FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
The Message for Sunday May 15th
from Ret. Pastor Arnie Johnson
Scripture Reading:
Old Testament: Daniel 2:20-22
New Testament: Acts 9:1-9
LET US PRAY: May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, my Lord, my Strength, and my Redeemer. Amen.
In past messages, I have brought up the thought that many have had that there were two things in life we could always expect, and they were “Death and Taxes.” When I started thinking about this message today, I realized that there was another that we can always count on, and that is change! Sometimes change can happen rapidly, sometimes slowly, sometimes with a bit of nudging, sometimes with a hard push! A perfect example of something happening that caused change was this.
Picture a scene from the Old West, sometime in the 1870s. Weary cowboys in dusty Levi's gather around a blazing campfire after a day on the open range. The lonely howl of a coyote counterpoints the notes of a guitar as the moon floats serenely overhead. Suddenly a bellow of pain shatters the night, as a cowpoke leaps away from the fire, dancing in agony. Hot-Rivet Syndrome has claimed another victim. In those days, Levi's were made, as they had been from the first days of Levi Strauss, with copper rivets at stress points to provide extra strength. On these original Levi's--model 501--the crotch rivet was the critical one: when cowboys crouched too long beside the campfire, the rivet grew uncomfortably hot. For years the brave men of the West suffered this curious occupational hazard.
Then, in 1933, Walter Haas, Sr., president of Levi Strauss, went camping in his Levi 501's. He was crouched by a crackling campfire in the High Sierras, drinking in the pure mountain air, when he fell prey to Hot-Rivet Syndrome. He consulted with professional wranglers in his party. Had they suffered the same mishap? An impassioned YES was the reply. Haas vowed that the offending rivet must go, and at their next meeting the board of directors voted it into extinction. (Everybody's Business, ed. by M. Moskowitz, M. Katz, R. Levering.)
It took from the 1870s to 1933 for this change to happen, and it took a specific painful experience to bring it to the attention of one who had control to make the change happen pretty rapidly! I think we’re going to find out today that it also happened during Biblical times with many people including Saul, our subject of today’s message.
Saul is an interesting subject. We all know a lot about what Saul/Paul did in his life AFTER Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus, but what do we know about him before that? It’s very important to understand where he had been before that time.
What we know about Paul is that he was likely born between the years of 5 BC and 5 AD. What he writes in The Book of Acts implies that he was a Roman citizen by birth, more affirmatively describing his father as such. His was a devout Jewish family in the city of Tarsus—one of the largest trade centers on the Mediterranean coast. It had been in existence several hundred years prior to his birth. It was renowned for its university, one in which students could receive a superior education.
To understand Saul a little bit better, we need to understand that as a youth he studied under Gamaliel (Gam-a-li-el), the most famous rabbinic teacher of his day, a man liberal in mind and tolerant in spirit. This teacher of Saul was the eminent doctor of the law who advised the Council to leave the apostles alone. The Jews celebrated Gamaliel (Gam-a-li-el) as “The Glory of the Law”. The training of this famous teacher, “held in honor by all the people”, involved a rigorous study of the Jewish Scriptures together with the extensive comments of the learned rabbis concerning them. Saul would have been required to learn a trade so that they could eventually teach without becoming a burden to the people. He likely followed a typical Tarsian industry, making tents from goat’s-hair cloth. As a student of Gam-a-li-el, Saul most probably had an intimate grasp of his own native tongue as well as Greek and probably Latin. It was his grasp and fluency of Greek that was possibly one of his most valuable assets for being a missionary in the first century. Saul was very well educated!
In his letters, Paul reflected heavily from his knowledge of Stoic philosophy, using Stoic terms and metaphors to assist his new Gentile converts in their understanding of the revealed word of God. His wide range of experiences and education gave the "Apostle to the Gentiles", as Paul might have been known by, the tools which he later would use to effectively spread the Gospel and to establish the church solidly in many parts of the Roman Empire.
Paul referred to himself as being "of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee".
Paul’s family had a history of religious piety. Apparently, the family lineage had been very attached to traditions of the Pharisees and observances for generations. Young Saul learned how to make the mohair with which tents were made. Later as a Christian missionary, that trade became a means of support for him, one that he could practice anywhere. It also was to become an initial connection with Priscilla and Aquila with whom he would partner in tent making and later become very important teammates as fellow missionaries.
Nothing more is known of his background until he takes an active part in the martyrdom of Stephen. Paul confesses that "beyond measure" he persecuted the church of God prior to his conversion. This persecution continued until we meet him on the road to Damascus in our scripture reading today from Acts.
It certainly appears weird to me that with all his education and study of the Old Testament with the rabbis, that Saul did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He spent so much time trying to counter what Jesus and His disciples had done and were doing, trying to get the disciples arrested.
