|
|
|
|
"Same Old, Same Old" Acts 9:1-6
Both of the scripture passages that we heard this morning are two of the most compelling stories from the New Testament: John's description of Jesus's post-resurrection appearance to Peter and the disciples, and Paul's extraordinary conversion story. There's been a whole lot of new work on the subject of Paul in the theological academy, and we have even had a scholar from Yale here talking with us about her findings, thanks to Ariana. I am partial to conversion stories, so today I'd like to focus primarily on the Acts passage and Paul. As we know, there is almost as much written about Paul as about Jesus; understandably so, since a third of the NT is made up of Paul's letters to the nascent churches around the Mediterranean. Another great addition is the book by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan Reed called In Search of Paul. These new Pauline perspectives really wouldn't make much difference to us out here in South Lyme, except that what ministers learn in seminary, not to mention what the public reads, does ultimately spread out and influence personal theologies, and that does make it important. A little history: as most of us can can extrapolate by looking at our own Christian landscape today, first century Judaism was not a unified system of beliefs and practices. Accounts by contemporary historians Philo and Josephus, as well as recent archaeological discoveries, and the unearthing of the Essene scriptures & the Dead Sea Scrolls, indicate that even in little Palestine, Judaism was not a simple monolithic faith and culture. Positioned as it was in the crossroads of the ancient Middle East trade routes, it became a big soup of religious ideas and moral ideals, which are always wound up with the political, economic, and social interests of any area or time. For example, there were Messianic movements expecting the end of history; zealous revolutionaries yearning for rebellion against Rome; and purist-separatist movements, such as the Essenes, protesting against the controlling Jewish parties in Jerusalem. Others accommodated their Judaism to fit Greek ideas, Hellenistic culture, and Roman power. The super-zealous Pharisees like Paul, became the most rigid defenders of Jewish Law and faith. Many feel that their purist legalistic interpretation was one force that drove Paul to the point of fanaticism against Jesus's Jews. More unnerving and adding to Paul's impotence and rage, the followers of Jesus had an uncanny sense of security and freedom and of ultimate victory which sustained them in the face of danger and death. We can surmise that this serenity and freedom only intensified Paul's inner conflict, and has often been held to explain Paul's conversion, if there is any "explanation" of something so intensely personal and powerful. Other scholars have interpreted the accounts of Paul's blindness and conversion in Acts as metaphoric of the beginnings of Christianity: Paul had been blind in Judaism but had received spiritual illumination in meeting Christ on the road to Damascus. In his own words, ".. I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ." The conversion experience was the basis for his ministry and his authority, making him a witness to the resurrected Christ and qualifying him as much an apostle as the original twelve. His mission to the Gentiles essentially arose from his conversion. It also landed him in the cross-hairs of the Jewish High Priesthood, not because he was preaching to (ie, "stealing") Jews, but because his message was directed to the socially and economically influential "God-Fearing" community. These gentile "God-Fearers" had long been attracted to the Jewish faith, and would have easily understood Paul's Gospel, emanating as it did from Jewish tradition and Law. In the religious and political context of a heavy-handed Roman theocracy, it is easy to see how Paul's preaching that Jesus was the son of God - not a Caesar or a Claudius - would also be in direct conflict with the political powers. in direct opposition to Rome's empire and its own "Sons of God," Paul wrote "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, heirs to Abraham's seed and promise." So Paul was seen as a threat by BOTH the Roman political authorities and the Jewish religious authorities. Whatever his authority in the early church period, Paul has been controversial in our time too. The content of some of his letters, the ones known today as Pseudo- Pauline or Deutero-Pauline are often in conflict with modern views on slavery, women and interfaith respect. Only seven are considered authentically Pauline, but the others present the gamut of those views which have led to the modern controversy surrounding Paul, but were really the views important to his Christian followers. For example, on Jews - who became "enemies" to those trying to self-define as Christian, thus indicting Paul for centuries of malingering anti-semitism. "Paul's" views on women - who were to be subservient, thus Paul was blamed for preserving patriarchal domination; and slavery, which was condoned, preserving this evil until modern times; and finally - marriage, which was tolerable but celibacy was better. In the context of Paul's belief in the end times and the imminent return of Christ, why get married? In the re-write of Paul's true opinions by followers in the pseudo-Pauline letters, and the Lukan interpretation of Paul as presented in Acts, many of those opinions have to be taken with a grain of salt if not outright dismissed. Crossan shows, from archeological evidence and exegetical comparison of the Pauline letters, how we today have to move to a new understanding of Paul and his theology. A Paul who wrote to the Galatians: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." is, like Jesus, not interested in differentiating, but in uniting. Most of us know the story of bad Saul, torturer of Jesus' followers, destroyer of his church, being transformed into good Paul, how he was thrown to the ground, blinded by a bright light, and addressed by the risen Christ himself. Of course there have been lots of questions about what happened to Paul on that road, whether he was thrown from a horse, or a donkey, or if