A Wonderful Story

Matthew 18:15-22

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 7th September 2014

Several years ago I came across the work of contemporary poet Stephen Dunn. There’s one poem that particularly spoke to me.  It’s called “At the Smithville Methodist Church.” Dunn recounts his daughter’s experience at Vacation Bible School one summer. Dunn and his wife are essentially agnostics.  They’re skeptical about religion in general, not hostile to it, but they’re not sure what to make of VBS and their daughter’s emerging faith. Here’s how he captures the experience:

It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.

She liked her little friends. She liked the songs
they sang when they weren't
twisting and folding paper into dolls.
What could be so bad?

Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith
in good men was what
we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,
that other sadness.

OK, we said, One week. But when she came home
singing "Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so,"
it was time to talk. Could we say Jesus

doesn't love you? Could I tell her the Bible
is a great book certain people use
to make you feel bad? We sent her back
without a word.

It had been so long since we believed, so long
since we needed Jesus
as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was
sufficiently dead,

that our children would think of him like Lincoln
or Thomas Jefferson.
Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief
to a child,

only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story nearly as good.
On parents' night there were the Arts & Crafts
all spread out

like appetizers. Then we took our seats
in the church and the children sang a song about the Ark,
and Hallelujah

and one in which they had to jump up and down
for Jesus.
I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain
about what's comic, what's serious.

Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can't say to your child "Evolution loves you."
The story stinks
of extinction and nothing

exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have
a wonderful story for my child
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car
she sang the songs,

occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do but drive, ride it out, sing along
in silence.[1]

“I didn’t have a wonderful story for my child,” Dunn said.  So what exactly is this “wonderful story” of ours?  How do you sum up it up?  I’m not sure the Church tells one story.  The story is Jesus and Jesus is the story of God’s love. But how do we tell such a story, this multi-faceted-gemstone-kind-of-story of ours?  There are many aspects to it and we approach it from many perspectives and angles.

It seems to me that everything we do in a church is grounded in the belief that we have a story for our children. Our worship, our fellowship, our community around this Table are all because we have a wonderful story for our children. Our ministries of sympathy, service, and witness, our educational and missional aims are all because of this story. Even all the dust and debris around here at the moment with the demolition and reconstruction of the Beechwood steps are all because this is the place where we tell our wondrous story and we need a way to get in here to hear it.

There are plenty of great stories to shape the lives of our children, marvelous stories that enliven the lives of our children.  But what makes this story—our story—so different is the way it speaks to the why question.  Evolution, for example, speaks to the how question.  That is, how we got here. But evolution doesn’t love you and me. The Bible’s story, including the opening chapters of Genesis, is less about how we came to be than why and for what.  I do not doubt the veracity of evolution.  However, Genesis is not a scientific text.  It tells a different kind of story and answers a different set of questions. Our job in the Church is to speak to the question why.  Parents can tell their children (in good time) how they came to be.  But the deeper, more profound question why?—why do they exist? why do we exist?—the answer to these questions requires a different kind of narrator. 

The Bible’s story puts our children—and us—into the world, into this deeply disturbing and scary, yet wildly wondrous, glorious and beautiful world.  The Bible places our children and us into this amazing world with meaning, purpose, love, and grace. This story tells our children why they exist. It gives them and us a song to sing and sanctifies our lives and makes us holy.  Our children can’t discover this story on their own and neither can we. The story tells us that we are loved more than we could ever possibly imagine, that we’re not alone in this universe, that Jesus is present within us and among us.

And for Matthew here one significant part of the gospel story is forgiveness. Forgiveness, because it is related to God’s love and grace, stands at the center of the gospel narrative, the Church’s story.  However neither Jesus nor Matthew had any romantic illusions about the nature of the Church and it’s ability to practice forgiveness.  We might sing, “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love,” yet painful breaks can and do occur in our relationships.  We might sing, “We are one in the Spirit,” yet cruel words and thoughtless actions can and do separate and divide us.  We might sing, “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,” but there’s plenty to weaken the strongest of churches.[2]
Matthew tells us how to live together. Work it out. Seek reconciliation. Try to make amends. Reach out. Why? Because wherever two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name he’s there too. When we’re quick to accuse and judge, shun and exclude someone from the Church, we need to remember that Christ is among us and in the person we dislike or want to shun, in the one who makes us uncomfortable.  When we focus on Jesus at the center of the community we remember it’s not about us: the church doesn’t exist for us, we exist for the church.  God doesn’t exist for us; we exist for God. The focus on Christ draws us out of our isolation and allows us to live together.

