Saul? Paul? What's in a Name?

Acts 9:1-20

Easter 3 Year C

April 14, 2013

First and Harmony Presbyterian Churches

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            When were you saved?

            I am going to go out on a limb and guess that living here in the buckle of the bible belt, most of you have heard that question at least from time to time.

            When were you saved?

            As a Presbyterian, and  preacher to boot, having been brought up in good Reformed fashion, my quick response is always, “when was I saved?  I was saved on a hill far away nearly 2000 years ago when Jesus died on the cross!”

            Two things about that statement are true, one spoken and one unspoken.  I do believe that I was saved and you were saved and the whole world was saved through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  That is the spoken truth of those words and it is important that we have the voice to say it.  It is important that we who live in our Reformed tradition are willing to articulate our understanding of God’s salvation history. It is important to speak our truth.

            The second truth in that statement about being saved on a hill far away in time and place is unspoken.  My other truth in those words is that I am jealous of Saul.  I am jealous of anyone for that matter who has what is called in church shorthand a “Damascus Road experience.”

            The story of the conversion of Saul, the Damascus Road Experience, can, if we allow it lead to what one commentator calls “faith inferiority complex”- that nagging feeling that somehow our faith is not as good; as genuine; as godly as another’s.  It is that little voice that convinces us that while God may be at work in our lives, God is not THAT at work.  I mean if God acts like this to draw in a guy like Paul, what does it say that my life- my conversion- is so much less of a mountain top experience?

            Just think about what happens that day.

            Saul, professional harasser of Christians makes a visit to the high priest.  No longer spewing what the text calls “murderous threats” against the followers of Jesus, Saul wants permission to round them up.  Saul goes to the high priest and asks for written permission to do a theological round-up and take all these Jesus people into custody and throw them in jail. 

            This is the man we celebrate today.  When Saul set out on the road to Damascus he was setting out on a crusade to theologically cleanse the Jewish world of the Christians. 

            Well, while Saul the ethnic cleanser to be was riding along the road, a light from heaven encircled him.  Saul falls off his horse, is struck blind, has a conversation with God and eventually he is baptized- ordained really- by Ananias.

            Flannery O’Connor once said of Paul, “I reckon God knew the only way to make a Christian out of that one was to knock him off his horse.”  Of course the story never says that Paul was on a horse, but who am I to argue with Flannery O’Connor!

            Whether or not it is historically accurate, O’Connor raises an important point about this story.  The main actor in the story of Saul’s conversion, in the story of every conversion, is God. 

            God is the central character here. 

            What happens on the Damascus Road is not Saul’s sudden revelation that Jesus is the son of God.  His eyes were not opened to the truth in some moment of internal spiritual awakening.  In fact, he is struck blind!  His eyes are quite literally closed.

            What happens that day to Saul is not his “decision for Christ” as so many call it, but God’s decision for Saul and the world.

            In the African-American preaching tradition, there is a practice that is known as call and response.  From time to time the preacher will simply say, “Amen?” to which the congregation will proclaim, “Amen!”  Or the preacher may ask, “can I get a witness?”  And with many voices, the congregation will answer.  It is call and response.

            The conversion of Saul is a sort of historical call and response.  God needs a witness- a voice- a mouthpiece for the gospel- not merely to say the words but to demonstrate with a life the very power of the grace of God.  God needs a witness not only to the words of Jesus but to the power of God that is behind them. 

            God needs a witness, and Saul is the perfect candidate.  Who better than a Jesus hating, death threatening, Christian bashing Pharisee to demonstrate the love, compassion, forgiveness and saving grace of God!

            Yes, God needed a witness and Saul fit the bill.

            Amen? (You know you want to respond.  Go ahead.  Its ok.)

            This is quite a story, right!  It is easy to get swept up in it.  It is easy to get drawn into the Hollywood drama of the theological villain being struck blind, redeemed and proving true that old saying that there is no one more passionate than convert!

            This is the mountain top of mountain tops!

            When I sat and wrote these words, I hoped that I would feel more drawn to this story.  I hoped that my unspoken truth-that I am jealous of those who have Damascus Road experiences- would subside.  To be honest, it didn’t- it hasn’t. 

            Now don’t get me wrong, I can point with no measure of doubt to places where God is at work in my life. But still, it would be nice to get knocked off my horse from time to time;

            nice to know that God is paying that kind of attention to my life;

                        that I am that useful to the work of the Kingdom of God.

            I know in my heart that there is nothing wrong or unholy about the steady unfolding of conversion, but it would be kind of nice to have a big moment like that to hang our hats on.   When I find myself getting jealous of Saul and all those who have had a Damascus Road, I try to remember, slow and steady- slow and steady- after all, slow and steady wins the race.

