Easter 3 C

Easter 3, Acts 9:1-20 “The miracle of Conversion”

I despise this cult. They think they can change everything, as if they somehow know what is better for everyone. They say Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet. And not just a prophet but the Son of God! Worst of all they make up a story about this Jesus being raised from the dead! God wants me to remind them that they are followers of blasphemy and they must be stopped!
“Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1).
Most of us remember that Paul was once Saul, a non believer who had a miraculous conversion experience. What is easy to forget this is that he was much more than an unbeliever. He was a committed Pharisee. A man so wed to his specific interpretation of God to the point that he asked for permission to hunt down followers of The Way, the early Christians. Who would have guessed that this man would write a huge chunk of the Christian Scriptures? That his name would still be on the lips of Christians 2,000 years later, not as persecutor but as a Saint?
I sympathize with Saul on a deep level. I too am a convert to Christianity. Like Paul, I was not just an unbeliever; I was committed to debunking Christianity in general.
I was brought up in a household that had no religion. I came from a long line of Christmas and Easter Roman Catholics. My family however, where the odd ones in the clan. We did not go to church ever. I say we didn’t have any religion, but that’s not really true. We had Atheism with a capital A. This was our faith, our creed, our dinner time conversation. Did you hear what the Pope said today? How deluded can you be? Did you hear about that televangelist? What a crook! How about that strange Episcopal Church that keeps thinking it can make the world a better place? Maybe when they realize they are shackled to an outmoded concept they can free themselves to actually help the world!
This was my world. I was brought up knowing that I was lucky to be brought up un-brainwashed! I for my part, felt I had a calling. I was to help free those silly Christians from the shackles of theism! It was real easy to do, because I met no real resistance. My friends envied the fact I could sleep in on Sundays and didn’t have to go to confirmation classes. When I told them that their religion was silly, they agreed! It was not until 8th grade that I met someone who made me think that there was a Christian out there who actually wanted to be a Christian.
I don’t know much about Pastor Wilson. I do know that he was a Lutheran pastor who somehow ended up being a substitute teacher on the side. Whenever I walked into a classroom and saw that Mr. Wilson sitting there, I was overjoyed. Not because it meant no teaching, but because it meant that I got to spend the next 60 minutes interrogating Pastor Wilson about the church. One day in the middle of one of my tirades against Christianity, Pastor Wilson stopped me. “Matt, have you ever actually read the Bible?” “Well, no;” I replied. “My father doesn’t want that junk in the house!” He asked: “Would you like one?” I told him yes.
The next morning at 7 AM, I met Pastor Wilson at his car in the Teacher’s parking lot, and he handed me a Bible at great risk to himself. Inside on the cover page he wrote “May you find the Truth!” I rolled my eyes at that. I already had the truth. Now I just had more reasons why Christianity was ridiculous!”
I could tell you a hundred stories about me arguing with Christians for the next few years of my life, but they would get pretty boring after awhile. They all boil down to a conversation where I told the other person that they were deluded.
I kept this up through high school and most of college. In my last year of college I decided to take a class on the New Testament. I had flipped through the bible Pastor Wilson gave me, so I knew a few things. But here, here was the opportunity to really amp up my ministry of unbelief. If I could understand the Bible on a scholarly level I could tear it to pieces intellectually. Halfway through that class I went home to dutifully due my homework, which of course meant reading the Bible. On this particular night I was reading the bible and found myself completely distracted by my own thoughts on what I was reading. I found myself thinking, well I’m not sure that’s what God meant.
Wait a minute. That’s not what God meant? I don’t believe in God! Then it happened. The voice. “Matt, you know it’s all true. I’m here, and you have always known it.” I’ll give you one guess as to who wrote the particular epistle I was reading. My experience was not physically like Paul’s. There was no light, and I did not fall over. But the voice was no less real. I was just as disoriented as a man who was knocked off his horse by a blinding light. It was clear what I heard. I knew I was wrong before.
How do you go back to the people you have persecuted? “Remember all those times I told you that you religion was stupid? Would you mind telling me about that stupid religion of yours? I think I may have been slightly off before…”
Paul too had to face this. He had to go back and face up to the community he had tried to tear apart. Acts tells us that Ananias, the man who got the job of being Paul’s first Christian Brother was not at all that thrilled about it. “Saul! The man who seeks to destroy us? Surely, Lord, you cannot want me to speak to that man!” But that is exactly what God wanted Ananias to do.
When I had to go back to my Christian friends and tell them that the Lord had let me know that I had been slightly mistaken in my views, they all embraced me with open arms! My grandmother told me that this was a miracle and an answer to her prayers. Unknown to me she had been asking a group of nuns to pray for me since the day I was born that I would find God.
In that Bible I was trying so hard to tear apart there where a lot of miracle stories. Miracles are hard to grapple with. Did Jesus really walk on water? Did he really manage to multiply those few loaves into enough for thousands? When I was an atheist, these miracle stories where one of the many things I found silly in Christianity. Looking back as a Christian, I am not all that stunned by Jesus walking on water. I just don’t imagine it hard for God Incarnate to do things like that. What I do find spectacular is that God got a man like Saul to turn around and give his life for the very thing he tried to destroy. It is spectacular that God kept knocking at my door until I finally opened it and let Him in.
I find it spectacular that Pastor Wilson could sit across from me and listen to an angry teenager try and chip away his faith, only to respond back with prayers for my conversion. The words I used in the beginning of my sermon were not the actual words of Saul, but they were pretty close to the words I threw at Pastor Wilson. Yet he responded with love, not anger and hate.
Easter is the time where we proclaim the greatest miracle of all, that Christ rose from the dead. Standing in the amazement of that it is sometimes hard to see how we can respond. Pastor Wilson responded by helping to cooperate with the miracle God was working on with me. I think that’s the way that miracles usually work. I don’t think the disciples knew they were about to be a part of a great miracle when they brought Jesus those few loaves and fish. I don’t think Ananias was aware that by putting aside his own feelings and doing what he heard God tell him to do that he was helping to raise up the great apostle to the Gentiles. I doubt Pastor Wilson knew that 15 years later that angry teenager would be preaching to this congregation a few months away from being ordained. Yet whether he knew it or not, Pastor Wilson had a part to play in the miracle of my conversion.
Whether you are aware of it or not, I am sure that each and everyone on of you has or will come into contact with a person who would love to see Christianity crumble. If it hasn’t happened already, words similar to the one I began my sermon with will be aimed at you. When you respond to that person in love, in Christian hope, you too may be playing your part in an ongoing miracle. Be Ananias and help Saul become Paul the Apostle. Be Pastor Wilson and help an arrogant teenager fall in love with Christ. Speak and act in Christian Love, and watch God’s miracles continue to unfold. Know that God is asking you to help turn the detractors of Christ into lovers of Christ.