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Meeting the Risen Christ: III.
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David A. Renwick| Listen |
Our second reading this morning is from the twenty second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, reading from verse 1. This is the story of the conversion and call of the Apostle Paul. Paul has two names. His Hebrew name and his Greek name. Saul is his Hebrew name. Paul is his Greek name. It’s not a question of changing his name once he became a Christian. Many people in the ancient world, just as some today, and especially perhaps in the South, have two names, which they say together. And so this is Saul Paul. ‘Saul’ his Hebrew name, and ‘Paul’ his Greek name. The story is of his call, confronted by the risen Jesus as he travels to the city of Damascus to persecute Christians. (See Scripture Readings)
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Scripture Readings
Genesis 12:1-9 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the LORD and invoked the name of the LORD. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb. Acts 22:1-16 When they heard him addressing them in Hebrew, they became even more quiet. Then he said: "I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today. I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison, as the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify about me. From them I also received letters to the brothers in Damascus, and I went there in order to bind those who were there and to bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment. "While I was on my way and approaching Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone about me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?' I answered, 'Who are you, Lord?' Then he said to me, 'I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting.' Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me. I asked, 'What am I to do, Lord?' The Lord said to me, 'Get up and go to Damascus; there you will be told everything that has been assigned to you to do.' Since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, those who were with me took my hand and led me to Damascus. "A certain Ananias, who was a devout man according to the law and well spoken of by all the Jews living there, came to me; and standing beside me, he said, 'Brother Saul, regain your sight!' In that very hour I regained my sight and saw him. Then he said, 'The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear his own voice; for you will be his witness to all the world of what you have seen and heard. And now why do you delay? Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.'" (NRSV) |
VISION STATEMENT
Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers.
Called by Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit,
we aspire to love and glorify God within the church and beyond,
through worship, study, fellowship and service.
In this next seven or eight weeks together, we’re going to be thinking in our Sunday morning sermons about the mission of Second Presbyterian Church. On the front page of your bulletin, there is a vision statement or a mission statement of our congregation which many of you may not know exists! BUT . . . it’s been there in the bulletin for about three or four years now! And, yes, I know that when something is there for three or four years you sort of take it for granted. But there it is, and in the next few weeks we’ll be looking at some of the phrases in the statement that I hope are true about our church, whether I am the pastor or not! We are a fellowship of believers. We have been called together by Jesus Christ. We trust that we are being led by God’s holy spirit and we aspire to love and glorify God. That’s our business. And with God’s help, we will do that in the future as we have done in the past.
Today, though, I would like to continue one more time on our Easter theme that we’ve been following the past few weeks, looking at one more appearance of our Lord Jesus following that first Easter. The appearance of Jesus to the person we know of as the Apostle Paul, to Saul, on the road to Damascus.
Last week we thought about Jesus’ appearance to two of his disciples, not two in the inner group, but two of the broader group of disciples who were walking from the city of Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, maybe some seven miles or so away. And Jesus comes up alongside of them and they think he’s a stranger. They don’t recognize him. They’re not expecting the risen Jesus to be with them and along the way in that conversation, they move not only from Jerusalem to Emmaus, but they move from a world in which Jesus is as good as dead into a world in which Jesus is inescapably alive — and alive to them — for ever more. And it happens through some very simple means of grace. It happens through a simple personal testimony. It happens through the simple reading of scripture. It happens through the simple breaking and eating of bread together. And all of a sudden, their eyes are opened and they see what they never saw before - Christ Alive! - and it changes everything for them.
The week before last, we heard together about another appearance of Jesus, to a group of disciples up in Galilee, about seventy miles north of Jerusalem, beside the Sea of Galilee where Jesus comes and speaks, in particular, to Simon Peter, the leader of the disciples. Speaks to Simon Peter, his closest friend. To Simon Peter, who has denied Jesus three times, just a few days before. And Jesus three times asks Simon Peter, "Do you love me?" And it stirs up all those awful memories of failure and denial . . . "Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?" . . . and Simon Peter replies, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." And Jesus responds in a remarkable way by saying to Simon Peter, to this one who had denied him, Jesus says to him, "Take up where you left off. Take up exactly where you left off. Feed my flock. Tend my sheep. Be the leader that I have called you to be. No matter what you’ve done, pick up where you’ve left off."
