Who's Captive? Who's Free?

Acts 16:16-40
Easter 7
May 29, 2022

William G. Carter  

Memorial Day offers a time for us to give thanks for those who have gone on before us. We plant flowers, tidy up graves, and review the memories lodged within our hearts. With special gratitude, we thank God for those who have given their lives in the service of our country. They have made sacrifices for our well-being. They have seen action to defend our values. And somebody will add, we remember those who have fought for our freedom.

For our freedom. Freedom.

Today we are reflecting on freedom today, and its antithesis, captivity. And we will be instructed once again by an adventure story from the Acts of the Apostles (text). Listen to Luke’s first-hand account:

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.

But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

When morning came, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.” And the jailer reported the message to Paul, saying, “The magistrates sent word to let you go; therefore come out now and go in peace.” But Paul replied, “They have beaten us in public, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and now are they going to discharge us in secret? Certainly not! Let them come and take us out themselves.” The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens; so they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. After leaving the prison they went to Lydia’s home; and when they had seen and encouraged the brothers and sisters there, they departed.

As we heard last week, the Word of God had moved into Europe. The Word traveled from Jerusalem, to Samaria, through Turkey – and now to the ends of the earth, specifically to the region of Macedonia, northeast of Greece. Paul and his companions happened upon a wealthy merchant by the name of Lydia. She heard the good news of Jesus and welcomed the messengers into her home. A small circle of Christian believers began in the city of Philippi, as they preached the Word and offered prayers.

Yet one day, as we heard, the apostle Paul blew a gasket. His annoyance had been building over a few days. As he and the others went back and forth to Lydia’s place of prayer, they kept passing this unusual young woman. She kept calling out. She was persistent. She was loud. She was obnoxious. And she was a slave.

In that time and location, slavery was legal. It was an open economy without many limitations. Some men owned this woman. They discovered she had a special ability to tell fortunes. So they bought her – literally purchased her as a slave – and used her to make a buck.

She had a remarkable skill. The single person could ask, "Will I find the right mate?" The married couple could inquire, "Will we ever have children?" The business owner could wonder, "Will my fortunes rise next season?" In each case, for a significant fee, she provided an answer, a true answer. Her ability made a lot of money for her owners. They kept her fed and on an invisible chain of exploitation. They were free to do this. She was their captive.

However, something inside her would also blurt out the truth for free. I’m guessing it happened when her owners weren’t paying attention. As Paul and the others passed by, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the most high God. These men are slaves of the most high God.” Nobody paid her to say it. The words just came out.

And they kept coming! “These men are slaves of the most high God. These men are slave of the most high God.” Every time they passed. Who wants that kind of exposure, even if she was telling the truth? Clearly, she couldn’t help herself. And the shouting continued, every single time. “These men are slaves of the most high God.” It was so annoying. Clearly, she was not only enslaved by her owners; she was enslaved by an unseen spirit.

It became so annoying that Paul had it. So one more time, “These men are slaves of the most high God.” Paul turned, looked at her, identified that thing within her, and said, “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I order you to come out of her.” The shouting stopped. She was quiet. She was free. Free from that fortune-telling spirit that turned her into a commodity. She was free to be who God created her to be.

As you know, this healing infuriated her possessors. Why? You know why: they couldn’t exploit her anymore. They could make money off her ability anymore. And they were enraged. Up until now, they thought they were free to do whatever they wanted, pushing this woman forward as a sideshow attraction. But they can’t do that anymore. They thought they were free, but they were captive to their own greed.

So they grab Paul and his buddy Silas, drag them to the center of town, push them before the magistrate, and make up some accusations: These men are Jews. They are disturbing the peace. They are pushing customs that are not . . . lawful for Roman society. A riot breaks out. The citizens pile on. Paul and Silas are beaten badly (so much for “disturbing the peace”). And these two outsiders are thrown into a jail cell.

You can determine the real charges for yourself: casting out an unclean spirit, or liberating an exploited young girl, or – and this is probably it – messing with the pocketbooks of a couple of oppressive businessmen. Whatever the case, Paul and Silas, formerly free, are now imprisoned. They were free, but they are captives.

