Conversion
Acts 9:1-20
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
October 20, 2024
Photo by Ronaldo de Oliveira on Unsplash Used under Unsplash license
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQqAwHg_-OM
Last Sunday, we read together from Acts 17, where the apostle Paul was preaching to the Gentiles in Athens. Today, we back up to a time when he was called Saul, a time when he held to a rigid boundary between Jews and Gentiles, with his body and soul planted firmly on the Jewish side of that boundary.
The very first time Saul was mentioned was in chapter 7, when he guarded the coats of those who stoned Stephen to death. After Stephen’s death, the persecution got so bad that the new disciples fled from Jerusalem. You remember the church in Antioch which came about in part because of this great scattering.
Saul is no longer content with just driving the believers out of Jerusalem. He tries to pursue them all the way to Damascus, which is more than 100 miles from Jerusalem. The story begins with Saul breathing threats and murder, but that is a mild translation. It would be more accurate to say that Saul is snorting. He is riled up.
Saul has the authority to take life through imprisonment or execution. Biblical scholar and theologian Willie James Jennings says, “No one is more dangerous than one with the power to take life and who has already mind and sight set on those who are [perceived to be] a threat. Such a person is a closed circle relying on the inner coherence of their own logic.” [1]
“Such a person is a closed circle relying on the inner coherence of their own logic.” What a great way to describe an echo chamber. Perhaps you know some individuals who are stuck in an echo chamber. It often seems that no appeals to logic or facts will change their mind. We are familiar with this phenomenon. We see it politically – the other party is the enemy. We see it in the church where one faith stream is pitted against another. Protestants against Catholics, mainliners against Evangelicals. We plant body and soul firmly on our side of the boundary.
This is more than difference of theology or worship style. Saul is downright dangerous. It takes a blinding light and a disembodied voice and three days of an intense spiritual experience to change him. His reversal is amazing. He goes from fully sighted to being blind. From being a person on a clear self-appointed mission to someone who has to wait for days in order to learn what to do next. He starts out intending to lead captives back to Jerusalem and ends up being the one led into Damascus by others. By the end, his position is flipped. Instead of persecuting the followers of the Way, he joins them. We might call this a conversion. Ananias is a disciple who lives in Damascus. He knows who Saul is. He knows that Saul is the dangerous enemy. Ananias does not readily accept God’s instruction to go to him, to help him. Saul kills people like him. Ananias needs some reassurance that the risk he will take is really what God wants. But he becomes convinced and he does what God asks. The Bible does not say that he acts without fear. His hands may shake as he lays them on Saul, whom he calls brother, but he still does it. We might also call Ananias’ experience a conversion.
We will come back to Saul and Ananias. First, let me introduce you to two people I met this summer. They were born on opposite sides of a great divide. This divide was so intense that people were regularly killed or imprisoned by people on the other side. Everyone knew who the enemies were. I’m speaking of Northern Ireland where it may be easiest to describe the two sides as Catholic and Protestant, although it is more nuanced than that.
Tom was Catholic and he also served as General Secretary of Sinn Fein for several years. Lesley was on the other side. She is a Presbyterian minister. Tom and Lesley and a few others met secretly to work for peace because it was dangerous. No one trusted the enemy. If you trusted the enemy, then you were a traitor. Lesley was serving her first church. If the church had discovered her role in the peace talks, she would likely have lost her job, possibly her ordination. She was ordained about 7 years before me. I cannot imagine summoning that kind of courage in my first call. She had been warned against those people from childhood, the people with whom she was now sharing homemade pizza because they couldn’t meet in a restaurant or pub. Tom had suffered legal discrimination and imprisonment by the folks on Lesley’s side when he was a young adult. He had every reason to be angry, to hate her and her kind. Somehow, they allowed their minds to be changed. They were converted to the cause of peace. Their meetings were part of the background that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, ending about 30 years of violent conflict.
We had the privilege of hearing some of their stories one holy afternoon in Belfast. You could tell that their shared risks developed into an incredible friendship. Lesley is still ordained in the Presbyterian church. Tom is still an Irish Republican, but he no longer identifies as Catholic or even as Christian. Near the end, Lesley told my favorite story. She said that not long ago, she had been ill for a long time. While she recuperated at home, many people came to see her. Lots of her Presbyterian colleagues, some church members, family and friends dropped in to encourage her with food and good wishes. Of all the many people who came over the weeks of her illness, Tom, the non-Christian, was the only one who sat down, pulled out a Bible and read scripture to her. To have changed your mind so completely about who the enemy is or how you are to relate to them – I would call that a conversion.
