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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her sermons from our most recent sermon series on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Our last series was an examination of events in the Acts of the Apostles. Our current series examines how we can cope with change during these times. Enjoy.
Persevering Through Change
July 12, 2026 7th Sunday in Pentecost
Exodus 16:1-11 Romans 5:1-5
There's the saying that I use to put on my checks attributed to Benjamin Franklin which says: Nothing is certain but death and taxes. I tend to agree with that, except I would have to change it a little to: Nothing is certain but death, taxes, and change.
Change is the natural order of life. We tend to think of stability as being a no-change state of being, but in reality we are changing all the time. Just standing here right now the cells in my body are going through a continual cyclone of change. Cells are dying, cells are being renewed. I have blood cells moving through my system bringing oxygen to various places. I have white blood cells that are out there searching for infections that they can get rid of. Just standing outside and looking out at nature there is constant change happening under the surface of the same view that we see every day from the front door of our homes.
When I studied philosophy, I noticed there was a distinct difference between Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy. Western philosophy looks for the concepts that are consistent and which don't change; then it moves to change. Eastern philosophy, especially Chinese philosophy, is actually based on the fact that life changes, and starts with the question: What is the change and how does one adapt to the changes?
In Chinese philosophy there are three types of change that you used to assess any given situation. The first is the no-change point, the point of consistency that you have at that moment. The second is cyclic change, the change that repeats itself. An example of this would be the seasons: Spring, summer, fall, winter. The third change is evolutionary change. That’s the type of change that is growing into something or even decaying into something. And all this change interacts with each other. A tree can be viewed as all these changes at once. It is the tree that’s always there in your yard. But the tree changes through the seasons in a regular cycle. Yet it’s also growing from a seed, to a full grown tree, to then dying, and becoming dirt again. To assess a situation you examine what the no-change point is, what the cyclic change is, and what the evolutionary change is.
I think that it's part of our human nature to be afraid of change. We don't like it because change means that something new and different is happening and we don't know if we'll be able to handle it. Will our skill sets be applicable to the new job; or the new relationship; or the new place that we're moving to? Are we going to be able to handle the subject in school that we've never done before? I'll be honest I was totally scared when I took geometry. I was pretty good with algebra, but geometry was very different and I didn't know if I could deal with it. But you know, I got through it.
And sometimes we don't believe that we can handle something new. When I went to college in Colorado I had so many friends who said: I can't imagine going that far away to school. You can imagine some of the reactions I got when people found out that I was moving to Japan: I could never do that! I could never go live in a country that didn't speak English. It is amazing the limits we put on our own abilities to grow and change.
A lot of the story of Exodus, when the Israelis are led out of Egypt, is about resistance to change. The Israelites have gotten so used to living in Egypt under the conditions of slavery that they didn't know how to be a people and a nation who could determine their own destiny. They really didn't know how to take care of themselves. They find themselves with a lack of food – which admittedly is a worrying thing – but instead of putting their minds to solving the problem they complained to Moses that it would have been better to die in Egypt than to be hungry now in the desert.
They lament the fact that at least in Egypt they would be sitting by the flesh pots, the household pots that meat was cooked in. The Israelites as slaves probably wouldn't have been allowed to eat the meat; that was reserved for their masters. They would have been stuck with bread and Egyptian beer, and maybe a carrot or two. But at least they would have smelled the meat cooking; a smell which was comforting to them. Moses took them out of their comfort zone in order for them to gain their freedom and self-determination. And they’re frankly very scared because they just don't know how to do and be these new people.
But all during those travels, God shows the Israelites that He is with them, and that He is providing for them. He gives them manna from heaven. (And, yes, I tried to look up what that was and nobody knows what it is.) He provides them water in the desert and meat for them in the form of a quail migration. And most importantly he provides for them commandments and laws that they can live by and build a nation from.
And these commandments are so important, so right, and work so well that they endure down through the ages. Two thousand years later Jesus is challenged by a Pharisee to name the most important commandment and Jesus replies: Love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as you love yourself. On this all the other commandments are based.
