In an incredible book entitled The Moral Intelligence of Children, the Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Robert Coles, talks about a student that he had known who had been reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Character is Higher than Intellect.
Marion was a student who admired Emerson, and she had arrived at Harvard from the mid-west and was trying hard to work her way through college by cleaning the rooms of her fellow students. Again and again she met classmates who had also forgotten the meaning of ‘please’ and of ‘thank you’ no matter how high their SAT scores might be. They did not hesitate to be rude, even crude, towards her. One day, she was not so subtly propositioned by a young man she knew to be very bright. She quit her job and was preparing to quit the school altogether. Full of anxiety and anger, she came to see me. ‘I had been taking all these philosophy courses and enjoying every one of them’ she said to me, ‘and even though we talk in those about what is true, what is important, and what is good, how do you teach people to be....’ Well, this was the question!
It is precisely this question about goodness that dominated the thought of the man known as Saul of Tarsus. He was convinced that the Law (Torah) of Moses constituted the ground of goodness. Therefore, when he heard that a group of Jewish people were following a man called Jesus and were referred to as ‘the Way”, he was concerned. These people believed in the Law and goodness itself, but they also believed that the teachings of their leader someone went beyond the Law and introduced people to ideas and attitudes that did not correspond with traditional views. Saul, therefore, set out to destroy this dangerous group. He asked permission from the Sanhedrin to travel to Damascus to round up these followers of the Way and bring them back to Jerusalem to be charged. He did this because he knew that the large Jewish community in Damascus could be easily influenced by these followers of Jesus Christ.
We also know that Saul of Tarsus, as a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, had guards with him on his way to Damascus. But it has been speculated that those guards probably didn’t have a lot to do with Saul of Tarsus. They would leave him to his own devices. It must have been a lonely walk, full of anger, and righteousness, defending the good, and getting people who were followers of The Way that were going to destroy all that Paul knew and loved. This was an angry man on a mission.
The story of the encounter between Jesus and Saul on that road goes down in the annals of Christian history as one of the most significant. We read that Saul was blinded by a light, and he heard a sound. Even though those with him didn’t hear anything. He had a theophany, an appearance of God before him, who says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Of course Saul wasn’t going to persecute Jesus per se, he was going to persecute the followers of Jesus, but Jesus identifies himself with people, and so Saul was struck blind. Eventually, he is taken to Damascus and for three days he lives without sight, food or drink. He is told to go and visit a man called Ananais, who is deeply troubled when Saul visits because he knows that this Saul of Tarsus was coming to do damage to the followers of The Way, and Ananais had to make a very strong statement of faith that his prayers were being answered, because this was an angry, dangerous, self-righteous person, who was coming to attack him. It was also as a result of this experience that Saul’s name was changed to Paul.
The blindness that Paul experienced helped him to realize what he had not seen. Things that he needed to see clearly: Jesus of Nazareth. He had already made up his own mind about Jesus. Clearly, the events in Jerusalem that led Saul to stone Stephen, who had been one of Jesus’ earlier followers, caused Paul to have concern that the law, the good, was being eroded by Jesus of Nazareth, and forgiveness, tolerance and sacrificial self-giving love was too much for Paul. Paul thought this was a danger to the law and to the hard letter that he saw emanating from it. After he was blinded, he came to see something in Jesus that transformed him. While blinded, he saw. Think about it for a moment. One of the greatest passages that has ever been written about Jesus was written by Paul some years later to the Philippians. A man who had been persecuting Jesus, writes:
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place, and gave him the name above every name: at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in Heaven and on Earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Now that is transformation! That is a profound change from a man who set out on the road to Damascus to persecute followers of The Way! When people tell you that their own attitude to Jesus cannot change, or that it is formed and therefore cannot be re-formed, don’t believe them. The Apostle Paul (Saul to Paul) tells you differently.
Another profound thing, and it has really been stressed over the last twenty-five years, thank goodness, is that Paul originally had seen a discontinuity between his own faith and commitment to God and the law and those who followed the way of Jesus. For the Saul who was on the road to Damascus, that discontinuity meant that, as a faithful Jew, he could have nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. But, Paul changed. He changed so much that in the Book of Romans, Chapter 15, he wrote these words:
For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the Patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. And, it is written ‘Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles and sing praises to your name.’ Again, ‘Rejoice O Gentiles with his people”, and again ‘Praise the Lord all you Gentiles and let all the peoples praise him.’ And again, Isaiah wrote, ‘The root of Jesse shall come and the One who rises to rule the Gentiles, in him the Gentiles shall hope.’ May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul wrote this to the Romans years after the events on the Damascus road. Why? Because he saw that his mission was to go to the Gentile world, not as a schism from those from whom he had come, but as an extension of those from who he had come. He saw Christ as the means of reaching out to the Gentile world and a way in which it was done was through the very Lord himself.
Paul had been changed! He had been blinded, but now he saw. Here is a man who was blinded by his own anger, self-righteousness, and sense of wrath, but Paul changed. Christ changed him, so-much-so that it was Paul who wrote those incredible words of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13: “Now abide faith, hope and love, these three, and the greatest of these is love.”
