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Acts 7:54 –
8:3
April 18, 2010 SAUL
OF TARSUS:
If you were to visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, you would see two life-sized statues in the entrance to that great cathedral, statues that were made by Adlai Hardin, one of the most beloved members of our church that I have had the privilege of knowing. Adlai also carved the oak leaves in the casework for our church organ and also the four panels in the Sheffield Auditorium, one of which I have put on display this morning. In St. Patrick’s Cathedral there’s a life sized statue that he did of St. Peter, with a fisherman’s net thrown over his shoulder, and then on the other side of the Narthex is a statue of the man most responsible for the growth of the Christian church. Nearly 1/3 of the New Testament consists of letters that this man wrote. He was born in about 2 AD and so he would have been a contemporary of Jesus; although, there’s no evidence that they actually met. In his missionary journeys, he circumnavigated the so-called “civilized world” at least 3 times, doing all that he could to propagate the early Christian church. From Corinth on the Peloponnesus of Greece up to Philippi in Macedonia to Ephesus in Turkey to the Island of Malta to the City of Rome to Galatia in Asia Minor down to Jerusalem in Palestine… it’s amazing the number of miles that this man logged for the sake of what would eventually be called “Christianity.” Of course, it’s all the more amazing when you consider that for those who were trying to follow the life and teachings of Jesus, this man might have been thought of as public enemy number one. I am speaking of course about a man by the name of Saul, later to be known as St. Paul. In this series of sermons, I’d like to see if we can get to know this man, some of the places he visited and the churches he helped to establish, and this morning I would have us concentrate on the amazing transformation he went through, based upon an experience he had on the Road to Damascus. We celebrated Easter 2 weeks ago, but it would be a mistake to think that Easter comes but once a year, and for St. Paul, previously known as Saul, Easter did not take place in an empty tomb in Jerusalem but rather, for him, it took place as he was riding a horse into the ancient city of Damascus. Michelangelo has painted an amazing fresco of this, with a shaft of light coming down from the heavens, and with Saul being thrown from his horse. I’ll have more to say about this in a few moments, but first, let’s see if can get to know this man by the name of Saul. As perhaps you know, Saul was Jewish, and indeed, he no doubt prided himself on having the same name as the very first King of Israel, and having the same name as King Saul might be more significant than what we may think. Also, we know that he was from the town of Tarsus, which is now in Turkey, and being Jewish, I also need to say and say quite clearly that Saul’s conflict with those who followed Jesus should be seen as an internecine conflict, a conflict within Judaism itself, a conflict between one branch of Judaism and another. “Christianity”, as such, had not yet been invented, and those who followed Jesus were primarily devout Jews who felt that they were restoring the true essence of Judaism. Too often we Christians read history backwards, and so we oversimplify this story of Saul to show how superior Christianity is to Judaism. According this aberrant reading of the story, Saul was a Jew who belonged to a group that sought out and persecuted Christians, but then, on the road to Damascus, God intervened, knocked Saul off his high-horse, and blinded him with the light of Christ. Saul “saw the light” and then became a great apostle for the Christian church. As I see it, the best of our spiritual journeys are not linear, where we start out at “A” and end up at “Z”. I’ve always loved how the poet, T.S. Eliot expressed this in his magnificent poem, “Little Gidding”, the last part of the Four Quartets. Near the end of this poem, he says,
We shall never cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
So it was I think in the spiritual journey of Saul. Whatever it was that he experienced on the road to Damascus brought him back to the true essence of Judaism, something from which he had strayed far, far away, but in this circular journey, rather than refer to Christianity or Judaism, perhaps it would be better to say that if you were to give a geometric illustration of Saul’s life, perhaps it would be better to say that he started off in life perfectly at one with God but then sectarianism and xenophobia – the fear of others, the fear of losing power, the fear of losing your sense of identity, the fear of not being any more special in the eyes of God than anyone else and maybe this combined with the bad influence of others took him away from that primordial at-onement with God, and then quite wonderfully, his eye-closing, eye-opening experience on the Road to Damascus brought him back to the love of God once again. Anyway, as a young man, growing up in Tarsus, Saul fell under the influence of those who for whatever reason felt threatened by the life and teachings of Jesus. In the English language, maybe for good reason, the words “jealous” and “zealous” are separated by only one letter, for one often leads to the other. Even though there isn’t such a word, and maybe there should be, but it’s been my experience that “jealots” too often become “zealots”, those loaded down with resentments are those most likely to be engaged in violent acts of self-righteousness. Saul and the group within Judaism to which he belonged – the Pharisees – were fierce adherents to the law, and they would brook no deviation from it whatsoever, and they would spend their time going over and over again all the details of the law. