A new identity
Commentary
The first lesson and the Gospel speak of the new vocation that comes to people who encounter the risen Jesus. Paul on the Damascus road and the disciples on the beach discover what it is that this risen Lord would have them do. In both cases, the vocation is grounded in what amounts to a new identity. The second lesson may provide a paradigm for how we discover this identity and vocation in our own lives.
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)
Scholars do not like to call this story "the conversion of Paul" because that seems to imply a change of religion. To say that Paul converted from Judaism to Christianity would indeed be anachronistic and inaccurate. Paul continued to regard himself as a Jew, even as a Pharisee, for the rest of his days (Philippians 3:5). Nor is it right to think that Paul's "conversion experience" brought him to make some new commitment to God that had been lacking before. Unlike others, whom Luke says persecuted Christians out of jealousy (Acts 5:17), Paul did so out of a righteous indignation against what he sincerely thought was blasphemy. Paul was zealous for the Lord; he just didn't know what the Lord wanted him to do. So, scholars say, the story is more a call narrative than a conversion account. The Lord reveals the divine will to this devoted servant so that he may serve his God better.
There is much truth in the above discussion, but what happens here is more profound than the designation "call narrative" may imply. Let us suppose that Paul had written a systematic theology and completed it the week before his trip to Damascus. Would he now need to add a new chapter and perhaps amend a few points here or there? Or would he have to throw the whole thing out and start over? I think the latter. Paul does not just discover his vocation, nor is it even just his theology that is corrected. He becomes, to use his own language, "a new creature" (2 Corinthians 5:17), and if that's not conversion, what is? We note, for instance, that Paul does not subsequently place his talents as a persecutor at the church's disposal and begin breathing threats and murder against the enemies of Jesus. It is not as though he is still the same person but has learned who the true blasphemers are. He is, fundamentally, a different person. The discovery that Jesus is the Son of God and that God has raised him from the dead changes everything.
The words that Jesus speaks to Paul on the road are illuminating: "Why do you persecute me? ... I am Jesus whom you are persecuting." Paul, of course, thought he was persecuting the church, the disciples of the Lord (v. 1). But Jesus so identifies himself with his followers that what is done to them is done to him. There were many scales that needed to be removed from Paul's eyes for him to see the world from God's perspective. Recognizing that Jesus was not only alive but active and present in the lives of people currently on earth was one of them.
Revelation 5:11-14
John's vision of heaven contains this beautiful hymn of worship. It presents Christ as "the Lamb that was slaughtered," emphasizing his role in sacrificial atonement. It presents him also as worshiped by all creatures in heaven and on earth. Angels, elders, every form of life declare him worthy of blessing and honor, glory and praise.
As such, the text serves liturgical purposes better than homiletical ones. But a consideration of its context may bring out its sermonic message more clearly. At the beginning of chapter five, John sees in his vision that God has a scroll. We are never told what is on the scroll -- that is not important. Rather, the question is, "Who can open it?" Who is worthy to unlock the mystery of God, to reveal whatever it is that God wants to say? To place this in a modern idiom, I would say that the scroll stands for "the meaning of life." Everyone wants to know: "What is the meaning of life?" As such, the question cannot be answered, for the answer would vary for different people at different places and times. The more important question is: "Through what or whom can we discover the meaning of life for us, today?"
The simple answer, of course, would be "through Jesus." Jesus reveals the meaning of life -- the meaning of history and the meaning of every individual's personal existence. But the way in which Revelation answers this question is itself significant.
In verse 5, the answer is first given: the Lion of Judah is worthy to open the seal. The seer looks, expecting to see a great and powerful lion. Instead, he sees ... a lamb (v. 6). A butchered lamb, in fact. Jesus is the lion and the lamb. Somehow, in this mysterious combination of symbols, a profound point is being made. When we look to Jesus as the powerful lion and yet perceive him as the slaughtered lamb, then we will have found the one worthy to open the scroll for us, to reveal what our life is all about. Then we will have found the one worthy of the hymn presented in the verses of today's lesson.
John 21:1-19
The focus in this lesson shifts to the mission that children of the resurrection are to perform in the world. We began two weeks ago with an invitation to see the Lord as active and present in our own lives. Then, last week, we were encouraged to believe the Word that proclaims him as active and present in the community. Already, indicators of mission have been planted. "As the Father has sent me," Jesus told his disciples last week, "so I send you" (John 20:21).
Two images of mission are employed here: the great catch of fish and the impending crucifixion of Peter. Taken together, they symbolize the triumph and humiliation that will characterize the church as it seeks to impact the world.
