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Sunday, November 18, 2018

“Suddenly, a Light…”

A sermon based upon Acts 9: 1-19
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
31st  Sunday in Ordinary Time,  November 11,  2018 
(12-14) Sermon Series: Church: Then and Now

The account of Paul’s conversion repeated not once, but three times in the book of Acts, captures and captivates the Christian imagination. 

We wonder is this what we are to expect in all Christian accounts conversion?  People do love to hear a ‘dramatic’ story of immediate change and conversion, whether it is religious or not.

Recently, I heard a Charlotte Pastor, Pendleton Perrry tell of his conversion from being a life-long Duke to now being an fanatical Carolina fan.  He had been a duke fan all during his childhood and teen years.  He followed Duke basketball with great passion.  He had Duke posters all over his bedroom.  He knew all the players and stats.  And he had loved to pull for Duke against Carolina, especially, cheering fanatically every time Duke won.

Then, that very ‘second’, right in the middle of basketball season, he received an acceptance letter inviting him to study at Chapel Hill.  He said that then, in an instant, his loyalty changed. Today, there is no more loyal Carolina fan than Pendleton Perry.  The moment he got that letter, his heart was converted to from dark Blue Devil to Carolina blue Tarheel.

I can’t say the same for me.  When I studied at Gardner-Webb College, instead of going off to Carolina, there was no great fanfare or salute.  Like most people, I went off to college to study and to gain the knowledge and experience I needed to work and follow my calling.  I thought Gardner-Webb was a good place to get a quality education.  There was no great ‘conversion’ experience.  Gardner-Webb just happened to be the school that accepted me first.  There was no great fanfare or sudden change of attitude.  I went to school.  I studied hard.  I made good grades, learned, and matured, but there was no sudden ‘new’ me. 

HE HEARD A VOICE SAY…. (4)
When we turn our attention to the conversion of Saul, who changed his name from the Hebrew ‘Saul’ to the Latin, “Paulus”, we see a much more dramatic experience.  Saul’s conversion story is filled power words and phrases like ‘suddenly’ (3), ‘a light…flashed’ (3), ‘He fell…’ (4), ‘a voice’ (4), ‘speechless’ (7), and ‘vision’ (10).   There is nothing dull, ordinary, or ‘common’ about Saul’s conversion.  Still, the men traveling with Saul heard a ‘sound’, but they ‘did not see anyone’ (7).  It was mysterious to them, but it was very real to Saul.  We are told that as a result, ‘for three days (Saul) was blind and did not eat or drink anything’ (9).  Whatever it was, as it’s often said, it ‘threw him for a loop’.

FF Bruce, the late British NT scholar, commenting on impact of this religious experience upon Saul’s life, wrote: “Few of Saul’s distinctive insights into the significance of the gospel cannot be traced back to this Damacus-Road event, or to the outworking of that event in his life and thought” (FF Bruce, Acts, New International Commentary, p. 183).

Even though Saul’s experience is unique, Dr. Bruce goes on to cite a similar conversion to Sundar Singh in 1904.  Singh was a hindu, who had also be saying negative things about Jesus, and then suddenly, without warning, encountered ‘Christ’ is a ‘light of love’, though he had never, ever, read of Saul’s conversion.

If you’ve read the account of the conversion experience of great French mathematician, Blaise Pascal from 1654, in which he wrote down his exact experience and sewed it into his jacket, where it was found years later upon his death by one of his servants.  It was very specific:
In the year of Grace, 1654, On Monday, 23rd of November…From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve,
FIRE!
God of Abraham, God of Issac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certitude.  Certitude. Feeling.  Joy.  Peace. 
God of Jesus Christ.  “My God and Your God”. 
He is to be found only by the ways taught in the Gospel…This is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and the one whom Thou hast sent, Jesus Christ” (Jn. 17:3).  Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ” 
(As quoted in Conversions, Kerr and Mulder, 1983, p. 37).

Growing up a Baptist, we have been a people who celebrated greatly such clarity of conversion.   One of the gospel songs expressed the sentiments this way:  “I Can Tell You the Time.  I Can Tell You the Place.  Where the Lord Saved Me, By His Marvelous Grace…’  That song not only celebrates  the clarity of time and place, but it also points us to the mystery of the ‘why’ or the ‘how’:  ‘But I Can Not Tell You How.  And I Can Not Tell You Why.  But I will tell you all about it,”  the song concludes, “in the By and By.”   Clarity of Conversion, along with the Mystery of Conversion; that’s the strange combination of religious experience?

GO…ON STRAIGHT STREET (11)
Perhaps some of you have such ‘clarity’ or ‘drama’ in your conversion experience too.  Maybe like Saul, that moment was dramatic, clear, or instant.   

But what if, like me, your conversion story is not so dramatic.  What is you would just one of the youth, who finally ‘understood’, went to your father, to the preacher, or walked down an long, church isle on a Sunday morning, or at a revival service, because everyone else did, and you realized you needed to do that too.  What if the your ‘conversion’ to Christ was much less dramatic, though is was just as real?  While your love for Christ and your conversion to the truth of the gospel is no less impactful for your life, it wasn’t some momentous or earth-shattering, event. Does this mean it is less real, or important? 

Maybe your experience of conversion is more like that which we read about when we move from Saul’s story, to encounter the simple, but reluctant faith of this ‘disciple’ named ‘Ananias’.   In fact, if there hadn’t been an Ananias who stood ready to ‘obey’ God’s voice, there would have been no Saul, at all.   But Ananias’ has no dramatic story of conversion.  Besides, Ananias was a bit ‘reluctant’ to be obedience to God’s voice, wasn’t he? 

