This Lenten Road

Divine Intervention: The Road to Damascus

Acts 9:1-20

The heart of God beats for transformation.  Though God is unchanging in his character, and infinitely faithful, God is unswervingly committed to the transformation of His people.  It can be said, then, that God is a God of change. 

Anyone who says yes to taking up their cross and following Jesus the Messiah for life accepts that life will be a life of change.  But not change just for the sake of change.  This is not rearranging the furniture in spring to give the room a fresh look.  The change that God brings upon his people is transformation—walls knocked out, windows changed, flooring, paint, window coverings, the whole thing. 

But that’s not even the end of it. 

There’s purpose in God’s transformation, purpose beyond our comfort and safe passage to heaven.  Jesus taught that those who follow him faithfully and seek him will be like branches attached to a vibrant, life-giving vine.  Such branches will produce good fruit (John 15).  Jesus also taught that the world would know us by the fruit we bear (Matthew 7).  And Paul, whose story we’ll look at this morning, reminded the Roman Christians that they’d been given new life through the death and resurrection of Jesus so that they would not go on sinning and floundering in their old ways, but that they would “bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4).

As church, our responsibility is to be transformed by God so that our lives here and now describe the beauty and wonder and mercy and grace of our God.  To follow Jesus for life is not about making a name for ourselves, or protecting our reputation, or hiding out with our tribe until Jesus comes back.  Following Jesus means a life here and now making a name for God through the fruit we bear by His Spirit.

The Apostle Paul is a profound example of a life transformed by God to bear fruit.  (Acts 9)      

9:1But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord

(This is a lifestyle for Saul—a well established pattern)

went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.  3Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.  4And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"  5And he said, "Who are you, Lord?"

(Remember, Saul is a Pharisee of the highest order.  Saul could recite the entire Torah word for word, no doubt.  So Saul, drawing on his knowledge of the Torah, understood that a blinding light and a powerful voice out of the clear blue of a quiet ride might just be the work of Adonai, YHWH.  So he responds appropriately: “Lord”.)

And he said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

(Pause here for a minute.  If I were to ask you to think of the most important passage of all Scripture, I bet we’d have a pretty long list.  It’s difficult, isn’t it, to pick one passage out of the Bible? 

But if I were to consider that question, I think I would include in my list, the seven words of Jesus to Saul in Acts 9:5: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”  This one sentence is so profound, so weighty that it’s good Saul was already on the ground because that’s the appropriate posture for hearing what Jesus was saying.

Keeping in mind that Saul was a Jewish Pharisee try and hear the words of Jesus as Saul would have heard them:

The Pharisees had contributed to the killing of Jesus over Jesus’ refusal to deny that he was God.  It was blasphemy of the worst kind in the ears of the Pharisees.  “The use of the earthly name “Jesus” rather than the divine title (Lord, Adonai, and YHWH) would have put everything into focus for Saul.  Jesus of Nazareth was alive. 

His disciples had been right after all in proclaiming his resurrection from the dead.  The evidence was too compelling to reject and longer.  Saul had been coming to Damascus ‘to arrest all who call on the name’ (of Jesus as Lord). 

In the Old Testament ‘calling on the name’ is a standard description of prayer to God.  But Saul had heard these wing-nut fanatics call Jesus Lord, like Stephen who called to Lord Jesus as he was dying.  And all this was blasphemy to Saul, and had to be stopped!  But now, as he’s on his way to do just that, he’s jolted into the realization that Jesus is indeed alive.

In that one sentence, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting”, Jesus asserts his divinity, and affirms the resurrection of the dead—something that only God has the power to do.

It says one more thing:

Jesus said “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”  This doesn’t make sense.  Jesus is dead.  Saul’s just out to crush the freaks who say he’s alive.   Put another way, Jesus is saying “Every time you strike those who follow me, I feel the blow.”  But how can this be?  Saul had been persecuting those who called on the name of Jesus; those who would count themselves as His followers.  Saul was persecuting the church.

Saul, known to the world later as Paul, would write extensively about the church being the Body of Jesus.  You and I and everyone who calls on the name of Jesus and follows his way for their life are part of his body.  Another name for the body of Jesus is the church.     We study the words of Paul to know what it means to be church.  Paul’s understanding of what it means to be church was ignited by this divine intervention on the road to Damascus. 

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting”: seven of the most important words in the entire Bible.    

6But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do."  7The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.  8Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.  9And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

10Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." And he said, "Here I am, Lord."  11And the Lord said to him, "Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying,  12and 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."  13But Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem.  14And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name."  15But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.  16For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name." 

