Sermon: April 14, 2013
The following sermon was preached at St. Luke's Lutheran Church of Logan Square by the Rev. Justin Baxter on April 14, 2013. Rev. Baxter is an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. His message is centered on John 2:1 - 19 and Acts 9:1 - 20.It feels good to be moving through the Easter season. A weekly dose of alleluias, great music, and liturgy that speaks to our community. A weekly reminder that yeah, Jesus has been raised from the dead – alleluia! A reminder that God’s promises are true and that death does not have the final say. And when Jesus is on the loose, who knows?… He will probably make you breakfast or something. That’s the thing about the resurrection, right? You don’t know where Jesus might turn up in the ordinary circumstances of life.
Have you ever thought about your own call story? Have you thought what is it about this God thing that brings you here on Sunday morning, if it is about that God thing at all? Have you thought about what is the power in your life that sets your moral, ethical and spiritual compass to true north? These are good questions to ask as individuals and as a community. These are questions that arise for me as I read the Gospel and Acts reading; about the disciples fishing and meeting Jesus on the beach for breakfast, about Paul on the road to Damascus, about where and how Jesus meets us, and how we experience the risen Christ in others.I have the great opportunity to fulfill one of my passions in life as a paying job – running. I manage a specialty running story here in Chicago. What I have learned from the retail industry at large is that consumerism, dare I say capitalism, and is perhaps one of the most powerful guiding forces in our life today. You can’t hide from the plethora of messages persuading you toward the next best thing that will invariably make your life better, easier and more beautiful. And who doesn’t want that? Who doesn’t want that sort of guarantee? (If only it didn’t expire). So, as a pastor I was shocked when I find that the Christian community in many places succumbs to this capitalistic notion of salvation. I don’t think I am the only one that has had the experience where you just aren’t quite saved enough if you weren’t saved like “X”.This risen Jesus, in this morning’s Gospel reading and the account from Acts, does an incredible job at breaking throughout cultural catechism. A notion that you are assured of your salvation if, and only if, you’ve been knocked off your ass, or on to it, as is this case may be.I imagine that Paul would probably take issue with his conversion as a coming to Jesus moment. That overwhelming sense of love, embodied in Christ, and now flowing in the body of Christ broke through barriers and reached out to all. Paul saw himself as a prime example of this amazing grace. Such amazing grace also changed Paul’s perspective on scripture from a fearing defensive fundamentalism to a centered, critical interpretation, inspired by Jesus’ own stance. He was prepared to follow its logic to the end, refusing to withhold regular table fellowship with Gentiles (as James’ pressures insisted, to which Peter and Barabas succumbed in Galatians 2:11-14), resisting those who insisted on circumcising Gentiles (because scripture said so in Genesis 17), and asserting that in the love of god in Christ we are no longer under the biblical law, even though we more than fulfill the legitimate demands it contains.It was, after all, an encounter with risen Jesus that makes it all happen for Paul, just as with the Gospel reading and Confession of Peter, it was no Peter, but his confession of Jesus that was the Rock, the anchor for the foundation of the Church. So this reading from Acts is not Paul but Jesus who has the vision and shares that vision of which the Church and its mission might be.The extraordinary thing that we learn about God, in Jesus, is that forgiveness and conversion are possible at all. Acts (and we must admit that Luke may exaggerate for the sake of the story) portrays Paul as the greatest enemy of the earliest followers of “The Way.” But rather than smite him, or demonize him, Jesus instead takes his gifts of zeal and persuasion, and puts them to work for the Gospel. Imagine what that would be like if those who stand in our way of progress today suddenly decided to work for the betterment of the poor and the outcast in our midst. Could you imagine if city hall decided to ensure that all people of Chicago were granted equal access to health care, education and employment? What would you do if police officers made random phone call to citizens to ask how they were? To encourage them to stay safe?An encounter with the risen Lord can do that for a person. There have been countless stori
es over the years that proclaim this basic principle. They hymn, “Amazing Grace,” sings it not only as Paul’s song, but also as ours. The first good news in this story is that god doesn’t give up on Paul or the disciples who should know what their call is but revert back to what they know – fishing. Nor does God give up on us. Even when we are at enmity with God. God loves us and claims us. And since God does not separate us into “good” people and “evil” people, we no longer have to do that with each other. We need to not justify our actions by pointing to others and proclaims how bad they are, quite simply because God does not.Conversion happens. Turnaround happen. But they don’t happen because I make them happen in myself. They happen because I am grasped, time after time, in an encounter with the risen Christ. Such is the wonder of our God.Paul’s conversion alone would not be enough of a reason to celebrate his life with a Church festival, no matter how minor. It is his radical understanding of both the calling of his own people and the good news for all the peoples of the earth that make Paul stand out.As hard as it may be for Lutherans like me to admit it, the center of Paul's teaching may not just be "justification by grace through faith," though that certainly is a prominent point to his theology. The radical center of Paul's preaching seems to be that in Jesus, the covenant God made with Israel has reached its climax. Paul understands a continuity between the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and the god who acted in Jesus Christ. Paul sees that god has fulfilled his covenant promises even though Israel did not. Paul understands grace as larger than forgiveness for the individual, for the Church. Paul was the first, or perhaps the most vocal, to see that grace is larger than the body.This has been a source of struggle and argument for the people of god ever since. We seem to be as disjointed and disparate, as a group of Christians, as any major religion can be. We argue about most anything, from human sexuality and how to live as Christians to what we believe and the truth of the core Gospel message. In the midst of this we have something to learn from St. Paul and his message after his conversion. That message was startling similar to the confession of Peter. "He is the Son of God." At this time of Easter, we do well to remember that despite the things that we think divide us as Christians, this confession of faith unites us in the Gospel.The good news goes far beyond this. It is, simply, that the risen Lord Jesus continue to seek out and encounter a lost and hostile humanity in surprising and startling ways. Our "Damascus road" experiences happen as we too are grasped by the risen Lord through Word, Sacrament, or even by occasional extraordinary encounters. We may be blinded and confused momentarily, but in the end, we too are called by God to share the wonderful news that the risen Jesus, the Son of God, is Messiah and his kingdom includes all peoples. When all humanity shares this experience of the risen Lord, when we are open to Christ's expression in all those around us, we will be one indeed. Until that day, we hope, we pray for unity, and we give thanks for Paul, Peter, and all the saints who have caught and shared glimpses of the risen Lord with us.Amen.