Enter the City
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
April 25, 2004
Acts 9:1-20; Revelation 5:11-14
Acts 9:1-20 ¶ Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
¶ Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
¶ For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.”
Rev. 5:11-14 ¶ Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the elders fell down and worshiped.
I. INTRODUCTION
Have you ever known a know-it-all? I mean a real know-it-all? One of those guys who’s got all the answers and who always assumes he’s right about everything? You ever know someone like that? Of course you do—he’s standing right here in this pulpit. I’m a card-carrying member of the International Association of Know-It-Alls and Blowhards.
There’s one thing that know-it-alls like me have in common: we hate to be wrong. It grates on us. It makes us mad. There’s nothing more infuriating than being wrong about something. Now, I’d like to think that I’ve made enough progress in my three and a half decades that I’ll entertain the possibility that I’m wrong and admit it when shown to be wrong. Not all the guys in the Association will do that. But it still grates on you: whether you have misnamed the capital of Oregon, or whether you’ve mistaken your third-base coach for another runner on the base path (as I did last week)—being wrong is a frustrating experience. Most of us, when shown to be wrong are embarrassed by it to the point that we forget to be enlightened by the new information.
II. THE TEXT: ACTS
We often think of St. Paul as a know-it-all. Perhaps, he’s our patron saint. You can definitely get that impression reading his epistles. He writes in his epistle to the Philippians:
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. (Phil. 3:4-6)
‘As to righteousness under the law: blameless.’ Paul’s not a guy lacking in self-esteem. He’s not someone who doubts his own abilities. So you can imagine how it must have felt for Paul to have suddenly and so dramatically have been proven wrong. That must have really annoyed him.
We heard the story from Acts just a few minutes ago. Paul is traveling to Damascus with letters from the High Priests giving him the authority to bind those professing Jesus Christ and bring them back to Jerusalem. Along the road he is confronted by a bright light and the voice of Christ who says to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He is blinded and instructed to enter the city and to seek out a man named Ananias, who comes, and lays hands on him and restores his sight. We are then told that he remained in Damascus, proclaiming that Jesus was the Son of God.
III. PAUL
Paul is by far one of the most fascinating characters in Christian history. Perhaps the only New Testament author we can identify with certainty. And probably one of the most misunderstood people in Christian history as well.
We talk a lot about how Paul was a persecutor of the Church and how he was converted on the Road to Damascus and subsequently became one of the ancient Church’s greatest apostles. We never really look into why Paul was a persecutor of the Church.
There is a tendency to think that Paul turned from a ‘bad guy’ into a ‘good guy’ on the Road to Damascus. Such a dramatic character change that he even changed his name from Saul to Paul. Well, there’s a problem with that. First because ‘Paul’ isn’t a name—it’s a nickname. And second, because the bad guy/good guy imagery owes more to our desire to attribute bad motives to our opponents than it does to reality. It’s something we continue to do in our politics: our political opponents can’t possibly be sincere about their political opinions—they must have them either because they’re America-hating godless welfare-state supporters, or because they’re mean-spirited defenders of a morally bankrupt corporate aristocracy. So, we’re tempted to think that Paul’s persecution of the Church was driven by wicked motives.
But why was Paul persecuting the Christian Church? There is a clue in a number of his epistles. Reading in between the lines, some scholars have concluded that Paul persecuted Christianity (which was then called ‘the Way’) not on account of their belief in Jesus as the Messiah—there were all kinds of would-be messiahs, believing in one or the other did not necessarily target you for persecution by the religious establishment—but rather on account of the fact that this new sect, this ‘Way’ was admitting Gentiles—non-Jews—into its number without requiring that they be circumcised or follow the Law. [E.P. Sanders, Paul, The Law, and the Jewish People (1983), at 191.]
You have to step back and think about this for a second to remember why this would be so offensive. The Jewish people are a covenanted people—bound in a covenant to God to be a people apart, not to engage in the idolatries of the nations, not to act as other nations do. In fact, there are three sets of Old Testament laws designed to help the Children of Israel maintain a separate identity: food laws (kosher rules), circumcision, and special days (Sabbath and festivals). These requirements of the law serve no other purpose than to identify who is a Jew and who isn’t. They are designed to keep the Jewish people a people apart. So it’s one thing if you and your fellow Jews want to meet on the first day of the week and talk and pray about your Resurrected Messiah. It’s quite another thing if you’re inviting Gentiles in to this group—not requiring them to be come Jews—and calling them members of “Israel”. To a traditional Jew, this would destroy Jewish identity. It would erase the difference between Jew and Gentile. Imagine how you might feel ….