*                  *                  *

Does the road to Damascus seem like a strange place to stop on our Lenten journey?

The incident that occurred there, after all, took place after Lent, after Easter and the Ascension, in fact. It’s almost like beginning the story at the end, reading the last chapter of a book before reading the first. If you had asked the arch-Pharisee Saul, who was traveling that road with letters from the high priest—letters which gave him authority to capture and bind any Christians he might find in Damascus—whether this might be a good place to begin a Lenten journey, Saul would have laughed … or scowled. “I’m not going to begin the story of Jesus and his followers,” he would say; “I’m going to end it—once and for all!”

That’s the way Saul set out to travel the Damascus road. He knew where he was going, and he knew what he was going to do when he got there.

So Saul sets out on horseback and comes near Damascus and all of a sudden a blinding light flashes and Saul’s lying flat on his back on the ground. 

And then a blinding light flashes around us. Wait a minute! Lent is a season of darkness, isn’t it? A time of somber shadows. Christmas is a time for light, what with all those candles and angels and shining stars. And Easter, when it comes, with its brilliant resurrection sunrise shedding light on all around—Easter is certainly a season of LIGHT. But Lent?

We have already admitted to persecuting the Lord Jesus Christ, “by what we have done and what we have left undone.” And that means that the bright light of God’s righteousness is shining on us as well: “Why are you … persecuting me?” “When do we persecute you, Lord?” we cry. – “Whatever you have done (or not done) to one of the least of these my brothers or sisters, you have done (or not done) to me,” comes the reply. “Why have you disobeyed me? Why have you lied to me? Stolen from me? Bad-mouthed me? Ignored me? Been unfaithful to me?” “When, Lord? When?” we cry. “Whatever you have done (or not done) to one of the least of these my brothers or sisters, you have done (or not done) to me.”  Evidence of our discipleship is found as we live day-to-day.

“Repent!” the season of Lent calls out to us as we hurry by. Literally, the word ‘repent’ means to turn around, to change directions. Think for a moment: What would be the opposite of “Why are you persecuting me?”

Now, to be fair to Saul, he was a good Pharisee (and that’s not an oxymoron).  He was doing what he’d always believed to be right.  He was passionate in his dedication to the Torah Law.  In some ways I wish I had the same passion about the scriptures.  Saul had thrown his whole life into his convictions.  But what Saul was missing was the Spirit of the Law.  He was not bearing fruit for God, and so God needed to get hold of his life and transform it. Saul was “spiritually blinded by wrong convictions until a greater light caused him to become spiritually enlightened.  But what we can learn from Saul’s experience is that Jesus sets the terms.  Jesus must be the shaper of our convictions, and Jesus will knock us off our high horses to get that through to us.

(God preserves in us what is good, gets rid of what is not—he prunes us like a good gardener prunes her trees.) 

The church is at a crossroads.  We know it to be true here at Zion.  In many ways the church in Western World mirrors Saul’s trip to Damascus.  In hand we have letters that state a certain way of doing things that we’re apt to defend to the death.  But around the next bend in the road we’re in for a big surprise that will floor us, even blind us.  We are being met by the risen Christ who’s presenting a choice to us:

Go the way of the Pharisees into oblivion by fighting tooth and nail to preserve a social club/refuge brand of Christianity, or reemerge from our blinding as a vibrant church that has the requisite energy to spark personal and community transformation.[1]     

Either way it’s not our friends, or our traditions, or the institutional church we’ll have to answer to.  We’ll have only Jesus to answer to. 

But as Saul found out, Jesus is more than ready to instruct us: “Get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do,” Saul was told. What he was to do, Saul was told, was “to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.” Quite a turnaround!  The legalist was to be the lover of grace.  The persecutor was to become one of the persecuted. Saul of Tarsus would be known to history as St. Paul.   

We can learn from our forebears and avoid making the mistakes they made.  Saul is an example of what happens when we try and operate apart from grace, apart from the Holy Spirit, apart from Jesus.  Saul’s an example of rigidity and making rules around skewed convictions. 

But Paul is an example of what happens when Jesus gets hold of us.  Paul’s an example of what happens when we surrender to the grace of Christ through the Holy Spirit.  Paul’s an example of beauty in the midst of ugliness.  Paul points to Jesus—Jesus, Jesus, Jesus—as the author and perfecter of our faith, the Head of the Church, lover of our souls and shaper of our convictions.  Let’s pray.