And that right there, for us is our no-change-point. Plus we’ve been given a third commandment: To love others as Christ has loved us, to add to our no-change point.
Look, I know that the world is changing very rapidly. When I was a kid, we still had dial phones that were connected to the wall; computers were used only for major things like collecting weather data; and if you wanted to make a copy of a piece of paper you used a carbon copy sheet. Now I have a phone and a computer in my hand, and a printer sitting on a table at home.
When I was young, a woman wasn’t allowed to have a bank account without male permission and people who were not white were often refused spaces at colleges or mortgages to buy houses. There has been progress and change, but sometimes it happens so fast that we feel the ground is shifting beneath us and that the future is unsteady.
But how we get through the change is to evaluate the changes and our actions against the commandments of Christ. Are we using the changes to help us live in the connection of love with God, our neighbors, and ourselves? And are we doing it the way Christ wants us to live it?
This phone can be used to contact me at any time to let me know when one of my parishioners needs me, instead of just leaving me a message and hoping that it will get through. Facebook can help me get the word out about events like a Bible Study or Youth Group, but it can also be a platform of gossip, lies, hateful things and division. We have to ask ourselves when we text or post messages: Are we spreading dignity, respect and love, or are we spreading hate?
Life changes; but being a disciple of Jesus doesn’t. Being kind to others, respecting others, giving people their dignity, showing forgiveness when we make mistakes, and giving grace by helping each other to get out of the messes that we make, is our no-change consistency of action that keeps us grounded. It is who we are, and who we will continue to be, and become better at being, because that’s what following Jesus is all about. And sometimes we have to wrestle with how we’re going to do that in our crazy world. But we are not doing it alone; we’re here to help each other do it right.
When Paul says We are justified by faith, that doesn’t mean we’re right all the time. It means we are made right by God’s grace and forgiveness; and knowing that we can handle anything that the world throws at us.
So embrace change. Embrace the cycles, embrace the evolution of growth and decay, knowing that you are standing on the no-change point of God’s love and Christ’s salvation. And no matter what the world throws at you, you’re going to make it through, because God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are walking with you.
What Ministry are We Supporting?
July 5, 2026 6th Sunday of Pentecost Communion
Acts 16:16-24 Acts 16:25-40
In the Book of Acts, Peter and Paul travel all over the ancient world bringing to people the message of Christ. Chapter 16 focuses mostly on Paul and his adventures in Greece. In the narrative that we read today, Paul is in Phillipi, which is located in the northern part of Greece.
There he meets a woman called Lydia and her husband while he’s preaching, probably in the marketplace. Lydia is a businesswoman, who deals with imported purple cloth, a very luxury item, and she and her husband are so impressed with what Paul has to say that the ask to be baptized. Then Lydia invites Paul and his traveling companions, Luke and Silas, to stay at their home while they’re in town. Everyday Paul and his companions go to the place of prayer, which was probably the synagogue, and were followed by a woman who apparently had the ability to tell fortunes and who would proclaim in a loud voice that they were from the most high God. Paul gets annoyed and orders the woman to stop in Christ’s name, causing the spirit of divination to leave her and causing her owners to lose money.
So, the owners have Paul and Silas arrested and have them put in jail for essentially disturbing the peace, when actually all they were doing was proclaiming Christ. The Bible doesn’t mention who the owners were but they were probably prominent citizens with influence, which is maybe why Paul and Silas are given such harsh sentences. After all, Paul didn’t harm the girl or try to steal her away. The owners don’t even mention the girl in the charges rather they say: These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.
That’s not very specific but somehow the judge decides to not only have them stripped and flogged, but he puts them in the deepest cell in the jail and in shackles. That that kind of treatment was only reserved for really dangerous criminals. The harsh sentence tells me that the judge is trying to appease someone powerful.
