TheoTrek — A Journey with God in Discipleship
Proclaiming God's Redemption
Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11, 20c; Mark 1:29-39; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Rev. Chris Harbin, Central Baptist Church—Lowesville, VA
08 February 2009
After the long hot ride on a dusty stone-paved road, he must have been tired. There are any number of reasons to suggest why he fell off his horse. He might have fallen asleep, rocked to oblivion by the incessant riding motion. He might have spent too long sweating in the sun with too little water. It could have been a combination of fatigue, dehydration, or the horse's stumbling on a rougher stretch of road. There aren't too many heroes whose stories begin with falling off a horse, but this is one.
In Paul's case, this may even be the best known portion of his story. It was a momentous event in his life. It was transforming. Maybe that's why we tell and retell it. We tend to look for an initial transformational moment spawning a change of course, one moment that makes all the difference. We want transformative change to be instantaneous—a moment, a catalytic event—not a journey of many seemingly insignificant steps.
We can easily picture the hot, dusty road to Damascus. Back in Paul's day it was a long journey. There were no paved roads as we know them, though the Romans built stone roads throughout the empire to help move their troops quickly from one place to another as need arose. No, there were no rest areas or parks along the way, no fast food joints with clean restrooms available to passing tourists. It was just that lonely road—something upwards of 150 miles of dust, sun, sweat, and the odors of fresh piles of horse droppings. After days of riding, Paul fell off his mount. Perhaps we should consider sunstroke, dehydration, or exhaustion. His traveling companions would have, anyway, if they had not heard the voice calling from heaven.
Over the next few days, Paul wrestled with the importance of that encounter with the risen Christ. He prayed and fasted at least until the coming of Ananias. He reflected on the meaning of the words he had heard. "I am the Jesus you are persecuting." Ananias came with an even stranger portion of the message, "I will show you just how much you must suffer for my sake." Forget the whole "Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling" thing. This was a far cry from a lullaby pleading to a comfortable, sleepy repeat-this-prayer-and-all-will-be-well Christianity. It was not enough for Paul's move from persecuting Christians to accepting Christ. This transformational call included receiving the brunt of the intense persecution he had been dispensing.
This is not quite how we picture God's call in our lives. We might expect some interruption in our plans, but "How much you must suffer for my sake" does not seem to fit with our understanding of the gospel nor the will of Christ Jesus. We would expect Paul to run away. If he had been smart, he would have turned tail like Jonah and headed somewhere far away from God's call on his life. We want to shout out to Paul, "Stay away from what God is wanting from you! It's too much of a commitment and too great a sacrifice!" At least, that's the way we figure it when we think about God calling us.
Looking at Paul's story, however, this suffering thing doesn't sound so bad. We keep it at a distance. We just let it slip by unnoticed. After all, he is one of our faith heroes! It is just a story, though. We consider that he is somehow removed from what God is doing today. He is one of those legendary figures from days long, long, long ago, when God did things differently. That was back when suffering was just part of living—kind of like going to bed with a minor arthritic pain. We just don't have to go through that anymore. Suffering is no longer necessary, at least in questions of faith.
We live in a different world, isolated from the weather, driving asphalted roads to purchase food at the store without having to work the fields in hopes of a harvest, and trusting that our government will neither torture us nor become too enmeshed in our lives. God wants what is best for us. God wants our comfort, peace, tranquility, and financial blessing. Like corporate America, we take our comforts for granted. The pursuit of happiness is a divine right! (Isn't that somewhere in the Bible?) We have ample supplies of medicine to deal with pain. There's no way God could want us to live according to God's call Paul … or is there? Take two Tylenol and call me in the morning.
It took Paul a while to come around to the importance of God's call on his life. Oh, he started proclaiming the gospel in Damascus pretty soon under the care of Ananias and the other local believers, but then he hid away from some years in Arabia, working out just what the gospel was and how that would change his life from zealous persecutor of the church to its most avante guarde emissary. It seems that it was during these years that the change really took hold, however. He came back from this wilderness experience a changed man with a transforming mission.
The fall from the horse was symbolic in many ways. He had to give up his position, his pursuits, his ties to the tradition, heritage, and direction in which he had been raised. As he writes to the Corinthians, he speaks of the hold the gospel of Christ Jesus had on his life. Talk about a transformation! Here was a man who had persecuted believers, now preaching the gospel of Christ under a blanket of persecution with imprisonment, beatings, and being left for dead. He should have fled the call of Christ, but unlike Jonah, he had a different take on that call. To the Corinthian believers, comfortable in their relatively recent affluence, position, and self-advancement, he says, "Woe to me if I do NOT proclaim the gospel!"
The cares of the world had changed in his eyes. What he had earlier sought fell away from center stage of his life, much as he had fallen off that horse long before. Paul had assumed that as he fought for prestige within the ranks of a zealous Judaism he was on track for serving God. When we get down to it, he did not truly suffer any great transformation. He had already been zealous for God. He had already been giving his all to serve God as best he knew. What changed was simply a question of direction in which to invest his life.
He did not choose the path taken by Jonah. He did not determine to flee from all God had in store for him—nor just the things that did not match up to the direction he had chosen in life. Paul simply made the decision to choose to serve God, not what simply passed for serving God. Rather than fleeing God's direction, he chose to accept leaving behind what he could no longer pretend was in God's interests. Rather than agreeing with Jonah's cry of grief over having to serve God with a message that did not set well with him, Paul simply continued serving God, though now on a proper course.
The gospel gained a hold on Paul. Step by step on the journey of his life, it became the driving narrative behind his life. It was the song he sang, the tune to which he danced, and the message he proclaimed. It was also the reward of Paul's life and ministry. To proclaim the redemption of God was his purpose, and its proclamation was his greatest reward and fulfillment. He was held captive—a slave to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The change of purpose made it all worthwhile. Would we say with Paul, "Woe is me, if I do NOT proclaim the gospel of God's redemption?" It's either that or running away from God like Jonah.
—©2009 Christopher B. Harbin