Personal Transformation

A Sermon preached on Sunday, September 16, 2007

by Pastor Terry Davis

First Presbyterian Church, Hartford, CT

Acts 9:1 - 22 ¹Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest  ²and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.  ³Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.  ⁴He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”  ⁵He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.  ⁶But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”  ⁷The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one.  ⁸Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.  ⁹For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. ¹⁰Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.”  ¹¹The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment 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 in Jerusalem;  ¹⁴and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.”  ¹⁵But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel;  ¹⁶I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”  ¹⁷So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”  ¹⁸And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized,  ¹⁹and after taking some food, he regained his strength. ²⁰and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.”  ²¹All who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?”  ²²Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah.

When people are willing to discuss their faith seriously in a situation of safety and trust I find that Paul’s dramatic experience on the road to Damascus elicits two different reactions.  There are a great number of people who will tell you that they have never had any spiritual experience as powerful and overwhelming as this.  Many of us find that God communicates with us in a still small voice, and we may long for the certainty that we think would come if we were stuck down and blinded on some Damascus road along our own journey.  On the other hand I have also discovered that even in today’s secular world when people are skeptical of dreams and visions and when hearing voices that other people do not hear is considered a sure sign of severe mental illness there are an amazing number of people, clergy and laypeople who have in fact had some dramatic encounter with God.  Carl invited a group of several dozen of us either near retirement age or recent retirees, all pretty liberal theologically and in social viewpoints, to gather for a joint exercise in looking back at the scope of our ministries.  One of the people who shared in the course leadership was a Jewish historian who as we neared the end of our experience together noted that over the course of a dozen or so meetings he had heard about half of the class share some Damascus road experience that he thought was exclusive to much more conservative Christians.

We often wonder why people have such different spiritual experiences when we are all relating to the same God, even working in the same denominations and traditions.  The last two people we read about in the Acts, Stephen and Philip, were apparently not called in such a dramatic fashion as Paul, but the congregation discerned their gifts and call for the ministry and put them forward for ordination as Deacons.  Why did Paul have such a sudden and dramatic life changing encounter while other people have never had anything like this happen to them?  Are those whose call is marked by loud voices and fireworks more spiritual than those who have never had such an experience?

I have a theory about why Paul was called in the way that he was, and it may or may not apply to other people. 

I spent a great deal of my life in Kentucky and you may know that in the hills of Appalachia several generations ago the most common work animal on the farms was the mule.  In the mountains and hills the mule was much more surefooted and useful for plowing and pulling loads than oxen that are used for the same purpose in the flatlands.  All the old timers will tell you that mules are well known for their stubbornness.  A mule can be a wonderful and tireless worker if it is in a mood to work, and the most exasperating beast when he is not.  Mule trainers are a special breed of men and a skilled mule trainer was much sought our by farmers.  Several people told me similar stories about an old time mule trainer trying to explain what he did to a younger man.  The younger man was having no luck at all, he would tell the mule to move, he would pull on his halter, but the more the young man pulled the more the mule dug his hooves in the ground and refused to move, refused to pull the plow.  What do I do with this beast, he asked to old man, and the old man said watch this.  He picked up a piece of two by four lying on the ground and went up to the stubborn mule and smacked him on the side of the head.  The young man said, now what did you do that for.  The old man said the first thing about mule training you need to know is that you have to get the beast’s attention.

I think that it took a smack on the side of the head, a lightning bolt from the sky, and several days of blindness to get Paul’s attention.  Paul was one stubborn mule of a man.  He was a true conservative; he spent his life conserving and preserving the Jewish faith, the law delivered to Moses.  That is why he was so adamant about persecuting the Christians, because they seemed to be a threat to the faith that was so important to him.  They wanted people to be open to new truths, to understand that God had done something new in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God had revealed a new dimension of God’s love and grace and forgiveness.  Jesus was not a stickler for old traditions, and neither were most of his followers.  They believed that Jesus provided new interpretations of the old law.  Paul believed that Jesus was overthrowing the law and the prophets and he wanted to put an end to this dangerous Jesus movement.

I believe that God had been working on Paul for a long time; he had heard the witness of Christians as he attended their services as a spy, and as the Christians were brought to Jewish courts.  He had been there when Stephen preached his last sermon, and he had seen the calm and certain faith that he had even in the face of death, praying for forgiveness for his executioners.  In these and many other ways God was calling Paul to embrace this Jesus faith, but the more God knocked on the door of Paul’s heart the more Paul resisted.

But God had chosen Paul, he wanted his gifts for preaching and teaching, his gifts for writing and for organization and most of all God wanted Paul’s soul, the soul devoted to God but closed to the message of Jesus; God wanted him to grasp the message of love and grace and forgiveness, and to devote his fervor to the spreading of the Gospel.  God told Ananias “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.”  Paul had to meet Jesus with all the drama of the bolt of lightening and the blinded eyes before he would surrender himself to God’s calling. Just as God had met Moses in a burning bush, just as the Lord had pursued Jonah with a storm at sea, just as God confronted Isaiah in the temple with a vision of the Lord high and lifted up, so God pursued Paul until at last he surrendered his heart to his calling.

What about you?  How have you heard the call of God on your life?  I believe that there are many here whom God is calling to greater dedication, whom God is calling to new tasks of service and ministry.  The same God who confronted Paul on the Damascus road is the same God who speaks to us with an inner urging, with the voice of gentle silence, and through a restless longing of our souls for a closer walk with God.  The same God who called Stephen and Philip through the voices of their fellow members also calls us through other Christians who recognize our gifts and call and speak to us about being an officer, a member of a committee, a Sunday School teacher, or a member of a mission team whether that team is going to community meals or to the coast of Mississippi.  What is God calling you to do and to be?  Will you answer that call?