Except the two of them don’t act like captives. Even though their ankles were chained to the walls, something in their spirits was not bound. They started praying. They started singing. They kept on praying, they kept on singing. They were having a Holy Hootenanny in jail. All the other prisoners could hear them, as they sang about Jesus who is free from the powers of death. Paul was a prisoner, right? But free as a bird.

So they kept singing, they kept praying. It got to be about midnight, when suddenly the ground shook violently. The rafters of the jail wobbled. An earthquake shook so fiercely that all the prison doors flew open, and all the shackles fell off the prisoners’ legs. Not only that, but Luke also says the earthquake was so powerful that it woke the jailer from his evening snooze. That must have been some earthquake!

And the jailer looks up and down the hall. All the doors are open. This man is terrified. He had one job – to keep the captives in their cells – and he presumes they have all run away. Oh, the shame! He knows the rules: if a prisoner escapes under your watch, you might as well be dead. He is afraid of the awful consequences of losing his detainees, so he prepares to fall on his sword. He is a captive to his own fear.

Just then, Paul calls out, “We are all still here. Don’t do anything rash.” And the jailer couldn’t believe it. He rushes in, looks around, sees these prisoners where they’re supposed to be, takes them outside of that badly shaken jail, and then falls to his knees. “What must I do?” he blurts out. “What must I do to be rescued, to be saved?”

And Paul says, “Let me tell you about Jesus. He was a good man, falsely arrested for doing charitable deeds. He healed many, spoke truth to power, and this is what got him condemned. He suffered a shameful death, a death on a cross – but then God raised him and lifted him as Lord over all. Jesus was a captive – but he is free. Hear the news and trust it.”

This jailer who has been shaken awake so abruptly took the two prisoners to his home, cleaned their wounds, bandaged their bruises, and asked to be baptized. Then they all sat down to have something to eat. The jailer, once fearful, was now free. Paul and Silas were still captives, under the watch of the jailer, but they had been free all along.

The story moves along from there. When morning comes, the magistrates send word through the police, “Release the prisoners and tell them to skedaddle.” But Paul said, “What? After a night like that?” They can’t pretend it didn’t happen. They can’t merely do a political washing-of-the-hands. He said, “You tell the court that we are Roman citizens (see, he could play that card when he had to). Not only were we falsely accused, but you also can’t just whisk us away secretly. Come and release us yourselves.”

See, he’s still a captive – but he is free. The authorities come to apologize, and to gently request them to leave. Apology accepted, farewells are made, and off they go. The Word of God moves on.

It’s a remarkable story, given the interplay of captivity and freedom. Those who believed they were free were prisoners of something. Those who had been captives are curiously liberated. And the event that set the whole, long tale into motion was the release of a young woman - enslaved, commodified, captive to an unseen spirit – she is set free, and this exposes the other imprisonments that seem so familiar to us all.

There’s a woman who found herself hooked on painkillers; she thought they might set her free, but they enslaved her. Or that business person, on the surface might appear liberated by a whopping paycheck yet is merely wearing the golden handcuffs of a consuming job.

One of the privileges of my job is standing backstage at weddings. I often hang around with the nervous groom as he steadies himself before walking in. I can’t tell you how many times his buddies will joke, “Tom, you are trading in your years of single freedom for the old ball and chain.” They laugh, but I can testify that a good marriage is one that frees you from the tyranny of selfishness.

Who truly is the captive? Who is free? And what are we going to be captive to?

We hear it all. Years ago, complaints about a high school dress code. Adolescents surging full of hormones, arguing, “I am free to wear whatever I want.” What they didn’t notice is what they wanted to wear was exactly what all the other kids were wearing, purchased from the same stores in the mall, same gaps showing too much flesh, same identical look. They told themselves they were free, but the mall told them to fit in with all the others and sold them a bill of goods. Looked like freedom, but it was really a form of captivity.

