JOURNEYS OF PAUL: BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

For the next few weeks we will be following the journeys of the Apostle Paul as he moved to found congregations in Asia Minor and finally in Europe itself. If it were not for Paul or someone like him inspired by the Spirit, those days of the week (Sunday, Moonday, Thorsday, Saturnday) that are fossils of religions past might well reflect our current faith. Without somebody like Paul, the blessings of faith in Christ we hold so dear would be denied us.

So we are going to look at the journeys of Paul, remembering that in the Bible every geographical journey is also a ….. spiritual journey.

The story of Paul starts out in Jerusalem: he was a Pharisee’s Pharisee. The chief role in life of the Pharisee was to study the law of Moses as the core of all morality and ethics, and create rules for all possible experiences in life.

In the book of Leviticus, there are all sorts of instructions about washing one’s clothing after ritual contamination. Well and good. But the Pharisee asks questions like: how long shall the washing continue? How many times shall the cloth be wrung out and then re-submerged? Is well water sufficient or must the water be from a spring? If there is dual contamination, must the washing be done twice? According to the world view of the Pharisee, if you were working on these questions, you were like a tree planted by the water in Psalm 1. Nothing could blow you away.

Paul was that kind of Pharisee, and any indication that outward practice was not as important inner cleansing filled him with fury. So he joined in the Pharisee’s persecution of the church: Jesus and his followers were not rule keepers. The Pharisees were rule makers and rule keepers.

Let’s pause here: Are you a Pharisee? Or maybe I should ask: are you a Pharisee about some things though not others? Are you a selective Pharisee? Those folks who have the loud mufflers are a danger to society. But my exceeding the speed limit is no big deal.

Martin Luther started off with the Pharisee mentality. As a monk in the Augustinian order, before he launched the Protestant Reformation with solo gratci (only grace), solo fidie (only faith), he used to wear his confessors out with his long winded confessions and demand for more and more penance. His confessor, Father Staupitz, once yelled at him: “God is not angry with you; you are angry with God.”

John Wesley went to college with that Pharisee mentality. His fellow students called him “Methodist” because he carefully arranged every minute and evaluated his performance according to expectations.

In each case the spiritual transformation from rule keeper to trusting follower was connected with the Letter to the Romans. It’s about how just keeping the law will never get you right with God. Paul wrote it; Martin Luther wrote about it, and John Wesley listened to what Luther had written the night his life was changed and his heart was “strangely warmed.”

You heard the story. Paul the Pharisee was persecuting the church in Jerusalem and was on his way to Damascus to do the same thing, when he saw a light, heard a voice, and was struck blind.

There are numerous stories in the Bible about people who were blind. Those stories are there, every one of them, from the beginning of the Bible to the end, to make this point: you people who think you see are often less sensitive to the work of God in the world than those with poor eyesight. “You look but you do not see,” accused prophet after prophet. And in the Gospels it is often the people without sight who first recognize the healing power of Christ.

Paul was blind long before he hit the road for Damascus. He was blind because he insisted that there could be no new work of God. He was blind because he thought that keeping rules was the same thing as spirituality. And he was blind because he thought that the power of hatred was stronger than the power of love. The sudden light did so much more than take away his sight. It forced him to realize how little he saw.

The Pharisaic impulse is often accompanied by Biblical proof texting. Forget about the larger story. Forget about the general themes. Forget about the passages that may say the opposite thing. Find the sentence that makes your point and then you’ve got a rule. And you can quote it and throw it people’s face to make a simplistic point even if the situation is more complex.

It’s easy to say that about the religious right; they’re a big fat target for rule making and proof texting. I’m much more concerned that we use this insight as an occasion for examining ourselves. Are there passages that make us a little too cozy? Worst of all, are we trying to buy our salvation by good works? When we take up a collection for hunger or flood relief, is it a gift or a token? What’s the whole picture of our life together?

When Paul’s eyes were opened, he saw a vibrant, vital community of loving people who looked out for each other. And he immediately became involved in that caring. He stopped persecuting and started testifying. He stopped tracking people down and started seeking people out to share his faith.

One of the things we see in the Book of Acts as the community of Christians became more distinct from the synagogue community was that the Christians had to invent their own structures and organization. But what never happened, at least in the time of Paul, was for the organization to be the basis for the life of the community. People were there because of what they received from God through Christ, not because they had a job.

And what of us, dear friends? Yes, so many of you have roles that bring such a blessing to the rest of us. Yet today I challenge you to remember that you are not here because you do something. I challenge you to remember that, whatever skill set you bring (and you bring marvelous ones), that more important are the spiritual gifts you bring. I challenge you to remember that offerings of cold, hard cash given without heart (no matter how large) will freeze the spirit of the church, and that real sacrificial giving (no matter how small) will set it on fire. Are you here because you think the church needs you? Well, it does, but what it needs the most is for you to be here because you need the church.

Now, if we can see that difference, our eyes are open, and if we can’t, we’ve got 20/20 blindness.

My prayer for us today is that God opens our eyes (all of us) to the riches of God’s love, acceptance, and free grace. My prayer is that we stop using the church as a place to hide from the world, and bring the world into the church and the church into the world. My prayer today is that in the months ahead giving becomes contagious. That closeness to God becomes an expectation. That fellowship becomes inevitable.

Because the rule making, role demanding organizations that call themselves churches today need someone to come to them and touch their eyes, and bring them the true gospel. And that could start here. It should start here. If we are open to it, it will start here.