josephholubsermons
Easter 3
April 18, 2010
Acts 9:1-20 John 21:1-17
Wake-up Call!
Peter and Paul were two dominant figures of the first century
Christian movement. But
they were very different, rooted in diverse backgrounds and
distinct religious and social traditions.
In fact, the New Testament tells us they were in conflict and even
records a nasty theological brawl between them.
(Galatians 2)
In the year 96 C.E. , Clement of Rome noted,
“Because of jealously and
envy these greatest and most upright pillars of the Church… competed
until death.” According
to legend, Emperor Nero martyred both in 64 C.E. Legend also has
it they even contended for the goriest execution in that Paul was
beheaded with a sword and Peter was crucified upside down.
Who knows? If it is true,
it shows even these two great characters had feet-of-clay.
However, these stories from Acts and John show they also had
much in common; for these stories tell us they both had a
personal encounter with the living presence of Jesus, and the result
was nothing short of a change of heart; change of mind; change of
direction that had life-long implications for each.
Luke reports that Paul,
called Saul before the Damascus Road experience, was a temple
sanctioned persecutor of followers of
“The Way.” (what
early followers of Jesus called themselves)
On the road to Damascus Saul had
a mystical encounter with the risen Christ.
Many people have a difficult
time accepting that literally and understandably so!
However, there are a growing number of biblical scholars who have
concluded that Paul was a
Jewish mystic. A
careful study of Paul's letters reveals that numerous times
Paul describes mystical experiences of the Sacred.
Mysticism and the mystical experience is something that most
of us have not experienced - including me - except for one
instance in my life I would call a "mystical experience."
Simply because the experience is
mostly foreign to me doesn't mean I don't recognize its reality or
validity.
Mystics have
experiences in which there is a vivid sense of the presence of God,
the Sacred, Something More - an experience of communion with God.
At that point, the individual doesn't merely believe in
God as a concept, but experiences God on a level of knowing God.
Whatever Paul’s experience, the result was that Paul’s life was changed.
But how was it changed? The
change that occurred was not a change from a non-religious
person to a religious person.
It was not a change in which Paul
ceased being a Jew.
Paul considered himself to be a Jew before and after this
experience. So what
changed? What was
different? What changed for
Paul was that he went from
one way of being Jewish, a Pharisee-centered Jew - to
another way of
being Jewish, a Christ-centered Jew.
Metaphorically speaking,
before Paul could be changed and his life redirected, ironically he
needed to be knocked down and struck blind so that he might
see in a whole new way.
Sitting blind and helpless
in the grimy dirt of the road, provided Paul with a whole new
perspective. In his
helpless state he began “to see” in a new way.
His state of sudden helplessness
and dependence on others gave Paul time to reflect and think about
who he was, what he was doing, where he was going. It
gave Paul the opportunity to contemplate the voice that he heard and the
haunting question that came with it,
"Saul, Saul, why do you
persecute me?"
In that voice he heard the call of Jesus, and it was a
call into a new vocation, and, for me that’s the
dominating point
of the story.
Like many of the great prophets of the Old Testament who experienced a
call to a new vocation in the throes of a mystical experience, so
did Paul. The point of this story is not to get hung up on
thinking we should all strive to become mystics.
The point of the story is for us to wrestle with questions
like,
"What is
your (our-congregation’s) Christ call?
What concrete expressions might following Jesus take in
(your, my, life/our lives) as a congregation?"
When we begin to ask questions like these, then
this story ceases to be ancient history and suddenly becomes
alive and relevant to this moment in time.
It’s in that process of discernment that we encounter the
living Jesus, and Jesus becomes real and relevant.
For Paul, it meant a call to a new religious vocation as a
Christ-centered Jew. It
meant moving from a
religious life that was extraordinarily narrow, exclusive,
judgmental, and law- oriented - and moving into a
spiritual life
(a spirituality) that was very much the opposite; much more
inclusive, non-judgmental, affirming and grace-oriented.
Paul frequently described this new life in his letters:
For example, in Galatians he writes,
(3:28) "There is no longer
Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male
or female; for all are one in Christ."
Paul is describing a whole
new kind of community that was a radical departure from the
way religion and culture had structured life in a hierarchy of relative
worth. Paul moved toward
creating a radically inclusive Christ community that he challenged
others to cultivate; a
community that intentionally strove at affirming the worth of all, especially those culture and religion had minimized.
When we look at the history of Christianity we tragically see a
religion that too often has more closely resembled the vocation of
Saul the persecutor
than Jesus the bringer of
the grace of God.