So here’s the underlying question of the story: who yanks your chain? To whom do you belong?

Like you, I continue to be speechless at the senseless slaughter of innocents in elementary schools, or shoppers in a grocery store. I have a lot to say, just like you, but I don’t know what to say. But maybe here’s one thing. Maybe if we belonged to our children, maybe if we belonged to our neighbors, maybe if we belonged to Christ, we could give up our captivity to violence.

It is clear there are voices that enslave us, unseen forces that play on our fears and diminish whatever it is that makes us human. We won’t be free – we can’t be free – until we belong to something greater than our own anger and our addiction to hostility. And for some we will be free only if we increase our own arsenals, that is a form of madness. Let’s call it what it is – it is captivity to the powers of destruction.

Our recurring challenge is a soul-sized battle. To whom or what will we belong? And are we free, truly free?

The Bible story begins with an act of liberation. A woman in Philippi was trafficked by a couple of men. She was exploited. They were marketing her abilities to line her own pockets. She was enslaved – and Paul called upon Jesus Christ to set her free. That act of truthful healing is what set the whole story in motion.

Yet, even as she had been possessed, she did tell the truth. Do you remember what she called out, whenever Paul and the others passed by? “These men are slaves of the most high God.” Slaves! That’s the word. They did not belong to themselves. They belonged to God in Christ, and that is what set them free.

Reminds me of a song that we used to sing in church before the old hymnal was revised:

Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.
Force me to render up my sword, and I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life’s alarms when by myself I stand.
Imprison me within Thine arms, and strong shall be my hand.[1]

This brings us close to the mystery of what it means to be a Christian: we belong to Jesus, the living Christ. We surrender to him and give up any illusion of independence. We submit to his ways, awkward as they may be, and turn from our own natural inclinations. We give up the vain dream so commonly voiced in the phrase, “I am my own person,” for we keep opening ourselves to the possibility of how we could be Christ’s person.

To some, in our hyper-individualized culture, this sounds like a form of incarceration. But when we join Christ in the works of healing, forgiveness, and love, we discover that taking his yoke is the true freedom.

No wonder that the Christian people remember how Paul offered advice to one of his churches. He said, “As a prisoner in the Lord” (hear that? He’s not referring to merely being in jail), “I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”[2]

This is freedom, true freedom. It is not the shallow temptation to whatever we want, but “bring every thought captive in obedience to Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 10:5)

Let me sum it up by saying all of us are captives to something or someone. The question for today is this: who yanks your chain?

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.  

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[1] “Make Me a Captive, Lord,” by George Matheson. The Presbyterian Hymnal (1990), #378

[2] Ephesians 4:1-3, NRSV

Who Am I to Hinder God?

Acts 11:1-18
Easter 5
May 15, 2022

William G. Carter

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.

Luke is the author of this book, the Acts of the Apostles. He continues the story that began in his Gospel book. What God has begun in the ministry of Jesus is continuing in the work of those who follow Jesus. There is continuity between then and now.

As he tells the story, sometimes he repeats himself. We can expect that. When something important happens, it’s worth telling again. God sends the Holy Spirit to empower the church, and the Spirit keeps coming. As we heard last week, God began the work of converting a young man named Saul, now renamed as Paul, and that conversion is told two more times.

And today, in chapter eleven, we hear the apostle Peter retell the same story of what happened in chapter ten. The details are the same. In fact, this chapter moves along more quickly than the one before it. Yet the issue is the same: who are you going to let into your church?

Not a new issue, but one of the two initial issues for that early circle of believers. You know the first one: what will we do, now that Jesus has gone up into heaven? He died, was raised, and ascended into heaven – now what? That dilemma was answered quickly. He went up and the Spirit came down. There was continuity between what Jesus said and what the Holy Spirit of God inspired the followers of Jesus to say. The Spirit fills the vacancy with the same holy Power. Jesus has gone, we have power to go on.