In some ways, the appearance that I want to think about today is similar to that appearance with Simon Peter. Like Simon Peter, Paul carried a noose around his neck. This memory of something he had done which was so awful, so terrible, that it could easily have crippled his life. In the name of God, he had persecuted Christians because he thought that Jesus, the Galilean peasant who had been crucified, was anything but the Messiah. Anything but the Son of God. Could not have been the Holy one of God. And he thought that those who claimed that he was, he thought that they were enemies of God, and that they needed to be silenced – thrown in jail or put to death. And he had led the way in their persecution.
Until that day when everything changed. In his case, it was a cataclysmic event. It wasn’t just a few simple means of grace, though, sometimes, often, it is. But in his case, it was a cataclysmic event. He’s on his way to persecute again, to carry off Christians as prisoners, to bring them back to Jerusalem. He’s on his way to Damascus. He’s outside the Holy Land and there, suddenly, there is this blinding light. And it’s not just the sun – it’s the Son of God. It’s not the sun – it’s the light of God, the "shekinah" it was called, which was associated in Judaism with the temple, the shining glory of God, blazes at him. Knocks him off his mount. Knocks him down to his feet and changes his life. It’s not in Jerusalem. It’s not where you expect it. It’s outside the Holy Land. Yet God appears in power, and there’s this voice. And the voice is very personal and says, "Why are you persecuting me?" Which leads Paul to ask, "Who are you, Lord?" And then the voice responds – "I’m Jesus!" Can you feel it? Oh, one of those awful moments! When you realize what you’ve done, and you’ve been terribly, terribly wrong. . . "Why are you persecuting me?"
And Paul is helpless. Doesn’t know what to do or say, but the voice keeps on speaking and says, "Get up. Go. Get up. Go." Go to Damascus, first of all, and then, in some of the other accounts of the conversion (Acts 9, Acts 26), the voice goes on. "I want you to go to the ends of the earth. I want you to take the message of God’s salvation made known through me and made possible through me to the ends of the earth. You are my chosen servant for that purpose. Get up and go."
What a great command: "Get up and go!" Not a new command by any means! God had given that commandment on different occasions to different people in the distant past.
- Remember all the way
back to Abraham, in our first scripture reading? Abraham, the
ancestor of Jews and Christians and Muslims. It was fifteen hundred,
or perhaps seventeen hundred, years before the Apostle Paul. Abraham
is in what we would now call Iraq with his family. There, too, a long
way from the Holy Land. There, in a place where you would least expect
it, God speaks, and says to Abraham, "It’s time for you to move, I
can’t tell you where, but if you go, I’ll lead you there! I’ll take
you to the land I will show you. But, without knowing your
destination, you must go. It’s time to move. (It’s almost a little
ditty, isn’t it? – "Time to move, can’t tell you where, but if you go,
I’ll take you there.") God spoke to Abraham, and Abraham obeyed. And
amazing things happened through that act of simple obedience.
- It was the same
command as the one given to Moses, five hundred years or so
after Abraham. God comes to Moses, and Moses is running away from God,
trying to hide from God in the desert, where you would least expect to
find God. And in that unexpected place God speaks, seemingly from a
shrub or a bush that is burning but is not consumed, and says, "I want
you to go back to Egypt. I want you to speak truth to power. I want
you to speak to the king, to Pharaoh, to tell him to let my people go,
to release them from bondage and slavery." And Moses says, "No, I
don’t want to do it. I cannot do it. I cannot do what you ask," and
God says, "Go," and Moses says, "No," and God says, "Go," and Moses
says, "No," and God says, "Go" and Moses says, "All right. I’ll go.
Don’t want to. But I’ll go."
- And the same command comes five hundred years after that to Amos: to Amos, a farmer, watching out for his animals, his livestock, his trees. God says, "I want you to go up north. I want you to speak to the king of Israel. The land has become godless and corrupt and I want you, a farmer, to do this. To expose the injustices and the corruption of the land." And Amos says ‘yes’ to God, and goes up north, and speaks to the king and the king says, "Go back home." And Amos says, "No, I can’t go back home." He says, "I am no prophet nor a prophet-son, but I am a herdsman, a dresser of sycamore trees and the Lord took me from following the flock. And the Lord said to me, `Go. Prophesy to my people Israel. Go. Prophesy to my people Israel. Get up and go.’"
And it is this same word, "GO," is it not, which Jesus himself speaks to his disciples, to his followers in another appearance at the end of his earthly ministry. We use the words from Matthew 28 at times of baptism,
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. GO therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe everything that I’ve commanded you." And then a promise, "Lo, I am with you always, to the very end of the age. To the very end of time."
A great command: "GO." And a great promise: "I’ll be with you always." But, let’s be clear, this command and this promise is not just for ministers and is not just for missionaries and it’s not just for great leaders like Paul and Abraham and Moses and Amos. It is for all followers, all disciples, of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I, of course, have taken this command and this promise quite literally, for over thirty years now. Following God’s call to preach here in the United States
. . . Well, actually, part of the call was to follow an attractive young American junior year abroad student back across the Atlantic. . but hey, God’s call is often mixed like that, you know! We sometimes speak in pious terms about following God’s call, but the call is often mixed up with the human motives – it certainly was in my case, and I suppose it always will be, because God loves us as people who are flesh and blood and not just as pious souls.
But "getting up and going" quite literally has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. And from the beginning, the very beginning, it has involved both excitement and pain.
In fact, one of my most vivid memories and most painful memories, especially as we think of Mother’s Day, is of my mother waving goodbye to me at the train station in Edinburgh as I got on the train to go to London to catch the trans-atlantic flight to come to seminary: it was a moment of utter desolation, looking at her face as the train left the station. I thought I would be back. I think she knew that I never would, at least not permanently.
The two to three weeks that followed were amongst the most miserable in my life, wondering if I had in some way betrayed my family and broken her heart. We later talked about it and she told me how she coped with her own leaving of home when she was about my age. My mother was one of four children. One of my aunts, my only aunt on her side, was brain-damaged at birth and lived with my grandparents and then came to live with us when my grandparents died, She, of course, stayed at home most of her life. But my mother and her two brothers in their early twenties all left home and went overseas. A long, long way away for ten, fifteen, twenty years. To Malaysia, to Singapore, to Kuwait, to Palestine. Far away.
My mother said that when that happened that her father, my grandfather, responded to this loss of his three active children, not by withdrawing, but by learning all he could about the places to which his children went. It was not the end of the world for him but the expansion of his world, so that where they were, in a sense, he was too. His world just grew with their travels.
In sharing this story with me, one of the most important stories of my whole family, my mother gave me a simply enormous gift. A liberating gift, and a blessing that I hope I can pass on to my children and to the congregations that I serve.
Get up and go. And I will be with you always. A great commandment which expands our world, and a great promise that we are never alone. But keep in mind, as well, that this command and this promise is not just geographic and it’s not just literal.
Remember in the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord Jesus, right there in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), turns to his disciples and he says to them, "Go." It’s in the context of worship, if you remember.
If you come to the altar and there you have a gift for God, says Jesus, and if at that moment you know that there is a rift between you and your brother or your sister, drop your gift right there at that moment and go. First, be reconciled to your brother and sister.
"I do not want your worship if you will not fix your
relationships with one another, says Jesus in God’s name. First, go."
"But it’s hard, Lord, I don’t know what they’ll say."
"So said Moses, too: Go. Go. And I will be with you
always," says Jesus, "even if it’s in exactly the same place where you
are, and the person involved is the person sitting next to you today."
Go, he says. It’s not just geographic.
- Go to that difficult person and love them as I have loved you.
- Go to that difficult task. Do not bury your talent in the ground.
- Go to that new stage of leadership where God always calls us up and gives us the gifts we need for the moment in which we find ourselves.
- Go to that new stage of giving where we give more than we think we can. And so empower God’s work to be done.
- Go to the other side of the tracks and see for yourselves what God sees every moment of every day in this world which God has made – the hungry, the naked, the poor, the oppressed – places and people where God is at work, and is calling us to follow.
The command to go is as much about a way of life as it is about geography. It is central, in fact. It is a core aspect of our faith in Jesus Christ and our faith of the God of the scriptures who from the very beginning tells his servants to go.
That’s certainly how Jesus understood it. That’s certainly how Paul understood it. I hope it’s how we understand it. A command, not just for Paul from the risen Christ. Not just for Paul or Abraham or Moses or Amos. And not just for me at this stage of my life but for all of us. A great command with a great promise.
Go. And I will be with you always, says Jesus. Even to the very end of time. As in the past, so in the future. Great is God’s faithfulness.
Let’s bow before God in prayer.
Holy God, You span time and eternity and yet you think of us. How stunning. How remarkable, yet, through Jesus Christ, we hold it to be true. Think of us now and help us to think of you, and lift us up with the power of the risen Christ to see and to find new life in him always and everywhere. Amen.