“Called to a New View of God”

Listen to the sermon here.

What is your view of God?  We all have a vision, often influenced by art or drama, of what God looks like.  A benevolent being, sitting on clouds? A judgmental tyrant wielding lightning bolts?  One New Yorker cartoon features Moses standing on a rock holding the tablets of the 10 commandments and a hand reaches down through the clouds offering what appears to be a box in the shape of a heart and a voice from heaven says, “And (now) a little something for the wife.”

We don’t know exactly what God looks like.  But we know from scripture God is one of hearts as well as tablets.  Love as well as laws.  Grace as well as righteousness.

The story of the Apostle Paul this Lent begins with his conversion from being a hard edged Pharisee named Saul with a narrow view of faith to finding a new vision of God.  And from that, a new vision of himself. 

Let us pray. Gracious God as we begin Lent may we be open to your finding us, leading us through these 40 days, and showering us with your grace-filled love.  Amen. 

This week we begin our Lenten journey.  Lent is a 40 day period of preparation to get ready for the celebration of Easter.  We take seriously the Lenten call for reflection, fasting, letting go, spiritual practices, seeking wholeness, and prayer.

This Lent we are focusing in worship on the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul.  As John Low shared, before he was Paul, this man was known as Saul of Tarsus.  Tarsus was a town in what is now Turkey.   Saul was Jewish, but Tarsus was a gentile town. 

At first this was difficult as Saul was in the minority in Tarsus.  Paul grew up very focused on his religious identity.  That identity was very important to him.   As a teenager, he studied law with the great scholar Gamaliel and became a Pharisee.   Pharisees held a strict interpretation of religion and argued that Israel needed to return to a strict observance of Jewish laws.  Saul’s view of God was important to him.  But his view of God was a restrictive, inward looking one. 

So when a new religious sect called the Way, as Luke tells us, led by someone name Jesus, appeared, Saul was upset.  Even when Jesus was killed, his followers started spreading his influence.  Saul saw them as an affront to God.  Saul saw it as his God-given mission to stop this new movement.

Saul was part of a group that captured Christians and locked them up.  He was present at the stoning of Steven.  All of this was out of his grave concern for what was happening to his faith. 

As Bonnie read, Paul was on his way to Damascus to find a group of Christians to punish.  But God had other plans.  Jesus came to him in a vision and asked why he was persecuting Christ, and Saul fell to his knees.

Saul was blinded by the light coming to him and asked, “Who are you, Lord?”  The voice identifies as Christ.  “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

This was not the God which Saul had expected.  Saul thought he was helping God, trying to defend the faith.   He thought he was doing God’s work, not harming God.

In our world one of the great dangers of our time, is violence done in the name of organized religion.  We see the brutality of ISIS and the acts of many in different religious contexts done in the name of faith.  I believe this breaks God’s heart.

Saul thought he knew God.   He sought God.  Careful what you ask for.  Like Saul, when you ask for God, you might get Jesus.  When you think you are the light of the world, you might be temporarily blinded.  When you try to convert others in God’s name, you might find yourself converted.

Saul learned to see God in a new way.  This wasn’t someone who had no experience with or interest in God.  Saul was someone who had an intense interest in and focus on God.  We can be interested in God and yet not really know God.  This has been one of my own challenges in faith in studying.  And one where we have an opportunity to focus on in Lent.  From Saul’s conversion came a new call.  God called Saul, this negative Pharisee, became Paul, and turned his life into a miraculous mission.  God sent him out to visit parts of the near east spreading the gospel.  He helped impact the world in important ways. 

Luke tells us in Acts that Saul was unable to see.  He was blinded by the light, as the phrase goes.  For the next three days while life was darkened for Saul, he focused on the risen Jesus Christ.  At the end of Lent we focus on Jesus’s three days in the tomb.  So it’s appropriate we begin Lent thinking about Paul’s three days in darkness.

When he thought he saw God, he was unable to see God.  When he had an incomplete view of God, he thought he could go right ahead.  Many commercials this week said, “Big things comes in small packages.”  But as William Sloan Coffin once wrote, “Love measures our stature; the more we love the bigger we are.  There is no smaller package in all the world than that of an individual all wrapped up in himself/herself.”

That is where Saul was.  He had read the law and studied the faith.  But that lead him to a narrow assumption of the truth.  An incomplete view of God.  He was missing love.

Jesus brought him a fuller view of God.  One rooted in grace, forgiveness and love. 