Now I’m sure that Paul and Silas didn’t feel very good about being stripped, beaten and thrown into the nastiest part of the jail. But they don’t sit there complaining. They don’t cry and make themselves the victims: Oh, look what they’ve done to us. We’re the unluckiest people in the world. No one else has ever been treated as badly. No, they do not do that. They start praying, and singing hymns, very loudly. Loudly enough that the other prisoners are listening.
That is an act of faith and defiance. And don’t think that it hasn’t been used down through the years. Do you know that when Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting on that bus the cops thought that it would be fun to put her in the cells where all the drunk street walkers were? It was meant as an act of humiliation. Rosa introduced herself, told them why she was there – which won her some sympathy – and then she said she was going to pray, and did they want to join her? They did. She had a prayer meeting in that cell. Not only was she sustaining herself in the midst of injustice, but she also sustained others. Now that’s supporting ministry.
Well, in the middle of the night there’s an earthquake. All the chains fall off and the doors are opened. The jailer wakes up, sees the open doors, and assumes that the prisoners have escaped. This is pretty much a career-ender for him, so he decides to kill himself. But just before he plunges his sword, Paul tells him that they’re still here. Now the miracle is not the earthquake or the doors opening – earthquakes are a dime a dozen in the middle east and doors will open during earthquakes – the miracle is that Paul and Silas’s chains are off. Earthquakes can’t do that. The jailer and his family are converted and baptized.
The next day Paul and Silas are informed that they are free to go. You have to wonder what was going on behind the scenes. Perhaps Lydia, who I am sure was prominent citizen in her own right, got involved. The judge reconsidered his action, but now Paul makes a defiant statement: They have beaten us in public, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and now are they going to discharge us in secret? Certainly not! Let them come and take us out themselves.
Paul is calling out the injustice that he and Silas faced. And he is not willing to sweep it under the rug. This is an act of living as Christ. Christ called out injustice when he saw it. We like to present Jesus as a loving figure, and he is, but he wasn’t a pushover. He calls us to live as loving people to each other. He calls on us to share our blessings and talent to make the world a better place to live for all of us.
Christ stood up against injustice. He stopped the stoning of a woman. He healed people on the sabbath, when authority figures said it wasn’t right to do that. He called out the hypocrisy of Pharisees. He overturned the money tables in the Temple because the lenders, in collusion with the Temple, were running a legal extortion operation on poor people and pilgrims.
Paul has been caught up in an act of injustice. He’s been beaten and imprisoned out of spite, on trumped-up charges. And he is not going to go away quietly; he is going to make the people involved acknowledge and take responsibility for their actions. And they do. The magistrates come and apologize and ask Paul and Silas to leave the city, which they do after they say goodbye to Lydia’s family. And I’m sure they thanked her and her husband for supporting them.
This day, the day after the 250th Birthday of our country, is a good day to ask ourselves if we are supporting justice ministries in our communities.
When Jesus was living people didn’t have power. Christianity was essentially a quiet rebellion for the powerless. By following Christ people built communities where people supported each other to make their worlds better. If you could make a cloak for a poor widow who had nothing, that was a justice ministry. If you helped to feed a family, that was a justice ministry. If you took a child in who had no parents, that was a justice ministry. If you could bring clothing and food to people in prison, that was a justice ministry. Christians lived under a giant, soul-crushing system that favored the rich and powerful, but they knew that if they could treat each other with love, and help each other get through life with dignity, that within the confines of their community they could have a measure of fairness and hope.
We are so blessed to be living in a country that has the value of equality under the law. We are so blessed to not have institutionalized slavery. Yes, it was there at one point, but we got rid of it, mostly because it was recognized as being unchristian. We are blessed to be able to vote for our leaders instead of being subjected to civil wars to decide who is going to sit on the throne. We are blessed to be able to speak our opinions to each other, and to have them corrected by learning new information when they are wrong.
All of these blessings are built on Christian ideals. And I know that some people will discount Christian ideals and say that they are simply humane ideals that all humans have. But if you’ve read history, you know that not all cultures have been very humane. Christ called for us to live in love and respect, and that is the ideal I hope to strive for personally and I want my country to do that too.
But our country is only strong with that when we live and support ministries that bring liberty and justice for all. And isn’t that what Jesus wanted: Freedom from sin in the knowledge that we are loved and forgiven, and justice for all people equally so that we may love each other without fear.
So what ministries are we supporting? You don’t have to make a big contribution. Treat people of other ethnicities as equal and as children of God. Help out your neighbors in need through food or other acts of service. Refrain from the hate that is spewed by those who want to divide us and act in ways that unite us. And speak out when you see someone treated unfairly. And no one ever said it would be easy, but remember, as Paul did in that prison, that God is always there for you to pray to, sing to, and call on for strength. May we all find and live that strength for ourselves, our family, our neighbors, our communities, and our nation.
Mentoring New Leaders
June 28, 2026 5th Sunday of Pentecost
Acts 16:1-5 Philippians 2:19-25
I’m sure you’ve heard me mention before the book called The Peter Principle. It’s a satire which says that within corporations, people rise because of their competency but then eventually they will be promoted to a position where they will be incompetent. When they hit their level of incompetency it becomes a problem because you can’t promote them any further, but you can’t demote them, and eventually their incompetency trickles down to everything beneath them, gradually causing the self-destruction of the company.
It's brilliantly written and I recommend it to anyone who is a part of a profit or nonprofit organization. It doesn’t matter if you have one or multiple tiers of management; an incompetent manager is going to create incompetence underneath them.
Something struck me while I was reading this book: At no time do the authors suggest a solution to this dilemma. I think since the authors wrote it as a satire they weren’t interested in offering a solution. But I thought, maybe because one of my disciplines was as a teacher: Oh my gosh, all you need to do is to train someone coming onto a new position in what the responsibilities are and how they should go about this. A good training program will solve all the problems that the book raises.
Recently my husband and I got into this science fiction drama called The Silo. It's about people in a post-apocalyptic world who reside in giant underground silos, with a complex social structure that’s meant to help them survive. When someone gets old enough, they become a shadow to someone who is an expert in their field. It’s a learn by doing thing. As they work with the expert, the expert passes down all the accumulated knowledge that’s been learned over years and years of time, plus any innovations that the new expert might have made. It’s like an apprentice, journeyman, and master Craftsman relationship. And this goes for everything, from teachers, to policemen, to engineers.
But isn't that what a mentor program is? We pass down our systems to the next generation so that our systems can keep functioning. The problem with our modern culture is that we’ve kind of lost the traditions of personal mentoring. Our systems have become specialized, and we now go to school or special training programs for our jobs. And that’s okay because there is an efficiency in that method. But anyone will tell you whose worked for a while that the best way to get experiential knowledge is to have a mentor connected with a training program. The mentor usually knows the pitfalls and can show you how to avoid them, and the right way to do things so that you can succeed.
Christianity actually grew with mentorship. Early Christians didn’t have seminaries or special classes to take. People came to Christianity and if someone, like Peter or Paul, found someone who was especially good at teaching and preaching the gospel, or organizing a church, then they would take them under their wing and pass on their knowledge to them. One of the first of these disciples was Timothy, who Paul found in Lystra, a town in Southern Turkey. Timothy was very devout, and since he was Greek and Jewish he could speak to both cultures about Jesus.
Timothy is mentioned all through the New Testament. He starts out as a companion of Paul and then becomes a preacher. Soon he’s Paul’s right-hand man, going out and checking up on churches that he and Paul planted. Paul in his letters recommends Timothy to congregations as someone who is faithful, a good speaker, and a problem solver.
When you string the references in Paul’s letters together you see the development of Timothy from apprentice to journeyman, to finally a master disciple and minister. When Paul goes to Rome, Timothy basically takes over Paul’s job in Turkey and Greece. You might say that Timothy was one of the first District Superintendents and eventually one of the first Bishops of the area. But this couldn’t have happened without Paul’s loving mentoring of Timothy. And I have no doubt that it was loving because Timothy and Paul worked together for a long time, and we don’t work with people for a long time unless we really like them.