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in reading the bible, but you can have too much of a good thing, and then and now, there are those who pour over every single verse, every punctuation mark, and then use their supposed knowledge of the bible as a weapon against someone else, and how sad it is that the quest for righteousness too often leads to the dead- end of self-righteousness. In that community of Pharisees or Zealots, what may have started out as the 10 Commandments became quite literally thousands of rules and regulations pertaining to all manner of things, but especially with regard to how one should be obedient to the admonition to “remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” I am fairly sure that Saul grew up in a very “religious” – and I have put that word in quotation marks, for I believe that what sometimes passes for being “religious” is in fact just the opposite, the very antithesis of what it means – but in any case, Saul grew up in what he thought was a very “religious” community in which perhaps they refined and refined again and again what it means to “honor the Sabbath day and to keep it holy”, but refineries are never very good “defineries” as more often than not they lead to a very different product. Edible corn, for example, can become “white lightening”. Beautiful poppies can become heroin, and a list of beautiful commandments can become a deadly theology and a deadly weapon. There were those then and now who say that one should do no work at all on the Sabbath, but then, reducio ad absurdum being what it is, the refinery of the mind being what it is, they would say, “well, what if a fly should land on my nose; if I should brush that fly away, would that constitute work and therefore be a violation of that commandment?” And of course it’s one thing to impose such purist, legalistic, ridiculous notions on oneself, but they felt it was incumbent upon them to impose this life-style and this theology on everyone else. And this is where that which is ridiculous becomes imperialistic and dangerous for everyone else. Look through your bible, and I think you’ll find it in the Book of Numbers, where a man is stoned to death because his family was cold and so he gathered sticks together on the Sabbath, “heaven forbid!” And those who stoned this man to death, I’m sure, deep within themselves, these “zealots”, these “jealots” really felt that they were doing the right thing, saying to themselves, “it’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.” So, here we have two young men – both about the same age, both deeply devout in their relationship with God: Saul up in Tarsus and Jesus down in Nazareth, both vying for what they perceived to be the Truth, both highly intelligent, both extremely well-read. For Saul, I think it’s fair to say that his theological authority was deeply rooted particularly in the first part of the bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and maybe especially Joshua, Judges, and the books of Samuel, one and two. For Jesus, I think its fair to say that he was particularly rooted in the prophets, especially the prophecy of Isaiah and the psalms, the poetry of Israel, many of which he knew by heart. Saul was born of the tribe of Benjamin and prided himself on having the same name as the very first King of Israel. Maybe he even fanaticized that those good old days could be restored if only, if only he could persuade his people to be obedient to God’s Law. And then, over here on this other side, almost directly South of Tarsus, over the eastern point of Cyprus and across a small part of the Mediterranean Sea, there’s this other man, by the name of Jesus, a young Jewish man who is living and teaching of very different theology. He teaches on the Sabbath Day, a violation of the Sabbath. He says strange things like, “the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.” He eats and drinks with those that Saul would have thought were unclean and therefore no good for the soul. He reaches across boundaries that are absolutely taboo. He hangs out at a well – Jacob’s Well -- with a woman who was known to be an adulterer; he stands in the way of a group of jealous zealots or zealous “jealots” (you take your choice) who were about to stone someone to death, and then when asked to expound on all those laws that were so near and dear to Saul, he said they could all be summed up really quite simply, “Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself” or “do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” Do you see, can you see how flippant, how casual, how irresponsible this would seem to Saul of Tarsus? This young Jewish man by the name of Jesus also came from a distinguished genealogy, the family of David, and maybe, maybe on some unconscious level, Saul of Tarsus, his name being what it was, maybe he was jealous of the great, great grandson of David. For all of us, old battles sometimes become inward battles, and I wonder in our own country how many times and places and issues and souls in which the Civil War is fought, again and again, and so maybe Saul of Tarsus was fighting for his namesake, fighting on behalf of ol’ King Saul who was himself brought down by the demon of jealousy when a young man with a beautiful singing voice played sweet music on the lyre and ultimately put the old King out of a job. And then, on top of it all, suffering as they were under the injustices of the Roman occupation, rather than talk about restoring the ancient Kingdom of Israel, this young man from Nazareth, spoke not of the Kingdom of Israel but the Kingdom of God, saying, “the Kingdom of God is at hand; it is already here; it is within you and it is among you”, but it doesn’t have nationalistic or sectarian or geographic boundaries, as if to say, “yes, the kingdoms of this world, the Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Israel, the Nabatean Kingdom, the Syrian Kingdom, the Babylonian Kingdom, the Pharaoh’s Kingdom, such things are transitory and can do terrible things, but the Kingdom of God, it is inviolable; it is invincible; nothing can touch, nothing can overcome, nothing can conquer the sovereignty of your soul, for “the Kingdom of God is within you.” And when people heard these words, for those living under occupation and oppression, you can imagine how empowering and how liberating this must have been for at least some of them. But for others, those who had invested so much time and thought and prayer into the possibility of restoring the kingdom of Israel, those for whom Jewish Nationalism had become the be all and end all of their lives, perhaps you can see how Jesus’ words would have seemed to them to be fighting words. Jesus of Nazareth and Saul of Tarsus. Even though they were contemporaries, almost exact contemporaries, there is no evidence that they actually knew each other. Nevertheless, even in those days before “cyber space” was invented, gossip always and everywhere travels faster than the speed of light, and so I have no doubt that Saul of Tarsus would have heard about this man, this Jewish man and the message that was being taught by his disciples. “Did you hear what this man said, ‘the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” “And then, on top of it, he was put to death, and his disciples had the gall to say that he had been resurrected. This is blasphemy. This is heresy. Something should be done about it. Someone