On Valentine’s Day we affirm that God’s full nature includes love.   John would say God is love.  It is in this experience where Saul perhaps was first exposed to the idea that his religion without love is nothing.  Valentine’s Day is celebration of love.  The scripture passage most commonly read at weddings is 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul writes that without love we are noisy gongs or clanging cymbals.  That we are nothing.  That is where Paul found himself at this time.

Notice that God calls someone else in our story too.  A man named Ananias.  Ananias lived in Damascus in the community to which Saul was planning to persecute.

After stopping Saul, God called to Ananias and told him to go to Saul and help him.  Ananias response was basically, “Him?!?  You want me to help Saul, the one who is coming to get me.”

Ananias ends up laying hands on Saul, calling him “Brother Saul,” and helping return his sight.  Through a demonstration of forgiveness and love, God helps Saul see an even broader vision of what God was like.  Not rule-bound but gracious.

So this Lent, our call may be to repent and ask forgiveness.  That is appropriate work of Lent.  It may be we haven’t done anything as bad as Saul, but it’s good for our souls to unburden ourselves through confession, traditionally a focus of Lent.

It also may be that our Lenten task is not only to ask for forgiveness like Saul, but to offer it like Ananias.  To think of the person for whom our focus is keeping us from moving forward.  The person who is cutting us off in the parking lot, or cutting short our dreams in the office or cutting our time with a loved one, or just cutting off contact and we are mad about it.  Ananias showed grace in the face of persecution.  There is something very Christian about that.  And Lenten, if you think about Christ’s actions on the cross at Holy Week.  It gives the world a fuller picture of God’s character.  What wondrous love it is. 

If we view God as fundamentally judgmental and mean, we’ll view everything through that lens.  If we recognize God is gracious and full of love, we start to treat everything that way.  Starting with ourselves. 

If you want a new vision of your life, look to a broader view of God.  The Christ who embodies love.  From that comes a new fuller view of God and of life.

This morning we remember St. Valentine, a patron saint of love, a priest in the 3^rd Century at the time when the emperor Claudius was persecuting Christians too.  The history is a bit uncertain and there are many stories about Valentine.

One holds that Claudius issued an edict that prohibited the marriage of young soldiers under the theory that unmarried soldiers fought better than soldiers who had someone at home.

The church thought that marriage was sacred and encouraged it.  Valentine encouraged people to marry within the church and he married people in secret.  

Valentine was eventually caught, imprisoned and sentenced to death for performing marriage ceremonies, and even trying to convert Claudius.

One of the people who was to carry out his sentence in line with the Roman law was a jailer named Asterius, whose daughter was blind.  The story is told that before he helped execute Valentine, in Rome, the same place Paul would later be executed, Asterius took his daughter to the priest. Valentine laid hands on, prayed with and healed the young girl.  He helped restore her sights, much like Ananias helped restore Saul’s sight in a similar way.   It is said Asterius was converted to Christianity as a result, much like Saul did.  Valentine showed forgiveness as Ananias did.

Valentine was sentenced to a brutal execution because of his stand for Christian love.  But he also showed his love for someone in need.  And the power of forgiveness.  The story goes that the last words he wrote were in a note to Asterius’ daughter.  In doing so he inspired the notes on today’s giving of flowers and boxes by signing the note, “from your Valentine.” 

As we begin our Lenten journey with a focus on Paul, we affirm that Paul’s story begins with God coming to him through light, through hands, and through a call, in a most improbably way.  Turning persecution into friendship.  Making the rule bound gracious.  Giving Saul a new name, a new identity in Christ, a fuller understanding of God and God’s love, and a new calling, which we explore this Lent.

Our opportunity this Lent is to think about the reality of who Christ is, what he did for us and how he is coming to us, to give us a new view of God this season.

It could be that there is a surprise for us this Lent.  That some chance encounter on the street inspires us to cast a wider circle with our mission nets. Or a call from a family member allows forgiveness to be offered and received.  Or that we are so fed up with what we read in the news about how people are treating one another in politics, policy or around the world that we get involved.  Or that our inward focus on Christ in us, opens our eyes to the light shining in others.

New York City pastor Michael Lindvall writes, “People speculate about the search for God, as if the transcendent one were a set of misplaced car keys. The awkward truth is that it is we who have misplaced ourselves. The journey of faith,” Lindvall writes, “is not so much to ‘find God’ as it is a struggle to follow a God who finds us.”

Let us strive to openness to what God is like and then commit to following God this Lent.  Paul thought he understood God but was surprised when God found him.  That humility opened his heart to a new understanding of loving grace, and it changed his future.  It opened up his life to a new ministry.  What might be possible for us?  Amen.