            Do you see it?

            Do you see the problem there?

            I didn’t until I was well into preparing this sermon.  It did not dawn on me what the real problem is with this text; or at least the problem I impose on this text.

            The problem is not that I or perhaps you have not had a Damascus Road experience; a dramatic conversion in our souls.  It is not that we lack some formative experience in the faith or even that we forget that slow and steady wins the race.  The problem is that we think it is a race to begin with.

            In that moment-that place-that time- God needed a witness who could shake the foundations of the world; a witness who would come at the world so sideways that nothing but the grace of God could have made it happen.  God needed a particular witness and God found it in Saul. 

            The point of this story is not that Saul was so convicted of his past sins and so convicted of God’s power and calling that he had to change his name to leave the past behind.  The point is that God needed a particular sort of bold in your face witness and Saul fit the bill.

            Saul’s is not the model for conversions.  In fact it is the exception to the rule.  Far more converts in the book of Acts come through the steady relentless proclamation of the Gospel.  

            Saul’s conversion is romanticized and lifted up as though it is somehow better than or more powerful than others, but is it really?  Is Saul any more faithful that Thomas who, despite his nagging doubts, will not leave Jesus?  Is Saul any more holy than the Roman centurion whose conversion we hear of just after this text and from whom we never hear again?

            What the story of the conversion of Saul reminds us is that there is not a one size fits all conversion experience just as there is not a prize for being the first to believe or the one to be brought to belief in the most dramatic fashion. 

            The thing we must remember in this story is that more roads lead to faith in Christ than just the road to Damascus.  That was Saul’s road and thanks be to God he got knocked on his rear end so he could dust himself off and never be the same again.

            And Saul’s road-Paul’s road-may be the road some of us will take to faith in Christ and thanks be to God for it.  But Saul’s road is not the only road.  In truth, a theologian William Muel said, there are as many roads to Christ as there are Christians to walk them.

            Whether God is knocking you off your horse or leading you gently by the hand or coming more as a whisper from the dim light of tomorrow, the point is not how we are called but that it is God who does the calling.

            My we, each and every one, have eyes to see and ears to hear and above all lives to respond to the calling of God- however it may come.

            In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Beyond the Empty Tomb

Acts 5:27-32

Easter 2 Year C

April 7, 2013

First and Harmony Presbyterian Churches

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

               

                When the Americans and the Soviets entered the early years of the space race, many battles were fought on many fronts.  Some were public relations battles: Sputnik beat Explorer/Alpha 1 into space, Yuri Gargarin beat John Glenn to be the first man in space.  Others were technical battles: the Soviets got a man walking in space first while the Americans would develop the only vehicle ever to land men on the moon. 

            One practical battle was figuring out a way for the astronauts to write in space.  In 1961 most pens worked on the simple principle that ink would flow down-drawn by gravity- to the nib or the point.  To find a way to make a pen that would reliably write in zero gravity, NASA put a few good engineering minds to the task and in time they came up with a design for a ballpoint pen which would write in the zero-gravity of space. It was a small but important engineering advance.

            Thanks to NASA scientists we now have pens that will write in the vacuum of space.

            And how did the Soviets deal with that same problem?  They used a pencil.

            In our text from acts today, we see two groups facing off in a theological debate- what would in time become a sort of theological space race- over the message of Jesus in the days and years following his resurrection.  The disciples, who have been following Jesus’ command to preach the Good News to the world, are brought before the Sanhedrin.   

            A cursory reading of this text leaves us with an easy out.  The council- the Jews as history would come to call them- admonish the disciples for preaching in the name of Jesus and causing disruptions in daily life. 

            It is easy to take those words of Peter’s, “we must obey God rather than any human authority,” and dress ourselves up as heroes of the faith boldly standing for the gospel of Christ over and against the world.  That sort of self-serving piousness is so very common in the church today.  From legislators who try to mandate faith by forcing children to pray in school to political groups pushing to impose a single narrow moral perspective on the whole of society, the underlying justification for their political actions is this declaration: “we must obey God rather than any human authority.”

            The trouble with such a simplistic reading of this text- of acting as if all that is in the church is of God and all that is outside of the church is merely of human authority- is that it both misses the point of the text and diminishes both God and the world at the same time. 

            Yes, a surface reading of this text leaves the impression that what is at hand is a struggle between the good disciples and the bad Sanhedrin, however like so much of God’s word this is a little more nuanced than that. 

            You see, this is not a debate between the church and the world- the disciples are not brought before a Roman imperial court.  This is an intramural argument in the midst of the early church; a debate between the disciples and others who heard but are not yet ready to fully embrace the message of Jesus.  This is, in other words, not as simple as pious Christians fighting the good fight against secular humanism.  That might work for a sound-bite, but it is not what is happening in this text.

            This is a confrontation over the logic of trust.

            In the wake of the resurrection, the early church was confronted with two realities; first, the one they called the son of God was killed on a cross- this alone was difficult enough to explain but adding to that resurrection and ascension and it gets nearly impossible to make this stuff sound plausible; and second, in the face of a world seemingly relatively unchanged by recent events,  there was a growing sense that perhaps we need to hedge our bets a little on the teachings of Jesus;  maybe caution would be the best policy at this juncture.

            By the logic of Jesus, our trust should be fully in God.  We are called to love God and love neighbor, to do justice and love righteousness, to give drink to the thirsty and food to the hungry, to comfort the grieving and set free the captive.  The logic of Jesus calls on us to trust in the goodness of these things in and of themselves and to live our lives in fulfillment of them.

            The logic of the world- the logic of the Sanhedrin, however, argues that we need to hedge our bets.  Just in case this whole Jesus business is not real, we should be sure that we do not give away too much or show too much compassion; don’t expose yourself too much to the ridicule and anger of the world.  And even if it is real, there has to be more to it than just this.  The logic of the world argues that anything as radical and history altering as the ministry and message of Jesus Christ must be more complicated- more complex- than simply sharing the love of God in the world.

            This confrontation between the disciples and the Sanhedrin is about whether we will put our trust in the world’s tendency to be seduced by complexity or in the straightforward call of Christ.

            I would wager to say that if we were to locate ourselves in this text honestly, we would be tempted to identify with Peter but have to acknowledge that most of us sit on both sides of that debate.

            I certainly try to put my trust in the straightforward promises of God in Jesus Christ- to live into my faith as fully and deeply as I can letting it shape me rather than trying to shape it myself.  I try, I wager you try, I wager most everyone who sits in a pew this morning tries…but still, somewhere in our spirits, there is yet a voice of the Sanhedrin saying, “if it is this simple, it cannot be trusted.” 

             Today, one week after the celebration of the resurrection, with our alleluias still hanging in the air, we are no less confronted with the realities of church life in the early 21^st century than we were two weeks ago when we waved our palms and shouted Hosanna! 

            Across the country resources, membership and other measures of congregational vitality continue to struggle.  We see congregations close their doors because they can no longer afford the large building or the cost of their staff.

            Whether measured by stewardship gifts received, members on the rolls or attendance each Sunday, many if not most, mainline churches are struggling today.  So what can be done about it?  What can be done to reverse these trends?

            A whole cottage industry of church vitality specialists has emerged over the last three decades.  Each has his or her own magic formula- their own Geritol- for the church. 

            Need to get attendance up- here are five easy steps to making church an easier place to be.

            Need to get membership up- here are 10 ideas of things you can offer to make membership more attractive.

            Need to get stewardship up- just tell them that if they give to the church God will prosper them and they will get rich one day.

            There is no shortage of Sanhedrin logic in the church today; no shortage of experts and consultants who will gladly help you navigate the troubles of contemporary church life and the danger strewn waters of the modern congregation. 

            Congregations can spend thousands even tens of thousands of dollars to navigate these complexities when perhaps the best and most basic answer is right there in front of them; the calling of the life of Christ.

            Love God, love neighbor, do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.  It is as simple as a pencil and no truer or more faithful path to vitality in the spirit has been or ever will be found. 

            The world may measure us by the number of people in the pews and the size of our bank accounts.  For my part, I think the disciples have a point; we who purport to follow Jesus need to look to a different metric- a different measure of who and what we are.

            You may remember a few years ago the phenomenon of the WWJD- What Would Jesus Do?- marketing campaign.  I think we need a similar slogan this morning- WWDD- What Would the Disciples Do?

            The answer is right here in our text for this morning.  Disciples obey God.  Disciples embrace that calling of God in Christ that is no more complicated than extending the hand of friendship and fellowship. 

            Now that we stand beyond the empty tomb, what are we to do?

            We do what the disciples did. 

            That’s it.

            Nothing more complicated than that.

            It is as easy as a pencil.

            Amen.

               

               

                

The Chapel on the Campus: Inside Wisdom's House

Proverbs 9:1-10[i]

Munger Memorial Chapel at the University of the Ozarks

April 10, 2013

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Wisdom hath builded her a house.