But Peter, always the practical one, says, “Okay, Lord, fine. Sounds great in theory. Just tell me the minimum number of times I have to forgive so I know when I don’t have to forgive any more and can then throw that person out of the church.” Peter wants to put a limit on the generosity of grace. In fact, Peter doesn’t understand grace.  Actually, a person who knows something about grace would never ask such a question.  If we think and act like Peter here, then it means that we don’t know what grace looks like and feels like either. Seventy-seven times.  Don’t count.  Don’t keep track. Grace doesn’t keep count. Grace doesn’t keep count.  Just keep on doing it. Why? Because without forgiveness there’s no community, there’s no Church.

Now it’s possible to just tell or teach the story of forgiveness without being shaped by it. We can teach our children how they ought to forgive, but ignore it ourselves. However, the nature of this story is such that we can’t just teach or simply tell it (and when we do, we’ve missed the point). It’s a story we have to experience.  And we experience it even as we tell it because we discover is that we’re already we’re in it.  By virtue of our baptism we’re already within the grand narrative of God’s grace. And we can tell that the story is having an influence us in the difference it makes in our lives, in the way it’s shaping us—in the way followers of Jesus relate to others, especially when the family of Jesus gathers in community and tries to be faithful together.  That’s the test.  For, to know that God has forgiven us but then withhold forgiveness toward our neighbor is, in the end, to be ungrateful.  It’s forgiveness known only intellectually, not experientially, personally, from within.  To know that God has forgiven us but then withhold forgiveness toward ourselves is also to be ungrateful. An experience of forgiveness yields further forgiveness.

Knowing the undeserved and unearned forgiveness of God becomes the cornerstone of the Christian experience and sits at the center of who we are. It’s embodied in the Table. Several years ago, worshipping in Iona Abbey in Scotland, a long Communion Table was set up right down the center of the medieval nave. There is a tradition of this within the Scottish Church.  The Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, built by the Church of Scotland, has a very wide center aisle in order to accommodate a Communion Table, stretching from one end of the sanctuary to the other. I wish we could do the same here at CPC. It’s a powerful way to say that the Table sits at the center of what we do. It’s why Jesus gives this meal to us.  It’s why John Calvin (1509-1564) wanted Communion served every Sunday in Geneva, because this meal helps to remind the Church that Christ is among us and within.

Jesus makes the story of God’s forgiving love tangible and real. And this meal is offered again and again and again in the hope that someday we’ll finally get it—that we and our children will know that we’re forgiven in the eyes of God and then, in the words of Paul Tillich (1886-1965), finally “accept our acceptance” and live from this truth.[3]  For people long to know they’re forgiven, whether they believe in God or not. People are hungry to know they’re forgiven. This wonderful story of ours tells us that nothing can separate us from God’s love (Romans 8). When we know—really know this—we’re living from within the story.

And so with grateful hearts, accepting God’s forgiveness offered at the Table, we can rejoice. Like Stephen Dunn’s daughter at VBS, we can jump up and down all the way to the Table—go ahead, if the Spirit moves you—singing hallelujahs, beaming all the way home.

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[1] Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994), 183-184.

[2] Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 209.

[3] From Paul Tillich’s famous sermon “You Are Accepted” in The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955).

Living at Cross Purposes

Banias (Caesarea Philippi), the setting for Matthew 16: 13-28

Matthew 16: 13-28

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost/ 24^th August 2014

What does it means for us to bear a cross? We know something of what it meant for Jesus.  What about us?  You’re probably thinking, aren’t people suffering enough these days? Why do we have to talk about crosses? After all, it’s not Lent! Nevertheless, the lectionary invites us to consider Matthew 16 and asks us to consider this timeless question: what does it mean to live a cross-shaped, cruciform life?[1]

In Matthew 16 we find this classic exchange between Peter and Jesus and these memorable, unsettling verses: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life “ (16: 24-26).

