Acts 9: 1-20
Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of Jesus, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly 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, Holy One?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”
The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank.
Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. Christ said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Holy One.” Christ said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Holy One, 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 Christ said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Holy One Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Child of God.”
Now, when I say the risen Christ, I want to be very clear about one thing, and don't hear me wrong, it's not restricted. For some people, this experience can come as the presence of God. Some people feel it as the Holy Spirit is upon me or the Holy Spirit is within me. For some people, Mary Magdalene becomes a vivid presence in their lives. For other people, the Holy Mother Mary appears and has been seen and is a living presence in their life. It is interesting that Mother Mary, even though the gospel stories, and certainly Paul, don't really pay a lot of attention to what happens to her afterwards, is cited all over the world. Her presence cannot be denied. By her own power, she comes forth.
Some people just have an experience of God, and some people a direct encounter with Jesus. However you experience the presence of God in your life, say hallelujah. That's right, thank you. Hallelujah. The form is not what matters. The contact, the move towards God from within your own spirit within you, however that needs to happen, God will find a way to bring you in if you let it, if you allow it. And it's really about allowing.
Saul, on his way to Damascus, was not seeking for the Word of God to come to him in that moment. That was not what he was doing, but it came anyway, and he responded. He didn't really have a choice. For me, one of the questions that come up in this story is Saul, who was persecuting the early Christian movement known as the Way at the time, became one of the strongest followers of Jesus. And so he had a, let us say, change of mind. And this is in our day and age when we think about the conflicted times that we live in, the polarized world that we live in, an interesting and important question.
How do we actually change our minds? Because we know a lot of people in our lives who we would like for them to change their minds. I don't have to change my mind so much, but if you and you and you and you would just change your mind every now and then and come more in my direction, the world would really be a better place, trust me. In the political sphere, this has been actually being tested, because this is what campaigns are about. Presidential campaigns now routinely spend like a billion dollars trying to get people to change their minds. And what we find actually is people rarely do. Fewer and fewer people change their minds.
And so you find in the campaign says that small segment that they're looking for of people who are the so-called undecided voters. And all the advertising goes to them and all the attention goes to them. And I think sometimes people just say I'm undecided because they get a lot of attention. If you're squarely decided where you land on the Republican side or the Democratic side, you don't get any attention. But when you're undecided, they try to change your mind. And it usually doesn't work.
You know what worked? Do you remember that here in California we had Proposition 8 some time ago? Remember that? And then a campaign started that began in Massachusetts and that was then brought here to California to change people's minds and to change the vote so that now we actually have marriage equality. And what they found out is that when volunteers go to people's homes, knock on their door and tell their personal story, that changed people's minds. You knock on the door and you say you know I can understand where you come from in this. But you have to understand that my partner who I've been with for 20 years, when she goes to the hospital I cannot go and visit her. And I cannot be appointed as the one who makes medical decisions for her. That affects me because I cannot be married. When my partner has social security and he is the one who's worked all his life and I cannot get part of that social security because we can't be married afterwards, that affects me.
And there were these stories that people knew and told and they were personal because they only told stories that were true for them. And they made a connection and then build their relationships. And you know what happened? People were like oh I never thought about that. I can see how that would influence you. I don't want that for you. I actually want you, I can see you, you're a real person in my face, on my front step. And I kind of like you. You kind of like me in many ways. And this is what you're struggling with? We can change that. And that is how marriage equality came to be the law of California and now the law of the land.
Personal stories, interactions, relationships change people's lives. You have to let yourself be known. If you want somebody to get to see things from your perspective, your vulnerability is going to go a long way. You have to let yourself be known. Saying you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, is not going to do it. Nobody has ever changed the mind on the basis of an argument. That's never happened. Stories, personal stories and relationships do change people's minds.
And in the Christian world, we are concerned with this because Paul, as he later came to be known, first Saul, writes in the book of Romans, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is. First you transform, you renew your mind, and then you can test and see what God's will is.
Sometimes I feel like, well Paul, you had it easy. I mean, Jesus wasn't fooling around with you. Just like, whoosh, on the ground, on your knees, no more sight, no more speech. Everything came to a standstill. There was no escaping it. And so when Paul says we have to renew our minds, it's like, how do you do that? Well, here's the kicker. In the modern world, well the modern, in the pattern of the world, of this world that Paul writes about, changing the mind happens in a most often a particular way.
