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Imagine if you had the power to actually change things. If we had that power, we would probably use it to make our little corners of the world exactly the way we want them to be so that we and those we love are healthy and comfortable and the people around us don’t rub us the wrong way. Things are good. Yet, we tend to assume that what is good for me is good for everybody. So that if I have the power to change things, I should rightfully change the things around me that would make life better for me and everyone will benefit. Unless of course, I’m a sociopath or psychopath who likes making others suffer, then I will create chaos for the heck of it and revel in the addictive thrill of having power. Rarely, do we humans exhibit the wisdom to presume that if we had the power to change things, what needs to change first is me.
If we want to change the world, the change must begin with ourselves. In our passage today, Paul is spending some time reflecting on the change he himself was going through having encountered the resurrected Jesus. His birth lineage was a cut above. He was very zealous in his faith; exceedingly mindful of keeping the Law of Moses. He was so zealous that he was adamantly attempting to quell a big change that was happening among his people as the result of what he believed to be a lie, that God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. Paul believed that Jesus was a treasonous blasphemer who deserved death by crucifixion for claiming to be the Messiah and the Son of God. But he had since come to call all that vainglorious zeal dung since coming to know Jesus and the change meeting Jesus was working in him.
Paul was on a trip to Damascus to round up Christians, when in a prolonged flash of light seen by all in the party, Jesus confronted him. Paul responded to this confrontation with a question, “Who are you, Lord?” Thus began Paul’s desire to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection.
The question Jesus confronted Paul with was “Why are you persecuting me?” Paul was persecuting Jesus by persecuting Jesus’ followers. It’s likely that this question created a desire in Paul to want to know what it was about himself that made him want to persecute Jesus and his followers. I say that because it’s interesting that in our reading the means that Paul choses to get to know Jesus Is to step into the shoes of Jesus’ persecution, the shoes of suffering as Jesus suffered, and walking a bit more than a few miles. If you want to know someone, walk a mile in his shoes so they say.
Paul’s very to-the-point encounter with Jesus on the Road to Damascus was for Paul the evidence that God had raised Jesus from the dead. This meant that according to Old Testament prophecies God had poured out his Spirit upon the followers of Jesus and that through them God was bringing in the kingdom of God and changing the world by calling people to loyalty to Jesus. This changed Paul. His goal was no longer rising to power in the midst of the Jerusalem Pharisees by Law observance and persecuting the followers of Jesus, but rather to know Jesus, to personally know Jesus, and the power of his resurrection – a power that changes people – a change that is nothing short of being born into a new life in which you know yourself to be a beloved child of God.
If you take Paul’s letters and suss out his metaphors, his images for what salvation is, at the top of the list would be that salvation is that I was once an estranged God-hater, but through what God has done in, through, and as Jesus the Christ in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, I now know myself to be a beloved child of God as Jesus is. I am a beloved member of God’s family here on earth. To know Jesus is to know ourselves to be beloved children in the family of God. The power of Jesus’ resurrection, though powerful enough to create this Creation, raise the dead, heal the sick, and cast out demons, now works powerfully in us by bringing us to want to know Jesus himself more and more in order to grow to be more like him in his selfless love.
We get to know Jesus when we live according to that one commandment he gave us, that we love one another as he has loved us. Unfortunately, loving the way Jesus loved doesn’t come apart from suffering. It is costly to love. I remember a song from back in the 70’s done by a band called Nazareth entitled “Love Hurts.” It does. To love the way Jesus loves means we will always be feeling empathy for others as we join with them in their struggles, so through what this world calls happiness out the window. But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are moments of celebration, moments of victory when God powerfully answers prayers. There’s a contentment, a joy in knowing that God is for us, with us, and will work all things to the God of his beloved children. Seek to know Jesus and to experience that power of his resurrection. I am wholeheartedly convinced that as Paul says everything else is dung. Amen.