But what does this really mean? First, let’s focus on what it doesn’t mean. The “cross” isn’t a synonym for every difficult task or demanding situation that we find ourselves in.  That’s how Billy Joel expresses it in one of his songs. Here are the lyrics: “We all have our cross to bear./ We all walk in darkness sometimes./ Though I know it don’t seem fair, /We all have our cross to bear.”[2] Now, I love Billy Joel, but he’s not a theologian—unlike Bruce Springstein, who is. And it’s more than just a New York vs. New Jersey thing. (Springstein really is a good theologian, so is Bono.)  “Bearing one’s cross.” It’s become an idiom, an expression basically meaning we have all our difficulties, and challenges, so grin and bear yours. I once saw a cartoon: a manager is sitting behind his desk talking with a disgruntled employee. The employee is standing in front of the desk with his hands actually nailed to a large cross on his back.  The manager says, “Oh come on, we all have our crosses to bear.” 

Referring to the cross in these ways belittles its meaning and cheapens Jesus’ journey to it. They also depoliticize Jesus’ death, which was done at the hands of the Roman Empire. Jesus’ cross is not our cross. Most of us here will not experience a death like his. There are some whose faithfulness to Christ and his call in their lives will lead to a cross, to death.  The more we learn about James Foley, the American journalist savagely murdered by the Islamic State in Iraq this past week, the more we see the depths of this man’s faith and the way his faith informed his life as an investigative journalist searching for the truth.  Jesus’ cross was uniquely his.  But there is something of Jesus’ cross that shapes the way we live when we’re walking with him.  James Foley’s experience was uniquely his. But the cross still shapes our lives.

But what does this really mean?  It’s complicated. In Matthew’s account there are at least two levels of meaning going on:  what actually happened in Jesus’ life and then Matthew’s take on what happened.  Matthew wrote his gospel in the 80s in order to provide a theological meaning of Jesus’ ministry. From our vantage, we tend to view the gospels as first-hand, historical accounts as they happened.  They’re not. We forget that the Gospel of Matthew, composed decades after Jesus’ life, was written with a pastoral responsibility for a community of believers trying to follow Jesus in an increasingly hostile world. Embedded in Matthew, in almost every chapter, is the Jewish-Gentile tension that was prevalent throughout the first century. Do Gentiles have to become Jews before they can worship Jesus and then be welcomed into the synagogue? Or can Gentiles be welcomed as Gentiles? And how does one worship Jesus as Lord within a larger society that demands that Caesar is divine? How does one serve God’s Kingdom, God’s Empire, as citizens or slaves in Caesar’s Empire? So, when we read Matthew 16 and hear Jesus talk about taking up a cross, it’s confusing. Is Jesus calling for treason against the state, because only the Roman state crucified people?

And how could verses 24-26 (above) have made any sense to the disciples prior to the crucifixion? What do you mean we have to be crucified? How is that useful? Peter’s resistance to the idea makes perfect sense; Jesus’ harsh critique seems inappropriate. These verses sound like the tongue of a preacher writing to his congregation decades after the resurrection. Matthew the preacher is basically saying that Jesus showed them something in and with his life and says to us: following Jesus inevitably means suffering and loss for a higher purpose. Therefore, don’t be surprised when people tell you otherwise and try to divert you from your calling. Just say to them, “Get behind me Satan.”

That’s what Peter and the other disciples learned in Caesarea Philippi. Jesus intentionally took the disciples to this alien place; he took them out of their comfort zones into a gross Gentile place, to a wild, very un-Jewish place. Caesarea Philippi was settled by Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) in the 3rd century BC; in 20 BC it was annexed to Herod the Great (74-4 BC) and later given to Herod’s son, Philip (d. 34 AD), who renamed it in 14 AD in honor of Caesar Augustus (63 BC- 14 AD). It was a Gentile community, full of temples to many gods, including a colossal temple, an Augusteum, not far away, built by Herod the Great to honor to the divinity of Caesar. It would have been a gross and offensive place from a Jewish perspective. During the Jewish Wars (66-70 AD)—so, after Jesus’ death but before the writing of this gospel— Caesarea Philippi was used as the staging area for the Roman troops that sacked Jerusalem and eventually destroyed the great temple to Yahweh in 70 AD. The author of Matthew would have known this. There’s also an enormous cave or grotto at the center of Caesarea Philippi that, according to tradition, is the birthplace of the god Pan. It’s called the Gate of Hades (not hell, there’s a difference); the cave is the entrance into the underworld, the home to an entire pantheon of Greek deities.