In Luke's Gospel, the story of the great catch of fish comes at the beginning, when Jesus first calls his disciples (Luke 5:1-9). It seems out of place there. Although the disciples in Luke do go out to heal the sick and cast out demons during Jesus' lifetime, there is no instance of them "catching people," that is, bringing others into the community of Jesus, until after Easter. Indeed, the only instance of this in the Gospels is found, ironically, in John (1:40-51), which saves the miraculous catch story for after Easter. The story fits well there, at any rate, for it now becomes descriptive of the post-Easter ministry of the church. It presents the expectation that the Easter community will expand in size and diversity.
Everyone agrees that the number of fish (153) is symbolic (see v. 11), but no one knows of what. One good guess is that in John's day, people may have believed that there were 153 nations in the earth, so that the fish symbolize the universal character of the church's mission. That's a nice thought, but we have no way of knowing exactly how they counted nations or how many they thought there were.
The conversation between Jesus and Peter indicates that "catching people" is not enough. The zoological metaphor shifts from viewing people as fish to viewing them as sheep, but more important, the vocation is now defined as "feeding," not merely finding or catching or herding. We remember other stories in which Jesus speaks of the shepherd going after a sheep that is lost (Luke 15:3-7). That image would be similar to catching fish with a net. Here, Jesus goes further. We show our true love for Christ by feeding others, that is, by working to meet their needs, whatever those may be. The image shift for mission is very important. The feeding paradigm takes the emphasis off of numbers and puts it on nurture. More important, it moves away from addressing mission in terms of the church's need (to grow) to focus on the needs of the people whom the church seeks to feed.
Does your church view its mission as "catching fish" or "feeding sheep"? Both are biblical images that capture aspects of the new vocation granted to children of the resurrection.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)
We have three different accounts of the conversion of Saul in the Gospel according to Luke (9:1-20; 22:6-16; 26: 12-18). They differ in a few minor details, but essentially they are the same. In addition, Paul writes of his conversion in Galatians 1:11-16, and in 1 Corinthians 9:1 and 15:8-9, stating that at the time of his conversion on the road to Damascus he saw the Lord. For Paul, that made him an apostle, equal to the twelve. An apostle, in Paul's thought, was one who had seen the risen Christ and had been sent to announce that good news. No mention is made of seeing the Lord in Luke's account, and for Luke, the only apostles were the twelve in Jerusalem who had been with the Lord during his life on earth. Luke always wanted to exalt the importance of the Jerusalem church.
Despite these differences, both Luke and Paul himself record that in the vicinity of Damascus Paul underwent a life-transforming experience, which changed him from Saul, the persecutor of the early Christians, to Paul, the Christian apostle to the Gentile world. The story in Luke stands in the middle of a series of conversion accounts -- of the Samaritans and of the Ethiopian eunuch in chapter 8 and of those converted by Peter in 9:32-42. The Spirit is moving mightily, out into the world. Certainly, however, the conversion of Saul is seen as the paradigmatic account.
The story of Saul is the story of an enemy of Christ. Saul hated Christians. He hunted them down and had them flogged and expelled from the synagogue (contrary to Luke's notice that Saul delivered them to Jerusalem). And because Saul hated Christians, he also hated Christ. That's what Jesus is saying in Matthew 25:40: "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." Paul was a strict Pharisee, and according to the teaching of the law, anyone who hung on a tree was cursed by God (Deuteronomy 21:23). Yet Christians were proclaiming that the Messiah himself had been condemned by the law and crucified on a tree. Moreover, they were maintaining that the law had been fulfilled and was at an end. That was too much for Pharisee Saul.
It has been the common stereotype to say that Saul was converted because he could not follow the law and that he finally realized that he could be saved only by grace. But that theory has no basis in fact. Paul himself states that as to righteousness, he was blameless under the law (Philippians 3:6). Paul could follow the law to the letter. It was not his own spiritual or psychological inner state that led to his conversion. We should give up that thought.
Indeed, Paul's story shows us rather clearly that we do not convert ourselves. There is nothing that we can do to transform our own lives. As the prophet Jeremiah once stated, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?/ Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). We cannot transform ourselves, because everything we do is tainted by our sin, and the more we rely only on ourselves, rather than on God, the farther we fall into sin.
