Sermon for April 22, Saul, Who Was Breathing Murder
Easter 3 C, Acts 9:1-20, Psalm 30, Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19
[Telephone] "Hello, may I speak to Simon Peter."
"Yeah, this is Ananias. From Damascus. You’ll never guess who I just baptized."
"Saul of Tarsus."
"From a vision I had."
"Well, there’s more. He’s going to take the lead from you. But he’s also going suffer. Hahah."
It is reported in Acts that the other believers had a hard time accepting Paul and they shunned him at first when he went to Jerusalem, till Barnabas put his arm around him like PeeWee Reese.
Saul was that special sort of true believer, a fundamentalist, a fanatic. He didn’t see himself as a bad guy, but a very good guy who was totally dedicated to the cause, for the sake of the cause was not afraid to hurt people. He also had something to prove, and since he was not a native Judean. He was born in what is now Turkey, in the Roman colony of Tarsus. His mother was Jewish, but what was she doing living in Tarsus? His birth there gave him Roman citizenship, he could have enjoyed the Roman world, he had all the benefits of Hellenistic civilization, but he rejected it.
He wasn’t some country bumpkin from Galilee for whom the Roman world was exotic and attractive. He had been there, he was not impressed. He committed himself to the opposite, to a rigorous form of Judaism, and his choice for Judaism had a lot of rejection in it. There was a lot of No inside his Yes. He chose to join the strictest group of Pharisees, and they must have been thrilled to have him, this guy who was fluent in Greek and even Latin, who had the freedom of the Empire and could stand up to other Romans.
He was dedicated to the preservation of the Temple in Jerusalem as the opposite of the Capitol in Rome, and the purity of Jewish law against the laws of Rome. To hold these tight until the Messiah would come and kick the Romans out and rule in Jerusalem once again.
And these followers of Jesus were messing it up. They said the Messiah had come and he was ruling in heaven, not in Jerusalem. They said the Temple was a nice place to pray but optional. They gave whole new interpretations of the Torah and did not keep kosher and said that Jewish laws were optional. If they kept this up the Jews would lose their distinctions and blend in with everyone else and Jerusalem would lose its special place and Israel would lose its unity and purity. They implicitly denied the choice he had made with his own life. He was furious at them. Their movement had to be expunged. He saw it as a matter of survival.
Saul is not an easy guy to reason with. He is so emotional and passionate. And for him it’s never about opinions, it’s about convictions. It’s not about being happy, it’s about being right. And he’s so much smarter than everybody else, so what can you tell him? He knows more than you do, and he knows he knows it. He even knows what his unknowns are, and it doesn’t bother him. To change his mind you’ve got to knock him down.
Which is what Jesus does. And says a very few words. Just enough to change everything, just enough to make all the difference. And to concentrate his mind he gets blinded, not to keep him in the dark but to send him deep inside so that he can really think this through.
And the healing grace of God has to come to him from the outside. Through the Christian community. It comes in the form of Ananias. Just an ordinary guy. I love how St. Luke uses this minor character from history like a supporting actor in an opera, to heighten the drama and bring out the emotion. The emotion at play here is fear. Ananias was afraid of Saul. He could have been arrested by Saul and dragged back to Jerusalem. But the fear in Ananias expresses the even deeper fear that was inside Saul, the engine of Saul’s ferocity, the existential fear in Saul that Judaism might not survive against the power of Rome, or that Saul himself might not succeed in keeping it.
That fear gets healed. And in a very calm and quiet scene, Ananias is able to lay hands on him, and call him Brother Saul, and soothe the raging of the beast. He breathes clean air, instead of breathing threats and murder. The power of the resurrection here is to empty him of fear.
In Blacksburg, Virginia, a 76 year old professor named Liviu Lubrescu ran to the door of his classroom and with his body held it closed so that his students could escape out the windows. He had suffered both the holocaust and Communism. A colleagues said that he had no fear of death.
A 32 year old graduate student named Waleed Shaalan had a wife and a little son back home in Egypt. On the floor, he used his own wounded body to shield a fellow student, who survived.
I had chosen my sermon title long before Monday’s massacre. This was to be the first in a sermon series for the Easter season on how the resurrection of Jesus had its impact on particular individuals in the New Testament. We’ll be looking at Lydia who dealt in purple, Peter who dreamed of unclean food, Dorcas who made clothes for the poor, and Saul, who was breathing threats and murder. Well, the threats and murder were suddenly and terribly relevant this week. Not only the 33 in Blacksburg but the 171 in Baghdad and that too included suicides. There’s the madness of a young college student and the madness of Iraq. There seems to be a spiritual global heating from the fires of rage and fear.
We will not say that being Christian somehow makes you more heroic or sacrificial than other folks. Or that being Christian makes you more effective in fighting evil. That can’t be said. But we can say that the gospel prefers certain responses to evil among the responses that are possible, and when we see non-Christians exhibiting such responses we can be all the more encouraged to trust the gospel.
