“…suddenly a light from heaven flashed
around him.” (Acts 9:3)
If you ever wondered where the phrase “He saw the light” came from, I suspect it’s referencing the conversion of Saint Paul described in our First Lesson for Easter 3, Year C in the RCL (Acts 3:1-20). It actually takes more than a light from heaven to get this hard-assed guy to change his mind. After all, Paul—or Saul as he called himself then—was actually “breathing threats and murder.” Can you imagine him inhaling and exhaling his disgust and contempt for followers of Jesus? Hatred was his oxygen. It’s what kept his heart and lungs going. This dude was so into his identity as a Pharisee that he was willing to turn to violence rather than have his religious views challenged.
Sound familiar? Did you ever hear of anyone who so identifies with their philosophical tribe that they’re ready to—oh, I don’t know, say—storm the U.S. Capital rather than accept that reality contradicts their opinion? If there’s anything I’ve learned in a quarter century in the ministry, it’s that these types don’t want to change. You just can’t make a rational argument to an irrational mind.
Saul was a Pharisee, a legalistic, holier-than-thou-even-thought-about-being, ultra-pious Jew who just couldn’t stand the idea that God’s love and forgiveness were possible for people who thought differently from himself. He was a walking, talking monument to intolerance who would gleefully watch as an opponent was murdered by a shower of rocks just for not thinking exactly the way he thought. Ever know anyone like him? If you do, you’ll agree it might take an act of God to change their mind.
Truth be told, I know that when I was growing up my folks had a certain obdurate streak. My mom, for instance, was a dyed-in-the-wool-while-it-was-still-on-the-sheep Missouri Synod Lutheran. She was convinced the LCMS had a lock on the gospel, and other Christians—even other types of Lutherans—ran the risk of serious error.
I was a second-year confirmation student when our LCMS congregation got a new pastor. This pastor, the late Rev. John Meether, was part of the splinter group that had broken off from the nominal LCMS when a controversy on biblical interpretation and scholarship arose around the Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Pastor Meether had the audacity to change our liturgy by the insertion of up-tempo canticles. My mom found this tantamount to heresy. My dad was willing to overlook the change in worship style, but, having been raised a Primitive Methodist, he was aghast when, in Bible study, Pastor Meether suggested that some of the wackier miracles in the Bible might not have actually happened. Dad was taught every word in scripture was divinely inspired and literally true, and he was really uncomfortable with any new interpretation.
My parents managed, as I recall, to choke down their discomfort, but others in the congregation weren’t so forbearing. Some, unwilling to have their comfort assaulted, called for the pastor to be fired while others rallied to his aid. The internal bickering eventually drove our family from the congregation and landed us—to my mother’s disquiet—into the arms of an LCA congregation where the warmth of the welcome overcame any issues my parents may have had about interpretation or worship style.
The Griffiths clan may have had a positive experience coming out of this, but the LCMS saw years of controversy, the disruption of a seminary, the firing of two district presidents, and hundreds of congregations withdrawing from the denomination. Our own ELCA suffered similar wounds when a vote of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly declared LGBTQ+ individuals in committed relationships eligible to serve as Ministers of Word and Sacrament. This decision was welcome to most, but an abomination to a few who just couldn’t wrap their brains around the concept of grace and acceptance of all of God’s people.
Like Saul, we are sometimes willing to fight to the death to preserve our world view. We hate change, and we fear challenges to our self-identity. Yet God keeps challenging that identity all the time. And God is able to make changes in us—even if it takes time.
I don’t think the blinding light or even the voice of Jesus changed Saul. What strikes me most about the story of his conversion is the love shown by Ananias, a man who himself is rather reluctant to take a new view of things. God softens Ananias’ heart to the point where he can look at his persecutor and address him as “Brother.” I think this is what really brought Saul around. Arguments of logic and reasoned debates—even miraculous acts of God—aren’t as effective as love.
My parents mellowed a little in their old age. Perhaps not as much as their son would’ve liked, but still, I could sense a softening of some of their harsher judgments and preconceptions. They were, after all, baptized people. In our scripture lesson baptism is the natural next step in Saul’s conversion. If you read his epistles, you’ll figure out he was still a hardass even after he was baptized. He just became a hardass for Christ. It wasn’t the act of baptism that changed him, it was the fact of being baptized that must’ve opened him up to the idea that every day is an opportunity to put away the old and be born anew.
It just takes a little time and a bit of
love.
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