Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Sermon - Conversion is more than belief (Easter 3C)

Most of my friends preached on the gospel passage, but Shawn and I spent the week before this sermon on the island nation of Malta, the very place where Paul was shipwrecked on his fourth missionary journey. Being immersed in the story of Paul, from conversion to execution, influenced me to abandon the sermon that I had started and to furiously jot down notes as we traveled to many of the places on Malta that have Paul's name. On our return Saturday, I compiles those various musings into this reflection on the difference between conversion and belief... 

 4th Sunday after Easter – Year C                                                April 10, 2016
Acts 9:1-20, John 21:1 20                         Panzer Liturgical Service, Stuttgart

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. [i]

This is one of my favorite poems and I have often seen my faith journey reflected in its verses. It’s the epitome of the statement, “I came to a crossroad and had to make a choice…”
We do those things Robert Frost talks about. We measure the pros and cons of taking each road, whether it’s what we’re going to do on our next vacation, what we’re going to have for dinner, or where we will next be going to church. Does it have a good youth program or sing the kind of music I like? Do I like the minister, or can I at least stand to hear him or her preach every week? Sometimes our choices are not about theology or denomination. Sometimes they are just about looking down the road and thinking it might be better than where we have been.
But what if our faith journeys are not always about carefully measured choices? Pauls’ conversion story gives us a totally different model of faith. How would we respond if we were literally knocked on our behinds and blinded for three days? What if that was the way we encountered the risen Lord, not necessarily for the first time, but at any point in our lives? 
Would we trust the voice who spoke to us? Would we be totally freaked out that He knows our worst secrets, but still calls us by name? Would we follow a complete stranger who is called to wait with us in this time of discovery? Would we abandon our old lives and identities and take on a totally new way of life?
Reading through the book of Acts tells a remarkable story. Until this week, we have followed the disciples of Jesus as they begin the process of birthing the Christian church. Enter Saul… defender of the Jewish faith and persecutor of Christians. Can you imagine the potential for disbelief that must have surrounded these events? This Jesus, who spoke to him in this striking moment, was the very one whom Saul sought to discredit, and his followers to destroy. And yet Saul did not turn away from the crisis that led him to Christ. He committed totally to the new life that Jesus called him to. He changed his name, and turned 180 degrees in the way he was living his life and in his life’s mission. And with Paul’s leadership, the church didn’t just grow, it flourished and spread much farther than the original disciples could ever have imagined.
The way that Luke tells the story, we are reminded that God often, and maybe even mostly, chooses to work in unusual and surprising ways. Don’t just think about the courage that it took for Paul to turn his life around… think also about the bravery of Ananias, who took Paul in and helped him begin this new life to which he had been called. Eric Berrato writes:
But the Lord is unrelenting and reveals to Ananias in one brief sentence the nature of Saul’s call: He will bring the gospel to kings and Gentiles alike. And he will suffer for the sake of the gospel. In brief form, we learn what shape Paul’s ministry will take in the remaining chapters of Acts. Luke also reveals what is central to the gospel. The good news is expansive and broad. It reaches to the widest edges of the world seeking the lost, but God also turns to the powerful of the world and demands justice, grace, and peace. Yet this good news comes with a price, a price we must wonder if we are willing to embrace as Jesus’ disciples.[ii]
I think this story is important as a part of the Eastertide narrative because it reminds us that the story of salvation doesn’t end with the resurrection of Jesus, but because it is the beginning of our stories. Looking back, I can see the times when Jesus knocked my off my metaphorical horse and blinded me to the plans that I envisioned for myself and set me on a new path. And let me tell you, there were a lot of tears, a lot of blindness of not knowing what was going to happen next. And I’m sure you’re all tired of me saying this – but you could never have told me thirty or twenty years ago that this is where I would be living and serving and growing in faith.
I lift this story up to you to ask these important questions: How does this story give us a new imagination for what it means to live out our faith fully? Do we have zeal for the gospel of love and grace, or is our zeal for something else, like having other people believe exactly the same things we do? Is our zeal wholly committed to serving God’s people, or is it sometimes misdirected or even destructive? Are we pursuing a ministry grounded in love of people and the world as God intended them to be, or one that seeks to change people into our model of how we think people should behave.
Every day I watch the news and wonder if our need to defend our faith at the expense of the experience of others is really what Jesus intends for us… and yet I don’t know how to respond, probably because to speak out might cause me to be rejected. And so I encourage you to join me in asking God, “What do you expect of me/” And if he is calling us to go to unexpected places, let us go together. And if we end up taking different paths, let us support one another in prayer and in the knowledge that God calls each of us differently to use our various gifts to serve both those who are our sisters and brothers in Christ, and those who have not yet seen themselves in his story. 
Even the most liturgical among us know what it means when someone asks what it means to be saved. But I’d like for us to think about the faith in another dimension. We refer to this story from Acts as Paul’s conversion story. And I think it’s important that we remember that conversion is not just about believing in something new, but in having a change of heart and turning in a new direction.[iii] 
When I became a member of the church, I took this vow: To confess Jesus Christ as Savior, put my whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as my Lord; with prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness. I was 12 – what did I know? I have spent the last 40+ years growing into those vows. And at various times in my life, I have had seen glimpses of what that kind of life – that kind of faith – really look like. And it’s glorious… it’s hard, but it’s glorious.
This process of conversion, of dedicating our lives to God and Christ, is ongoing and will not be completed until we are reunited with him in glory. God isn’t finished with any of us yet. God will keep working, sometimes gently calling, and other times knocking us out of our comfortable routines into something new and dangerous and life-giving. That’s not to say that we are called to be reckless, but if story of Paul’s conversion and indeed his whole ministry are any kind of example, they at least call us to reconsider whether God is calling us to live out faith from our comfort zones. Who knows when God will show up on your happy little road and turn your life completely around… and when it happens, how will you respond?
In today’s gospel lesson, we hear Jesus ask Peter three times if he loves him, and each time when the answer is a “yes,” even an agonizing “yes,” Jesus instructs, “Feed my sheep.” Serving God and Jesus means serving others. It’s not just about taking care of a building or making sure an institution survives. It all about loving and caring for those who are most in need of the goodness and the grace of God. For many, the work we do and the grace we share might be the only evidence some will ever see that God exists.
German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer left a legacy of faith which amazes and frightens the most faithful Christian. After Hitler rose to power Bonhoeffer left his post at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and his new fiancee, to return to Germany. There he would eventually come to believe that Hitler’s could only be dealt with one way, and he would spend two years in prison for his part in an assassination plot.  He was executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945, just two weeks before the United States Army liberated the camp. When he died he famously remarked to another prisoner, "This is the end — but for me, the beginning."[iv]
Bonhoeffer wrote some of the most important theological reflections of the 20th century. I leave you with this quote today. And when you are inclined to take the safe road and live life the way you expected it to be, remember these words:
I'm still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.[v]
Amen.

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