This has been a bad week. It started with one of the worst tragedies that has ever hit our country. Only wars, terrorist attacks and natural disasters have caused more anguish, more grief and suffering and loss, and more questions about providence and the presence - or absence - of God. The monstrous events at Virginia Tech were followed in short order by the murder of a student at the University of Washington, bomb threats at the University of Minnesota, and ending the week with the shooting at the Johnson Space Lab in Texas.
What kind of a world do we live in?
The same kind of world we have always lived in. We have always lived in a world of senseless death and random brutality. What did Adam and Eve feel, do you suppose, when their first son Cain killed their second son Abel and God banished him to wander the face of the earth? They lost both children at once. Do you suppose they asked, “Where was God?”
These things stun us because we can never get away from them. They come too quickly. Next door is the same as across the country or around the world. Last year it was the Amish schoolchildren, the year before that was Hurricane Katrina, the year before ... it never seems to stop. Because it doesn’t.
There is something in us that wants to say it’s worse because so many were hurt at once, the images stun us with their vivid particularity and non-stop repetition. 24-hour news means 24 hours of bombardment. And eventually we have to turn it off. The farther away it is, or the more incomprehensible the numbers seem, the more quickly we become numb. Some people call it compassion fatigue. But there’s more to it than that.
As the dictator Josef Stalin once said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” We can turn these images off, because the pain is not ours. True pain comes one - or maybe two - deaths at a time.
If you ask the parents of the children who were killed, I don’t think they would say that the pain would be less severe if fewer people had died. A mother doesn’t grieve less when she is alone with her grief, a father doesn’t feel better when he sees all the other young men his son used to pal around with get on with their lives. Just be-cause a disaster is on the evening news doesn’t make it more painful than the tragedy that only destroys one life. Loss and grief strike us all. Sometimes even tragedy. And the kind of pain you cannot turn off happens one person at a time, one death at a time, one loss at a time.
You all know this. We all know this. We have all known pain, from the death of children to the death of dreams, from betrayal to abuse to the shame of failure. And there is no way to measure it, and there is no way to explain it. Actually, we can explain it. We pastors have nice little theological categories that actually do work, at least on an intellectual level. We even have a name for the topic: the question of how a good God can allow such evil is called “theodicy.”
But what we are all ultimately forced back on is not an explanation, no matter how elegant. When tragedy strikes us, we have no explanation that will take away the pain. What we do have, like Job, is God. And the question is not “Where WAS God.” That’s the “why” question, and the answer - if any - helps only a little, if at all. The important question is, “Where IS God.” Because he is not only the one who can can comfort, God is also the only one who can answer the even more important question, “What do I do now?” “How can I go on?” The pastor’s job, at times like these, is to point the stricken one toward God, and speak the healing words of Christ. Because the only way to go on is surrounded by the love of God, supported by the strength of God, and trusting in the purposes of God.
And what on earth does this have to do with Paul’s Damascus road experience?
Let me tell you how I got from here to there, from this week’s tragedies to Paul’s - accident.
I had already tentatively settled on a theme and a title, which as you may have noticed is “knocked off balance.” And I had been thinking about how often God has to knock us off our feet to get our attention. Authorities on the subject of religious experience tell us that most conversions happen at times of change or crisis. Teens and young adults are the most open to hearing from God because their lives are changing so fast, they haven’t yet latched onto the certainties that will steer and anchor them through the rest of their lives. After about 25 it’s much rarer. But three other key moments in life when we are likely to hear from God are when we have children, at what is called a “mid-life crisis,” and when tragedy strikes. It’s as if the foundations of our lives have been struck by an earthquake. We run to firmer ground.
This week’s horrors came rolling in on us like tidal waves. And I remember hoping that the stricken parents and families of these beloved children knew Christ, that they have a hand to hold during the dark days ahead. Some do, and some do not. Perhaps the witness of those who know God’s comfort will speak to those who do not. I pray that they will. Let me make it clear, though, that I do not believe God orchestrated these events to bag a few more souls to fill the celestial banquet table. Eager as he is for all to join him, I don’t think God works that way. But where else can comfort and hope come from but the God whom we already know brings life out of death? Perhaps the deep darkness they are now experiencing will help those who now mourn believe in a light that can truly transform their darkness.
And then I started thinking about Paul. Paul didn’t have any reason to believe that he needed to examine his life. He was a man with a mission, filled with absolute certainty about his direction. His whole life had been dedicated to God, devoted to studying the Scriptures, passionate in his observance of the law. His zeal and energy seemed boundless. I expect he was a very popular teacher - rabbi - in the local synagogues because he was so passionate and learned. People listened to him, respected him, and took their cues from him. This was a man who had discovered his calling early in life, and was well on his way to the top. His career began, in a way, when he held the robes of those who stoned the first martyr Stephen to death. And now he had found fulfillment as he pursued and imprisoned those despised followers of the Way of Jesus Christ. Paul - who was still known as Saul when we encounter him in today’s text - had it made.
But why was Saul so stirred up about the followers of Christ? Was it just that he was offended by the claim that Jesus - a man who had been crucified, for goodness sake - was actually the Son of God? The promised Messiah? We are pretty sure that most of the religious leaders were against Jesus because he threatened their certainties, their status, their self-esteem. Is it possible that Paul was also trying vainly to hold onto his position and his certainties?
What we do know is that on that long-ago day when Saul was knocked to the ground by a flash of light, he heard Jesus’ voice. And Jesus was saying, “‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And then, in some translations, he adds: “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” But, what does that mean?
Back in those days, a goad was a long sharp pointed stick used to move cattle. And so Jesus would have meant that God was trying to get Paul to change course, to move in a different direction. And of course the more Saul resisted, the more he refused to pay attention to the messages and signs, the cues and clues that surrounded him, the harder God had to prod.
