Text: Acts 9:1-20
Theme: “The Organic Gospel Changes People” (2nd
in a Series)
Third Sunday of Easter
April 10, 2016
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, TX
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out
murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the
synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way,
whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey,
suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice
say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are
you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,”
he replied. 6 “Now get up
and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
7 The men
traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not
see anyone. 8 Saul got up
from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led
him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three
days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.
10 In Damascus
there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord,” he answered.
11 The Lord
told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from
Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision
he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his
sight.”
13 “Lord,”
Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he
has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from
the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
15 But the Lord
said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to
the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer
for my name.”
17 Then Ananias
went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother
Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming
here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
18 Immediately,
something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up
and was baptized, 19 and after
taking some food, he regained his strength.
Saul spent several days with the
disciples in Damascus. 20 At once he
began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.
In
November of 2004, the IBM company hosted a conference at Rockefeller University
in New York City. A number of brilliant
thinkers were gathered there just one day to propose solutions to some of the
world’s biggest problems.
The
first topic was the crisis in health care.
It’s an industry that consumes an astonishing $2.1 trillion a year in
the United States alone – more than one seventh of the entire economy. Together with the massive cost, every
reliable indicator demonstrated that we’re not feeling healthier, and we are
not making enough progress toward preventing illnesses such as heart disease,
stroke, and cancer.
At
one point in the proceedings, Dr. Raphael Levey, founder of the Global Medical
Forum, told the audience: “A relatively
small percentage of the population consumes the vast majority of the health
care budget for diseases that are very well known and by and large behavioral.” In short, we have a small percentage of our
fellow citizens who are sick, who know they are sick, who can be treated, but
yet they steadfastly refuse to change their behaviors.
Dr.
Edward Miller, dean of the medical school and CEO of Johns Hopkins, reported
thus to the conference: “If you look at
people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, ninety percent of
them have not changed their lifestyle.”
In
his excellent work, Change or Die,
Alan Deutschman asks us a question:
Could
you change when change really mattered?
When it mattered most? Yes, you
say? Try again. Yes?
You’re probably deluding yourself.
That’s what the experts say. They
say that you wouldn’t change. Don’t
believe it? You want odds? Here are the odds that the experts are laying
down, their scientifically studied odds:
nine to one. That’s nine to one
against you. How do you like those odds?
Why,
pray tell, is there such resistance to change?
Without change, people will die, groupings of people will die, churches
will die, and empires have fallen. In
short, the status quo is killing us but we will stop at nothing to maintain it.
Why
such resistance to change? The verdict
of the ages is one word: fear. Fear stops us dead in our tracks. It robs us of any enthusiasm to do the work –
sometimes the hard work – of change. The
tactic we employ so often to cover up that uncomfortable fear is DENIAL. “I don’t have any problems; we don’t have any
problems; everything is fine.” If
someone pecks and probes, then we often resort to the tactic of Adam in the
garden of Eden. After that unfortunate
afternoon when the forbidden fruit was consumed, Adam said to God: “The woman you gave me; she made me eat.” Eve deferred to the snake, and the
finger-pointing has gone on ever since. Instead
of change, we assess blame.
It’s
fear, folks. Fear fuels the resistance
to change. It’s fear of retribution,
fear of being vulnerable, fear of getting out of our comfort zone, fear of
actually having to look at ourselves and our world with 20/20 vision.
With
some individuals, it is impossible to change – in and of themselves. They simply do not possess the spiritual,
mental, or physical resources to do it.
They are, in effect, actively dying
As
a chaplain and as a person on the front line in recovery programs, I’ve seen
this. Speaking of recovery, most
programs are 12-Step programs. I won’t
go through them all, but round about the 9th step some promises
start to kick in. One of them, perhaps
the most important one, is this: “We
will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for
ourselves.”
This
“doing for us what we could not do for ourselves” is what happens when the
organic Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ – the message of grace, forgiveness,
and new life – gets a hearing.
A
case in point, straight out of the Book of Acts, is our text for today. About the least likely candidate for any
meaningful and lasting change was Saul of Tarsus. Our reading begins with Saul “breathing out
murderous threats” against the Lord and His disciples.
Saul’s
resume’ was all but an impenetrable wall against change. He had it right it. He was right.
He had the doctrines all in a row.
He was Jew, a Roman citizen, and a student of the most famous rabbi,
Gamaliel. He had the pedigree, the
street creds, call it what you will. As
to the laws of God, he considered himself blameless. And if blameless, there is no need for
change. If there were to be any change,
it would have to be in people who didn’t see it His way.
He
was on his way to round up some of those first Christians; he considered them
common criminals – a massive threat to God’s honor, to what was good and right
and salutary and pious and exemplary.
Then
it happened. God did for Saul what Saul
could not do for himself: change the
man. It began with a question,
actually: “Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?”
You
see, the organic gospel – the real thing that Jesus taught and literally
embodied – changes people. Sometimes the
change can be direct and dramatic (as with Saul) or it can be indirect and more
intellectual. Either way, the Gospel
changes people.
Being
the gift that it is, the gospel keeps giving!
It changes people; it produces faith in people, it makes disciples, it
creates community, and – drum roll
please – it gives people new purpose.
Saul, this complex and even murderous man, became the chosen instrument
to take the gospel to the Roman world.
Earlier,
I mentioned Alan Deutschman’ book, Change
or Die. At the end, he mentioned how
he wished to change the title. While
fear is a great motivator to change (in this title, it’s fear of death), fear
never produces lasting and meaningful change.
The new title he selected was Change
and Thrive.
Gifted
and motivated by the pure gospel, God will do for us what we cannot do for
ourselves. We can change and thrive.
Amen.
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