And the second dilemma, again, has to do with whom we welcome. Whom we include. The first circle of apostles was very disturbed with Peter, Simon Peter. They heard that Gentiles listened to his preaching. How could this be? Jesus was a Jew, all of them were Jews – what do you mean he was preaching to the Gentiles? And not only were they Gentiles – they were Italians! Not only was he preaching to them – he was eating with them. Can you imagine the Great Apostle Peter, the Rock on whom Christ said he would build his church – and he was eating spaghetti?

So Peter tells them the story. It happened around noon. (Remember last week? Paul on the road to Damascus? That happened about noon.) And Peter was up on the roof, the flat roof, praying his mid-day prayers, and getting a little hungry.

About the time he’s ready to say “amen,” he has a vision. Maybe it began with a growling stomach; we don’t know. He saw the heavens opened, and a holy picnic blanket came down. And that blanket, that sheet, was loaded with all kinds of animals: there were birds, beasts, and lizards, eagles, pigs, shellfish, and snakes. Then that Voice – that familiar Voice from heaven – said, “Get up, Simon Peter, kill one of these and eat!” And Peter was horrified.

Why horrified? It’s lunchtime. He’s hungry. But he’s the Jew. That means he’s careful about what he eats. He’s not going to chew on a snake or crunch on a lobster. He’s a Jew. His Bible says all of those animals he saw were ritually unclean. Don’t eat them. That’s what the book of Leviticus says. It doesn’t matter if it’s lunchtime. You don’t eat that stuff if you are a covenant child of Israel. Your Bible tells you this.

And the Voice said, “Go ahead and eat.” This is the Table set before you. This is the Heavenly Banquet floating down as a gift. This is the Joyful Feast given to you by God. “Go ahead and eat.”

Peter says, “Lord, I’ve never put any of that dirty junk in my mouth. I’m trying to be pure here!”

And God says – or is it Jesus who says, “What God has called clean, don’t you call dirty.” And Peter is stunned.

Now this is the book of Acts, and I’m retelling you the story you already heard me read, and because that story in chapter eleven is the same story as chapter ten, it should come as no surprise that Simon Peter sees this vision three times. He hears the Voice three times. And then, just as suddenly, the whole thing’s gone. Vanished.

What is he to make of this? Well, there’s no time to think about it. Just then, downstairs, there’s a knock at the gate. A couple of Italian soldiers stood there and said, “Our army commander has had a vision, telling him to meet with a man named Simon Peter. Is there a Simon Peter here, in the city of Joppa?”

Simon Peter looks up at heaven, looks at them, looks up at heaven, nods his head, says, “OK, I get it. I will go.” Because that Vision of the Heavenly Non-Kosher food still burned in his heart. And he still hears the echo of that Voice, “What God has called clean, don’t you dare call dirty.”

And let me tell you something else, which you might not have noticed. In his Jewish Bible, there is a story of man named Jonah. He’s in the seaside city of Joppa. He has a vision from God to go to the Gentiles, and he doesn’t want to go.

In our text, here is Simon Bar-Jonah (that’s his given name). He’s in the seaside city of Joppa. He has a vision from God to go to the Gentiles and otherwise would not want to go.[1] It’s the story, the same old story, the same recurring story, the same ongoing story, namely, who are you going to let into your church? Or temple, or synagogue, or family.

My teacher Fred Craddock made the connection between the old story of Jonah and Luke’s reappropriation of it in the story of Simon Bar-Jonah. And he lived the lesson. As a kid pastor, he landed in a little church near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It was an aristocratic bunch, he said, full of the town fathers and mothers. They liked their cozy fellowship.

 

Then the town began to change. Oak Ridge was selected for a national laboratory. They would enrich uranium there. All these other people moved in to build the facility – bulldozer operators, stone masons, concrete pourers, day workers. The lab brought in trailer parks. They had noisy kids. And not only were they laborers – a lot of them were Yankees. Outsiders. Biblically speaking, Gentiles.

 

But Rev. Fred said, “This is our mission. God has put these people on our doorstep. They need the Gospel. They need our church. Let’s reach out.”