Rather, we are converted to faith and our lives are transformed solely by the grace of God, by his active intervention in our hearts and minds. And that is what happened to Saul. He had heard about Jesus. He was present at the stoning of Stephen, and he knew what Christians were preaching. But suddenly Jesus himself confronted Saul on that Damascus road. A great light flashed around Saul from the sky, and he heard a voice call his name, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" When Saul asked whose voice it was, Jesus identified himself, told Saul to get up, and to enter Damascus. But Saul was struck blind and had to be led by his companions.
In short, Saul the zealot, a Hebrew of Hebrews, the Pharisaic fulfiller of the law, the active, energetic persecutor who could hunt down Christians to punish them -- that proud and vigorous man was suddenly helpless, needing to be led along like a little child and then unable to eat or drink for three days.
I wonder if that is not what happens to us when we truly become Christians, that we lose all reliance on ourselves and become solely dependent on the guiding of God. We too are an energetic, goal-oriented people, aren't we? We set our plans and arrange our schedules and work hard to fulfill our own desires and to reach our own goals. And then the risen Lord Christ intervenes in our lives and somehow our plans and goals become secondary. And what we really desire is to further God's purpose of love and to serve his will in the world. As John the Baptist said, we decrease and Christ increases (John 3:30), and the Lord takes over our lives. And we find, as a converted Paul found, that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Galatians 3:20).
That does not necessarily happen to us suddenly as it happened to Saul. We need not undergo a sudden conversion experience like Saul's to be taken into the Christian life. Some of us are raised in Christian homes, by truly devout parents, and we are nurtured and brought up in the faith, day by day and year by year, until our dependence on Christ becomes our way of life, and we become true servants of the Lord.
One thing is certain, however. Christ does not redeem us from our old life and from our old self for no purpose. In our text, when Ananias hesitates to go to Saul and lay his hands upon him, Ananias is told by the Lord, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel" (v. 15). Saul, who became Paul, was chosen by God for a task.
That is the way with all of the servants of the Lord in the Bible. Elijah, in the Old Testament, hearing the still, small voice of God on Mount Horeb, was not allowed to bask in the experience. Instead he was commanded to return to his people and to start a revolution (1 Kings 19). And Peter and James and John at the Transfiguration were not allowed to build booths on the mountain and to continue to enjoy the mystical vision. Instead, they had to go down and follow their Master to Jerusalem and to a cross.
So it is too with us. God has not transformed our lives by his active Spirit and made us his disciples just so we can enjoy his fellowship all by ourselves. And surely he has not made us Christians so we, in our pride, can claim some sort of spiritual superiority to those around us. Heaven help us if we exchange our discipleship for self-glorification, for then we do not belong to Christ, and he is not our Lord. No, we are called to accomplish tasks for our Lord. Each one of us has a task.
Yet, in fulfilling the purpose for which God converted us, we may even have to suffer. God says in our text that he "will show Paul how much he must suffer for the sake of his name" (v. 16). And Paul, in giving his litany of his past, tells how true that became: five times beaten with forty lashes, three times with rods; once stoned; three times shipwrecked; a night and a day adrift at sea; always on a journey and always in danger for the sake of his Lord (2 Corinthians 11:24-29). But he could also say these slight momentary afflictions are "preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17). And so he could advise his churches to "rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice" (Philippians 4:4). Our discipleship, our conversions by the grace of God, our service in his name, lead to glory, good Christians, and to rejoicing.
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)
Scholars do not like to call this story "the conversion of Paul" because that seems to imply a change of religion. To say that Paul converted from Judaism to Christianity would indeed be anachronistic and inaccurate. Paul continued to regard himself as a Jew, even as a Pharisee, for the rest of his days (Philippians 3:5). Nor is it right to think that Paul's "conversion experience" brought him to make some new commitment to God that had been lacking before. Unlike others, whom Luke says persecuted Christians out of jealousy (Acts 5:17), Paul did so out of a righteous indignation against what he sincerely thought was blasphemy. Paul was zealous for the Lord; he just didn't know what the Lord wanted him to do. So, scholars say, the story is more a call narrative than a conversion account. The Lord reveals the divine will to this devoted servant so that he may serve his God better.
There is much truth in the above discussion, but what happens here is more profound than the designation "call narrative" may imply. Let us suppose that Paul had written a systematic theology and completed it the week before his trip to Damascus. Would he now need to add a new chapter and perhaps amend a few points here or there? Or would he have to throw the whole thing out and start over? I think the latter. Paul does not just discover his vocation, nor is it even just his theology that is corrected. He becomes, to use his own language, "a new creature" (2 Corinthians 5:17), and if that's not conversion, what is? We note, for instance, that Paul does not subsequently place his talents as a persecutor at the church's disposal and begin breathing threats and murder against the enemies of Jesus. It is not as though he is still the same person but has learned who the true blasphemers are. He is, fundamentally, a different person. The discovery that Jesus is the Son of God and that God has raised him from the dead changes everything.