While I think that many of us do look for mentors in our work and, despite what the Peter Principle says, I do think that there are a lot of jobs out there that provide training and mentorship, I unfortunately think that when it comes to our non-profit organizations, and I include churches in this mix, we don’t mentor or raise up new leaders very well.
I know of one church where the lay-leader of the church (a wonderful person) held that position for about 35 years. Now I know, people get stuck in positions because someone else doesn’t want to step up, or the person in the position doesn’t want to give up control, or they don’t know how to teach, or they feel it’s an imposition to ask for help. There are a lot of reasons to be stuck, and I don’t know what this lay-leader’s reason was. But the point is, they didn’t train anyone to do the job, so when they went into a nursing home there was no one who knew how to do the job. And since the lay-leader had taken on more responsibility to the position than was needed, (like running the fall craft fair, plus lots of other jobs) no-one wanted the job because they were afraid of the amount of work.
The church floundered until the minister divided the work into a proper proportion. And that was almost done with a crowbar because people had been conditioned to believe that only the lay-leader could do all the jobs – not that they could be subdivided. In the end it was the church that was stuck and had to be unstuck to move on. Don’t worry – they’re doing okay now.
Now that’s an extreme example but let me give you another one that’s more common. A husband and wife, who were trustee and treasurer, decided to retire to another state where their grandchildren lived. They went to another younger husband and wife in the church and told them: Now it’s your turn to keep the church going, and they just handed over the reins. There was no shadowing, no mentoring; and the younger husband and wife thought: This is how it’s supposed to be, and there was quite a bit of incompetency for a few years. The sad thing was, when people offered to help, they refused because they thought that by getting help that they would be betraying the system.
I could add some more examples, but I think you all get the picture. If we don’t take people under our wings and teach them how our churches are run, then we won’t keep going once people need to retire.
But also, by having people learn how our church works, we create a culture of awareness and transparency, which fosters a better understanding of the system we’re in.
And one of the ways that we do get stuck is because we don’t ask for help, because we believe that a position, whether it be a treasurer or a recording secretary, can only be done by one person. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe we can have two recording secretaries for meetings who switch off – that way neither one will become burned out. We can think out-side of the box to raise up leaders and to relieve the stress of our current leaders.
And I know, one of the reasons why people hesitate to ask for help is because we don’t know how to teach others our job. But think of this: Often when we teach other people our job (or anything actually) we clarify how we do something and why to ourselves. I always became a better teacher when I taught other teachers how to teach, because I had to first figure out what I was doing.
But this isn’t just confined to how we manage our churches. I really think that one of the ways we can live in Christian fellowship is by being mentors to each other about our Christian journeys. In order for us to be Christian leaders, we need to share how we cope to help each other get through this crazy world that sometimes doesn’t seem to want us to live as disciples of Christ. We need to let go of our fear of asking for help in our journeys when they become difficult, and we shouldn’t be shy about sharing our triumphs either. (That’s something I also need to work on.)
But if we open ourselves up and become a bit more vulnerable and teach, help, and ask for help, in the spirit of love that Jesus teaches us, that will strengthen us and our relationships with each other, and we will become a more connected and more loving church. Like Timothy and Paul, we can do this by acting in the love and name of Jesus.
Welcoming All
June 21, 2026 4th Sunday of Pentecost Father’s Day
Acts 10:1-8 Acts 10:19-35
We all live inside our stories. How does that happen? Well, we all get out into the world, and do things, and then we tell the story of our experience. Our stories are usually from our perspective, because it's the one we have. Although sometimes we do include the perspective of others in our stories. Like we say: She was upset because she was stood up by her boyfriend. We include other’s perspectives because we have empathy and we’re trying to understand where people are coming from. But mostly the stories that we tell articulate what we've been through.
Unfortunately, one type of story that we tell ourselves are stereotypes. Old people can't use computers. They just don't have the training, or they don't want to learn how to do it. Or: Younger people are only interested in what they can learn on their phones, not what they can learn out there in the real world. Maybe in your experience those stories are real or not, but we do classify groups of people according to those stories, and we interact with them according to those stories.
Peter had grown up with the story that the Jewish people were the chosen people of God. Everyone else was classified as a gentile. It didn't matter what their belief system was, gentiles were not holy, couldn't understand holiness, and were unclean people. And if a Jewish person hung around a gentile, they could become unclean as well. Peter lived inside this story. I don't think he hated people who weren't Jewish, he just knew that he had to avoid them and he really wanted nothing to do with them.
And then he met this guy called Jesus who was obviously a holy man, and as a holy man was not supposed to associate with anyone who was unclean in any way. Remember when Peter first met Jesus and he realized how holy Jesus was? He said: Get away from me Lord, for I am a sinner, and therefore unclean, and you should not be anywhere near me. But Jesus, instead of rejecting him, offered to Peter to come and be one of his disciples.
Now while Peter was with Jesus, Jesus was interacting with quite a lot of people who Peter would consider to be unacceptable according to the story in Peter’s head. There was that Samaritan woman at the well; I mean proper Jews were not supposed to associate with Samaritans. And then there was that woman with the open wound; Jesus wasn't supposed to be near anyone who was that kind of sick. And there was that woman who was accused of adultery who Jesus saved; a holy man is not supposed to associate with an adulterous woman. And then there were those Greek philosophers who Jesus talked to; he wasn’t supposed to be talking with gentiles. And there were there was that Siro-Phoenician woman whose son Jesus brought back to life; another gentile who he shouldn't have spoken to.
This is actually a short version of a long list. Peter was exposed to a lot of incidences with Jesus that went against the story that Jews weren't supposed to associate with gentiles. You’ve got to wonder how he processed that. Did his story get changed by those encounters or did he cling to that version of the exclusive Jew for himself?
After Jesus ascended to heaven Peter became the leader of the church in Jerusalem. But Peter was still concentrating his efforts of making disciples of all nations by connecting with Jewish people who were living in other nations. The Jewish population was spread all throughout the Middle East and all around the Mediterranean. Wherever the Romans had established their empire, Jewish people existed. And the phenomenon of the Holy Spirit and the tongues of fire at Pentecost was a Jewish phenomenon because Jews from all of these nations were gathered in Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for the holiday of Shauvot, and they were the ones who were baptized that day.
So, when Peter is told to go talk to the centurion he's going against that story that he's listened to, told to others, and internalized for a greater part of his life. I'm not so sure that even with all of the experiences that he had with Jesus that he had let go of, or changed, that story. And I suspect that because there’s a middle part of this scripture that we're not reading today. You see, before the men arrive to tell Peter that the centurion wanted to talk to him, Peter has a vision of God spreading a table of all these different types of animals that are forbidden for Jewish people to eat. God tells him three times go ahead and eat these animals, and Peter being a good Jew, says: No Lord, I will not eat anything that is unclean. Then God replies that what God has created is not unclean.
Now with that vision in mind, that what God has created is not unclean, Peter goes to meet the centurion Cornelius. Cornilius, who is a devote man, tells Peter his story, that he was praying and God told him that should seek Peter out for guidance, and Peter realizes that this is a man who is not Jewish and yet he’s seeking salvation. So, he tells him the story of Jesus.
It’s at that moment that Peter’s story changed. He stopped telling himself the old story of the unclean gentiles and he started telling himself the new story of the gentiles who are seeking salvation. Paul gets a lot of credit for being the apostle to the gentiles, but, if you look at the scriptures, Peter also opens the door for the Christian religion to become truly a religion of all nations and of all people.
That's the thing about Christianity, it asks us to examine the stories that we’re living and to change them if they’re wrong. Think of the stories that our own culture has told to us throughout the years. The story that black people cannot be as intelligent as white people. The story that women are not as capable as men and that they need to be led and learn how to follow.
Think of the story that we see in the media that all immigrants are criminals and a danger to our society. I remember once I was telling my students that my family had been in this country since before the American Revolution. And they said to me: Oh, you're a real American. And I replied: I am an American, but I know a woman who immigrated from China when China became communist. She wasn't born here and yet she is an American citizen and has contributed greatly to this country. She is just as American as I am.
I hope that on that day I changed the stories that my students were telling themselves in their heads about who an American was.
We walk around like Peter with the assumptions that we and, other people, are a certain way and that they can't change, or grow, or become something different. And unfortunately, we are often telling ourselves a false narrative.
And yet, Jesus asks us to change our stories from ones of condemnation, like Peter had about gentiles, to ones of grace, empathy, and love. Through Christ, Peter rewrote his story about who is clean and who is unclean. We need to be listening to our own stories and examining our own assumptions about people and their worth, and we need to allow grace, empathy, and love, to rewrite those stories of condemnation into stories of acceptance. Because the only way the world is going to change and become better, the only way we work towards the kingdom, is if we operate from stories of hope and love.
So, when you find yourself thinking about those people and what they do ask yourself: Is this story real? Do I know all the facts? Maybe I need to find out if the negative is truly negative, and if it’s not, to let it go and change it into something better. If we upgrade our stories I think we will find ourselves truly living in the story that Jesus and God want us to live in with them.
Radical Conversion
June 7, 2026 3rd Sunday of Pentecost
Acts 9:1-9 Acts 9:10-22
Saul was not a nice person before he becomes Paul. When I learned Bible stories in my youth, Paul was this great leader of the early church who went all over the Middle East and into Europe preaching about Jesus and planting new churches wherever he went.
Then when I got a little older, I heard the story of the death of Steven, one of the early disciples, and that Saul held the cloaks of those who stoned him. This is how he enters into the Bible narrative. I learned that he originally opposed the new church of Jesus, and was instrumental in having a lot of early Christians arrested. Eventually he decided to go to Damascus, pursuing a lot of the Christians had fled there, and on the road to Damascus he was struck down by Jesus and had his great conversion.
But it wasn’t until I became an adult, and I really thoroughly read the account in Acts of who Paul was and what he did as Saul, that I realized how dramatic and intense that conversion was.
We don’t know much about Saul’s background, but we do know that he was a Pharisee descended from a Pharisee family. Probably that included not only his father, but other members as well. Now remember that you didn’t inherit being a Pharisee. It is like being a college professor, you have to study many years and be very proficient in the scripture, and the laws and customs of Judaism, before you are awarded that title.
We know that Paul’s main job was being a tent maker. For most people being a Pharisee was their volunteer job that they did in their community, which they would sometimes get paid for. When you rendered your services to a family who wanted to know if what they were doing was religiously or culturally correct you could accept a token fee, in coin or goods, as a mark of gratitude.
The Pharisees were created to make sure that the laws and customs of Judaism would not be forgotten. It’s believed that this organization was formed when the Greeks conquered Israel and really tried to eradicate a lot of Jewish tradition. The Pharisees were the counter to that to keep the culture alive.
But take a moment and think about Saul as a young man. He was from Tarsus, a prominent city in present day Turkey, and we know that his father was a Roman citizen, so he is a Roman citizen. So, he grew up with a privilege that most young men didn’t have. He also grows up in a very dedicated religious household, and he’s surrounded by this idea that the Jewish faith must be preserved. That this is his family’s mission. He takes on that mission and studies very hard to obtain the very honorable position of Pharisee. Then he goes to Jerusalem. It’s implied that he arrived there after Christ died, and it’s also implied that he never met Christ or even saw him preach.
Now I want you to imagine this young man, who has been raised to believe that he is a keeper and defender of the Jewish faith. He looks at early Christians and their beliefs, and he sees a threat to the foundation of Judaism. He’s connected to the Temple, and he’s listening to priests talk about these radical ideas that Jesus had and taught, and he learns that this man was crucified for sedition. And he probably also learns that the priests had hoped that, when Jesus died, that his movement would have died with him, but it didn’t, in fact it’s growing. Plus, his followers are claiming that he rose from the dead after three days and is the true Messiah.
This threatens every foundation of Saul’s life. He’s a young man with fire in his heart for his faith. He concludes that these followers of Jesus have the wrong beliefs and he’s going to do something about it. Understand that Saul truly thought that this was a divine mission that God had given to him: To show these people the errors of their ways and to stamp out this new heresy.
I am sure that when he first started, he brought people in for questioning and tried to convince them that the beliefs of this new Jewish cult were wrong. But he came up against the unshakable belief and faith that those in the early church had. They had seen Jesus; listened to him preach; walked with him; and some had maybe even met with him after his resurrection. They were not going to discount their life experiences. And Saul goes from re-educating and guiding to arresting and giving people one option: Renounce Christ and come back to the true Jewish faith or spend your time in prison or executed.
Saul became the inquisitor who was responsible for the persecution, imprisonment and death of many, many people and families. He made Jerusalem such a horrid place to live that many of the faithful left, and Damascus was one of the cities that they fled to. Which was why Saul was on his way there with a company of Temple guards who were going to round up the Christians in Damascus and do what they did to them in Jerusalem.
Saul is the classic case of good intentions using evil methods to do what you think is right. That is not a good place for anyone to be because you lose your humanity in the process, and Saul had definitely lost his. No wonder Jesus struck him down, because that was the only way to get through to him.
And Christ didn’t just strike him down, he took away his sight. Have you ever not had your sight for a while? I had eye surgery in my twenties, because I was going blind, and coming out of it I was essentially unable to use my sight for about a week. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t go outside, I had to stay in a dark room, I couldn’t lift anything over ten pounds or do a lot of movement, and I had to cover my eyes for a few hours every day. Now I wasn’t completely blind but let me tell you, you are thrown into your head; it’s the only place you can be. Saul’s life came to a screeching halt, and for three days he had to think and confront who he was, what he believed in, why it was wrong, and remember all the atrocities that he had committed. I do not think it was a good three days.
Sometime during those three days he came to the acceptance that he was on the wrong path and that he was ready to repent, to choose a new direction. And when he was ready God sent Ananias to him. Saul was ready to become Paul; he was ready to proclaim that Jesus was the son of God. And he went out and did just that.
People didn’t believe this. They had doubts, they did not believe that he was sincere. And I think Paul knew that was going to happen, but he didn’t take the doubts and animosity personally. He knew why they doubted him and he knew that the only way to counter that doubt was to live his new life fully and completely as a servant of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. To go out in Jesus’ name and do the work of Evangelistic love.
Paul never lied or glossed over that evil period of his life. He admits that he was one of the worst sinners out there. But that is one of his messages. That if he, who had lived with so much hate in his heart that it drove him to destroy others could be forgiven and change, then anyone could. There is hope for us all.
Now in this story of Saul who becomes Paul, where do you see yourself? I don’t think any of us have gone to the extremes that Paul went to. But where have we judged because we were certain that we were right? Where have we not listened to other opinions and beliefs and acknowledged the truth of the experiences of others. Have we ever acted with such certainty, only to realize that we were horribly mistaken? Are we willing to sit with ourselves and think about what we’ve done and acknowledge that we were wrong and think about how can we fix this? And are we willing to do the hard work to make things right even though we know that we’re going to get some flack for it? And finally, are we willing to accept radical conversion in others?
Jesus challenges all of us to go out and live as radical converts. To accept Him and God and the Holy Spirit in our lives and then to put our former lives behind us and to live forward into Christ’s love. Paul made his start in a synagogue telling everyone that Jesus was the Messiah. What can you do? How can you bring God’s radical love into your life and the lives of others?
We are all walking a road towards God with Christ as our guide. Like Paul, may we all have the courage to acknowledge our mistakes and continue forward in and with the Love of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.