This is where Jesus took his friends (!) to test them, to this outrageous, shocking, offensive place, to hear what the people were saying about him and then to challenge them to answer, honestly: “Who do you say that I am?”   This is where Jesus wants his followers to make their confession—in Caesarea Philippi—to speak up for him, to acknowledge him Lord, there. Not in houses of worship. 

It costs us nothing, absolutely nothing, to say, “Jesus is Lord” here in this sanctuary. Jesus calls us to answer the question, not in safe places, but in inhospitable, out of the way, places on the edge. It’s here in Caesarea Philippi that Peter makes his famous confession, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” To which Jesus responds, “Blessed are you, Simon…for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” You are Peter, you really are a rock, and upon what you said, I will build my church, “and the gates of Hades will not prevail against.”

But then Peter quickly realizes what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God—it means suffering and loss because people don’t welcome the Kingdom’s message. Jesus tells his disciples that he must go up to Jerusalem, undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, be killed, and on the third day be raised.

That’s when Peter interrupts Jesus and says, “Um…excuse me, Jesus, may I have a word with you,” as he whisks Jesus off to the side and says, “Jesus, I have a question for you. Are you on DRUGS? What are you smoking? What are you talking about? This can’t happen to you. This is not supposed to happen to you. Never. For God’s sake, Jesus, you’re the Messiah!”

Jesus turned to Peter, looked him dead in the eye, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” And that’s when we hear these words about the cross. It’s easy to understand Peter’s astonishment.

Why is Jesus so harsh toward Peter? What does Peter know about crosses? It seems cruel. To be called “Satan” by the Son of God…one doesn’t easily get over hearing something like that! These words cut deep. But we have to remember what is at stake here: God’s Kingdom.  This is serious business. It’s a matter of life and death, for Jesus and for all those who follow him, for the Church. 

Jesus was sent to proclaim God’s Kingdom, which means the undoing of every other kingdom that claims to serve God and God’s people. As God’s Son, this was Jesus’ calling, his purpose, his reason for being. The meaning of his life wasn’t found within his life, per se, but discovered when his life was placed in service to something, Someone larger than himself. And that’s why Peter becomes Satan, which means, literally, an “Adversary.”  

Peter’s vision for Jesus’ life would take Jesus away from the vision he knew he had to fulfill. Peter’s understanding of the Messiah was at odds with Jesus’ life-purpose. Peter’s hopes and dreams for Jesus were no more than Peter’s projections of his own hopes and dreams for himself upon the screen of Jesus’ life.  Projections are often similarly self-centered. That’s why it’s often destructive and disastrous for us to get caught up in and be defined by what others are projecting on to us, when we feel bound by the burden of their expectations for us.  Our own projections are often self-serving. Peter’s projection doesn’t support Jesus in Jesus’ vision. Instead, Peter’s projection blocks, preempts, and thwarts Jesus’s purpose and obstructs him in his mission.

Peter is tempting Jesus.  He’s tempting Jesus to be something other than himself, to pursue a different calling.  Jesus probably struggled with vocational issues every day. When we think about temptation, we often view it as being tempted to do something that we either know we shouldn’t do or want to do. We say we’re tempted by chocolate or ice cream, tempted by other cravings or habits that we know are destructive. They’re often temptations of doing. “The devil made me do it.”

But there are also temptations of being, which are far more serious; when we’re tempted or pulled away from being something or someone we’re not. There’s plenty in this world, whether in the past or in the present, trying to pull us away from the God-given purpose of our lives, from our callings. There’s plenty deep within the human heart and outside it that runs hell-bent away from the glorious vision God has for us and for the world. For the Holy Spirit, in love, is continually, incessantly, tenaciously struggling to draw us out of our tight, fearful, anxious selves to bring us into a larger, more expansive, generous life. But the nervous ego pulls back, prefers diminishment, recoils. Martin Luther (1483-1546) spoke to this tendency when he defined sin as “the heart turned in upon itself (incurvatus se).” There’s plenty within us and without us that resists the difficult path, which resists the struggle, which resists the fight, which resists the hard work of being faithful to our call. “To be nobody-but-yourself in a world,” e. e. cummings (1894-1962), said, “which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”[3]  There’s plenty within that prefers to conform to society, that seeks after happiness and comfort and security, as if these were kingdom values (and they’re not!), and so never tries, never risks anything that’s costs us, never risks anything of significance with our lives on behalf of God’s kingdom—significant from God’s perspective, not the world’s.  Listening to the voice and will of God means not listening to the weak, fearful, narrow-minded voice of our egos. It means to stop being lured away from your calling by the false and timid call of the ego or the tribe or community or the church or your past or your family your parents even one’s spouse or partner. All these voices can pull us away from our true calling.