We are tempted to respond to evil by fighting back, of which the exaggeration is Rambo, but then we imitate the very evil we deplore. The way of the gospel is the way of the lamb on the throne, the lamb that was slaughtered is the lamb that wins, and Professor Lubrescu and Waleed Shaalan say yes.
We can also say that the responses to evil which the gospel prefers for us do not excuse us from suffering. We suffer no matter what, there is no getting out of suffering. I think it’s the fear of suffering that often makes us pull back from doing the gospel thing, from doing the truly righteous thing, the radically loving thing, the daring thing of obedience. We think we can spare ourselves the suffering. But we suffer anyway, the issue is what kind of suffering and to what end.
Saul of Tarsus knew the evils of the Roman Empire and he was afraid of the power of evil to snuff out Israel or make it irrelevant as the bastion of good. His fear of the larger evil led him to hurtful things, as the lesser of the evils. And Ananias was afraid of the evil that had been in Saul.
Jesus told Ananias that Saul would suffer. But not as punishment or getting what he deserved. Though to your body it might feel the same. He would suffer the suffering that comes with not giving in to evil, not fearing it, not being turned back by its power. Of course he would still fear evil, but he would not let his fear deter him from his purpose or change his tune. Like Professor Lubrescu, like Waleed Shaalan, who suffered because they refused to give up their freedom.
For most of us, our situation is more like Ananias than like Professor Lubrescu. This week you are not likely to have to sacrifice your life, but you may well be asked to visit someone you’re afraid of, and lay your hand on a very hateful person, speaking peace when you want to shout your rage. That is its own kind of suffering. It is suffering to practice the forgiveness of sins. It is suffering to give up your moral rights and hand them over to God. It is suffering to trust in the ways of God. It is suffering to accept that Jesus acts like a Lamb when we wish he would be the Lion. Isn’t this strange, that the power of the resurrection might result in our suffering, and that God’s grace to us might even know us down? But then, how likely to be true.
Where was God this awful week? My rabbi friend reminds us that God is present in the Torah. We would add the Gospel. God is present in God’s Word. And God is present in God’s Spirit. God has chosen to be present that way. God is not some intervening spirit going around doing this and stopping that. .When God’s Spirit inside you leads you to believe the hope and promise of God’s Word, and act on it, that is God’s way of intervening in the world. Your conversion day by day is the means how God converts the whole world, day by day. You are the hope of the world.
[Telephone] "Hello, may I speak to Simon Peter."
"Yeah, this is Ananias. From Damascus. You’ll never guess who I just baptized."
"Saul of Tarsus."
"From a vision I had."
"Well, there’s more. He’s going to take the lead from you. But he’s also going suffer. Hahah."
It is reported in Acts that the other believers had a hard time accepting Paul and they shunned him at first when he went to Jerusalem, till Barnabas put his arm around him like PeeWee Reese.
Saul was that special sort of true believer, a fundamentalist, a fanatic. He didn’t see himself as a bad guy, but a very good guy who was totally dedicated to the cause, for the sake of the cause was not afraid to hurt people. He also had something to prove, and since he was not a native Judean. He was born in what is now Turkey, in the Roman colony of Tarsus. His mother was Jewish, but what was she doing living in Tarsus? His birth there gave him Roman citizenship, he could have enjoyed the Roman world, he had all the benefits of Hellenistic civilization, but he rejected it.
He wasn’t some country bumpkin from Galilee for whom the Roman world was exotic and attractive. He had been there, he was not impressed. He committed himself to the opposite, to a rigorous form of Judaism, and his choice for Judaism had a lot of rejection in it. There was a lot of No inside his Yes. He chose to join the strictest group of Pharisees, and they must have been thrilled to have him, this guy who was fluent in Greek and even Latin, who had the freedom of the Empire and could stand up to other Romans.
He was dedicated to the preservation of the Temple in Jerusalem as the opposite of the Capitol in Rome, and the purity of Jewish law against the laws of Rome. To hold these tight until the Messiah would come and kick the Romans out and rule in Jerusalem once again.
And these followers of Jesus were messing it up. They said the Messiah had come and he was ruling in heaven, not in Jerusalem. They said the Temple was a nice place to pray but optional. They gave whole new interpretations of the Torah and did not keep kosher and said that Jewish laws were optional. If they kept this up the Jews would lose their distinctions and blend in with everyone else and Jerusalem would lose its special place and Israel would lose its unity and purity. They implicitly denied the choice he had made with his own life. He was furious at them. Their movement had to be expunged. He saw it as a matter of survival.
Saul is not an easy guy to reason with. He is so emotional and passionate. And for him it’s never about opinions, it’s about convictions. It’s not about being happy, it’s about being right. And he’s so much smarter than everybody else, so what can you tell him? He knows more than you do, and he knows he knows it. He even knows what his unknowns are, and it doesn’t bother him. To change his mind you’ve got to knock him down.
