St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday Sermon – Third Sunday of Easter – April 18, 2010
“A New Thing: Chosen Instrument Catching On!”
Text: Acts 9:15-17
I cannot speak for other pastors, but speaking for myself I can tell you while there are many lessons I’ve learned over the past 40 years in the ministry, one of the more important lessons I’ve learned is that it’s one thing to be myself, and it’s another thing; a wonderful thing, life-transforming thing to be the self God wants me & calls me & gives me the grace to be thru faith in Jesus Christ.
Or to put it another way: I wonder how many older, faithful, seasoned pastors in our church body & teachers too might join me in saying, “The me that I am today is not the me that I started out to be.” Not that I have had a great conversion experience like the apostle Paul’s conversion experience to change me from unbeliever to believer, or change me from self-centered & self-righteous to self-denying & self-sacrificing. But the me that I am today is a whole lot less about me and a whole lot more about God and what God in His grace can & does do for each of us when we learn to surrender ourselves to God & His will through Jesus Christ.
Listen again to what the Lord God said to a reluctant disciple at Damascus named Ananias when God wanted Ananias to go and lay his hands on a blind & subdued Pharisee named Saul whom Ananias knew was the sworn enemy of Christians and out to arrest every follower of the Way he could find to take back to Jerusalem. The Lord said to Ananias
“Go, for he (Saul) is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him (Saul) how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”
Here is the truth of this text that we by the power of God’s mercy & grace can embrace and apply to our own lives.
It’s one thing to be ourselves, and it’s another thing; it’s wonderful thing, a life-transforming thing to be the self that God wants us & calls us & gives us the grace to be thru faith in JC.
Dr. Fred Craddock, tells a little story that most of us would probably not identify with, but it’s a good story and for a lot of people outside the church, outside Christianity, it’s a true story.
Dr. Craddock being from the south tells about a time when he was helping a church near Oxford, Georgia do an Advent service. Because there were a lot of people, they had to do it twice. Two nights!
The first night a woman came late with noisy kids. She distracted everybody, disturbed everyone around her. It even bothered Dr. Craddock a little bit, he said, though he could usually handle it. But the woman & her children were really a distraction.
At the fellowship time afterward, the woman came up to Dr. Craddock and said, “You don’t know me, but I’m the one with the noisy kids.”
Dr. Craddock said, “Yeah, I noticed when you came in.”
Dr. Craddock and the woman talked a little bit. Next night, second service, the woman was back, without the kids. At the fellowship time afterward she said to Dr. Craddock, “You remember me from last night?”
Dr. C said, “Yeah, you’re the one with the noisy kids.”
“I didn’t bring them tonight,” said the woman.
“You mean they’re not with you?” Dr. Craddock said.
Her reply was, “I take noisy kids and go late when I don’t want something to get to me. I came without them.”
Dr. Craddock thot to himself, “Did she want to be affected by the Gospel? Did she want the Gospel to get to her? No? Yes? No?
Then the woman said, “You won’t believe what a mess I’ve made of my life.” Yes, she was ready for the Gospel of Jesus to get to her!
Now I’m not going to stand here and tell you that Saul before he came to be known as Paul the great apostle & missionary for our Lord Jesus; that Saul was a high-ranking Pharisee ready to confess with no small amount of shame & guilt what a mess he had made of his life.
No! Actually, Saul was about as religious & as rigorous a defender of the Old Testament Jewish beliefs in the Law of God and the long-awaited coming of the Messiah of God to save God’s people as any Jew or Pharisee could be. It wasn’t what a shameful life, what an ugly, ungodly life, what a messed up life Saul had lived that put him at odds with believers in Jesus known as followers of the Way. Rather it was that Saul was so sure of himself, so full of himself, so self-righteous, so set on God being the God of the Jews, and teaching that the only way to be reconciled to God was to be a Jew.
What a revelation it was for Saul on the road to Damascus when the Lord Jesus appeared to Saul and knocked him off his high horse.
Most commentators agree this is not so much a “conversion” story as it is a “vocation” story. Saul, a deeply religious Jew who knew the Old Testament Scriptures & knew and all the laws & traditions of orthodox Judaism as well as anyone is here called to be a missionary to the gentiles to the very people condemned & excluded by Jewish law.
Still, says one commentator, “Even as a call story, this is a story of radical transformation, meaning to be called by God is to be transformed by God – a transformation in Saul’s case signified by his name changed from Saul to Paul.
For me and for many of my fellow pastors, this is what happens when God calls. There are many ways, experiences, blessings, voices, encounters, worship services, personal devotions, struggles, decisions moments of truth when God truly, surprisingly touches our lives.
In the Gospel for this Sunday on a beach, when the disciples are out fishing, the risen Lord Jesus encounters, embraces, forgives, calls a surprised & humbled Peter to “feed the Lord’s lambs, tend the Lord’s sheep”, and later on in the apostle Paul’s 1st letter to the church at Corinth what a surprise it is to here Paul say that while this feeding & tending & witnessing all started with Peter it didn’t end there but that Jesus appeared . . .
to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time . . then appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all came to and appeared to Saul, the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church of God.” (1 Cor. 15:5-9)
To this Scripture testifies again & again from Noah to Moses to David to Isaiah to Jeremiah to Jonah to Mary & Joseph to Lydia & Luke & Timothy that we don’t come to God, God comes to us. And when God comes to us; when God makes Himself known to us, when God calls to us in His Word, when God speaks to us, gets our attention, gets to us with His love, speaks grace & peace to us, we are changed.
Being called; full of repentance; reconciled to God by Christ’s work of atonement on the cross, delivered out of the messes we make as poor, sinful human beings is not something we do; it is a miraculous turning & repenting & reconciling God works in us, in spite of us.
In the Acts chapter 9 story of Saul’s conversion and call to ministry as God’s “chosen instrument” there are no noisy kids or busy schedule or shameful past to keep the Gospel from getting to Saul. So for us too there is no mess to clean up, no history to hide, no penance to pay, no miracles that have to take place other than that risen Lord Jesus shows up in His Word and Sacraments, and, in showing up, in speaking, in forgiving, in reconciling us to God, Jesus transforms us into what we could never be or become on our own.
Unlike “Saul-changed-to-Paul” who saw the light and had his life transformed almost immediately; for most of us, it take a while longer, sometimes a life time to become the self that God wants us and calls us and gives us the grace to be through faith in Jesus Christ.
But don’t sell yourself short! Catching up, catching on, catching our breath, like Peter did, like Paul, like many others have done to serve God – this is the wonderful new thing that Easter brings about.
The you that you are is the you God dearly loves and sent His Son to die for. But when God comes, when God calls, when God the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit encounters the you to bless you & sanctify you as His dear child for eternity, know this too. God never leaves us the way we are. And if this hasn’t happened to you yet, the promise of Easter always is, it will. It will.
