147 On the Road to Our Damascus

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “On the Road to Our Damascus”, originally shared on September 9, 2021. It was the 147^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Has your world ever been turned upside-down? Like when the Apostle Paul had an experience that changed him dramatically from being a persecutor of Christians to an Apostle of Jesus Christ? Could our experience of the pandemic make it a little easier for us to understand that conversion? And does it give us a clue for how we can make it through to the New Normal? Today, we’ll find out.

   I took a very short drive to Historic Route 66 recently. It goes right through the area where Sally and I and our son James have lived for over 35 years. Route 66 was one of the first American highways and was synonymous with the romance of the road and new starts for those migrating west. It was popular as a vacation adventure highway when the road was dotted with oddities and local treasures, stretching from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California. Its impact on popular culture included the song, “Get Your Kicks On Route 66” and the “Route 66” TV series. It was eventually replaced by the United States Interstate system in 1985, but it retains its status for many as a highway of possibilities, a road of the imagination as Historic Route 66.

   The Apostle Paul had a life-change experience on a road.

   That’s the Paul, who wrote much of our New Testament as letters as a missionary to new churches in the early years of the Christian movement. He was not always an Apostle. He was not one of the 12 disciples who later became Apostles when they were sent into the world by Jesus. And he was not always Paul.

   Paul was sent (and therefore also became an Apostle) later, on the road to Damascus.

   His name was originally Saul. Saul of Tarsus.

   We read him giving his backstory while presenting his defense in a religious court in Jerusalem in the Bible’s book of The Acts of the Apostles, the 22^nd chapter, starting with the 3^rd verse:

³ “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today.

   Paul had grown up in a province of the Roman Empire. His father had been a Roman citizen, which gave Paul access and rights during his later missionary journeys. He had studied with Rabbi Gamaliel, still remembered as one of the greatest teachers of Judaism in history. He became a persecutor of the Way, the name given to the Christian movement long before it was known as Christianity.

   Paul continues in verse 4:

 ⁴ I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison, ⁵ as the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify about me. From them I also received letters to the brothers in Damascus, and I went there in order to bind those who were there and to bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment.

   But God had other plans for Paul on the road. He goes on with verse 6:

⁶ “While I was on my way and approaching Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone about me. ⁷ I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ ⁸ I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Then he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting.’ ⁹ Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me. ¹⁰ I asked, ‘What am I to do, Lord?’ The Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go to Damascus; there you will be told everything that has been assigned to you to do.’ ¹¹ Since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, those who were with me took my hand and led me to Damascus.

   Now, this would get your attention! But what would the Christians, or followers of the Way, think? They hadn’t been literally knocked off their high horse. Paul presents himself to a leader of the Way there and says, in effect, “Hey, I was on my way to arrest you all and drag you to Jerusalem but, I’m different now, so let’s get all the faithful together so that I can tell them about what happened, OK?” Would you believe that?

   Ananias did. Why? Was it the voice of the Holy Spirit? I don’t know what else it could have been to convince him.

   Paul continues with verse 12:

¹² “A certain Ananias, who was a devout man according to the law and well spoken of by all the Jews living there, ¹³ came to me; and standing beside me, he said, ‘Brother Saul, regain your sight!’ In that very hour I regained my sight and saw him. ¹⁴ Then he said, ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear his own voice; ¹⁵ for you will be his witness to all the world of what you have seen and heard. ¹⁶ And now why do you delay? Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.’

   Do you remember the words of the hymn, “Amazing Grace”? “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind but now I see”? Paul lived them.

   He had undergone a life-changing experience, so his name had to change. He would no longer be known as Saul, but by his new name: Paul.

   He concludes, starting with verse 17, with a startling confession that did not disqualify him:

¹⁷ “After I had returned to Jerusalem and while I was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance ¹⁸ and saw Jesus saying to me, ‘Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ ¹⁹ And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. ²⁰ And while the blood of your witness Stephen was shed, I myself was standing by, approving and keeping the coats of those who killed him.’ ²¹ Then he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”

   Paul was present at the death of the first Christian martyr, Stephen, who was stoned to death. Paul held the coats of the men who stoned him, so they could get a good wind-up, I guess.

   Nevertheless, he was the one God called to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the world, primarily to the Gentiles, or non-Jews.

   As Rick Warren has said, God does not call the qualified. God qualifies the called.

   After Jesus died and rose again, he came to the mountain in Galilee where he had directed his disciples and he sent them into the world. They became Apostles, the sent ones. He gave them this commission, in Matthew 28:18-20:

¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

   We have undergone a great deal of change during the pandemic. Our work environment has changed, our education system has changed, and the way we worship has changed. The way we shop, the way we view others, the way we find entertainment, and dozens of other things have all changed.

   People are more likely now to see a changed life as normal. It’s easier for the world we seek to reach, as least most people in it, including the people we know, to see becoming a new Creation, being born again, as a real possibility.

   And that conversion will help people through the pandemic by pointing to that relationship with the one true living God. It draws us out of ourselves and into the love of God for the whole world. It brings us to an understanding that this world is not all there is. It helps us recognize that we have a home that is not of this world. That awareness doesn’t take our focus out of the world, but into it. We want the world to know Jesus Christ, and we proclaim Him in word and in deed. We demonstrate God’s love for us in our love and service for others. We’re going to make it through this pandemic because God has shown us the Way.

   We are followers of Jesus Christ. We go where Jesus goes, which is everywhere. We can do that as the whole Christian Church, the Body of Christ, but we can’t do that alone. We do the work for which we, as a particular part of that Body, have been called, equipped, and sent to do in the transformational power of the Holy Spirit.

   What is your road to Damascus? Is it your Baptism? Is it a time of renewal in the Holy Spirit? Your daily walk of faith in a living, acting, loving, relationship with the one true living God? Or is it yet to come?

   What is your Historic Route 66? Where has Jesus called you to go? And to whom have you been sent to share your story?

   God has given us a Way in Himself. It is a way of possibilities, a way of the imagination, and the way of faith. It is The Way, where we have encountered Jesus Christ on the road of our lives. The Holy Spirit, like streams of living water, wells up from within us to give us the eyes to see the presence of God, the road within us.

   Our journey is The Way itself. It is Jesus Christ, who said in John 14:6:

 ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

   Who will you encounter today, or tomorrow, or any day, who has never heard the story of salvation, or has never allowed it to sink in, or seen it work in an actual Christian life?

   Pray that God would fill you with the Holy Spirit and then hit the road. Share your story with your friends and relatives and whoever you encounter. Let the pandemic be a means by which you communicate the new life that exists in Jesus Christ. Jesus, who is the Way, the way, and the truth, and the life.