Which is what Jesus does. And says a very few words. Just enough to change everything, just enough to make all the difference. And to concentrate his mind he gets blinded, not to keep him in the dark but to send him deep inside so that he can really think this through.
And the healing grace of God has to come to him from the outside. Through the Christian community. It comes in the form of Ananias. Just an ordinary guy. I love how St. Luke uses this minor character from history like a supporting actor in an opera, to heighten the drama and bring out the emotion. The emotion at play here is fear. Ananias was afraid of Saul. He could have been arrested by Saul and dragged back to Jerusalem. But the fear in Ananias expresses the even deeper fear that was inside Saul, the engine of Saul’s ferocity, the existential fear in Saul that Judaism might not survive against the power of Rome, or that Saul himself might not succeed in keeping it.
That fear gets healed. And in a very calm and quiet scene, Ananias is able to lay hands on him, and call him Brother Saul, and soothe the raging of the beast. He breathes clean air, instead of breathing threats and murder. The power of the resurrection here is to empty him of fear.
In Blacksburg, Virginia, a 76 year old professor named Liviu Lubrescu ran to the door of his classroom and with his body held it closed so that his students could escape out the windows. He had suffered both the holocaust and Communism. A colleagues said that he had no fear of death.
A 32 year old graduate student named Waleed Shaalan had a wife and a little son back home in Egypt. On the floor, he used his own wounded body to shield a fellow student, who survived.
I had chosen my sermon title long before Monday’s massacre. This was to be the first in a sermon series for the Easter season on how the resurrection of Jesus had its impact on particular individuals in the New Testament. We’ll be looking at Lydia who dealt in purple, Peter who dreamed of unclean food, Dorcas who made clothes for the poor, and Saul, who was breathing threats and murder. Well, the threats and murder were suddenly and terribly relevant this week. Not only the 33 in Blacksburg but the 171 in Baghdad and that too included suicides. There’s the madness of a young college student and the madness of Iraq. There seems to be a spiritual global heating from the fires of rage and fear.
We will not say that being Christian somehow makes you more heroic or sacrificial than other folks. Or that being Christian makes you more effective in fighting evil. That can’t be said. But we can say that the gospel prefers certain responses to evil among the responses that are possible, and when we see non-Christians exhibiting such responses we can be all the more encouraged to trust the gospel.
We are tempted to respond to evil by fighting back, of which the exaggeration is Rambo, but then we imitate the very evil we deplore. The way of the gospel is the way of the lamb on the throne, the lamb that was slaughtered is the lamb that wins, and Professor Lubrescu and Waleed Shaalan say yes.
We can also say that the responses to evil which the gospel prefers for us do not excuse us from suffering. We suffer no matter what, there is no getting out of suffering. I think it’s the fear of suffering that often makes us pull back from doing the gospel thing, from doing the truly righteous thing, the radically loving thing, the daring thing of obedience. We think we can spare ourselves the suffering. But we suffer anyway, the issue is what kind of suffering and to what end.
Saul of Tarsus knew the evils of the Roman Empire and he was afraid of the power of evil to snuff out Israel or make it irrelevant as the bastion of good. His fear of the larger evil led him to hurtful things, as the lesser of the evils. And Ananias was afraid of the evil that had been in Saul.
Jesus told Ananias that Saul would suffer. But not as punishment or getting what he deserved. Though to your body it might feel the same. He would suffer the suffering that comes with not giving in to evil, not fearing it, not being turned back by its power. Of course he would still fear evil, but he would not let his fear deter him from his purpose or change his tune. Like Professor Lubrescu, like Waleed Shaalan, who suffered because they refused to give up their freedom.
For most of us, our situation is more like Ananias than like Professor Lubrescu. This week you are not likely to have to sacrifice your life, but you may well be asked to visit someone you’re afraid of, and lay your hand on a very hateful person, speaking peace when you want to shout your rage. That is its own kind of suffering. It is suffering to practice the forgiveness of sins. It is suffering to give up your moral rights and hand them over to God. It is suffering to trust in the ways of God. It is suffering to accept that Jesus acts like a Lamb when we wish he would be the Lion. Isn’t this strange, that the power of the resurrection might result in our suffering, and that God’s grace to us might even know us down? But then, how likely to be true.
Where was God this awful week? My rabbi friend reminds us that God is present in the Torah. We would add the Gospel. God is present in God’s Word. And God is present in God’s Spirit. God has chosen to be present that way. God is not some intervening spirit going around doing this and stopping that. .When God’s Spirit inside you leads you to believe the hope and promise of God’s Word, and act on it, that is God’s way of intervening in the world. Your conversion day by day is the means how God converts the whole world, day by day. You are the hope of the world.
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