I
was walking with a group of kids on our way back to the St. Louis Park Rec
Center after playing some
soccer on a hot July day a few summers back. Kids from the chess camp where I
worked got the occasional opportunity to play games outside (even if chess kids
playing sports doesn’t evoke images of high athletic skill). It was on that
short walk back toward air conditioning when a man walking his dog said a loud
“Hello!” and beckoned me over to talk with him. Sure, whatever, I thought, as
long as the kids don’t run out into traffic in the next seven seconds.
The
man was wearing a biker jacket on an 80-something degree day while out walking
his golden retriever. When I came over he very simply said, “Hey! Have you been
saved?”
Now,
I don’t think this happens in this part of the world very much, but it’s
happened a few times to me in the Cities—beyond the obligatory Jehovah’s
Witnesses at the door. And you would think that being a Lutheran pastor would
be a good comeback to this kind of question, but, actually, I've discovered that's just about the worst thing I can say, because suddenly I’m not just a lost soul in
need of saving, I’m a lost soul in need of saving who is leading other lost
souls away.
On
this occasion with my biker-jacket-golden retriever-walking friend, I came back
with a well-practiced seminary-approved retort. Have I been saved? “Yep. Two thousand years ago,” I said (we
seminary folks are so clever). But I had a feeling where he was going with this, and I
wanted to head him off at the pass.
“No,
that’s not enough,” he said, “You need to ask Jesus into your heart . You need
to be able to share the moment in your life when you accepted Jesus.”
As
it turns out, this guy happened to have a fantastic story. He carried around a
news clipping from the Star Tribune about his group of biker friends who traded
in a life of alcohol, drugs, and crime for a life of following Christ. I
couldn’t argue with his experience—and, frankly, I didn’t want to—and I didn’t
mind that he was sharing it with others—that seems very much what Jesus told us
to do—but something about that encounter still left me with a sour taste in my
mouth. I didn’t doubt his conversion experience; I didn’t mock it or suggest
that it was some sort of hallucination. I believed not just that he thought he
was telling the truth but also that the story he was sharing actually happened.
We have enough conversion stories to believe that God does work this way. The
most famous of these is Saul’s conversion in today's reading, but we also have
Luther’s storm experience on the way to Erfurt, and countless personal stories
that many of you could share of God doing something miraculous to change the
direction of your lives. I don’t doubt any of those experiences. Instead, the
thing that sat poorly with me was the way this man dismissed my experience as a
person who was brought up in the faith. He wanted a moment; I could only tell
him about a lifelong process that is ongoing day after day after day. He wanted
a dramatic 180 degree turn, but I could only give him subtle nudges in a
different direction. He wanted a seminal event; I could only give him a long,
winding road.
I don’t know the faith stories for every one of you. Maybe you’ve had some
crazy experience to share with the world (or maybe you will have one someday
down the line)—if you do, you should
share it—but the road of faith is not paved only in life-changing experiences.
Sometimes we just plod along and discover little by little the God who created
us and what we were created to be.
Saul
was converted dramatically, but then again Saul was also a dramatic person. He
was out to kill all the Christians he could get his hands on. He strove to be
the best of the best at ridding the world of this Christian blasphemy. God
needed a sudden, life-changing in-breaking into Saul’s life to turn this all
around; just as the biker who asked me if I was saved needed that radical
in-breaking in his life in order to set his life on a different course. God
tends to do this to people. When you are way off the deep end you find yourself
suddenly facing the terror of God’s self in the most surprising of ways. It’s
why you hear countless stories of people who overcame their addictions (or other
serious issues) not because of their will power but because they acknowledged
perhaps for the first time that they were not in control themselves and they
handed control over to God.
Some
of us need dramatic moments like that—moments where we are put to death of the
habits that have brought us to that point—and set on a new course. Saul needed
that. To a degree Martin Luther needed that. My biker friend needed that. Many
alcoholics and drug abusers need that. If you are saddled with anxiety or
otherwise turned in on yourself you may need that. God tends to turn the world
upside down for those of us who are particularly messed up, because we’re the
ones who can’t simply reconfigure our life’s direction; we need to be blinded
and that part of us needs to die. But,
for others, that desperate need for salvation comes in a different, slower way.
We die to sin every day and rise with Christ, so sometimes that dying can
appear like the littlest of changes in our outlook on life. In fact, many of
those little deaths and resurrections may be hardly noticeable. It may simply
feel like we are learning and discovering new things day after day.
Some
of us need a road to Damascus
moment; and some of us need the long way. Both are legitimate stories about our
salvation, but only one can be given a date and a time, and that’s OK. If you
know the date and time that you were saved, that’s great—I’d still say you were
saved two thousand years ago, but you know, we pastors are annoying like that.
But if you do not have a date and a time on the tip of your tongue that does
not make your faith in God any less real, and it certainly doesn’t mean that
God has somehow neglected to give you that critical experience necessary for
faith. It doesn’t work that way.
The
danger with all biblical stories is that we make them normative, suggesting
that this is the only way it can be. Saul had
a conversion experience involving God’s radical in-breaking so I need one too,
or else there’s no way to know if I’m not secretly damned! That’s the worry.
But we actually do have a moment to point to that assures us this is not the
case: our baptism. And this is the very reason why we baptize indiscriminately,
because baptism is not dependent on the starkness of a conversion experience or
the strength of your will to make a decision for Jesus; instead, baptism is
about God choosing you, which happens to be what he does with
Saul—dramatically, yes, but not always that way.
When
Ananias baptizes Saul before sending him on his way, he is giving a sign for
what Saul—now Paul—has discovered: he is a child of God. It doesn’t matter how
terrible he was before that moment; in fact, the traits of persistence and
dedication that made him so terrible as an enemy to Christians are some of the
same traits that make him such a champion of the faith after his conversion;
what matters is that he has been claimed and chosen as a child of God.
So,
graduates (this is my opportunity to do a mini graduation speech every year, so
you can bet I’m going to take it) I hope you never need a crazy roadside
experience. I hope God doesn’t need to turn you around so badly that he chooses
blindness or storms to get through your skulls, but know this: He will if he
needs to. God is not beyond making a point of messing up your beautiful plans. But
also remember: If you walk the long road of faith you may also never have a Damascus moment. God just
happens to know what we need better than we do ourselves, which should actually be some comfort. Saul needed a moment to radically alter his life’s
course, and in much the same way that is what the biker by the soccer field
needed, but my experience was different than his—not better
or worse, just different—which simply means that God is more than a one trick
pony. The Holy Spirit blinds people and she also nudges them.
Which
brings me full circle to my snotty seminary-aided response: The reason I say I
was saved two thousand years ago (and not some date in the last 20-some years)
is because salvation comes from the God who reveals himself to us most clearly on
the cross, and not from the strength of my belief. Otherwise, Saul would have
been completely beyond help, as seriously disbelieving as he was. Otherwise,
faith would be a ladder system where some of us are always just a little further ahead. Our choices end up mattering very little for our salvation when God
meets us along the road, but what does make a difference is how much it hurts.
I’m not going to tell anybody how to live their life, but I will tell you that
no matter your choices, you have a God who does one thing exceptionally well,
and that is salvation. It’s just that it will be more painful for some than for
others, because some need that Damascus
road experience. It’s why God calls people like Saul. Nobody is beyond
redemption. But it’s also why God calls people like you and me, because the
story of God’s salvation is much wider than this. It’s a story whose fabric is
woven by the threads of all of our stories; all unique, all valuable, all a
testimony to what God has done, and continues to do, in our lives.
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