent country. Today we are going to Damascus, at a time when Syria is in crisis and the world is watching to see what direction this nation will take. Currently it is Syria s social and political crisis which is in focus but it is also a country remarkable for its history with ancient remains everywhere. Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited capital in the world. The old city is still much as it was when Paul visited - you can still see the street called straight and the place where Paul was let down over the city wall in a basket, amidst much else of great beauty and antiquity. But we are not thinking about Damascus today because of its ancient glories or its architectural splendour. We are thinking about it because of something which has entered our language as a Damascus Road experience. Whenever someone changes their position by 180 degrees, we might say that they have had a Damascus Road experience. Today we will be considering the original one of the world s most famous conversion stories, the story of what happened to Paul of Tarsus. What is plain for all to see is that the life of Paul turned on whatever it was that happened on the road to Damascus. Prior to this, he was a Pharisee, devout in his Jewish faith and passionately, fiercely, opposed to the new teaching propounded by the followers of Jesus. After this, he himself became the foremost advocate and evangelist for the faith which he had once despised with a vengeance. It is a feature of our human life that there are certain decisive moments which shape us and make us who we are. Some of us can recall the moment when we decided that we would marry someone. That decision may have led to wonderful fulfilment or it might have led to tears and heartbreak or it might have led to something of both. But what is a common thread is that there was a moment when the decision was taken and your whole subsequent life story 1
has been shaped by that moment. Or think of the moment when you decided to buy a house or perhaps to build a house. There was a moment when you took the decision, when you signed a paper which made you the owner of a house. From that moment on the house has played a huge role in your life. It was Winston Churchill who said that we shape our buildings, then forever after they shape us. At a moment in time you take the decision that a certain house will be yours and how much flows from that one moment. Or think of the time you waited, as young people have done this week, for the envelope to arrive which contained your exam results. Or I understand it could not be a matter or receiving a text message. Depending on what the envelope or text message contains, certain doors may close or certain doors may open. The course of your life can be directed by what you see on the paper the moment that you open that envelope or on the screen when you get your text. If you live long you see many days. Many will be relatively uneventful. But there will be the occasional days when a decision is taken which proves to be a turning point. One such day was the day that Paul of Tarsus was on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus. Saul s Inner Struggle One thing you do have to concede to Paul of Tarsus is that he did not sit on the fence. On first encountering the Christian message he reacted against it with total opposition. He was not the first or the last to sense in the Christian message a threat to everything he stood for. But few have reacted with such intensity or thrown themselves into such an active campaign to eradicate the Christian movement. As he himself admitted in one of his speeches: In raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities. (26:11) What he could not very easily admit to himself is that what was driving his furious opposition was a nagging inner voice which was suggesting to him that the message about Jesus Christ crucified and risen might be true. Currently in Netherlorn we are enjoying a season of celebrating the arts so in this context our service would not be complete without a bit of poetry. As we try to get inside the mind of the young man Saul, perhaps there is something in Francis Thompson s poem The Hound of Heaven which gives us a clue: I fled Him down the nights and down the days I fled Him down the arches of the years I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears 2
I hid from him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated Adown titanic glooms of chasmed fears From those strong feet that followed, followed after But with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat, and a Voice beat, More instant than the feet: All things betray thee who betrayest me. The Damascus Road experience has often been read as something completely sudden and utterly unexpected. Obviously, yes, it was experienced by Saul as a tremendous shock. But might not the crisis be the outcome of a deep inner struggle which had been steadily ripening? Not for nothing does Luke tell us that Saul was present when Stephen was stoned to death. The cloaks of the executioners were laid at his feet. We are told that Saul approved of the execution. Yet was there also another level at which it challenged and disturbed him? Stephen had presented a cogent argument for the faith he professed, one which was deeply grounded in the Old Testament scriptures with which Saul, as a devout and scholarly young Pharisee, was very familiar. Stephen had also seen a vision of Jesus as he died did the memory of that somehow get under Saul s skin and start to work on him until the day came when he too had a vision of the risen Jesus? As he tried to push aside these troublesome doubts and questions he redoubled his efforts to crush the Jesus movement. He got authority to go to Damascus to stamp out the movement there. It was a seven day walk and as he walked he saw the vision which changed his life. What actually happened on the Damascus Road? What exactly took place that day on the Damascus Road? Well, for one thing, like many of the stories in the Book of Acts, it was an event which challenges our modern Western assumption that we live in a closed world with nothing beyond the physical reality perceived by our senses. Heavenly realities, in Luke s story, are not remote and certainly not nonexistent. They are close. In particular, the risen Jesus is not far away but powerfully present. We need to ponder this challenge if we are to going to get it. To be more specific, a suggestion has been made about the experience Saul had which is really only a guess but it is one worth considering. We read earlier from the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel. This was a passage which we know was used by devout Jews in the first century in their prayer and meditation. They would call to mind the great chariot with 3
whirling wheels and flashing lights which Ezekiel had seen in his vision. In the centre of the chariot was a throne. On the throne was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God. No Jew would imagine that they could ever see God but this was as near as they could come the glory of God made evident at the heart of the throne-chariot vision. The suggestion which is made is that Saul as he plodded along the dusty road was engaging in this kind of meditative prayer, calling to mind the chariot and the throne when all of a sudden it became clear to him that the face at the centre of the vision was the face of Jesus of Nazareth, the very person whom he was persecuting. Suddenly Saul s world turned upside down and inside out. He was shocked to the core. Years later he wrote of seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus the Messiah (2 Cor 4:6). In an instant the one whom he had scorned and opposed became the Lord to whom his whole life must be devoted. He was completely shattered by the experience, struck blind and unable to eat. Is there significance in the fact that he was struck down for three days? It was on the third day that Jesus rose from the dead. Is there a mirroring of this in the three days which Saul spent in his shattered state before he was baptised and began his ministry? Dietrich Bonhoeffer used to say that when God calls someone he bids them come and die. What Saul went through was a kind of death death to his proud independence, his religious self-sufficiency. Go into the city, he heard from the risen Jesus, and you will be told what you must do. (6) From now on he will be living under the Lordship of Christ. The great paradox in Christian faith is that it is death which leads to life, it is in denying yourself that you find yourself. Saul had to discover that and so do we. Somewhere deep in our experience there needs to be an equivalent to the three days which Saul spent crumpled and shattered in Damascus before he could begin his ministry in Christ s name. An ordinary person with a big task Before we finish we should notice that there is another character in the story of what transpired in Damascus. We might feel that Paul is almost in a different league from ourselves, with his massive intellect and his profound spiritual experience. If we do, there is also someone quite ordinary to consider Ananias. But he also has a role to play and he takes a step of faith which was just as vital to the unfolding story of the early church as anything that Paul did. 4
The followers of Jesus in Damascus knew all about Saul they must have been bracing themselves for the persecution which he would unleash when he arrived. They would surely have been wanting to give him a very wide berth, certainly not going to visit him. Yet Ananias had the faith to say yes when God s call came for him to go and lay hands on Saul, to baptise him and to enable him to begin the ministry which would take the good news to the Gentiles. God calls apostles but he also has big things for ordinary people to do. He calls each and every one of us to the death which means an end of the way we have imagined ourselves and which leads to the resurrection to the new life in which we are more truly ourselves and more fully able to fulfil the purpose which God has for our lives. The re-thinking and re-centring of life which Saul experienced so dramatically on the road to Damascus is something which has formed the core of the experience of faith for so many people down through the years. May it be ours also here today. In the name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen 5