one or the other were embellishments of later times. Some question whether it was a call from God OR a conversion experience, I say how could it be other than both. It was a road which we Tree Of Life journeyers might have followed last month and Paul's experience became the touchstone of our sojourn in the Middle East. Over the years that the church has sponsored these trips, I have often wondered what exactly the point was. When I finally signed up this year, I would often tell people who asked me the same question, that we were going to solve world peace. Uh huh. Well, it is clear that we didn't get that done, nor do I think it was ever really the point. Just as for Saul, huge social transformations begin with personal ones, and for each of us who went, I think it proved to be a journey toward new ways of seeing and being, and of course the scales had to fall from our eyes. And even WHEN the scales fall, as they did for Saul, it did not mean that Paul was DONE, that God had stopped speaking, either to Paul-post-conversion, or to us in our post-journey lives. Speaking of transformations, I used to have some post-its which read, at the top, "Different day, Same stuff." Believe me, during my drinking days, those words were my painful mantra, much as I would have liked something a little more upbeat. I'm sure you're heard the saying so appropriate to our addictive society but common to most human beings, something along the order of: "The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Even Paul post-conversion would despair, that even though he knew the good, some thorn in his flesh kept him rooted and stuck and doing what he did not want to do. Paul was doing it when he was trying to stamp out the Jesus movement, and save the certainty of his own same old, same old rigid faith. The disillusioned disciples returned to their old lives when their beloved Jesus and great hope Jesus died on the cross, and threw their nets over in the same old, same old way they had always done things. They pulled up nothing, until they heard the Lord call to them and suggest his way, the other side. And in response to such abundance, Jesus gave them the charge to "Feed my Sheep". So both scriptures, the Gospel and the Acts story of Paul's conversion, talk about this issue of our same old, same olds. Even though God only knows what keeps us stuck, God also knows what sets us free. The other day I was talking to a friend, and he asked me if I knew the key to early Christianity's phenomenal growth, from about 10,000 followers around 100 CE to probably 2 or 3 million just prior to Constantine's declaring the Roman Empire officially Christian. The fact is that those original 10,000 started "fishing on the other side of the boat", as it were, and it was so radically different from what had previously been "normal" human behavior, that it caught people's attention, the scales fell from their eyes, and the "Way" of Jesus' Judaism became Christianity itself, and a new way of being. Even in those ancient times, word travelled fast.. Christians, as they came to be known, began thinking outside their family, tribal and religious boxes. It was so counter-cultural, that many of the pagan gentiles who had been intrigued by the Jewish God and Jewish morality and Jewish religion, slowly to switch camps. The "God-Fearers" became those Christians to whom Paul was proselytizing. In Crossan's words, another way of looking at this radical vision for Christ's new creation was the transformation of a PEACE THROUGH VICTORY paradigm into a PEACE THROUGH JUSTICE model, built on covenant, nonviolence, justice and peace. Our own country, like many, has sadly followed the Roman model more often that I would like, and I certainly see it in the current Israeli actions in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Crossan even asks the question, "To what extent can America be Christian?" as the greatest post industrial civilization follows Rome was the greatest pre-industrial one. When we look at the Gospel, or the Bible in general, or Church, or the ministries of the church, I often go back to the question "Why?" What did God have in mind and put in the minds of all his or her saints and Paul and now us? Why do we come to church on Sundays? To have fellowship, yes. To receive comfort, yes. To praise and thank God for all our blessings, yes. But somehow those things are not large enough, at least in my opinion, to serve God's ultimate purpose. For America to be able to be Christian, really Christian, without blushing, we have to be transformations-in-process, so that like the disciples we can be equipped to "Feed Christ's Sheep" and allow their transformations to feed other sheep. One such prophetic fool for Christ is none other than Bishop Paul Verryn, a long time friend of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, who has "retired" as Bishop but has been called back to "supervise" the Central Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg. His church and ministry have been at the center of controversies surrounding the thousands of refuges from Zimbabwe, as the church has opened its doors to these otherwise unwanted and very much unwashed "foreigners". In one sense it is ironic that all this xenophobia has erupted just 15 years after the "end" of apartheid. But is it really so surprising? Many in South Africa still struggle with lack of jobs, housing, education and all the other issues of crowded modern societies. In truth, the radical acceptance of otherness and communal sharing that made Paul and the early Christians so intriguing to the God-Fearers is exactly the defining compassion as demonstrated by Verryn and other members of Central Methodist - all in the atmosphere of criticism and contempt by the majority of others. Sound familiar? Ignoring boundaries and tribes? Caring for the least of these? Radical hospitality? "Feeding his Sheep"? Confident in the face of personal danger? As Paul Verryn preached back in November at the big church, the bad news about the good news is that it is not easy and the cost of discipleship is dear. But that's what makes something brand new out of the same old, same old. Do we have the courage to make it happen? AMEN. Susie Hermanson
|
|
|