Can you imagine how Saul felt as he was walking down the road with some of his friends who probably felt the same way about Jesus as Saul felt, just having a normal conversation, when all of a sudden there was a bright flash of light, he fell to the ground, and a loud voice called his name? “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Or maybe in today’s language, “Hey man, what’re you doing to me? What’d I ever do to you?” And since Saul had no idea whose voice it was, he asked who it was who was calling to him. The reply was that it was Jesus, the same one who Saul had been persecuting. And rather than dressing Saul down at that time in front of all his friends, Jesus told him to continue into the city and wait to be told what to do.
So, when Saul got back up from the ground where he had fallen and was ready to continue on his way, he found that he couldn’t see; he was blind! Luckily, Saul’s friends helped him into town, to the house of Judas, and they waited, just as Jesus had commanded.
What was going through his mind? What was Saul thinking? “Why me? What more can happen to me? Will I be blind forever? Is this a punishment for what I have been doing?”
Saul’s entrance to Damascus was totally different from what he had expected. It was probably his plan to enter the city as the zealous persecutor of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth and be welcomed with open arms, but he had met the Man Himself and, humbled and humiliated, spent the first three days in Damascus, sightless and foodless, stuck in one house. What a reverse for the proud Pharisee bent on the imprisonment of the saints!
How about us, what would we have been thinking if it was one of us in Saul’s sandals, or even one of his friends? In this day and age, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if with the first flash of light, we would head for the ditch or some place of protection, maybe not to come out for a while!
The Acts scripture continues: “10 In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!” “Yes, Lord,” he answered. 11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.” 13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.” 15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
Well, Jesus took the next step of Saul’s conversion and told one of His disciples, Ananias, to go to Judas’ house and tell Saul to go claim Jesus’ name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.
Now we get to put ourselves in Ananias’ sandals. Again we might ask, “Why me, why do I have to be the one to go tell this well-known bad guy to change his ways and go spread the word and tell everyone he meets about Jesus, how good Jesus is rather than preaching how bad Jesus was?”
As much as he really, really didn’t want to do it, Ananias went to Judas’ house and did what Jesus had told him to do. “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.” 18 Immediately, 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.”
Saul had come to make the Nazarenes tremble; he was now a Nazarene himself, a follower of Jesus of Nazareth! What a swift change or Metamorphosis!
What did Jesus see in this man, this Saul? I’m sure that Jesus saw, just like us from the scriptures, an educated man, a Jew, a man that when he got his “teeth” into something he believed in, he wouldn’t let go. This was the kind of man that Jesus wanted on His side, not against Him! And, sure enough, once Saul had his blindness removed and saw the Light of Jesus Christ, he did just that! He didn’t stop telling the world about Jesus. He changed from Saul into Paul! I wonder if he started singing that old favorite: “I saw the Light, I saw the Light, no more trouble, no more strife. Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight. Praise the Lord, I saw the Light.”
What happened to Saul/Paul relates directly to what an Old Testament scripture tells us: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” That’s exactly what happened to Saul through Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus! Jesus was forgiving Saul for his sin and persecution of Jesus, the disciples, and the followers!
And, once Saul was baptized and gained strength, he then would have understood what he later wrote in Romans 6:3: “3 …. don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Yes, a new life! Change! That’s what baptism is, changing into a new life! A new life of Freedom! A new life in Christ! Scripture tells us in Galatians that “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Saul, who then became Paul, knew full well what the “yoke of slavery” was since he had been there, done that, had the T-shirt to prove it! Through Jesus Christ, he had gained his freedom! All he had to do was to throw off the “yoke,” that yoke that, even though he didn’t know it, had been burdening him for many years.
From that time on, for the rest of his life, he travelled and spread the Gospel of Jesus far and wide, to the Jews and the Gentiles, out of prison and in prison until he was beheaded in Rome by Nero on the same day that Peter was crucified!
And, just like Paul, we are free, set free by Jesus Christ, allowed to change, to become new. Let us all use that freedom courageously and wisely as we continue our life journeys being the people God wants and needs us to be. We are then in ownership of that same freedom that was mentioned in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, taken from an old Negro Spiritual by J. W. Work. The words King used were “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.” The words of that song are actually:
CHORUS: [C] Free at last, [F] free at last
[C] I thank God I'm [G7] free at [C] last
[C] Free at last, [F] free at last
[C] I thank God I'm [G7] free at [C] last
[C] Way down yonder in the [F] graveyard [C] walk
[C] I thank God I'm [G7] free at [C] last
[C] Me and my Jesus going to [F] meet and [C] talk
[C] I thank God I'm [G7] free at [C] last.
SO MAY IT BE. YES, WE ARE CHANGED AND FREE AT LAST! AMEN
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