We see an appalling and dreadful landscape littered with
the victims of an oppressive and persecuting religion in the name of God
and Jesus. People have been
dehumanized with guilt, bigotry, and intolerance. In God's name slavery
and segregation have been defended. In God's name children have
been abused, women diminished, homosexuals hated, wars waged, and the
unrepentant condemned (even tortured and executed).
Jews have been persecuted, doubters excommunicated, and violence
used to achieve conversion; all seemingly without care or conscience.
Mahatma Gandhi once made this chilling indictment:
“I like your Christ, but I do
not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your
Christ.”
In the face of this sometimes sordid history, we can almost hear
echoes of the words Saul heard on the Damascus road,
“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
“Christian, Christian, why do you persecute me?”
We could say that whatever Paul’s experience was on that road, it was
love that knocked him down and gave him the opportunity to
reconsider his life and to begin to live his life through the experience
of Jesus. For me,
this story of Paul’s experience on the road is best described as a
wake-up call.
But it is also a
wake-up call for us.
It's a challenge for us to wake-up to the nature and spirit
of our vocation as followers of Jesus; to wrestle with what shape and
expressions following Jesus might take in our lives.
(and then there is the story of Peter)
For Peter it was a different thing. Peter didn't need to be knocked
down like Paul. Peter needed
to be picked up! Peter was already down. You remember the
story? Peter denied his best friend Jesus at his most desperate hour.
Overcome by fear, three times
he denied their friendship when just hours before he had confidently
declared that he would be willing to die for Jesus.
Down-and-almost-out Peter was
wallowing in the mire of guilt, shame and self-deprecation. He was as
low as one could get, and what he needed was someone to
pick him up!
And that’s exactly what happened, and who better than the one whom he
had denied. Peter
experienced the risen Jesus as one who would not allow him to stay
stuck in his self-deprecation and self-loathing, but lifted him up
and out of it into a new mind-set and heart-set of self-worth.
Tom Harpur, Anglican priest, journalist and Rhodes Scholar discusses how
Christianity has contributed enormously to a cultural sense of negative
self-esteem and low sense of self-worth by proclaiming a message, both
explicitly and implicitly, that
"roasts people over the
fires of literal hell and are told how fully unworthy (we are) of God's
grace."
I have counseled people for the 34 years of my ministry, and I can
safely say that the biggest obstacle to what I would call growth to
Christian maturity, or growth into Christ-likeness, or into Christ-like
loving and self-giving is a pervasive sense of unworthiness.
A friend and colleague of mine, Kendra, who works in youth and family
ministry, wrote in her blog this week that
teenagers, in increasing
numbers, are asking for plastic surgery as a graduation gift from high
school. That’s a tragic symptom of a deeper issue; the issue of core
dissatisfaction with oneself, and the belief that external cosmetics
can bring about internal contentment.
This
story of Peter, wallowing in his self-loathing, is about
Jesus reaching deep
into the core of Peter’s very being to communicate the living truth that
he was loved and valued intrinsically to the core; and that it was
possible was for Peter to love and value himself intrinsically to the
core; so that he might be empowered to love others intrinsically to the
core.
“Feed
my sheep,” Jesus said to him.
The
Jesus I encounter in the gospels was in the business of
conferring worth
to those who had been oppressed with cultural and religious messages
that they had little intrinsic value.
He
loved the unlovable, touched the untouchable, and embraced those
quarantined from community life.
Perhaps there is no
more Christ-like thing (vocation) we can
do than to affirm and love our young
people with a Christ-like cherishing love that confers to their core a
sense of healthy self-worth.
For Peter, like for Paul, his encounter was also a wake-up call
into a new mind-set and new vocation; a call out of an
old way of being and doing
and thinking and living into a new way of being and doing and
thinking and living.
It’s a vocation founded on the solid rock of God's lavish grace and
cherishing love that would not let Peter remain wallowing in the
mud-hole of religiously cultivated negative self-perceptions and
profound regret. He encountered in Jesus a love that restored his sense
of self-worth that empowered him to see the worth and value in others,
especially those who were down-and-out.
Both Paul and Peter, even with their feet-of-clay and contentious issues
with one another, experienced the grace of God, through Jesus, touching
their lives in a deeply personal way; both called to embody the grace
shown them as the core of their new Christ vocation.
It was that grace that caused
them, even with their differences, to take one another seriously
and affirm that God was at work in both of their lives; so much
so, if legend is true, they died for the cause of Jesus in close
proximity to one another.
Paul on the road
and Peter on the beach; both experiencing wake-up calls into a
new vocation. These stories
can be wake-up calls for us current day followers of Jesus as we wrestle
with and discern how we are to live out and embody the
essence of Jesus.