Being faithful to our calling means, therefore, a change of mind, a change of perspective.  And so we see that it was Peter’s own self-understanding that needed to be “crucified,” his assumptions about God and the ways of God needed to be put to a cross.  In other words, they needed to die, they needed to be given up in order for him to take up something new, something far more profound and meaningful, something larger than the constricted perspective of his narrow-self.  “Bearing one’s cross,” living a cross-shaped life is a continuous process of dying and rising throughout our lives.  It means giving up one way of being in order for something new to emerge.  Peter has to relinquish his perspective, his assumptions, his life, in order to receive a new perspective, in order to receive a new life.

Peter was not willing to do that (not then, anyway). Peter tempts Jesus to throw it all away, go the easy route, give up on the vision, set his sights on what is reasonable and practical, go after something that has some guarantee of success instead of failure. Peter has other plans for Jesus.  But they were Peter’s plans, not Jesus’ plans, not God’s plans.

What do we discover here about the cross?  What if the cross is the consequence, the result of, even the price we pay for being faithful to our God-given purpose, our work, our calling, our identity as individuals and as the Church Jesus Christ?  If so, then don’t be surprised if we’re faced with the temptation to run from our identity and our task, to take the easy route, to take the less painful, less risky, less faithful course.  The temptation to run is natural, for who wants to suffer?  Perhaps the temptation is greatest when we are being faithful to the call. 

There’s a little Peter is in us, some more than others.  But there’s a greater Jesus in us, too, who loves us deeply and calls us to follow and leads us into God’s Kingdom.  When we’re in love with our callings, when we’re in love with God—when we’re in love—we suffer with and for and through and because of, willingly.  That’s what love does.  When we catch a glimpse of the grace and beauty of God’s Kingdom and move toward it, we find ourselves willing to endure whatever it costs, because we have come to know something of its value. That’s what love does. Amen.

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[1] “Cruciform” and “cruciformity” are terms often used by Michael J. Gorman, see Cruciformity: Paul’s NarrativeSpirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).

[2] Billy Joel, “Cross to Bear,” My Lives (Sony Records, 2005).

[3] e. e. cummings, "A Poet’s Advice to Students."

Encountering the Risen Christ

Brian "Doc" Reed, "The Road to Damascus". Used by permission.
See below for details.

Acts 9:1-20

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time/22^nd August 2010

This was the turning point in Paul’s life.  We could say Paul’s experience was the turning point in the history of the Church.  Without his titanic shift in perspective followers of Jesus would have been only a movement within Judaism. 

I'll admit at the outset that Paul is a challenge.  He just is. It seems that either you love him or you don’t.  Paul’s writings can be difficult to read.  He has a terrible habit of writing, long, run on sentences.  Personally, I love Paul—always have.  My admiration for him continues to grow.  After Jesus, Paul is the most pivotal figure in the New Testament primarily because he was compelled to proclaim God’s good news about Jesus beyond Judaism to the nations, to the Gentiles, a Hebrew word that means, from a Jewish perspective, “everyone else.”  But for Paul, most of as Gentiles, assuming most of us here are Gentiles, would not be part of the church.  

Here, I want to focus on Paul’s experience upon the Damascus Road and the change of perspective that occurred from that encounter.

In our postmodern, post-Christian, secular age we assume that miracles, visions, religious experiences like Paul’s are mythical or from another time.  Many assume that what happened to Paul only happened back then, not now.  Claiming to be wise, we assume that God doesn’t work that way any more.  Perhaps.  But what if God hasn’t changed?  What if we have?

