Paul’s encounter of Jesus on the
Damascus Road is probably my favourite story in the Bible. I could ramble on this for hours and not
exhaust it, but I won’t do that to you. But,
needless to say, it is loaded with imagery – life-changing personal encounter
with Jesus, being raised to new life, spiritual blindness, disillusionment
because Jesus has turned your world upside-down. This story just has everything and it puts me
in the mood to sing some Hank.
Paul’s experience here is
paradigmatic of what some would call a Christian conversion experience. Though I think it is more appropriate to
think of this moment in terms of Paul’s calling rather than his conversion. Just like the prophets of the Old Testament
and the disciples in the New, Jesus is calling Saul to follow him and that just
like the prophets there will be things that he will be irresistibly compelled
to do and say for God. “Rise up,” Jesus
says (that an image of resurrection) “and enter the city” (that’s a New
Jerusalem image meaning the church) “and you will be told what you must
do.” This is a life-changing personal
experience of Jesus. It’s an experience
of resurrection.
Paul would tell you that prior to
this experience he was dead, and after it Christ Jesus was living through him. Paul goes from being a zealous for God Jew
who was doing what he thought a faithful Jew should do. He was faithfully trying to stop those whom
he believed to be spreading the false teaching that Jesus is the Son of God and
the Messiah. Prior to this encounter Paul
simply did not believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead. But after meeting Jesus risen from the dead Paul
too begins to confess, teach, and boldly proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God
and the Messiah. He goes from being the
most vehement persecutor of the Body of Christ to being its most zealous
proponent to both the Jews and the Gentiles.
That’s resurrection.
I think Luke’s choice of words here
for describing Pal before he met Jesus is powerful. He says Paul was “breathing threats and
murder onto the disciples”. The image is
that he is literally breathing hate…breathing hate in the name of his God and
believing this hate to be the right and true thing to do. Breathing hate in the name of God. That’s hating someone because you believe God
hates them.
This happens today. Christians do this. Just to give an example, I know a Christian
mother who not long ago was compelled to have a talk with the school principle
and her child’s Kindergarten teacher because the teacher was telling her
students that when we die we become butterflies. The mother’s point was that if Christian teachers
in the public system cannot teach children that we will be raised from the dead
as Jesus was, then no teacher should be teaching an obvious lie that people
become butterflies when they die. Some
people would call this a mild case of persecution of the church that happens
now that Christianity does not get preferential treatment in the public forum.
We might and should applaud this
mother’s courage. Yet, this same
Christian mother recently, just after the Belgium terrorist attack posted to
her Facebook page a little long-winded blurb set under a big Canadian flag
about how if Muslims don’t like being Canadian they can get the H-E-L-L out of Canada,
only she used the F-bomb. That sort of
ignorance turns quickly to breathing hate. When a Christian says and does something like
this it makes it very hard to believe that they have seen the Light in Jesus
Christ.
The Triune God of grace, the loving
communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does not hate Muslims. I used the word ignorance here because ignorance
is a state of not knowing. In the case
above, it is not knowing what Islam is and not knowing Muslims as persons and
not knowing Muslim community and culture.
Yes, there are a lot of evil things being done in the world by people
who claim to be Muslim. Evil people can
twist religion and use it to breed ignorance and incite hatred. Church history is full of this just ask any
Jew. What this Christian mother posted
on Facebook was the same thing as anti-Semitism.
As members of the Presbyterian Church
in Canada we try not to be ignorant of other faiths. Rather, we confess:
Some whom we encounter belong to other religions and
already have a faith. Their lives often give evidence of devotion
and reverence
for life. We recognize that truth and
goodness in them are the work of God's Spirit, the author of all truth. We should not address others in a spirit of
arrogance implying that we are better than they. But rather, in the spirit of humility, as
beggars telling others where food is to be found, we point to life in
Christ. (Living Faith 9.2.1)
Coming Back to Paul, this sort of
breathing hate and mistaking it for being faithful was where he was at. If Paul had a Facebook page, I am sure he
would have filled it with long rants against the followers of Jesus. And indeed, Jesus confronts him for his
hate-breathing and it leads Paul to ask that most powerful of all questions,
“Who are you, Lord?”
There is only one person a zealously
faithful Jew would address as Lord. That
is Yahweh, the Lord God of Israel. So,
seeing the light Paul knows he is in the presence of God.
Who are you, Lord? That’s a personal question. It’s a relationship question. There has to be communication to get your
answer. The answer Paul gets is Jesus is
God/God is Jesus and he is persecuting God himself by pursuing the followers of
Jesus.
This experience not only literally
blinds Paul. He is likewise spiritually
disillusioned. Everything he thought he
knew and believed about God was shattered by this personal encounter with
Jesus. Paul believed God should have
been a very wrathful God towards him for the evil that Paul was breathing onto
the church. Paul believed he deserved to
die. But Jesus amazingly tells him like
he had told several other people who were dead.
Jesus said to him, “Get up.” Jesus gave Paul a new life.
New life happens when we encounter
God in Jesus and come to know that God is really like Jesus. God is life giving, life restoring. He is not some punitive judge out to send
sinners to Hell if they won’t repent.
God does judge, but his judging is in accordance with the love he has shown
us in, through, and as Jesus, God the Son become a man who died for us and our
sins. God’s judgement puts things to
right. Paul here is a prime
example. Jesus should have struck Paul
dead, but that’s not the kind of God God is.
Jesus raised Paul to new life.
To close, we have to be really
careful that we don’t let ourselves fall into the folly of breathing hate in
God’s name. This June the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada is being asked to make a decision
of full inclusion of homosexuals in the life of our denomination this means
recognizing marriage and ordination of practising homosexuals. Sadly, this matter is going to be prime
opportunity for hate-breathing from those on both sides of the issue. Let us pray that our commissioners will be
wise enough to approach this very sensitive matter from the perspective of
asking “who are you, Lord?” and will be able to come up with an “enlightened”
decision that reflects who Jesus is as the life giving God. Amen.
