February 17, 2013 | 4:00 p.m. | First Sunday in Lent

The First in a Series of Sermons on the Apostle Paul

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Acts 9:1–19

Tonight’s sermon is the first in a series on the Apostle Paul that will take us through most of the season of Lent, which began this week. Having spent the last number of weeks since Christmas looking at stories about Jesus’ early life and ministry, we’ll turn now to Paul to hear what one of Jesus’ followers said was so important about Jesus’ message. We start tonight with the story where Paul meets Jesus for the first time.

It is the story about what happens to Saul on the road to Damascus. To avoid confusion, let me explain that Saul is the same person as the Apostle we usually refer to as Paul. Like a lot of people in the Bible, Saul has an important experience of faith and then receives a new name that sort of marks the occasion. If you’ve heard this story before, you may know it as Saul’s “conversion” story. I’m going to raise some questions about that idea of “conversion” on the way to suggesting that if we look beyond the idea of conversion, we may find some things about this story that are much more relevant to our everyday lives than you might have expected.

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A little background about Saul is important in order to understand this story well.

We think Saul was born roughly ten years after Jesus’ birth and in a city called Tarsus, on the south coast of modern-day Turkey. Tarsus was one of the bigger cities in the Roman Empire of that time, and its position on the water meant it was more cosmopolitan than most places; it would have been home to people of different religions, nationalities, and languages. Being in Turkey, it was outside of what we normally think of as the home of the Jews, but because of heavy persecution around Jerusalem in the generations before Saul’s birth, many Jews had left Jerusalem and settled in places like Tarsus. Saul’s family was among them. So Saul was a Jew, growing up in a big city surrounded by the influences of Greek culture and the emerging Roman Empire.

We know from what Saul (eventually Paul) tells us about himself in the Bible that when he was a young man, he moved back to Jerusalem to be educated, and he became a Pharisee. Some of you will remember that the Pharisees are a group that is always challenging Jesus as he goes around teaching. This isn’t because they were bad people; it’s because they were a group of the most religious, most educated, and most dedicated Jews. So when someone as influential as Jesus came on the scene and started saying things about Judaism some of them had never heard before, the Pharisees were naturally skeptical.

It was shortly after Jesus’ life, and when his followers first started to multiply, that Saul came on the scene in Jerusalem as one of these Pharisees. Having decided initially that this fringe Jesus movement in Judaism was something to be afraid of, Saul became a persecutor of the followers of Jesus, first within Jerusalem and later heading out from Jerusalem to other places where the movement was growing. In the story we read today, he’s on his way north to Damascus.

As the story goes, Saul is walking along the road—he’s on his way to Damascus to find the followers of Jesus and drag them back to Jerusalem to punish them—when suddenly there is a bright light from heaven and the voice of Jesus is heard saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul is struck blind by the experience, and he does what he is told by the voice. His fellow travelers help him make it to Damascus, where he meets a follower of Jesus named Ananias, and Paul’s sight is restored.

That’s the background and the nuts and bolts of the story. Now let’s talk about what it might mean. As I said before, a lot of folks would suggest that what happens to Saul is a “conversion” experience. That terminology makes sense to us, because we live in a world where we hear people tell stories about having an experience of God’s presence and then deciding to change religions or join up with a religion for the first time. Notice, though, that this does not seem to be what happened to Saul. Saul was a devout Jew before and after his experience on the Damascus road. He had always been serious about religion and would stay that way. What happened on the road is that his eyes were opened to a new way of thinking about his religion: he changed his mind about the followers of Jesus. (For more on this idea, see Krister Stendahl’s Paul among Jews and Gentiles.)

Why am I telling you all of this? Why is this distinction important? For at least two reasons: First of all, I want to make the point that if you haven’t had some kind of major conversion experience, I don’t think that makes the story of your faith any less important. Second, I think that short of major conversion experiences, all of us face important day-to-day choices that can be helped by a close look at what happens to Saul. Let’s take those two things one at a time.

First let’s talk about our own stories in comparison to Saul’s. If you’ve spent a lot of time around churches, you might’ve been in a small group or a Sunday school class or a worship service in which someone talked about their church background or their “faith story.” It’s not unheard of in those conversations for someone to say, “Well, I’ve never had a Damascus road experience, but . . .” And then they go on to tell you about an experience in which they sensed God’s presence in their life, often in very significant and moving ways. Clearly when people say, “I’ve never had a Damascus road experience,” the meaning they are conveying is that they think their story is somehow inferior to Saul’s and that if they were really faithful, they would have a more remarkable story. I think that is a shame.

Saul’s story isn’t what everyone’s story is supposed to be like. It is obviously exceptional, and one of the clearest indications of that is found right in the story. After Saul undergoes this amazing experience on the Damascus road, he proceeds to Damascus where he meets Ananias. Ananias is probably a little more like you and me; he is already among the followers of Jesus, and when he meets Saul, he is skeptical. He’s heard that Saul has been persecuting the followers of Jesus, and he finds it hard to believe that Saul has changed; he’s afraid to go and see him. Most of us probably would have felt the same way. I really don’t think the point of this story is that every one of us should hope to have an experience like Saul’s or that we should feel that we are somehow religiously inferior if we have not. Saul’s story is supposed to come off as unusual.

The second point I want to make is that understanding this story as something other than a conversion experience might say something very important about our day-to-day choices. It’s a true statement that you don’t have to “convert” anything, you don’t have to change your whole life or your whole religion or your whole anything, in order to make other changes in your life that may be very important. Saul doesn’t change religions; he takes on a different way of thinking about how to be a Jew. We can all take on different ways of thinking about who we are and what we’re doing with the life God has given us. Sometimes it’s important to make a major life change. Sometimes a total career change is necessary; sometimes a bad marriage has to come to an end; no doubt there are moments in our lives when major dramatic changes happen, sometimes because we choose them, other times because they are thrust upon us.

But there’s a different kind of change that comes up far more often. We can think about changing our perception of where we are and what we’re doing right now. How can I be a more understanding boss? How can I be more tolerant and forgiving with my partner? Do I need to look again at how much attention I’m giving to my kids or to my parents? Do I need to look at the balance between work and other things in my life? Do I need to bury the hatchet in an old argument with a brother or sister or colleague? All of these questions represent changes that can be extremely important for our relationships with others as well as for our own well-being and our personal growth, and none of them require some kind of major life change; they involve a new realization about the life you already have. The other thing these questions have in common, and that they have in common with Saul’s story is that they involve admitting that we’ve been wrong. In this story, Saul makes a humbling decision, because he turns his back on a position he held very strongly; he becomes one of the people he’s been persecuting. In our own lives, much of our greatest growth comes as a result of honestly asking ourselves if we need to change something because the way we’ve been going about it has been wrong.

Many of you will know that today is the First Sunday in Lent, a time in the Christian year when we take some time to explore how we are doing in our relationship with God and with one another as we prepare ourselves for the story of the cross and the resurrection. I preached the sermon I did tonight because I think that sometimes we believe that Lent is either about giving up chocolate or beer or your favorite TV show without any particular reason, or it’s about some very pious, super-religious stuff that most of us aren’t ready for. I want to present a third idea: that perhaps this season is a time for you to think about who you are in relationship to God and where you are on your journey of faith, and wherever that is, accept it, and ask yourself, “Now, where do I go from here?”

As we hear our jazz reflection tonight, I hope you’ll allow that question to work on you. Amen.