 

The next board meeting settled the matter. A motion was made by the brother-in-law of the chair of the board. The motion declared, “We will accept in our church only those who own property in the county.” The preacher sputtered and fumed, but the decision was final. As one of them said in the parking lot after the meeting, “Face it, Craddock, some people just won’t fit in.”

 

Years later, Fred and his wife were driving through the region, when he decided to take her over and show her the scene of his early failures. It took a while to find the church. The area was booming. But there it was, nestled in the pines, with a big sign out front, “BARBEQUE – Chicken – Ribs – Pork – All You Can Eat.” Fred looked at her, she looked at him. He said, “Well, it’s about noon. Let’s get something to eat.”

The place is just jammed: Italians, Yankees, Gentiles, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Gay and Straight, Red and Blue, Old and Young, Right and Left and None of the Above. Fred couldn’t believe it. He said to his wife, “It’s a good thing this place is no longer a church, because most of these people wouldn’t fit in.”

And the other called Simon Peter back to Jerusalem, dressed him down, and said, “We heard you were eating with those people.” So he had to tell them the story, tell them what he saw in the vision, then tell them what the Voice repeated: What God has called clean, don’t you dare call dirty.

For it was clear to him that God was pushing and shoving the church beyond its own boundaries. He presumed to know where the circle was, surrounding the true believers and keeping out the infidels. He did not expect God was smashing the wall and bringing others in.

Now, I know this is hard for some of us. Where do you draw the line? Well, you don’t. If there’s a line, it’s a dotted line, at best. But at the center of it all is the grace and love of Jesus Christ. We are not defined by the boundary around us, but by the Christ who welcomes all.

I was reminded by a friend who took a church group to the Holy Land. They visited the West Bank, went to a Catholic school that was directed by a Palestinian priest. Over half of the students were Muslim for the simple reason that this was the best school in town. As the priest led the tour, he talked about the required religion classes and chapel services in which all the students took part. “They love to receive the sacrament of communion,” he said.

 

Someone in the group said, “Isn’t it dangerous for Muslims to become Christian? Aren’t their parents upset?” The priest’s face was filled with horror. He said, “Oh no, no, no. I don’t want the Muslim children to become Christian. But I do want them to know Jesus died for their sins, that they are forgiven, and loved by God. I want them to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to receive the means of grace. But I would never want them to become Christians.”

 

Well, imagine that. Grace circling around, with Jesus in the center. And somewhere, some Muslim children are growing up to believe that Christians are gracious.[2]

Now, I know, I know. This is a lot to chew. It’s hard to be pushed beyond our comfort zone, particularly to people who are not like us. Yet just then, the Voice above asks, “If they are not like you, who are you like? Are you like me, gracious and welcoming like me, or are you merely like yourselves?” That’s a good question.

What I know is that God’s future is inclusion. That’s where the Gospel has been headed since the beginning. All shall be welcome. That’s the future that God sets before us. I guess you don’t have to be part of that. But after seeing the extreme effort that Jesus has undertaken to welcome all of us, is it really all that difficult to welcome somebody else? It is his grace, after all. It’s all his grace. And he stands in the center, arms outstretched.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Thanks to Fred Craddock, who made this connection in one of his lectures.

[2] Thanks to Craig Barnes, who told his story in the sermon, “Who Is Your Gentile?”

Conversion in Two Directions

Acts 9
May 8, 2022

Luke tells us about a frightening human being named Saul. Saul is convinced he is right, and others are wrong. He is furious that a small but growing movement of dissidents have distorted his religion. Saul is a Jew, not only a Jew, but a Super Jew. He has studied the Bible, memorized the commandments, learned the many ways they have been interpreted, and reached his conclusions.

For him, faith is crystal clear. His mind is fixed. He is a true believer and does not believe in negotiation. Some would call him a radical conservative, an extremist, but Saul perceives himself as the bearer of the True Tradition. And no one will convince him otherwise. He knows what he believes and believes what he knows. And his clarity is so sharp that anybody who disagrees with him must be eliminated.