In our age many have lost the capacity to see the world sacramentally or mystically.  We have lost our openness to the God-reality that imposes itself upon us all the time and surrounds us and in which we exist.  Because we do not expect to meet God along the road, many fail to find God and are left disappointed.  With expectations low, many carry on nevertheless, saying they believe in God without really expecting to experience or encounter the Holy.  They still use God-language, consider themselves religious or “spiritual” (whatever that is), they follow the rituals of the faith, they still stand in worship to confess the creed.  Yet they live as if everything, including their salvation hinges upon their efforts and actions and decisions.  They say “In God We Trust,” they say they believe in “God.”  What God?  For many, “God” has become a hollow, empty sign, a cipher for something else, a synonym for the ego.  When we don’t expect to encounter God, religion and the religious life are quickly diminished to miserable moralisms. This is what happens when folks reduce the Christian life as a  synonym for simply being ethical: following the rules, observing the Ten Commandments (often translated as learning right from wrong), being “nice” to one another, teaching our youth to behave like good little boys and girls, culturally conditioning them to conform to the dominant values of society. Ethics are important—but is that why Christ went to the cross, to get us to behave?  God didn’t send the Son to help us conform to the expectations of culture. God sent the Son to transform us. God sent the Son to transform the world.       

Forgetting this distinction, I believe, is one of the reasons the Church, indeed Christianity, is in trouble these days and has become completely irrelevant for many.  Something’s missing.  What’s missing is the energy, the vitality, the passion associated with an experience of God’s power—God’s redemptive power—the kind of experience Paul had that gave him a radically new perspective of God, himself, and the world around him.

   

Sometimes I wonder if Paul would even recognize the Church today. David Buttrick, professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, asks, “When church is reduced to church management and the soul is scaled down to psychological promptings, who can speak of resurrection or spot surprising signs of redemptive power among us?  No burned martyrs light our skies; ministers burn out instead.  No Christians are persecuted; they merely perish from boredom.”[1]  We prefer Jesus-lite, religion without the inconvenience (or the cross).  But “where there is no cross, how can resurrection have meaning?”[2]   We prefer a decaffeinated Christianity without the kick—we don’t want anything to disturb our sleep.  But we need to wake up!  For Paul, the gospel was powerful and real, full of caffeine, with extra shots of espresso. 

I often wonder what Jesus thinks about the contemporary Church—yes, there are signs of life and vitality, and I’m grateful that Catonsville Presbyterian is a thriving, healthy community of faith—but we need to know that there are many churches these days that are broken and hurting, consisting of people that are petty, fearful, shortsighted, cruel, and divisive, “stumbling along,” Buttrick says, “at the brink of apostasy and selling out Jesus for a good deal less than thirty pieces of silver any day.”[3]  It’s enough,  Anne Lamott imagines, to make Jesus drink gin from the cat dish![4]

Few can claim the kind of religious experience that Paul had.  It’s true.  But it happens and it is happening.  We might not get thrown from a horse in blinding light.  It could happen.  However, something like such experiences can and do occur today.  Despite our resistance the Risen Christ still encounters people today in overt or subtle ways; the Risen Christ still meets people along the road and changes them. This still can happen.  It is happening.  In fact, the Risen Christ wants to meet us along the road of our lives.  He wants to blind us with truth and love and then open our eyes.  He wants us to see.  He wants to awaken life within us and make something beautiful of our lives. 

This is God’s desire for us. But do not underestimate the enormous forces deep within our souls that resist this holy work in us.  Look at Paul, locked in the confining perspective of his worldview, determined to be a roadblock to the people of the Way,[5] hell-bent on the destruction of God’s people, willfully bucking against the new thing God was doing in the world.  Surrounded by a blast of light, he’s convicted by these words, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”  Why do you kick against what I’m doing in the world? Why do you resist?  Paul doesn’t even recognize his victim.

We might not experience the Risen Christ exactly this same way, but the dynamics and the patterns of the resistance are very familiar to us.  And we have to be careful talking about what happened to Paul as a conversion.  It was not a religious conversion from Judaism to Christianity.  He became a follower of Jesus within Judaism.  It was a conversion of another kind.  Paul was locked in one perspective—it wasn’t Judaism per se—it was simply his own.  He thought he knew all there was to know about his God, his world, and himself.  He thought he knew how God acted in the past and, therefore, would most definitely act in the future.  He thought he knew about this Jesus the criminal and his band of blasphemers.  He thought he knew the truth, had all the facts, understood what was going on. That is until one day it was all—shattered!—in the encounter with the Resurrected One and he was given a new perspective, a new outlook, a new view of himself, of the world, and more importantly, a new understanding of the radical grace of Yahweh.  He discovered that truth is stranger and more wonderful than fiction, he realized the facts are not what they seem, that he completely misunderstood what was before his very eyes.  The text says, “Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; …” (Acts 9:8).  In seeing he could not see. He was blind to what was happening in front of him. Paul needed new eyes to see reality in a new way.