            On some level, the book of Proverbs is like being on a long road trip with your mom.  Apologies to the mothers in the room, but you can imagine what I mean.  Taken just a verse at a time, Proverbs is a nagging little text. 

            The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

            Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

            The lips of the righteous feed many, but the fool starves for want.

            If Billy jumped off a cliff would you?

            Don’t forget to wear clean underwear in case you are in an accident.

            I’m not entirely sure those last two made it in the book, but you get the point!

            Taken a fortune cookie piece at a time, the book of Proverbs is little more than a series of pithy occasionally annoying wisdom sayings.

            But taken as a whole, seen from a wider angle, a picture begins to emerge.  The picture of two characters, wisdom and folly, and their ongoing struggle to get the attention of the reader comes into sharp relief. 

            Our text today is the summation of wisdom’s argument.  It is an argument so sound and so firm and in which she has such confidence, that wisdom builds a great house of it within which the reader is invited to dwell.  Wisdom, the image tells us, is no passing or fleeting thing, it is the place we are called to make our home. 

            Now this home that wisdom builds is not a familiar one to most of us.  Its architecture goes against all the rules and it does not fit into the well-heeled well groomed settings we so vainly attempt to mold ourselves.

            Perhaps then it is a bit strange to take as a text in a college campus chapel this first bit from the ninth chapter of Proverbs.  What Proverbs, hell what the whole of scripture says is wise is often what the world declares to be foolish. 

            This is, after all a place that seeks to prepare men and women for successful lives in the world and what better way to do that than to teach the wisdom of the world? 

            Except the wisdom of the world is simply not a topic on which the wisdom of the cross can stay silent.

            The world says look out for number one, while the gospel says look out for your neighbor first.

            The world says the one who dies with the most toys wins, while the gospel says give away all that you have.

            The world proclaims the myth of scarcity, while the gospel proclaims the abundance of the love and grace of God.

            The world says death, while the gospel shouts LIFE!

            The wisdom of this world and the wisdom of God’s word are rarely if ever one in the same.

            This house of wisdom built in the book of Proverbs would not fit well into the neighborhood of the world today.

            Still, wisdom hath builded her a house.  And this is it and we have been called to dwell within its walls.

            So here we are in the chapel on the campus.

            Campus churches have a mixed history in American Academia.  Some, like Duke Chapel and Memorial Church at Harvard remain some of the most prestigious and influential pulpits in the nation if not the world.  They continue to have impact on their own campuses and throughout the world- academic and otherwise.  Others, like Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago and Heinz Chapel at Pittsburgh have become little more than popular wedding and concert venues their divine purpose as houses of worship and wisdom long since relegated to the rubbish heap of university politics; victims to the myth of neutrality and the wisdom of the world. 

              In each case, the chapels were built with the conviction that knowledge could not flourish or reach its fullest potential in service of the history of humanity absent its sister wisdom.  In no case was the chapel meant to replace the classroom.  Rather like two flying buttresses on opposite sides of a gothic cathedral, the classroom and the chapel- knowledge and wisdom- stood in cooperative tension one with the other, each working with the other to bear the weight of the roof.  There was, at the time of the great American collegiate church boom of the 1930’s a sense that what our institutions of higher learning needed was a reminder of something higher- something nobler; a reminder that knowledge is a bridge that can take you halfway across to tomorrow.  But it is wisdom that takes you the rest of the way.

            Wisdom hath builded her a house and so, the thinking went, shall we.

            Yet, after less than a century, most of the great collegiate churches and most of the once central campus chapels have become monuments, music halls or mausoleums.  These temples of wisdom and the ideal of knowledge tempered by wisdom and faith tempered by knowledge have been supplanted by a vision of knowledge that knows no ethic, no morality, no virtue but itself.

             In a world determined to know no ethic other than its own and answer to no virtue other than one of its own creating, the duty falls to the chapel on the campus today more than ever to serve as the spiritual tether for the free intellectual arena of thought and experiment; to witness to the importance of the soul as well as the mind in the building of character and leaders.  Because if history has taught us anything, it is that knowledge unchecked by wisdom and virtue is tyranny waiting to be born.

            The dangers of knowledge untethered from wisdom and virtue are evident as early as Pericles’ Athens.  One day Alcibiades, as a young man, was talking with Pericles, then the most powerful man in Athens.  The younger man with expansive assurance was telling the older how Athens ought to be governed.  For a while Pericles listened with a twinkle in his eye.  Then, becoming rather tired of the self-confidence of Alcibiades, he said with ominous irony; “When I was your age, Alcibiades, I used to talk just as you are talking now.”  Without a moment’s hesitation Alcibiades replied, “Oh, Pericles, how I should like to have known you when you were at your best!” 