While there is no doubt that Ananias is a ‘disciple’—a follower of Jesus, when ‘the Lord called to him in a vision’ and told him to ‘go to the house of Judas on Straight Street…” and to ‘lay hands on him to restore (Saul’s) sight’, Ananias answered with great reserve and reluctance: “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done…And he has come here with authority…to arrest all those who call on your name (10-15).”  Can you blame Ananias for this reluctance?  After all, Saul had killed Christians?

But my point here is not about Ananias’ reluctance, but about his conversion.  While there is no doubt that something dramatic happened to Saul, we don’t even know how Ananias became a Christian.  Probably it wasn’t even dramatic enough to be worth mentioning.  Later, when sharing his own testimony, Saul, who was then named Paul, said that Ananias was simply one of those ‘devout’ persons who always followed and ‘observed the law’ and was ‘highly respected’ (Acts 22: 12), but we know of no ‘dramatic’ conversion his life, nor do we hear of it in the story of many important followers of Jesus either.    

I don’t want to make much of Ananias’ reluctance to go to ‘lay hands on’ Saul,’  but what I do want us to understand today is what joins their stories together is not how they are converted, but their ‘obedience’.  Even though Ananias was reluctant, he obeyed God’s voice to go to Saul.  Even though Saul had been persecuting and murdering Christians, in a more dramatic way, Saul was becoming obedient too.   The ‘how’ of our conversion is not the important thing.  That we become ‘obedient’ followers of Jesus, is what always matters most.

Obedience is what conversion is finally about, isn’t it?   And I love the fact that the street that both Saul and Ananias ended up on was called ‘straight street’.  The name of this street serves a wonderful ‘metaphor’ for the kind of ‘street’ the gospel calls us all to walk on, a street where we walk ‘straighter’, ‘better’, more purposefully, intentionally, and honestly.  It is a street where we all walk to listen and to hear God’s voice, obey his will, and walk ‘straight’ toward God’s purposes of God for our life in the world.  As I used to hear a Pentecostal preacher say once to his audience, who had a tendency toward getting emotional:  “It doesn’t matter how high you jump, but how straight you walk when you hit the ground!”

HE COULD SEE AGAIN (18)
So here’s my point; whether your conversion story is very ‘dramatic’ or ‘interesting’ or whether is ‘vanilla’, ‘boring’ and uninteresting, the ‘kind’ of conversion you have is never as important at the kind of life you are living and the way you are living to obey God’s voice today.  And this is exactly where the story of Saul’s conversion concludes, when Ananias goes to him, and after laying hands on him, we read how, ‘immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again (18)”  Then, it says, ‘he got up, and was baptized…(18), and he ’, took some food  and ‘regained his strength (19)’ so that he began immediately ‘to preach Christ in the synagogues that he is the Son of God’ (20).

The great thing about Saul’s conversion story, is not how it happened, but that this was not the end of Saul’s story, only the beginning.  As the Lord told Ananias, “…For he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” (16).  The story of Saul’s conversion to become ‘the apostle’ Paul, has only just begun and his conversion to Christ is ‘to be continued’, as the old TV sitcoms, used to say. 

Perhaps this is what makes a ‘conversion’ story most important; not what happened then, once upon a time, in an instant, or why back when, but that the story continues today.  I don’t know what your ‘conversion’ story is, and it would be good for you to learn to share it, especially with those who haven’t had such an experience. 

But still, what matters most, even to that person who hears about it, for you to prove that it is real, is not just be able to say what happened, but to show, and share also, what is happening right now—how you are living your life and seeking to obey God’s voice—right now?   We have been converted to follow Jesus, either suddenly, or quietly, but the process of conversion, of regeneration, and of transformation, to be the person or the people God has called us to be,  for it to be real, must be a story that ‘still continues’.

Not long ago, Christianity Today, a magazine Billy Graham helped to established had on it’s cover a ‘lynching’ rope….  That ‘rope’ was put on that cover because America, and Christians too, especially Christians in America, still need to be converted.  That ‘rope’ was put there to get you to read the ‘lead’ article about one of America’s newest Museums, a Museum just recently established in Montgomery Alabama, that remembers and memorializes the 4400 African Americans who were unfairly, and unjustly arrested and lynched because of their race, not because of their crime.  You will find 800 Steel columns in that museum, representing the 800 counties where this lynching took place.  You’ll also find the names of those victims; like ‘General Lee’, a black man from Reidsville, SC, who was arrested and lynched for ‘knocking on a white man’s door’.  You’ll also read the name of “Jessie Thornton” in Lavern, Alabama, was lynched for failing to address a white policeman as ‘sir’.  Jeff Brown is also listed, as a man from Cedar Bluff, Mississippi, who accidentally bumped into a white woman while trying to get on a train. 

In his book, about his work racial reconciliation,  Lawyer Brian Stevenson, tells that the aim of his work is not to punish people who were wrong, but to invite people toward ‘conversion’ which leads to redemption and liberation.  If we will do the ‘hard part’ of acknowledging our wrongs, then the way of reconciliation and justice can become ‘real’ in our world too. 


The way this conversion can begin, says Stevenson, is when the counties, like Mecklenburg, and others, will come together to accept and receive their steel column and bring them home to acknowledge what has happened in the past, and to commit to a better future, together; with fairness and justice for all.  He says, only when we are awakened, disturbed, and re-oriented toward a different way, can we be truly converted to live in that new way.  Sometimes the way of conversion is sudden and dramatic; and other times the way is slower and long.  The point is that our need of conversion continues, so that God can continue to open up new ways toward the future that belongs to those who will allow God open and challenge our hearts toward the love that can still make us into the people God has called us to be.   Amen.

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