So how do we get new eyes? Albert Einstein (1879-1955) once said, “There’s nothing more practical than a good theory.”[6]  In order for us to see reality we have to get our theories straight, because your theory will shape the way you view the world.  Theory, from the Greek, means “to contemplate” or “to see.”  The Greek theorein means, literally, “to contemplate the divine.” We often assume that facts build reality, that if we have all the facts we’ll be able to determine what is true or not true.  Many live in a Joe Friday world.  Sargent Joe Friday on the television series Dragnet, back in the 1950s, would say when investigating a crime scene, “Just give me the facts, Ma’am, just the facts.”  But, facts are not enough.

We’ve actually inherited this attitude regarding facts from the European Enlightenment.  The philosophers of the Enlightenment were obsessed with facts, with raw data.  Contemporary philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre points out, “Straightforward facts” do not exist.  They were “like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen . . . a seventeenth century invention.”[7]  Facts tell us very little about reality; facts need to be interpreted and this requires a theory, an interpretive framework or perspective.[8]  That’s why there’s nothing more practical than a good theory.  The theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) taught us that facts are malleable in their meaning; facts can mean one thing in one situation and then mean something else in another, depending upon one’s perspective, one’s theory.  That’s why good theories actually help us understand the facts better; they provide insight into the way the world really is. 

When Einstein was a child he imagined what the world would look like sitting on the tip of a rocket travelling at the speed of light.  That experience later became the basis for his Theory of General Relativity (1915).  As a result, Einstein’s new perspective offered a more accurate understanding of reality, a better description of the physical world, requiring us to set aside the theories of Newtonian physics.

Your theory, your perspective shapes the way you view the facts.  This is why there’s nothing more practical than a good theory.  Good theory will lead you to the truth, lead you into truth, and the facts will fit better.  Bad theory will lead you to untruth where the facts don’t easily fit.  We saw this play out tragically several years ago when former vice president Dick Cheney kept asking the C.I.A., in the build up to the war in Iraq, “Why doesn’t your intelligence support what we know is out there?”[9]  It’s the theory, the perspective that determines what you see.

Sometimes there are things we don’t want to see, can’t see, won’t see.  We are so caught up in our tiny worlds, trapped in what Swiss theologian Emil Brunner (1889-1966) called “I-castles,” our inner fortresses built up to keep everyone out (including God), imprisoned in our self-security from which we are unable to extricate ourselves, let down the drawbridge, cross the moat and live in freedom beyond the castle keep.[10]  In those moments we need someone to come and break down our defenses and pull us out of ourselves—we cannot do this on our own, no one can.  We need someone who gives us courage to reach beyond sight, to step out with carefree abandon into life itself.

That’s what Jesus offers when we follow him—a titanic shift in perspective, a new outlook, a new lens through which we look out upon the world with new energy to live life unconstrained.  That’s why I affirm that the heart of the Christian experience is transformation. 

When we encounter the Risen Christ—or, better, when he encounters us—everything changes and we are never the same.  Our eyes are open and we begin to see things to which before we were blind.  And that’s why it’s often a shattering experience—a graceful shattering—because that’s what it takes to change us.  It’s shattering, but it’s full of grace because it’s offered in love—always offered in love.  It’s an experience that removes falsehood and allows us to move deeper into the truth, deeper into reality, offering us the truth that sets us free.  Old ways are cast aside; new life is given.  You can’t go back to the former way—you don’t want to!  You can’t continue believing in the old way—you just can’t.   Your values change—because they must.  Your perspectives change.  You might even say you’re “born again” (John 3:3).  In love, Jesus breaks open our walls of isolation, pierces our defensive armor, relaxes our fearful egos, and frees us to turn around, to change, to repent (as in metanoia, which means to change our minds, our thinking).   In Jesus Christ we are given a glimpse of God’s perspective and from that vantage point everything changes.

