Not What You Think

A man was driving his car in a very heavy snowstorm. The snow was coming down so fast and furious that he could hardly see the road in front of him, except for the lights on a truck in front of him, and so he used those lights to guide him.

As he followed, he noticed that the truck driver was taking a rather circuitous route. He was turning and twisting, twisting and turning until finally the truck driver stopped. He went back and rapped on the man’s window. The man rolled down the window and the truck driver said, "Listen, buddy, I’m finished sweeping the mall parking lot now. If you want the road it’s over there." ¹

Humbled by our blindness! That is the way our journey with Christ begins and continues.

Today is the last in our Walk Through the Bible series, and it is about Paul’s beginnings with Christ where he is humbled by his blindness. Paul’s conversion story is told three times in the book of Acts (9:1-31, 22:3-16, 26:4-18). Paul is a significant person in our whole understanding of the Christian faith, and much of our New Testament is either about him or from him.

Before we hear his story of being completely humbled and transformed by the amazing love of God in Jesus Christ, there are a few things you need to know.

Before he met Jesus he was not called Paul but Saul. He was the most righteous of the righteous Jews, a Pharisee, which means he was devoted not only to knowing God’s law but living it and protecting it. For that reason he was going after the disciples of Jesus because they claimed that he was the Son of God and the promised Messiah. This was blasphemy to his ears and had to be stopped.

Acts 9:1-31

Have you ever been absolutely sure you were right? So sure that you would do everything in your power to stand behind the rightness of your cause and prove the wrongness of your adversaries?

Saul was that sure. He had no doubt in his mind about the fundamentals of his faith. He had studied them his whole life. And he had no doubts that the claims of Jesus went against those fundamentals. Saul knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were.

So he went to the chief good guys, the chief priests, and got the appropriate papers so that he could do everything according to the letter of the law and go after these bad guys, these bad Jews, who were acting as if Jesus was God.

With a truly righteous zeal, Saul was going after them, down the road that goes from Jerusalem to Damascus, when all of a sudden a brilliant light overwhelmed them and knocked Saul to the ground. The Light actually spoke to him, calling him by name: "Saul, Saul, what are you doing? Why are you persecuting me?" "Who are you, Lord?"

"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Get up, go into the city, and you will be told what you are to do."

Saul did manage to get up, but he couldn’t see and he didn’t know which way to go. He had to be led by the hand. He could not eat or drink. He couldn’t do anything but for three days except sit and wait.

Talk about humbled! This man on a mission, in command, doing important things for God, was now completely helpless, like a child, totally dependent on others. And the greatest humiliation of all, he is dependent upon the very ones he came to destroy.

It is their touch, Ananias’ touch that removes the scales from his eyes. It is in his humbled broken state that he receives the Holy Spirit, "his sight was restored," and he becomes a baptized follower of Jesus Christ himself.

It is an amazing story that begins with a very righteous and certain Saul pursuing these disciples who bear the name of Jesus, and then it ends with him being one of them!

"Hey buddy, if you are looking for the road it’s over there!" If you’re looking for the way to God, it is the road of being completely humbled and transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ, not once but again and again and again – "continuing conversion" as Darrell Guder puts it. ²

Like Ananias. He too knew who the good guys were and the bad guys. Saul was definitely one of the bad guys. "You want me to go to his house?!" he asked God, which was the same as turning himself over to prison and death. But Ananias and the rest of the disciples had to be humbled and transformed anew by the amazing love of God that takes us out of our certainties into God’s mysterious ways, even toward the enemy camp!

If you are looking for the road to God – it’s not what you think.

Long ago a soldier carried with him the following piece on prayer:

Where are you most sure of your prayers? Where are you most certain of the fundamentals of life, of the truth? So sure that you would do everything in your power to stand behind the rightness of your cause and prove the wrongness of your adversaries? According to this story, there is only one thing of which we can be certain: that all of our certainty will be humbled and transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ over and over and over again.

