Why do you persecute me?

Epiphany 6 year A Sermon 

Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Acts 9:1-4  

What will Paul choose…life or death…

Continuing the metaphor we encountered in last week’s sermon…Jesus is about to invite Paul on a fishing trip…just like the disciples were invited…

But before he can become an effective fisher of men… Paul has to make a choice… between relationships that bring life and relationships that bring death.

Just like the Hebrew people passing through the Jordan River into the promise land. When Moses tells them…

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I have set before you…  life and death….blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life…

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For the ancient Hebrews it’s a choice between life for the community or death…for Paul nothing less is at stake than life for Jew and Gentile alike in the Kingdom of God.

Paul would later write…that his encounter with the risen Jesus… was an apocalypse – remember that word
from our series on revelation … revelation
is what apocalypse means…

Paul writes… ‘God revealed his son in me.’ Right there on that dusty road…
when Paul was hell bent… on the destruction of the new break away Jewish sect… of Jesus followers…

And right there in a flash…there’s a sense in which the deep molecular structure… of this rabid rabbi …
the heart of this religious assassin…was changed.

In the blink of an eye…Paul’s entire way of thinking is shattered and rebuilt...on a new foundation…Jesus… the Christ...so to the Corinthian’s Paul writes… ‘
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For no one can lay any foundation… other than the one already laid…which is Jesus Christ.’ The way Paul had perceived and directed his life up to that moment…
was entirely transformed. 

The book of Acts records that Paul was blinded by a dazzling light. Would  you say Paul converts to Jesus
and is saved and promised heaven when he dies?

Is that what really happened?

Not by a long shot.

Jesus doesn’t ask  Paul if he’s heard of the four spiritual laws. Jesus doesn’t ask him to be born again…Paul  isn’t even asked if he’d like to become a Christian convert…

What does Jesus ask him… [ask and wait for replies] 

He is asked about his violence…

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‘Saul…Saul…Jesus says… why do you persecute me?

This was the big question for Paul. Why was he persecuting Jesus by persecuting Jesus’ followers?
What was it about Jesus… that deserved persecution?

Paul speaks to this question… in his letter to the church at Philippi …in a rare autobiographical remark Paul writes…

If anyone else things he has reason to put confidence in the flesh I have more… circumcised on the eighth day…belonging to the people of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin…a Hebrew of Hebrew’s…in regard to the law – a Pharisee…
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as for Zeal… for heaven sake I was a persecutor of the church…as for legalistic righteousness – I was faultless!

Paul’s religious pedigree is excellent.  His zeal can be measured in concrete terms…is was a persecutor …Saul’s zeal knew no limit…even death…

What was Saul’s zeal for?  For Torah…for the Law…
as the Pharisees interpreted it…such a zealot was unconditionally prepared to use force…in order to turn God’s wrath away from Israel…for their understanding of God… was of a wrathful God.

Saul… could follow the logic of his understanding of scripture perfectly…he could watch Stephen stoned to death – and still be a model of perfection…
when it came to fulfilling the requirements of the Law.

And through the blinding light…the risen Christ
speaks the question Saul needs to hear
right into his heart…why do you persecute me?

In the coming days while still blinded… Paul would have a lot of time to ask himself this question…if I thought I was doing everything right…but now I know I was doing something very wrong – including how I read my Bible…then everything I used to think about God now has to be changed…

in light of God exalting Jesus of Nazareth
to the right hand of majesty.

Christian thinker Michael Hardin warns…if we are going to call this a conversion, it certainly isn’t Paul’s conversion from Judaism to Christianity…
Paul doesn’t change religions. 

It’s his conversion from persecutor to persecuted…
from villain to martyr…from blameless Pharisee…
to in his own words…least among the apostles and chief among sinners. This moment for Paul doesn’t bring about
a change in his faith tradition. Paul was a Jew just like Jesus…they never ceased being Jews…
and from the beginning to the end of their lives
they expressed their faith in a Jewish way.

Again we need to be careful how we use this word ‘conversion’ ….when we’re thinking about what it means… to become fishers of men and women…

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When Jesus passes by Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John on the sea-side in Capernaum… and calls them from their boats and their nets …to follow him…
to  become fishers of men…
they are just as Jewish as Paul is…

Conversion is the wrong way to describe what’s going on …Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John
are being called… to follow.

Was Paul’s Damascus Road experience a conversion or a call? If it wasn’t a change of religions but a call...
then to what was he being called…

a fishing trip…in his own words… ‘called to be an apostle… sent not from men nor by any man…
but by Jesus Christ and God the Father.’

Paul’s language echoes the calling of the Jewish prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah…my friends Paul isn’t converted from Judaism…he’s changed within it. Next week our guest speaker, Jacob Damkani has had the same experience and is now possibly the greatest messianic Jewish evangelist in the world.

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No if Paul was converted from anything… it was his zealous interpretation of Torah…which was leading him down the road… of death…

before his encounter with the risen Christ…Paul’s zealous interpretation of the law lead him to identify Jesus… as an heretical teacher and a dangerous agitator…
whose deeds had brought him to justice…on a Cross. [Pause]

But face to face with Jesus on the road to Damascus… Paul recognises this to be a false judgment …
a judgement… he must abandon.

When Torah…when the Law was interpreted from the perspective of the persecutor…it seemed to authorise social retribution in the name of God…
That’s what Paul saw in it…

But interpreted in the light of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth…the law demands love…
through the lens of what Jesus says is the greatest commandment
love the Lord your God with all you’ve got…
love your neighbour the same way…
in fact love your enemy the same way…
the law’s ultimate demand is love.

When the persecutors selected their texts
the law became a death dealing instrument…
allowing the community… to sanction death.

But as we can see from Jesus choice of greatest commandment… the problem lay not with the Law…
but with human interpretation of the Law.

Later in his letter to the Galatians… Paul draws a sharp contrast between the blessing/promise voice of God
and the cursing/enslaving…. voice of the Law.  

Following his encounter with the risen Jesus…
on the road to Damascus…
for Paul the law… is now secondary… to Christ.

While many of Paul’s contemporaries… and even some of ours… interpret God through the scriptures…
as retributive and punishing of sin…
Paul now understands… that God revealed in Jesus…
is compassionate and forgiving.  

Later Paul would say… it’s all about how you read the scriptures …you can read them veiled… or unveiled.

He writes… followers of Jesus aren’t like Moses

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who put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It hasn’t been removed because only in Christ is it taken away.

Paul writes…

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even to this day when Moses is read a veil covers their hearts…but when anyone turns to the Lord the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.
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And we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory are being transformed into his likeness with every increasing lorry which comes from the Lord…who is the Spirit.

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When the scales finally fell from his eye…Paul saw clearly…It’s not the letter of the text that is revelation…
but the interpretation of the text
in the light of the Spirit… who is Jesus. [pause]

Will you and I read through the veil of zeal
that authorises killing in God’s name… or will we read through the lens of Christ...who was killed in the name of the text?

So like Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John…
Jesus asks Paul to let go of something…
so he can grab hold of the net of God’s love
for the salvation of the world. 

And when he lets go he becomes the greatest evangelist to the Pagan world who ever lived…the one whom Jesus would call… my chosen instrument… to proclaim my name to the Gentiles… and their kings…
and to the people of Israel.

 My thanks again to Michael Hardin for inspiration for this sermon. His book The Jesus Driven Life can be purchased on Amazon.