So, here we have Saul of Tarsus, a devout Jew, a righteous man defending his faith from a group he believes is acting in a way that is dangerous to the identity of the people and could danger the social fabric. And while on this mission to Damascus, a light from heaven comes and knocks him to the ground and says, in effect, “You’re wrong.” How must Paul have felt?
But it’s instructive to look at what Paul did. Jesus says to Paul, “get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” And Paul does that. He goes into Damascus and awaits instruction. He awaits Ananias and is healed. He begins to proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God.
But there’s more to it than even that. For we know what became of Paul and of Paul’s career after this event. He becomes—and the point cannot be made too strongly—the Church’s great apostle to the Gentiles. To the very people he was persecuting the church for including. You and I are in the Christian Church in large part because of Paul’s efforts to support the Gentile mission. He was not alone in this, of course, and it was already happening without him, but he added a zeal to this mission to work to bring in “the full number of Gentiles.” (Rom. 11:25). In fact, in order to become a better apostle to the Gentiles, he adopts a nickname that is easier for them to pronounce than his Hebrew name Sha’ul—he becomes Paulos (or as some people translate it: ‘shorty’).
IV. CHANGE IN WORLDVIEW
Paul’s encounter with the Risen Christ changed the way he saw the world. Prior to his conversion experience, Paul had been acting out of conviction. After it, he was acting out of conviction informed by the new experience of the Resurrection.
A. Resurrection
The Resurrection had been that thing that caused Paul, who had assumed he knew it all, to re-evaluate. To realize that he did not have all the facts. To realize that he had been wrong. Prior to his conversion, he had believed that the followers of the Way were engaged in a dangerous dilution of the Jewish community. Afterwards, he believed that he was living in the Messianic era, when, in the words of the Prophet Isaiah “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” (Is. 60:3).
The reality of Resurrection had done for Paul what it had done for the Twelve: it transformed the way they saw the world, gave them a new sense of meaning. In many ways, they had all been wrong before Easter, and the Resurrection showed them a new way of looking at reality.
What is also interesting about Paul’s reaction, is that he did not simply turn around with his tail between his legs and go home. No, he got up, and entered the city. He continued on a mission—a new mission informed by the Resurrection. That’s not an easy thing to do when you’ve been shown to be wrong—to dive right in to the new understanding. It’s not something we often do.
B. Education
We are rapidly approaching the end of another academic year. This is the last service before finals and the second to last service over all. A number of you will be graduating in another two weeks. For most of you it will mark the end of another year, for some of you, it will mark the end of your first year in college.
But all of you can think back to your first days as a freshman. Thinking back to your attitudes and understandings—to the experiences you brought with you from high school. How many of those have survived unscathed? How many of the things that you thought with such perfect conviction at the beginning of your college career do you still think of in the same way? Chances are that you’ve had a couple of bubbles burst, a couple of walls knocked down. Preconceived notions about the world have been challenged—things you thought you knew, you now know in a different way, or realize you don’t know at all.
I am sure you’ve all had that experience in a particular class where you learn something that smashes the way you thought about the world. Where you feel like St. Paul, knocked down by a bright light, sitting on the side of the road, wondering how you’re going to see again. I had a number of those in seminary—in areas I didn’t expect to have them. They can be unsettling—like taking a sudden blow, it can leave you disoriented.
What are you going to do with this new way of seeing? Are you going to withdraw. To admit defeat and slink away quietly? No. You’re going to go back out into the world and use what you have learned. You are going to dedicate yourself to something that is informed by your experience and your new understandings. You’ve been knocked down onto the ground, and now you’re being called forward to continue the journey in a new frame of mind.
V. CONCLUSION: ENTER THE CITY
Christian faith is a lot like that. Christian faith is meant to challenge and to continue to challenge the way we see the world. It is meant to shine a light of grace, love, and resurrection onto our world and to cause us to see it in a new way. We all here have been formed by our experiences: our experiences in education, our experiences in community, and our experiences in faith. The power of the Christian message sometimes knocks us over, the way any new knowledge can. It can make know-it-alls realize that we do not know it all. It makes us realize that we maybe, just maybe, are wrong and have been viewing the world in the wrong way. We are invited to encounter the world through the power of new knowledge, new experience, and in light of the Resurrection, in light of the proof that God’s purposes are being fulfilled: that injustice does not hold sway forever, that fear does not rule, and that even death cannot defeat the love of God.
As Christians, we do not simply take this new revelation without response. We don’t just sit there on the side of the road, dumbfounded. No, like Paul, guided by Christ, we get up, and we enter the city.