Many of us are not really comfortable talking about conversion in the religious sense. Mainline Christians have largely subscribed to the notion that if you steadily nurture a person within the faith, they will naturally and consistently identify as Christian, so conversion is never necessary. Other Christian streams have emphasized the importance of an individual commitment to follow Jesus, a pivotal moment. Many of those conversions involve turning away from addiction or sleeping around or gambling or some other immorality. The stories include lines like “I was a complete loser until I found Jesus. Jesus saved me from all the bad things I was into.”
Neither one of these approaches really works in America today. Generations of people have neither been nurtured in faith nor made a personal decision to follow the way of Jesus. [2] We need to rethink the whole notion of conversion.
Rev. Anthony Robinson writes that in Acts, conversion is not primarily a moral turnaround. “Conversion means crossing boundaries and barriers and reaching a whole new way of seeing and understanding life. It is more about putting an end to ignorance than to immorality.”[3]
Saul and Ananias, Tom and Lesley each experienced conversion. They crossed boundaries and barriers and reached a whole new way of understanding life. They took calculated risks and gained an expanded vision of what is real and what is possible.
When Saul fell to the ground on the Damascus Road, he heard the voice say “Why are you persecuting me?” He could not imagine at first that it was God’s voice. He was not persecuting God. He was serving God. . . or that was his sincere intent.
“Why are you hurting me?” God asks. Saul’s conversion begins with that question. African-American theologian Willie James Jennings writes “In our world, this genre of question flows most often out of the mouths of the poor and women and children. The question casts light on the currencies of death that we incessantly traffic in, and it has no good answers. . . . But now”, Jennings writes, “ this is God’s question. It belongs to God. It belongs with God.” [4]
I wonder if we could ever hear that question directed at us. I wonder if we might be the ones in need of conversion. It is hard for me to ask that, hard to imagine how it might be true.
It is always easier to see the speck in someone else’s eye, so let me tell you about another church. This church only uses a small part of their large building. They are sincerely concerned about social justice, have been active on major issues for many years. Not long ago, they were asked to make their building available for asylum seekers. They are politically supportive of that idea. The request was that about 24 asylum seekers would shelter overnight in the church for a month. They would shower and eat meals elsewhere. Cots and blankets would be provided. The guests would arrive in the evening and leave by 7 the next morning. The church was on board with this idea. The guests could have free reign of the second floor rooms that the church wasn’t using anyway.
But then the fire marshall noticed that the second floor rooms only had one exit. That was not safe. However, he pointed out, the rooms on the first floor all had two exits. There were enough first floor rooms to accommodate the needs of all 24 asylum seekers who would be leaving by 7:00 every morning. But one church member said, “One of those rooms is the toddler’s room. You know how much children hate other people touching their stuff. They can’t use that room.” Someone else said, “One of the rooms is the lounge where we have coffee hour. They can’t use that room, even though they’ll be long gone by the time of coffee hour.” And so, the church may close their doors to those folks and this opportunity.
It’s not hard for me to hear God saying to them, “Why are you hurting me?” It is more difficult to allow myself to hear that question directed at me and possibly at us. Surely God isn’t asking us that, right? We are faithful and sincere – but so was Saul. We know the Bible and we understand how church works – but then again, so did Saul. We want nothing more than for everyone to know the deep love of God. We want nothing more than to see more people in church on Sundays. It is outrageous and offensive even to suggest that we might be hurting God, I know, but what if we are?
Could you and I be hurting God when we insist on offering the good news only wrapped up in the forms that we’re familiar with?
There’s a loneliness epidemic in our world. Can we be converted to the idea that God is among the lonely and despairing, calling us to abandon our comfort and security within these walls and learn how to befriend strangers?
Could we be hurting God when we assume that the spiritual practices, the forms of worship and discipleship, which have been vital and life-shaping for us will also be so for the next generations, and therefore must be defended and maintained for all time?
Instead of staying firmly within the boundaries of what has been, of what we were born into, could we entertain a conversion of our imagination? Is it possible that the Spirit is beckoning to us, urging us across boundaries and barriers to a new way of being and doing? A path that is only being revealed along the way as we start doing it.
This is the power of conversion – crossing boundaries, changing minds, increasing understanding, and taking action leads to an expanded, bold vision of what is real and what is possible. May God make it so for you and for me. Amen.
[1] [1] Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017), p. 90
[2] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church: The Book of Acts for a New Day, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), p. 140
[3] Robinson and Wall, p. 141
[4] Willie James Jennings, p 91