But
when God, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart
and called me through grace….
and called me through grace….
O
Lord, Paul’s soul was dead.
Through your grace, you called him back to life, to live in you.
Christ, call us.
Through these words, call us to your love and to your grace.
And let that call be enough for us.[1]
Amen.
Through your grace, you called him back to life, to live in you.
Christ, call us.
Through these words, call us to your love and to your grace.
And let that call be enough for us.[1]
Amen.
Paul is a fascinating character in scripture.
Fascinating, frustrating, fanatical – a lot of people have used a lot of F
words in relation to Paul. One description I might choose is “full of himself.”
In our passage today, Paul claims that God “was pleased to reveal the Son in me” and, at the very end, he says,
“They glorified God because of me.”
Paul sounds pretty infuriating! Not the kind of guy
you’d want to invite over for dinner. In fact, this letter, which Paul sent to
the church he founded in Galatia, was written in response to a group that was
trying to tell people to ignore him altogether. Even today, there are Christians
who would be happy to take such advice – based on Paul’s words about women not
teaching within the church and his support for slavery, to name just a few
items.
But that would be difficult, as thirteen books in the New Testament
bear his name. It would also be a great loss; scholar Richard B. Hays explains
that “Both [Saint] Augustine and Martin Luther ... took their bearings from
Paul’s message of radical grace, apart from works of the Law. The letter to the
Galatians is the fountainhead for all [thought on] justification by faith, the
cross, the power of the Spirit, and the meaning of Christian freedom.”[2]
These are, obviously, crucial components to our faith
in – and understanding of – Christ. So, it seems, we are stuck with this insufferable
figure. But maybe if we take a closer look, we’ll discover some of Paul’s
redeeming qualities. Perhaps we’ll see why God would call such an odd figure to
turn away from destroying the
emerging church and turn toward
shaping and guiding it.
Before he was Paul, he was Saul, a Jewish man who was
passionately devoted to his faith. In his letter to the church at Phillipi, he
gives his credentials: “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,”
he writes, “I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people
of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a
Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the
law, blameless.”
I can’t stress this enough: all these qualifications
are evidence of another F word we can apply to Saul: faithfulness. Perhaps even his acts to “persecute” the movement
that was taking shape after Jesus’ death and resurrection!
Imagine, today, if an influential Christian got on
television and said, “Christianity is all about meeting your own needs first.
If you have time left over, then you can think about helping the poor.” That
runs in stark opposition to what we actually believe, and I would hope that we
would all reject such teachings. Saul felt Jesus’ teachings were opposed to the
traditional practice of Judaism, and he reacted accordingly; still, I hope none
of us would resort to his methods.
The book of Acts tells us Saul was present during the
stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and that he “approved of their
killing him.” It also says that he was “ravaging the church by entering house
after house; dragging off both men and women, and committing them to prison.”
He even went to the high priest to ask permission to go to a place called
Damascus, just in case there were any of Jesus’ followers there. He got
permission and set off on his journey, and that’s when everything changed for
him.
As Saul was getting close to Damascus, a light from
heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to
him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The
reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Saul opened his eyes and,
to his horror, he couldn’t see anything. His companions helped him stumble into
Damascus, where he remained blind for three days.
Meanwhile, God called to another disciple, named
Ananias, telling him to go restore Saul’s sight. Ananias was, understandably, a
little concerned about this request. “Lord,” he replied, “I have heard from
many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and
here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.”
But God said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have called to bring
my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.”
So Ananias went to the man who, just three days
before, would’ve killed him. And he laid his hands on Saul and said, “The Lord
Jesus has sent me to you.” And something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and
he was no longer Saul, the persecutor; he was Paul, the apostle.
There are moments in our lives when God breaks in,
disrupting everything we thought we knew, turning the world upside down for us.
Sometimes these moments come with a blinding light and a flash from the heavens.
More often, though, they come quietly, innocuously – but no less shockingly.
These are the moments in which we are called by God.
The poet David Whyte
writes about these moments:
Sometimes,
if you move carefully through the forest
breathing like the ones in the old stories
who would cross a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what you are doing right now
and to stop what you are becoming while you do it,
questions that can make or unmake a life,
questions that have patiently waited for you,
questions that [will not] go away.[3]
if you move carefully through the forest
breathing like the ones in the old stories
who would cross a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what you are doing right now
and to stop what you are becoming while you do it,
questions that can make or unmake a life,
questions that have patiently waited for you,
questions that [will not] go away.[3]
When have these questions come to you?
One of them came to me, not out of a burning bush or a
lightning bolt from the sky, but out of the mouth of a friend – a mentor –
named Doug. He was the director of music at the church where I ended up doing
my internship, and also the leader of the Wednesday afternoon children’s
program. “Hey,” he said one day, “Would you mind helping me out for a few weeks?
I need someone who knows how to use a digital camera. We’re going to be
learning about the transfiguration.”
I had never worked with children before – I’d never so
much as babysat a cousin! The very concept was terrifying! But, for some
reason, I said yes. The initial four weeks turned into eight weeks and,
ultimately, three years of working with Doug and the kids, and I discovered
gifts I never would’ve guessed I had: the ability to patiently sit with a child
who was melting down in a crying fit; the ability to connect with kids on their
level and talk to them about important things; the ability to listen to parents’
joys and worries.
You may have already guessed what I couldn’t possibly have
known at the time: that question – “Can you help me out for a few weeks?” – was
preparation for the career I now have as a chaplain working with children – and
for my calling as a father.
You see, God’s call isn’t just for apostles like Paul;
so often we use the term “calling” to refer only to ordained ministry. But God’s
calling is for all of us. Farmers,
nurses, teachers, writers, appliance salesmen, garbage collectors, students,
husbands, wives.
Author Frederick Buechner puts it this way: “The kind of work
God usually calls you to is the kind of work that you need to do and that the
world needs to have done. … The place God calls you to is the place where your
deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”[4]
Saul only got half the equation right. His deep
gladness was in spreading a message. But it was the wrong message. It was a
message of legalism and uncharity. The world was starving for a message of
grace and inclusion, and that’s when God stepped in.
When Paul said that God had “revealed his Son in me” he wasn’t being boastful or
arrogant. He was pointing out that Jesus is revealed in all who are shaped by
God’s calling; that Jesus is revealed in the radical changes that come over a
person when he or she begins to listen to that still, small voice; that Jesus
is revealed when the task in front of you seems impossible, but you decide to
trust God and give it your all anyway.
So… What questions have been wriggling around in the
back of your mind lately? What prompting or guidance or urging do you sense? What
is it that God has put in your heart to do or to be? What does the world need from
you?
I hope you’ll think about it this week, and then come
back here on Sunday and let us know: To what are you being called?
Amen.
[2]
Richard B. Hays “The Letter to the Galatians” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. XI (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
2000), 183.
[3]
David Whyte, “Sometimes” in Everything is
Waiting for You (Langley, WA: Many Rivers Press, 2003), 4.
The last line was originally “questions that have no right to go away.”
The last line was originally “questions that have no right to go away.”
[4]
Frederick Buechner, “Vocation” in Beyond
Words (New York: HarperSanFransisco, 2004), 404-405.
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