            Plato took the training of Socrates and, tempered by wisdom, gave to Athens a soul.   

Alcibiades, the product of the same training, betrayed Athens and for all his intelligence proved a fool.  Knowledge became the very instrument for wounding civilization, for stabbing friendship, for assassinating virtue, for breaking down every noble thing in the world and all at the hands of a man who had vast knowledge but no wisdom with which to use it. 

           Knowledge absent wisdom may all too easily be subsumed by the evil that people do.  The place of the chapel on the campus is the saving of knowledge from prostitution to evil purposes.  What Alcibiades lost to his own and Athens’ detriment is what Plato maintained; a tether to the noble purposes of life, and the fruits of a knowledge formed and tempered by wisdom. 

           Wisdom hath builded her a house. 

           It was suggested from this very pulpit not long ago that this chapel is not the proper venue for discussion of hot button political or social issues; that the house of God is a place set aside solely for worship and fellowship.  I wonder how wisdom herself would respond to such an idea?  For that matter, how would Christ, whose house this is, respond to the admonition that the only province of the church is handshakes, potlucks and a few rounds of kum-by-ya?  Had Christ followed such advice, the gospel would surely be shorter and his own life much longer, but the world would be deprived of the greatest public voice to ever have drawn breath.

            In a way it is appropriate that we dedicate this new carillon today.  This instrument that will carry the voice of the chapel through music across the campus and into the community is a symbol of the duty of the chapel itself; to proclaim over the treetops and rooftops the word and wisdom of God.  Because when the chapel on the campus is silenced and tamed; when the house that Wisdom built becomes little more than the dwelling place of benign saccharine deism, we fail in our calling and this house of God becomes little more than a monument to folly. 

            The chapel is not only an appropriate venue for discussing the great and often divisive issues of the day, it is an essential place for it.  

            The chapel on the campus is a summons to see beyond ourselves to the world and beyond the world as it is to the world as it may one day be.  It is a place where the eternal scope of God rather than the narrow vision of humanity defines our debates and discernment.

            There is a French proverb that tells us that to understand earth you must have known heaven.  All that we know and all that we may learn;  all the reality that we may comprehend and all the empirical evidence that we may amass comes to consummation not in a world purely of our own making but in the grand narrative of human history, the ever unfolding story of God and God’s creation.  What if not the metanoic realization of the wisdom of God’s faithful community compels us forward?

            The wisdom of the Proverbs; the wisdom of the Christ; the wisdom of this house may not be the wisdom of the world and it may not be wisdom the world cares to hear but it is the wisdom needed in this world.   It is the wisdom that lets us see beyond now to tomorrow; it is the sense of eternity that is writ on each and every heart; it is the hope that casts light in even the darkest shadows of despair.

            Wisdom hath builded her a house, the chapel on the campus and she has put it here, in this place, for these people. 

Not only here in this place, but wherever in the world a Ozarks student touches the life of another, it is my prayer that the knowledge gained in the classroom will serve them well and the wisdom of this house lead them to serve the world equally well.  Every time a student who has passed these doors lives into the wisdom of the cross in the face of the world, this house will have a share in producing that consummation when love not hate, truth not falsehood, faith not fear, justice not injustice shall rule in the hearts and lives of all God’s children.[ii]  In the meantime, may this chapel on the campus, wisdom’s house, make its impression on the lives of the intellectual and spiritual pilgrims who pass this way and may it speak its deepest word to a broken and fearful world.

            My God continue to bless the University of the Ozarks with thoughtful, intelligent, curious and even skeptical students and may the college, with a little help from Wisdom’s house, continue to turn out into the world young men and women who are both keen of mind and wise of spirit.  

            Wisdom hath builded her a house.

            And this is it.

            And we are called to dwell here.

            Sola deo Gloria! To God alone be the glory!  Amen.

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[i] This sermon stands in a long tradition of campus chapel preaching that seeks to connect the worship of God and the nurturing of the soul with the educational goals of the modern university.  I make no claims to breaking new ground and am indebted to the many fine campus chaplains I have heard preach over the years.  I am particularly indebted to the late Rev. Dr. Lynn Harold Hough former President of Northwestern University and professor of homiletics at Drew University whose dedicatory sermon at Duke Chapel remains a classic of campus preaching.  Although entirely an intellectual work of my own creation, this sermon takes many queues in both form and underlying theology from Dr. Hough’s sermon.

[ii] This line is taken nearly verbatim from Dr. Hough’s Duke sermon.  Other than updating some gender exclusive language, it is left as it was preached 8 decades ago because its truth is no less today than it was then.