Acts 9:1-19
When Saul set out from Jerusalem to Damascus, he had no idea his life would be turned upside down, shaken and reordered.
Saul was a Pharisee who was zealous in his protection of Torah, the law of God, that was being rejected by the Jews who followed Jesus. He had stood as witness to the stoning of one of those followers, Stephen. Afterwards he was a leader in the persecution of this sect, going from house to house and dragging men and women who were followers of Jesus to prison.
He had great success against the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem and after receiving reports that there was an outbreak of this heresy in Damascus, he met with the high priest and received papers giving him the authority to take any followers of Jesus in Damascus and bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
So Saul, papers in hand and with his companions (perhaps Temple guards), set off on the 217 kilometer trip to Damascus. This was a six day journey so there was plenty of time to think. Knowing what we do about Saul, who later took the Greek name of Paul, he used the time to rehearse the theological arguments he would use with these heretical Jews who were being misled.
Saul was not pursuing these followers of Jesus because he enjoyed having power over others. Saul was not driven by power. He was driven by principle. He was a Pharisee and determined to protect his faith from those who would destroy it. These followers of Jesus were clearly a threat to Judaism and needed to be exterminated. There was a purity and an idealism in Saul’s zeal.
Saul was driven to succeed and he set off on his trip determined to be successful. For four or five days all was well. But then as he neared Damascus, in the heat of the noonday sun, he was knocked off his feet.
suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
Frederic Buechner describes Saul’s encounter this way:
It was about noon when he was knocked flat by a blaze of light that made the sun look like a forty-watt bulb, and out of the light came a voice that called him by his Hebrew name twice. “Saul,” it said, and then again, “Saul. Why are you out to get me?” and when he pulled himself together enough to ask who it was he had the honor of addressing, what he heard to his horror was, “I’m Jesus of Nazareth, the one you’re out to get.” We’re not told how long he lay there in the dust then, but it must have seemed at least six months. If Jesus of Nazareth had what it took to burst out of the grave like a guided missile, he thought, then he could polish off one bowlegged Christian-baiter without even noticing it, and Paul waited for the axe to fall. Only it wasn’t an axe that fell. “Those boys in Damascus,” Jesus said. “Don’t fight them, join them. I want you on my side,” and Paul never in his life forgot the sheer lunatic joy and astonishment of that moment. He was blind as a bat for three days afterwards, but he made it to Damascus anyway and was baptized on the spot. He was never the same again, and neither, in a way, was the world.
These Sundays of Advent we have been focusing on birth stories. We looked at Abraham and Sarah and the promise of a son in their old age, Jochebed and giving birth to Moses in a desperate situation and Mary giving birth to Jesus at an inconvenient time. When I was talking with Annie about this series, she suggested I pick the conversion of Saul as the fourth birth in the series and so here we are this morning.
How does Saul’s conversion fit in with the birth stories we have been examining? Well, the obvious connection is that Saul was reborn, born again, second-born.
In a physical birth there is conception when the egg cell and the sperm cell join and a new life begins. Then there is the period of gestation. For humans this lasts nine months and during this time the baby develops a body and organs that it will need to survive when it is born. Then there is the actual birth when the baby enters the world. And most times there is someone assisting in the birth, a doctor or midwife.
It has been interesting to look at Saul’s conversion from this perspective and see that his conversion was more than just a phrase, being born again or experiencing second-birth.
Let’s start with Saul’s conception. Saul was on his way to Damascus. There was purpose in his stride. He knew where he was going and he knew why he was going. He had no doubts. He was confident and then in a blaze of light he was knocked off his feet.
There is a joke about a farmer with a mule who was very obedient. All you had to do was whisper in his ear and the mule would obey. He sold this mule to another farmer who whispered, shouted and nothing happened. The mule refused to budge. He asked the farmer who had sold him the mule to come over to see what was the matter. The farmer walked toward the mule, picked up a big piece of lumber and whacked the mule on the head. Then he whispered and the mule trotted off. “He’s very obedient,” said the farmer, “but first you have to get his attention.”
Saul was so confident he was heading in the right direction it took something dramatic to get his attention. And the blinding light and voice speaking to him was the whack on the side of the head that did it. God got Saul’s attention and Saul’s thoughts turned from persecuting the followers of Jesus to considering who Jesus really was.
This was Saul’s conception. This was the first time Saul considered that he might be wrong. Saul was zealous for Torah, the law of Moses, and now he wondered what Torah meant in light of this new revelation.
The burning bush was a similar experience for Moses. Moses was out tending sheep as he did every day when he happened to notice a bush burning. This was not terribly unusual but this bush kept burning and did not get consumed by the fire. So Moses stepped aside from what he did every day and went to see what was happening.