I had the chance to hear Jim Lehrer (of the Lehrer news report) speak at the Peninsula Speaker Series in San Mateo last week. He is concerned by how divided our country is and seemingly unable to come together and work together. He had a lot to say about that, but one of the things that interested me was his description of the role of a news journalist in gathering and reporting information. Among the guidelines that he gives to all his news journalists out on the field, one of them was "always assume that there is more than one side to every story" and "give every person the benefit of the doubt."

Paul puts it this way in I Corinthians 13 (the love chapter): Now I know only in part... This is the road of conversion experienced again and again by Paul. The only real certainty we have doesn’t come from our mastery of the truth but from our humility before God’s truth (I Timothy 1:15). This is what Paul says we can know for sure:

We all know that fundamentalism is on the rise. But I wonder if we have eyes to see how it is not just on the rise over there in that country or in those religious zealots, but in ourselves as we become more passionate about the fundamentals that we hold dear.

Jimmy Carter in his book, Our Endangered Values, talks about the rise of fundamentalism and the ways it divides us, and lists some of the characteristics of fundamentalism. Listen to a few of them and see if they don’t apply to us a little bit with the things we feel strongly about, not just with our faith but the issues that divide us: the war, the raging debate in the church over homosexuality, abortion.

• Fundamentalists draw clear distinctions between themselves, as true believers, and others, convinced that they are right and that anyone who contradicts them is ignorant and possibly evil.
• Fundamentalists are militant in fighting against any challenge to their beliefs…
• Fundamentalists tend to make their self-definition increasingly narrow and restricted, to isolate themselves, to demagogue emotional issues, and to view change, cooperation, negotiation, and other efforts to resolve differences as signs of weakness. ³

I hear some of this language among us in the church. It’s like the radio discussion I heard recently where they were talking about how we don’t seem to be able to have conversations together about our differences; we just have this strong desire to do away with the opposing side. Of course, because I’m right and they are wrong! The bible says so!

As certain as we might be about who is in the good camp and who is in the enemy camp, God’s love in Jesus Christ will not move us out on a "search and destroy" mission. God’s love will move us in the direction of saying, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus has sent me to you..." That was an amazing thing!

When Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president of South Africa after twenty years of imprisonment by the white Afrikaners, he invited a small intimate group of people to witness his swearing in. Among these special guests were two of his guards in prison. "Brother Afrikaner, the Lord Jesus has sent me to you." "Brother Mandela, the Lord Jesus has sent me to you."

Now I know only in part… because of my sin, because of my cultural bias.

This is the humbling road of conversion that Jesus leads us down – toward the ones you and I want to dismiss and discount and perhaps destroy – across the aisle, across the liberal/conservative divide, across our hate and our good reasons to hate, across our boundaries, maybe even into our enemy’s home as God opens those doors like Paul did in going to the Gentiles – to call all people our brothers and sisters.

This is what Saul learned from his first teacher in the faith – before Ananias and Barnabas and the rest – several chapters earlier with Stephen who was martyred for his faith before Paul’s approving eyes (Acts 7). As his enemies were stoning him to death, even as he died, he looked at murderous Saul with love not hate and prayed, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." He was truly a man humbled and transformed by the amazing love of God in Jesus Christ.

Humbled by our blindness. If you want the road to God; there it is.

At the U.S. Army training school in Huntsville, Alabama, an inspection was being conducted by a particularly tough colonel. The colonel stopped at one soldier, and after looking him up and down he said with a scowl, "Trooper, button that pocket!" The soldier stammered, "Right now, sir?" The colonel snapped back, "Of course, right now!" Whereupon the soldier very carefully reached out and buttoned the flap on the colonel’s shirt pocket. ⁴

Humbled by our blindness, again and again and again.

Brennan Manning is an ordained Catholic priest and recovering alcoholic. He was invited to speak at the Crystal Cathedral and at the end of the service he gave this benediction: