Acts 9.1-25
Delivered on Sunday 06 July 2008 in Stockton Parish Church
Acts 9.1-25 - 'The Conversion of St Paul'
The story so far
Our passage this morning comes about a third of the way through the book of Acts. Before this point, the focus has been on the church in Jerusalem, but now the focus shifts outwards as the gospel spreads beyond Israel's borders.
At the beginning of Acts the new Christians enjoy great friendship, they share all they have, eat and worship together regularly, and have amazing prayer meetings where the building literally shakes! But then persecutions come, and one of the first converts, Stephen, is put on trial and stoned to death. Watching him die is a young man called Saul.
Saul of Tarsus goes to Damascus
Saul came from a place called Tarsus, and trained under the top Rabbi in Israel. He was fiery, idealistic - he had really 'got religion'. He was going around Jerusalem arresting Christians and putting them in prison. But he wasn't content with the Christians in Jerusalem - he knew that they had spread to the surrounding region. So he asked for permission from the high priest to go to Damascus to arrest them there, bind them up and drag them back to Jerusalem.
Luke, who wrote Acts, says that Saul was 'ravaging' the church (8.3). I don't know if any of you watched the BBC programme recently called 'Tiger: Spy in the Jungle'? The footage was amazing, but if you missed it I'm sure you've seen other programmes where some lion or tiger or something has caught another animal and is tearing it apart with its teeth. That's what Luke is getting at when he says that Saul is 'ravaging' the church. (There's even a prophecy about this happening, in Psalm 80.8-13 if you want to look it up.)
Anyway, Saul had found out that there were Christians in Damascus - that's about 150 miles away from Jerusalem - and he sets off, on foot. I told you he was keen! As he walks along, suddenly there's a great flashing light in the sky, and Saul falls to the ground. A voice calls out to him, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?' Jesus stops Saul dead in his tracks, and shows him that the people he's been persecuting were right all along.
Seeing things differently
Saul wasn't an evil man. He thought he was doing the right thing. From his point of view, he was arresting people who were dangerously insane, threatening to turn the society upside-down. Not only that, they were claiming that some wandering rabbi was actually God himself!
I'm sure you've all watched horse races, or seen a horse-and-cart. You know how they have blinkers on to stop them turning to the right or the left? That's like Saul: he had these blinkers on that stopped him seeing what God was really doing all around him. Blinkers are great, but not if you're facing the wrong direction!
We all have blinkers of some sort, they help us get through life. There's so much to do and see and think about, that we need some way of focusing on what's important.
But sometimes - like Saul - we can miss something, or someone, who is the most important someone in the world. It may seem like Christianity is boring or irrelevant, that 'faith' is backward, that science has taken its place. But what if all that is because of some blinkers, that are stopping us from seeing the truth about Jesus? What if Jesus really is God, come to live among us? What if he really did heal all those people, raise the dead, feed the thousands? What if he really did die on a cross two thousand years ago, to give us new life today? Because if he did, if he really is the Son of God, then that changes everything.
And it did for Saul. He was sincere, sure, but you can be sincerely wrong, and he was. Saul thought he was heading in the right direction, but he wasn't. Now I'm sure none of us here is ravaging the church like Saul was, but what if this is true? Saul had to be blinded to make him realise he was spiritually blind, but then his eyes were opened and he saw things as they really are.
CS Lewis, who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, said this: 'I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.'
I would suggest that we should all try to take our blinkers off, to look around, to investigate these strange stories about Jesus, to read about him in our Bibles, to keep our eyes and ears open to what God is doing and saying.
Because that's exactly what Ananias did, the second person in this passage.
Ananias - the obedient and faithful disciple
For a minute, why don't you put yourself in Ananias' shoes. He had heard about this man Saul, the bigwig from Jerusalem who was coming to Damascus to arrest Christians like Ananias. He had heard about the way Saul was ravaging the church in Jerusalem, and was, well, pretty terrified. Wouldn't you be? Saul was going to arrest any Christians he found, bind them up and drag them off to Jerusalem to be locked up.
Now God is telling Ananias to go and actually find this Saul. God must be off his rocker, thinks Ananias to himself. He's sending me into the lion's den, into the hands of the man who's trying to destroy the church. And so Ananias has a little argument with God. I love it when people in the Bible do this. God always wins, but it's encouraging in the times when I feel the need to have an argument with God about something. He can take it, he's a big God!
And so, despite his fear of being arrested by Saul, Ananias goes to the place where Saul is staying, in Straight Street, prays for him to be filled with the Holy Spirit, heals him of his blindness, and baptizes him there and then.
The life of the baptised
Ananias knew that baptism is not enough on its own, it's only the beginning. Christians are not supposed to be people who made some promises to God, a long time ago, and live their lives just like everyone else. Baptism marks the beginning of a life-long journey of discipleship - that means simply following Jesus faithfully and obediently.
Despite his fear, despite the fact that he didn't want to go, Ananias obeyed God faithfully. He had his eyes and his ears open, so that he could see and hear what God was saying and doing. He didn't have blinkers on, but realised that being a Christian means following Jesus wherever he leads, wherever he sends us.
Ananias' simple act of obedience led to Saul being healed and baptised, Saul who became Paul, the man who took the gospel out of Israel to the surrounding nations, the man who wrote half of the books in the New Testament, including the letter to the Romans, the man who taught us so much about God's love and grace. We never hear about Ananias again in the Bible, but thanks to his act of simple obedience, we hear a lot about Paul.
It is our prayer, here at Stockton Parish Church, that after their baptism today, N and N will grow up seeing the world like Saul after his conversion, living lives that are faithful and obedient to Jesus their Lord, like Ananias.
But the message is not just for them, it's for all of us. This is God's plan: that we spend our whole lives living out the baptism promises of faithfulness and obedience, serving our Lord Jesus. Let us not be blinkered to what God is doing and saying, but instead, let us be obedient and faithful servants, today and for the rest of our lives.
Perhaps as we end we could spend a few moments in quiet prayer, thinking about the ways in which we might be blinkered to what God is doing and saying, thinking about the ways in which we might be faithful and obedient disciples of Jesus.
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