Say hello to Saul of Tarsus. We meet him at the end of chapter seven, where he approved of the killing of a man named Stephen. Stephen was equally uncompromising, which infuriated Saul and those around him. Stephen had been seized and brought before the council on trumped-up charges. He was accused of saying things that he did not say. But he was also accused of talking about Jesus.

The council believed the best way to get rid of this Jesus talk was to get rid of Stephen, and Saul of Tarsus agreed. As the trumped-up crowd picked up stones to murder Stephen, the clouds opened. He had a vision of Jesus and said so. This ignited their anger – and after they got rid of Stephen, they thought they would get rid of everybody else who was talking about Jesus. Saul of Tarsus led the charge. He and his thugs were pulling people out of their houses, binding them in chains, sending them off to prison, and telling them to be quiet.

And then, says Luke, about noon one day, as Saul rode his horse on the road toward Damascus, something happened. There was a bright light. A loud Voice. A question taken from his own Jewish scriptures: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He couldn’t see a thing, so he asks, “Who are you, Lord?” And it was Jesus – same Jesus that Stephen had seen, same Jesus he was trying to scrub from the tongues of people like Stephen.

It had been attempted before: they thought if they could eliminate Jesus and erase his name, they would be rid of him. Guess what – what we have is another Easter story. The Christ appears, without any warning. And Saul, who thought he could see so clearly, had to be led away by the hand. His eyes were open but there was too much light in them.

This is a big story. Luke tells the story three separate times in this same book – here in chapter nine, also chapters twenty-two and twenty-six. Just like my stories, it gets a little better every time it's told. It grows because it’s a turning point. The man who tried to snuff out Jesus becomes one of his most devoted followers. He did a complete turn-around. Little Saul becomes a towering figure in the early Christian circle, traveling the known world, planting new congregations, and composing many of the documents in the New Testament. To keep himself humble, he changed his name from Saul (named after Israel’s first king) to Paul, which translated means “tiny.” It’s a tremendous change.

Now, let’s pause there for a second. Once in a while, we hear about people like this. We’re stunned to hear the news, astonished to see the change.

We had a kid on my high school class. Tommy had freckles and a devilish grin. Often in trouble. If there was a fight in the lunchroom, he may have sparked it. If someone smelled a smoking cigarette at football practice, we knew who it was. The teachers were on to him and sent him down to sit outside the vice-principal’s office. Who knows why he did? He was always getting in trouble.

Tommy didn’t do well in school. Got mixed up in things. Didn’t go on to school, took a job as a bartender in town. Then he discovered he could add significantly to his income if he sold a little cocaine on the side. He thought it was a promising career. It might have made him a whole lot of money if he hadn’t sold a few grams to an undercover cop.

And then, something happened. I’m not sure of what it was. Went off the grid for a few years, cut his shaggy hair, ended up as a student in a Bible college. Now, for the past twenty years, he has been the chaplain for a minor league baseball team. He prays with the ball players before every game, teaches them the Bible, listens to their troubles, prays with them some more.

This is the same guy. Or is it?

What happened? The classical answer is conversion. His life straightened out, or turned around, or was turned upside down. It’s hard to say – it’s his life, his change, his conversion. It’s not finished. It’s never finished. But he’s a different person inside the same skin.

Sometimes we hear these stories, and they are extremely dramatic. Someone is heading into the ditch of destruction and then they change. Or they say they do. Call them “born again” or second-chancers or whatever, they almost become celebrities. Often the churches treat them as celebrities. They are the closest thing we have to Saul, who became the Apostle Paul. It’s tempting to start believing that people should get knocked off their high horses just like Saul, that what happened to him should be a requirement for every believer.

Like that church organist who said to a preacher, “I played the organ for thirty-eight years, heard a sermon every Sunday, and could have snoozed for all twenty minutes of it. But then I found Jesus and I’m a different man.” The preacher said, “What do you think we were trying to pound into your thick head for the past 38 years?”