This is what happens when we encounter the Risen Christ or Christ encounters us.  What Paul experienced in that moment was shattering and graceful, but it was shattering and graceful because he encountered the presence of the Risen Christ, a personal presence, who came to him in love. This is critically important to grasp here because Jesus is not an idea to ponder or a fact from the distant past that we verify, and what the Lord requires from his followers is more than our belief and behavior.  Jesus wants more than your belief in him, he wants more than your ideas about him. He wants people who know his significance is greater than his teachings. His teachings only have authority because of the person who stands behind them.  He wants more than your ethical behavior and your “Christian” niceties, as impressive as they might be.  Jesus wants you, your life—all of it—so that you can come more alive as a person in him, to discover what it means to be human.  God sent the Son, flesh and blood, divine and truly human, a person, to meet us as persons along the road of our lives.  Jesus is a person we encounter, God with a face, not a thing, not an idea, but a personal presence who speaks to us, as the old hymn put it, “who talks with us and walks with and tells us that we are his own.”  He connects with us face-to-face, with a language that convicts even as it redeems.  In the conversation an exchange takes place and in that exchange, through the relationship, that interaction, we are transformed—person to person. It’s our ongoing relationship with God that matters most to God, not our belief and behavior.  When we walk with him our lives will change as we take on his traits, his love, his grace, his mercy, and his joy.  In this divine-human encounter we become more human, which is the whole point of the gospel!

Few can claim a Damascus Road experience exactly like Paul’s. But it happens. Whether in dramatic or subtle ways, the Risen Christ still encounters people today. Whether in a moment or across the many years of a lifetime—which, when compared to the age of the universe, is still but a moment—he continues to tear open our false realities, shatters them, in grace, and allows God’s transfiguring light to shine through.  God’s light “in whose light,” as the Psalmist says, “we see light” (Psalm 36:9)—in whose light we see more light, who gives us ever more to see.  The Risen Christ still meets us along the way and astounds us and changes us. This is the good news: the Risen Christ wants to meet us along the road, wants to open up our eyes, wants to awaken life within us and make something of our lives, lives that glorify God! That’s why it is a privilege, honor, and joy to be part of the Church, serving as fellow-laborers in this holy work, God’s holy work transforming people, transforming the world.

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[1] David Buttrick, The Mystery and the Passion: A Homiletic Reading of the Gospel Traditions (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1992), 25.

[2] Buttrick, 25.

[3] Buttrick’s, 26.

[4] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies:  Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).

[5] See Acts 9:2, the name given to the early followers of Jesus.

[6] This quote is attributed to Einstein, but also to the physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), who had a profound influence upon Einstein’s work, as well as social psychologist, Kurt Lewin (1890-1947).

[7] Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Duckworth, 1988), 357.

[8] Trevor Hart writes:  “Facts, then, are not the pre-theoretical, value-free, pure units of given ‘public’ experience that popular mythology would have us believe. . . .  Real facts are already theory-laden, quarried from the mass of our experience via a complex process of interpretation, in reliance upon tools to which we entrust ourselves and through the exercise of skills upon the performance of which the success of our quest for knowledge depends.”  Faith Thinking:  The Dynamics of Christian Theology (London:  SPCK, 1995), 56.

[9] Bryan Burrough, Evgenia Peretz, David Rose, and David Wise, “The Path to War,” Vanity Fair (May 2004), 232.

[10] "Man stays concealed in his secure hiding place, secreted behind the walls of his I-castle; and nothing can really entice him out until one meets him who overcomes all the mistrust and anxiety about his very existence which drives him into self-security and there imprisons him.  Man remains imprisoned within himself until the one meets him who can free him, who can break down his system of defenses, so that he can surrender himself, and in this surrender of self receive what he needs to enable him to abandon his securities; that is to say, until that one comes who gives man the life for which he was created." Emil Brunner, The Divine-Human Encounter (London: SCM Press, 1944), 51.     

About the image: I'm grateful to Brian "Doc" Reed for his rendering of Acts 9, "The Road to Damascus."  And I'm grateful to Jim LePage of the Old and New Project for permission to use this image. "The Old and New Project provides a platform for contemporary graphic artists to exhibit works themed on Biblical stories and passages.  It also aims to introduce a new online audience to Biblical art, attempting to replace popular, yet sometimes low-quality, contemporary Biblical art work with the kind of accessible and honorable work that has historically been associated with the Bible."