Are you perhaps familiar with the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance? It's a theory that was developed in the 1960s and it observed that when we act in a certain way and that we have attitudes in a different way, when they are not in alignment, we experience this as a tension within us. And we are prone to try to resolve this tension. And the surprising thing that cognitive dissonance theory showed in experiments and in real-life observations in the world is that most of the time people change their minds to conform to their behavior rather than conform their behavior to be in alignment with what they think. This is really important.
We are social animals. So behaving in accordance with the social context is important to us because sometimes our very survival is dependent on it. There's like a deep need for us to be safe in our context. And if that means we're doing things that at first are not appearing to be in alignment with our values, we find a way to rationalize what we're doing because we want to be in conformity with the people that we are with and with the behavior that we are showing up for.
The classic example is during the civil rights movement that desegregated the schools. And there were people outside of the schools in many parts of the country, and like, my white kid will not go to school with that other kid, and this will not happen, and I won't stand for it, and we're gonna burn the place down, etc., etc. The National Guard came in, they put kids in buses, they brought them to schools, and within a few years people's attitudes had changed. Behavior came first. Attitudes changed as a result.
In the church, and following the call of Jesus, what we're trying to do is the reverse. Be you transformed by renewing of the mind, and then your behavior shall change and follow suit. And that is countercultural. That is not how we are naturally wired as we are living in our social lives. And that makes true conversion a difficult proposition.
You know, in Judaism there is a Midrash about the burning bush that Moses encountered when he was living in the land of the Midian before the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. And the Midrash is about, so here's the burning bush, and it wasn't consumed, and Moses saw it, and it was like, that's weird, let me go find out what's going on. And then God said, take off your shoes, where you stand is holy ground, and then everything happened that followed. How many times have people walked by that same burning bush and notapproached it, not noticed it? Like, oh, there's a little bushfire, happens all the time, not noticing that the bush wasn't consumed. Or they saw that the bush wasn't consumed, they were like, oh, that's scary, that's weird, that should not happen, I'm going in the other way. And the rabbis who talked about this, they say, this happened at least 400 times. 400 is a symbolic number, obviously, happened a lot.
I sometimes wonder how many times Jesus appeared to people with the same intention as he appeared to Saul in this story. And people were like, hmm, trying not to pay attention, trying not to see, trying not to feel, trying not to follow, because it is really scary to do. Have we, perhaps, in our lives, had moments when God spoke to us, appeared to us, whispered things, said things, made things clear, and we were like, no, I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what that is. That's going to be costly.
It might be that we don't know exactly what Jesus looked like. I mean, Jesus was a peasant, carpenter, poor guy, had nothing, walked with just simple clothes. I can imagine that a Jesus today could be like, oh, I don't know, a Venezuelan migrant who is now locked up in his prison in El Salvador. We wouldn't know, which is why you don't turn strangers away. That's the old, old, old lesson from the Scriptures, that you don't turn strangers away because you do not know if they are the angels that are coming from God to tell you something deeply important.
We can be too surprised and not know what to do. And how can I hear a word from God or have a perception of God in my life? Me? No, impossible. Maybe you're too scared. It's possible. What happened to Saul was really scary. It was totally, totally frightening. And maybe it's too awkward. Well, it's Thanksgiving dinner, and here's my family, and you know what happened to me, what I'm really grateful for? Jesus appeared to me and had something really important to say, let me tell you. This is a hard dinner conversation, and so it's awkward.
And perhaps also we like our power in our lives. We like the things in our life that we have. Saul, when he left Jerusalem, left with all the authority of the temple and priest and the authorities, and he had an entourage, and they were probably armed, and he was going to put the people in chains and bring them back. He was powerful, but by the time he entered Damascus, they almost had to carry him in, and he couldn't eat, and he couldn't drink, and he had to start from scratch.
Now, let me be really clear about something. Some people take a story like that and say, God will sometimes strike you down or bring you illness or bring you misfortune so that God can do something else with you in your life. I don't buy that. I get why the story works in the case of Saul. I don't think that God is sitting around going, oh, you don't have it hard enough. Let me bring a little extra heartache in your life, a little extra difficulty, a little extra illness. But what I do believe firmly is that whatever you do experience in this life, God can say, well, let me see what I can do with that. Something new can come from this. Something different in your life can emerge now that you can no longer fully function in the way that you were used to.