And this is where I need to step in and slice away a little evangelical nonsense. Nobody finds Jesus. Nobody! But sometimes Jesus finds us. Let’s keep the grammar straight. We’re not the ones who do the converting. It’s the Risen Christ who interrupts Saul’s domestic terrorism. It’s the Easter Jesus who says, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” It’s the living Lord who shines so bright that self-assured Saul must reassess everything he assumed to be true. It’s Christ who lets him know that all that energy Saul was squandering on destruction must now be redirected toward building something different, something new.

Yes, let’s keep it straight. According to the Bible, it is God we meet in Jesus who speaks, it is God who calls, it is God who interrupts, it is God who meddles in our plans, it is God who redirects, it is God who changes the lives that we clung to as if they were our private possession. If you’ve ever gone through a change in your life, especially a good and positive change, I have to wonder if God was behind it. Or in the middle of it.

But here’s the thing, in this wonderful, expansive story, Saul isn’t the only one who get interrupted and changed. Who else is changed? The church, as represented in Ananias, one of the saints of Damascus. Did you notice? Jesus speaks to him too. “Get up and go to Straight Street,” says the Christ. “Look for a man named Saul and pray with him.”

Ananias says, “Wait, we’ve heard about this guy. He is Doctor Evil. He’s hunting us down. He’s trying to snuff us out.” He understandably concerned. Frightened, in fact. Like Saul, he thought he had the entire world sorted out, parsed, and categorized: Saul, sinner; church, pure. But the Risen Christ says it again. “Go!” So he goes. And no doubt, it took some time, conversation, prayer, and patience to work it through.

As Luke the storyteller says in his modest way, “For several days, Paul was with the disciples in Damascus.” How did they spend that time? I don’t know, but I can guess. They had to compare their stories, listen to one another, apologize, and forgive, pray, and take a big Spirit-filled breath – because we’re talking about change, and change never comes easily.

We often refer to this story as the “conversion of Saul,” but it’s also the conversion of the church to welcome someone like Saul. Saul had been hunting down the Christians; now he was becoming one. Ananias would have excluded Saul because of his reputation; now he was commissioned to welcome him. And there’s anyone who is behind it all, it’s the Risen Christ, the One alive at the center of all reality. And it is his intrusion upon us that calls us to change, to wake up from all the bad dreams, to welcome the dreaded outsider as a fellow human being.

It is all dramatized when Ananias meets his feared opponent for the first time. Remember what he calls him? “Brother Saul.” Isn’t that something? The enemy becomes a brother. So the main character of this account is not Saul, even though he gets a lot of ink. And it’s not Ananias, who overcomes his own reluctance. The main character is not Saul, not Ananias, but Jesus – Jesus, who largely stays out of sight, yet seems to be directing some of the action. It’s Jesus, who is not “found” but who does the finding.

All of this suggests some implications for our own faith and life. Let me suggest a short list of three:

1) Never dismiss anybody. Never write anybody off. If Saul could get knocked off his high horse and find his life redirected, it could happen to anybody. This is the great surprise as the story unfolds of Saul-then-Paul. Everybody is astonished. “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem?” Isn’t this the same person? Yes, it is, but it isn’t. When God shakes somebody’s shoulder, they wake up. If you genuinely want to be faithful, pray for God to shake you awake.

2) Never think for a minute that your judgment is correct. It may be right, it may be wrong, but it will certainly be incomplete. We do not know all that God is doing in every situation, because this is God who works in a variety of platforms and situations, all simultaneously, the same God who is not finished with any of us nor with anybody else.

3) Third, stay open. If God can work in any of us, if God can work for good in any situation, this could play havoc with all our well-established notions of certainty. We like to predict, or capture, or classify, or even contain where and what we’d like God to do. Chances are, God has other plans, and they are better. It is God’s job to save the world, and ultimately it is God’s responsibility. For our part, we open our arms like a sailboat and hope to catch the wind of where God’s Spirit is blowing. And then we will be part of something we never imagined.

Should all of this happen, we just might discover that Saul and Ananias have not been the only ones interrupted if not converted. God is also working in you and me. Far from finished, but still working.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.