When I was 18 years old and an exchange student in Germany, I went on a trip to East Berlin and had lunch with a young couple who were members of a Christian church. Because of their membership in the church, they were penalized by the East German government. They were denied a free state education. They were denied certain jobs. They were denied better housing. They sacrificed a lot for their membership in the church and I remember asking myself why anyone would make such sacrifices for being a member of a Christian church.
Church was just church and not very important to me at that point. A year or so later I met some students at university who talked to me about having a personal relationship with Jesus and one of the things that led me to surrendering my life to Jesus was the encounter with this East German couple. Meeting with this couple made me think about what it meant to be a Christian.
Tim Keller is pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York City. In a sermon about the burning bush he told the story of a member of his church who had an influential job with one of the major television networks. This man had a woman who worked for him and she made a mistake, a serious mistake that cost the network a lot of money. At her level in the company, her mistake would cause her to be fired. She was a talented, hard-working employee but the stakes are high and her mistake would mean the end of her career. The man who was a member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church was at a level in the company that could absorb the mistake without being fired and so he claimed it as his own, allowing the woman to keep her job. She came to him and asked him why he had done this. Why had he endangered his own career for her? And he told her he followed a God who forgave him when he made mistakes and allowed him to keep on going and so he wanted to pass on what he had received. This experience was a burning bush for the woman who later gave her life to Christ.
In second-birth, our conception is that event or events that cause us to step aside from the normal routine of our life and wonder why. Why was that person so kind to me? Why would someone sacrifice their own financial future to go off into the world to do social work? Why would someone go out of their way to help others? Why doesn’t that person do what everyone else does?
Not all of us are as zealous or determined or hard-headed as Saul was and not many of us have such dramatic stories of how we came to faith. But I would guess that most of us have some experience that made us turn our attention to God. Even if we grew up in a Christian home, there were experiences that made us think more clearly about what it meant to be a Christian.
Here is my first challenge in this sermon. In what way are you a noonday or burning bush experience to others? The way you live your life, the way you interact with others, the decisions you make all can be used by God to conceive new life, second life in the people around you.
The more you conform to the world and its values, the less bright your noonday sun will be, the less impressive will be your burning bush. But when you throw off the values of the world and choose to follow Jesus no matter what the costs, when you do that you shine brightly and your life will cause others to consider why.
You don’t have to stand on the street corner and proclaim the Gospel to be a witness for Jesus. Simply by living your life for Jesus, choosing for Jesus, forgiving and asking for forgiveness, living with hope, you proclaim Jesus. Even with all your imperfections you will help conceive new life in those around you as they wonder why.
After conception comes the period of gestation, the time when the baby develops within the womb.
Saul’s gestation period was the three days he was blind and led into Damascus. Three days to think about what had happened. Saul had been so sure he was right but now all that he had learned was in question. He had heard about Jesus. He may have seen him during one of the festivals in Jerusalem. He thought he had Jesus all figured out. A renegade pulling people away from obedience to the law. A radical who had to be stopped. Saul had undoubtedly been encouraged by the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus got only what he well deserved.
But what did it mean that Jesus had actually been raised from the dead? This had not been a hallucination out on the road. He had heard Jesus. He knew it was Jesus. Jesus was not dead but alive. And what did this mean?
Saul went back to what he knew. He went back to all his years of study. It was by obedience to the law that one found salvation, certainly not by rejecting the law. And yet Jesus had so clearly rejected the law. He had not shown respect for the law. He had provoked the Pharisees by healing on the Sabbath. His disciples did not obey the Sabbath laws. He had shown sheer disregard for the sacredness of the law.
If Jesus had not been simply a radical who had to be stopped, but was truly the Son of God, then what did all the things he had learned as a Pharisee mean? Had he believed a lie all his adult life? Was there anything at all that he knew anymore?
What was it he had heard about the teaching of Jesus?
He had stood as witness to the stoning of Stephen. What was it Stephen had said? Just before he died he said: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And then he cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
Was Stephen’s prayer meant for him?
What did Jesus mean when he had told him, “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do”?
Three days of thinking. Three days of wondering.
In my case there were some years of wondering and thinking. I was not nearly as focused as Saul. But over time, not every day and not every month, I had experiences that made me think about God. When my experience and reflection became more intense there was a period of a couple months before I finally surrendered and committed my life to Jesus.
If you are sitting here this morning and know you have never made a commitment to Jesus, never surrendered your will to his, then consider if you are ready to move this morning from this period of gestation to birth. If you are asking questions or wondering why, then you are close, not far from birth into the kingdom of God.
The next stage is the actual birth. The baby comes out of the dark into the light and it begins to breathe.
After three days of being blind, Saul was given second-birth.
something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
After three days of darkness he came into the light. He was baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit and began to spiritually breathe.