should reload..” So, Saul took it upon himself to do just that, to be a part of an inquisition, and I use that word quite intentionally for I’m sure that the same jealous, zealous spirit that was in Saul of Tarsus was exactly the same spirit of those who were a part of the Christian inquisition. So it was that we find in the first part of our scripture lesson for today Saul allowing himself to be used as a coat rack as he presides over the execution of Stephen. I love the seemingly incidental and seemingly irrelevant parts of the bible. On one level it seems totally irrelevant where the bible says that “the witnesses to the stoning of St. Stephen laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.” Although this seems incidental to the story, for me, it shows just how premeditated it was. Stephen was preaching a sermon, and I could understand it if, in a flash of anger, someone might have thrown a stone at him. (That’s why we don’t allow stones in here; I am sure that there are things that I have said for which you might be tempted to throw a stone or two!) But in this case with Stephen, the fact that they would take off their coats tells me just how deliberate and intentional it was. I mean, try throwing a rock while wearing a bath robe or a pulpit robe and you would see how awkward it would feel. Better to strip down so you can get a better shot. Furthermore, in their garments, they would have kept their valuables, and so quite understandably, they would leave their garments with someone they could trust. All of which tells me that Saul was more than just an onlooker or bystander, and the fact that he didn’t throw any rocks himself also tells me something about ideologues. For those with power and authority, they get someone else to do the dirty work. For members of the so-called Christian militia, there are so-called Christian ministers and so-called Christian theologians who should be held accountable. For those who wave their hateful banners wherever and whenever the name of Matthew Sheperd is mentioned, he being the young homosexual man who was beaten to death and left to die on a fence post in Wyoming, for those who killed Matthew Sheperd, standing behind them, cheering them on, there are jealous, zealous ideologues, ministers of so-called Christian churches that should be held accountable for the violence being done. For every Scott Roeder who shot and killed a doctor in Kansas who had performed abortions, there are a countless number of others, those who stand on the sidelines and by their hateful rhetoric help to create a culture of violence. For those over in Israel, those who live in illegal Jewish-only settlements, those who perpetrate violence against their Palestinian neighbors, you can bet that there are plenty of those over there and especially over here who justify that violence with their hateful ideologies. And yes, for young women beaten to a pulp or horribly mutilated because they do not comply with someone else’s notion of what it means to be a true Muslim, it’s not only the perpetrators of violence who should be held accountable but also the preachers and teachers, those who stand on the sidelines and cheer on their minions and hold their coats and maybe even hold-on to their valuables. All of which is to say that we have this type, this typology in all of our faith traditions. But thankfully, thankfully that’s not the end of the story, for Easter, the joy and the power of God’s love is always full of wonderful surprises. You can be on the road to nowhere and suddenly you can find yourself – literally and figuratively. I mean how does a man such as Saul of Tarsus go on to become perhaps the best friend of Jesus the world has ever known? How does he go from being a nit-picking legalist to one who would say, “For freedom, Christ has set us free, stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery?” How does he go from being one so seemingly infatuated with those of his own race and his own ilk and his own faith, his own nationality to one who would say, “Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Sythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all and in all?” How does he go from one who would sanction the execution of Stephen to one who would offer some of the most exalted words about love ever to be written, words that would be used at more weddings than I could count: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am become as a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.. How does he go from being a “clanging cymbal” to being such a beautiful instrument of God’s Love? How does one go from A to Z? Again, I would prefer to say that Saul didn’t go from A to Z. Rather, I would prefer to say that his spiritual journey was from A to Z and then back to A once again. Somehow, whatever happened to him on the Road to Damascus helped him to see that he had veered far, far away from the beautiful sense of communion with God that he had felt in his youth in the essence of Judaism, which as Rabbi Hillil and Jesus have both said is really quite simple. When asked to summarize his faith, while standing on one leg, the good Rabbi said, “That which is hateful to thyself, do not do to your neighbor.” That is the whole law, he said, the rest of it is commentary. But Saul, somehow, had lost his way; somehow he had forgotten what it was all about. And having forgotten the essence of his faith, he thought that communion with God could be reconstructed with a bunch of legalism, that one could take all the verses of the bible and somehow construct a place in which to live, that having a house-of-cards was better than not having any house at all, that righteousness and even self-righteousness could fill that God-sized hole that he had felt in his heart, that being a vigilante for God was better than not having any God at all, but thankfully, wonderfully, miraculously something happened on the Road to Damascus such that he was finally able to return to that glorious sense of communion with God that he had known in his youth. We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
Something happened on the Road to Damascus.
Easter is one name for it, and Grace is another. The Truth of this story is that the Love of God, the Grace of God can find us wherever we are, whether we are looking for it or not, and it can find us on whatever road we may be on, and as for me, I rejoice that these two Jewish young men – Jesus and St. Paul -- even though they may have never met, in the realm of spirit, they were the very best of friends. Amen.
David W. Good Old Lyme, Connecticut
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