Whether or not the verse about kicking against the goads is accurate, however, the question of why Paul is persecuting Jesus is the more important one.
And I do think that the reason Paul was fighting so hard against admitting that Jesus might actually be who his followers said he was, is that the foundations of his life were beginning to wobble, and it took all his attention and energy to keep from admitting it.
The first column that supported his certainties was religion. Not faith - religion. It was an inherited belief system. He had learned it from his father and grandfather. The Word of God that had defined and directed his life had lasted a thousand years or more; how could it mean anything other than what his teachers had taught him? Saul knew all of the laws and ordinances of Judaism by heart. But he didn’t know God. Saul’s religion was strong, but it wasn’t alive.
By the way, parents: don’t think it’s not important to teach your children the Bible. But getting to know Jesus Christ is even more important; in fact, knowing Jesus is the point of learning the Bible. We don’t want our children to inherit our religion, we want our children to meet our Savior.
The second column that supported Paul’s single-minded religious commitment was his awareness that Judaism was always under attack. From the early days when prophets had preached vainly against the fertility Gods of the Canaanites to the seductive pull of the Greeks and their philosophy, devout Jews had had to fight against the surrounding culture. It wasn’t easy being Jewish in an empire that celebrated tolerance - as long as you paid lip-service to the imperial cult. Saul had learned early not to listen to the siren songs of the Greek intellectuals, the Egyptian mystics or the Roman power brokers.
The third column that supported Saul’s career decision was his commitment to doing God’s will. He knew that the only kind of life worth living was one that was based on the will of God. But because Saul didn’t know God, but only second or third-hand interpretations of his word, he thought that God’s purpose was to enforce the law - as they understood it. Saul believed that it was his job to defend God against people who threatened his religious traditions - the first column his life rested upon. Since these upstart Christians threatened those traditions, they had to be eliminated.
He may very well also have relied upon God’s orders to Moses and Joshua to destroy all of the people of the Promised Land as they moved into it. The Hittites, the Perizzites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, and all the rest were to be utterly destroyed. And when he checked with the High Priest, and the High Priest agreed with him, Saul didn’t need to go any further. Saul didn’t feel the need to ask God, like Gideon did, to make sure he got the message right. He was right, he was righteous, and he wasn’t going to be sidetracked.
Can you imagine what a shock it must have been for Saul to discover that everything he believed in, everything he had fought for, everything he had accomplished were exactly the opposite of what God wanted? I don’t know about you, but I would be overwhelmed with shame and contrition and remorse and all the other feelings that go along with discovering that you have injured the most precious thing in your life. How could he make amends? COULD he ever make amends? What possible use could God have for him after what he had done? If you think Peter wept after he denied Jesus on just one night, how much more would Saul have wept when he realized how badly he had failed? He would have to crawl into a hole and pull it in after him. He actually did change his name and leave town, but that’s another story.
You may already know what Saul did after being knocked off his feet and having his attitude adjusted. He “got up from the ground, and . . . could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. . . . The Lord said to him, 'Get up and . . . look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. . . . he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.' But Ananias answered, 'Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem.' But the Lord said to him, 'Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.'" [Acts 9:8-17]
Sometimes God does work like that. He knocks us down -– just so that He can pick us up again. We may see being knocked down as unfair, even cruel. But if pulling a tooth is the only way to get rid of the poison and the pain, if cutting off the gangrenous limb is the only thing that will save our life, isn’t it worth it? Isn’t that the loving thing to do? Whether God actually trips us up himself or just picks us up after someone else has pulled the rug out from under us, the end result is the same - if we ask the right questions. And Saul did.
The first thing Saul asked was, “Lord, who are you?”
This is a personal question. This God who spoke to Saul was not the God he knew. This was not the God he had been serving. Perhaps, to him, God was old tyrant who had put the universe together, written down a set of rules, and then punished the people who ignored or disobeyed them. Perhaps the only way Saul could relate to God was by trying to earn the elusive favor of a demanding and distant tyrant.
The view we have of God, the beliefs we hold about God, determine the questions we ask when we’re knocked down. Many people nowadays see God as an impersonal, unconnected force who even if he does hear us won’t lift a finger to help. They have to figure out their own meaning, find their own direction, and do it all under their own power. Other people think of God as some cosmic candy machine, or a warm fuzzy Santa figure, whose job it is to make them comfortable and meet their needs. These are the ones who are outraged and indignant when life sends them a hardball. In their world view, love is never tough. Love never demands that we grow and change and learn to climb mountains and take risks for the sake of what lies ahead.
So our first question when tragedy strikes, when we can’t see and don’t understand, is “Who are you, God?” And he answers, “I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal.” [Dt 32:39] When Jesus answered, “‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting,” Saul immediately understood that Jesus was this same God he had thought he was serving. This Jesus he had opposed had died on the cross for him, just as the disciples he had been tossing into prison had said. But Saul hadn’t listened, because it went against the grain. God may wound, but only in order to heal. And this same Jesus was holding out his hand to lift Saul off the ground and get him started in a new path, the right path.
If we can hear the answer to that question, we are ready to go on to the second one.
And the second question is, “What do you want me to do?” [v. 6] Some translations have Jesus simply telling him what to do. But it doesn’t matter if you ask out loud or not. The important thing is that it is what you want to know. “Lord, what should I do?”
Because God will always have an answer for you.
When you are knocked off your feet, blind with tears or pain or even a light like the one Paul saw, the first thing to do is seek God. Let him speak to you. Learn to listen. And little by little you will find the strength to get up and move on. You will find your life given back to you. Not the same life you had before, no. But real life, good life, even abundant life. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” [Ps 30:5]