Saul was not alone when he was second-born. God put out a call to Ananias to be the midwife for Saul. This was not an easy call for Ananias to accept. Ananias was one of those Saul came to Damascus to arrest. Ananias was astounded when God told him he had already appeared to Saul and told him Ananias would be coming.
“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
But God told Ananias to go and he went.
Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
There was a sustained period of labor in my second-birth and I had more than one midwife. There was a girl who had a boyfriend at the end of the hall in the dorm where I lived. She would stop and talk with me when she came to see her boyfriend. She talked to me about giving my life to Jesus and encouraged me to pray each night asking God to reveal himself to me. I did that and discovered that God existed but still went through a period of a couple months of searching and exploring, unwilling to submit to the God I knew existed.
There were my sister Mitzie and her husband Bruce who I went to visit in March of 1971. I spent the week of my spring vacation with them, asked a lot of dumb questions which they patiently answered, went to church with them and on the plane coming back to Boston I prayed for the first time to God who I knew existed and I wanted to follow.
There was Julian Teitel who grew up in a Jewish family but discovered that Jesus was the Messiah. Julian had a fascination with the early Puritans and modeled himself after Spurgeon and he and I would meet together and go through the Scriptures and sing hymns in the style of the Puritans.
These are the midwives who helped me to be second-born.
I have lost touch with the girl who talked to me when she came down the hallway to see her boyfriend. My sister and brother-in-law visited me here in Rabat last spring and I had tears in my eyes when I introduced them in church as the ones who led me to faith. I did a Google search for Julian and think I found him as a minister in an Episcopal Church in Massachusetts. I sent him an email and am looking forward to his response.
The Bible does not tell us about the ongoing relationship between Ananias and Saul, but I would guess that Saul often thought of Ananias who had brought him to new birth.
Who are the people who midwifed you into second-birth? When is the last time you wrote to them or spoke to them and thanked them for their help to you? It would be great to do that this week.
Who are the people for whom you have been privileged to be midwife? Are you still in contact with them? If not, there will be a joyous reunion for you when you meet in heaven.
Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, is an excellent time to remember with gratitude the people who helped us to be second-born and to pray for the people we were privileged to midwife.
There is never a better time than now for you to be second-born. If you are familiar with Christianity but not intimate with Jesus, if having a personal-relationship with Jesus is not your experience, if you know about Jesus and know God exists but have been unwilling to submit to him, then this morning is an excellent time to do so.
God’s love for you is so powerfully demonstrated at Christmas when God took human form, became vulnerable as a baby, gave up his heavenly privileges, was born to suffer for you. I love Frederick Buechner’s meditation on Christmas which I printed in the bulletin. At the end he wrote:
The Word become flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not touching. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God … who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.”
Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.
It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast. Jesus was born to die.
That is the sacrifice Jesus made for you. That is the love Jesus has for you, that he considers you worthy to die for so you can live with him in eternity.
It may be you have resisted for years because of disappointments or doubts or fears. Let the love of Jesus for you overcome those obstacles and come be second-born this morning. We want to pray with and for you as you decide to submit to God’s will for your life and follow Jesus.
I want us also to pray for people in the world today, who like Saul, are driven by principle and are absolutely convinced they are right in what they believe, and so persecute Christians who they view as enemies of the truth.
Since the bombing of the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon in the US in 2001, I have been praying for Ossama bin Laden and others who are pursuing what they believe to be true with an idealistic zealousness. I have been praying that they, like Saul, will have a vision and be shown the truth and turn and become Jesus’ evangelists to their world.
We celebrate this Christmas, God with us, not just a cute, tiny baby in a manger, but God in the flesh. Over the centuries there have been many, many dramatic stories of people who have been spun around and turned in their tracks to face Jesus and discovered that what they had been pursuing was all smoke and mirrors, an illusion.
Those whose lives have been spun around are eternally grateful. Make sure you are in their number this Christmas.
Remember to be thankful this Christmas for those God used as burning bushes to make you step aside from your daily routine and ask why. Even if you do not know where they are, pray for them.
Remember those who midwifed you, who encouraged you to turn to Jesus. Send them a Christmas present of thankfulness this year.
Pray for those God privileged you to midwife. The joy you will experience when you come into God’s kingdom will be, in part, reuniting with those you helped come to second birth.
Renew your prayers for those you long to see come into the kingdom of God. It may have been many years that you have been praying but don’t give up. Pray again with hope.
And don’t forget to pray for those who pursue with idealistic zealousness what they believe to be true but who are working against the purposes of God. It is not a preposterous idea that they turn in their tracks and become God’s evangelists. It is simply how God works his miracles in our lives.
Nothing is impossible with God.