If that is not a transformation, I don’t know what is! In his encounter with Christ, Paul became a new person. He left behind the anger and the hatred that had characterized his former life. He left behind his bigoted views of Jesus. He was changed. Something in those three days of blindness caused him to see with new eyes. What are we to make of that for ourselves? Are we to make of it that all of us need a theophany in order to believe and be followers of Christ in the world? I don’t think so! Paul had his own unique experience. He was called by God in a unique place at a unique time, just like Ezekiel had been in The Old Testament when he was blinded and fell to his knees. What we do need to do is allow Christ to continually change us. Sometimes we think that the conversion of the Apostle Paul was a sudden thing that happened immediately. Rather, it was a process that he went through. He lived for three days with his blindness. He then went and lived with Ananias. He then joined a Christian community. He was formed by other believers. He came to his understanding and his awareness of who Christ was on his daily walk with Christ. He did it in his life of prayer.
This wasn’t the sudden, dramatic change that we often think it is. Paul makes this abundantly clear when he gives his own statement about his own conversion in the Book of Galatians. There is this sense in which that encounter with Christ was only the beginning of a life lived in Christ. At times, it seems that we think we have to have the spectacular moment of Paul or else you are not a believer. Well, for those of you who were privileged to have parents who baptized you, as my friend Jeff Loach likes to say, “When the parents held you in their hands and presented you to be baptized, at that very moment something began in you because of their faith in Christ. From the moment in your life that you began to pray, wherever that may be and in whatever circumstance it might be, there begins the life of the transformation of Christ. There, in a moment when you have to make a decision whether you follow Christ or you follow the patterns of this world, at that moment, you begin your walk with Christ. He changes us through all of these.” I don’t think there is anyone, if they are really honest, who will say that their understanding of Christ has not changed in their lives. Woe betide us if we think that only what we once knew a few years ago will suffice when we have a living Christ with us.
You see, the great mistake that Saul of Tarsus made on that road to Damascus was that thinking that Christ was dead, when Christ was alive. It was that understanding of Christ’s risen presence with us through the power of his Spirit that transforms our lives. We also sometimes have a pretty dark and a turbid view of God as well. Many people have a view of God like Paul had before he entered Damascus. I was reading a wonderful book by a colleague in the United Church ministry many years ago who is deceased now, Maurice Boyd. He preached in this pulpit at Metropolitan London for many years. He wrote a wonderful book, A Lover’s Quarrel with the World. In it he wrote:
I meet all kinds of Christians who ought to have a lover’s quarrel with their god, because the god they believe in is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; he is a monster. All through my ministry I have met men and women who have believed in a god so narrow and vindictive and cruel that I wouldn’t believe in him for a minute! And yet, they come to the house of God to worship him. To worship means ‘to ascribe worth’. How can one ascribe worth to a god who is not only less than divine, but sometimes less than human?
He’s right! There are many people who have a Pauline view or should I say ‘Sauline’ view of life and of God before the encounter with Christ. It is a dark and a turbid place. Many people in society think that is the real and the living god, that this god who Boyd described as ‘a monster’ is the god who really rules, as opposed to the God of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Saul of Tarsus becoming Paul the Apostle is a transformation in the way Paul saw God, and it changed him. It is the same in our lives with all our angers and biases, hatreds and fears. We all have them. Deep in our soul we foster some animosities and bigotries, just like everybody else. No one is exempt from that. But it is an encounter with Christ that transforms that. As Paul wrote himself, “We no longer see people through the eyes we once saw them, but now we see them through the eyes of faith, and it changes everything.” We are often blinded by our own hatreds and our own hatreds do not get us to see Christ or even the need of the other.
What finally was the purpose of this vision? Why did Paul need to see again? Well, Ananias, who was in that room in Damascus on Straight Street waiting for Paul knew why. He knew that the reason why is because the world was going to change, that the man who had been a zealot for one thing, became an ambassador for another. The man who had set out to persecute would now be the one who would proclaim Him, and that Christ would use him and transform him and change the world. It has ever been thus. When Christ enters a life, Christ changes it from within. I read a report by a very major aide organization that did work in Africa and the Middle East, and the story is told – you remember when there were problems in Biafra? There was such poverty and deprivation, sorrow and violence. It was terrible! One day, the aide organization received a bag. In it, there were all manner of things to help people. There was a note attached to it: “We, who have been moved by Christ, hope you can use what you find herein.” They opened it up, and as they started to unpack it they realized that many of the little packets actually had some cloth tied around the top of them, and as they opened the top they realized that they recognized the white strips. They were actually torn from the robes of people who belonged to the KKK. By being moved by Christ, those strips were now holding a part of the bag that was helping those of colour in need. The writer said, “This is the difference that Christ makes. This is the power of his transforming love.”
Whenever we look at the conversion of the Apostle Paul, and his life, let us not forget the radical nature of the changing power of Christ. It is one that changed Saul to Paul – and can change us and the world! Amen.