Sometimes our humbleness, when everything that we've relied on falls apart, is actually what brings us closer to God. I remember one time when I was working in a hospital and was so sure that I could do it all, I could take on any responsibility, just put it on my shoulders, I would carry it, I'm independent. The tension that I was creating for myself was so strong that I broke a tooth in my own mouth. It didn't just crack or anything, it was like crumble. Days later, still picking pieces from other parts of my mouth, totally crumbled. And I was like, oh, this is not just a case for the dentist. This is a case of something between me and God, like, okay, I'm getting the lesson where I'm going is not working. What do I need to do?
And what I needed to do was seeking collaboration, seeking support, admitting that I didn't know a lot of things. All these kinds of things, showing up with humility in my life and in my work, and then God tell me what needed to happen. God has been trying to tell me ever since. I had to. I couldn't do it. We like our power, though. I like the story of me being somebody who could really do it all. I like the story, put it on my shoulders. I'm that guy. I'm trustworthy and reliable. Hmm. That was a good story to live by. And you know what? People around me liked it and relied on it, and I invited it in. But when I had to turn around and say I can't do this anymore, they didn't go away. That was my fear. I thought they were going to go away now. They didn't. They stuck around, and they were like, actually, this is good. We see a little bit more of you. Not a bad thing at all.
Conversion is a process. I know that the story of Saul is like a slam, and it happens all at once. But that's not where the story ends. Saul takes several days to be with the disciples in the synagogues, proclaims that Jesus is the Son of God. But what is not in this particular story, as we read it today, is that afterwards, Paul now goes into the Arabian Peninsula and spends a few years being mentored, being taught, and learning what the life with Jesus really is all about before he sets out as the apostle to the Gentiles. Several years go by there before he becomes the apostle to the Gentiles, which is how we have known him.
It's a process, and I would say conversion is a process where we try and live from within and not be conformed by the pattern of the world. That is to say, we try to live in such a way that it is not our attitude that adapts to our conforming behavior, but a behavior that adapts itself to our attitudes, to our conscience, as it is ripening in us, inspired by any form of perception from God that we get. So it's really important for each and every one of us to figure out, to stand still, to ponder, to meditate, how does God show up in my life? Where do I perceive God?
And even though we don't talk about it very much, our direct experience with God, many people have it. Many more people than you might think, and you might feel like, I've had a sense, I think that might have been God talking to me in the middle of the night, and when I woke up, something had shifted in my spirit that wasn't there before I put my head down. Maybe you started, you went to bed, and you prayed on something, you had clarity in the morning that might have been God showing up in your life. Maybe you were taking a walk somewhere out in nature, and all of a sudden something stopped you in your track to notice something, and something changed in your life because you saw somebody or something, and you had to do act response.
God shows up in our lives in various different ways, and it is hard for us to stay attuned to this presence, but it is there, it will remain, it will keep asking of you, how does it happen in you? How is God appearing before you, or as who, or as what? It's going to be different for every single one of us. No two people have the same experience, but you can have the experience.
One of the ways in which, if we are a church that can work, can support this, is by continuing to recognize that Christ is in you, that Christ is in you, and in you, and in you. And even if you can't feel it, somebody might just be able to feel it for you. Something happened to you, something is calling on you, not with pertinence, but with curiosity, and with love, in relationship. So that if we are forming a different pattern than the world outside, we don't have to respond with fear when God shows up, or with like avoidance, or denial, or neglect, but it can be like, oh no, I can be in the company of people in my church who know something about this, who can feel this too.
In our prayer, when we have patience and trust in God, God will sometimes reveal God's self in very explicit ways, or sometimes in implicit ways. Saul had a big ask. He was like, you are going to be the one I'm sending to the Gentiles. That was a big job. We don't have that big of a job. We don't. Maybe. I don't know. It's between you and God, not for me to say. Sometimes it is just your own individual healing of past wounds. Sometimes it's an individual call, a sharing, a gift, whatever it is. If you get clarity about it within you, people will respond around you, and they may not know what's happening, but they go, something's different, something's shifted, and it's attractive, and I want to be there, and I'm encouraged to seek the healing for myself, and I'm encouraged to help out others, myself, and I'm encouraged to seek the voice of God in my own life for myself. That is a different way of being together in a church. Do you know what? It may have to sometimes happen outside the church, too. Sometimes church is not the place. Sometimes your experience needs to be so unique and so your own that you have to spend a while out in the wilderness before you can come back and share what it is that you have received. It's between you and God.
Conversion is this attempt to live from the inside out, to be in alignment with your values, your knowledge of God, your inspiration, and then express that out into the world rather than have the world express itself in you. Let's be curious. Let's be open to hear and see and feel how God is working in your life.
Amen.