The words that Jesus speaks to Paul on the road are illuminating: "Why do you persecute me? ... I am Jesus whom you are persecuting." Paul, of course, thought he was persecuting the church, the disciples of the Lord (v. 1). But Jesus so identifies himself with his followers that what is done to them is done to him. There were many scales that needed to be removed from Paul's eyes for him to see the world from God's perspective. Recognizing that Jesus was not only alive but active and present in the lives of people currently on earth was one of them.
Revelation 5:11-14
John's vision of heaven contains this beautiful hymn of worship. It presents Christ as "the Lamb that was slaughtered," emphasizing his role in sacrificial atonement. It presents him also as worshiped by all creatures in heaven and on earth. Angels, elders, every form of life declare him worthy of blessing and honor, glory and praise.
As such, the text serves liturgical purposes better than homiletical ones. But a consideration of its context may bring out its sermonic message more clearly. At the beginning of chapter five, John sees in his vision that God has a scroll. We are never told what is on the scroll -- that is not important. Rather, the question is, "Who can open it?" Who is worthy to unlock the mystery of God, to reveal whatever it is that God wants to say? To place this in a modern idiom, I would say that the scroll stands for "the meaning of life." Everyone wants to know: "What is the meaning of life?" As such, the question cannot be answered, for the answer would vary for different people at different places and times. The more important question is: "Through what or whom can we discover the meaning of life for us, today?"
The simple answer, of course, would be "through Jesus." Jesus reveals the meaning of life -- the meaning of history and the meaning of every individual's personal existence. But the way in which Revelation answers this question is itself significant.
In verse 5, the answer is first given: the Lion of Judah is worthy to open the seal. The seer looks, expecting to see a great and powerful lion. Instead, he sees ... a lamb (v. 6). A butchered lamb, in fact. Jesus is the lion and the lamb. Somehow, in this mysterious combination of symbols, a profound point is being made. When we look to Jesus as the powerful lion and yet perceive him as the slaughtered lamb, then we will have found the one worthy to open the scroll for us, to reveal what our life is all about. Then we will have found the one worthy of the hymn presented in the verses of today's lesson.
John 21:1-19
The focus in this lesson shifts to the mission that children of the resurrection are to perform in the world. We began two weeks ago with an invitation to see the Lord as active and present in our own lives. Then, last week, we were encouraged to believe the Word that proclaims him as active and present in the community. Already, indicators of mission have been planted. "As the Father has sent me," Jesus told his disciples last week, "so I send you" (John 20:21).
Two images of mission are employed here: the great catch of fish and the impending crucifixion of Peter. Taken together, they symbolize the triumph and humiliation that will characterize the church as it seeks to impact the world.
In Luke's Gospel, the story of the great catch of fish comes at the beginning, when Jesus first calls his disciples (Luke 5:1-9). It seems out of place there. Although the disciples in Luke do go out to heal the sick and cast out demons during Jesus' lifetime, there is no instance of them "catching people," that is, bringing others into the community of Jesus, until after Easter. Indeed, the only instance of this in the Gospels is found, ironically, in John (1:40-51), which saves the miraculous catch story for after Easter. The story fits well there, at any rate, for it now becomes descriptive of the post-Easter ministry of the church. It presents the expectation that the Easter community will expand in size and diversity.
Everyone agrees that the number of fish (153) is symbolic (see v. 11), but no one knows of what. One good guess is that in John's day, people may have believed that there were 153 nations in the earth, so that the fish symbolize the universal character of the church's mission. That's a nice thought, but we have no way of knowing exactly how they counted nations or how many they thought there were.
The conversation between Jesus and Peter indicates that "catching people" is not enough. The zoological metaphor shifts from viewing people as fish to viewing them as sheep, but more important, the vocation is now defined as "feeding," not merely finding or catching or herding. We remember other stories in which Jesus speaks of the shepherd going after a sheep that is lost (Luke 15:3-7). That image would be similar to catching fish with a net. Here, Jesus goes further. We show our true love for Christ by feeding others, that is, by working to meet their needs, whatever those may be. The image shift for mission is very important. The feeding paradigm takes the emphasis off of numbers and puts it on nurture. More important, it moves away from addressing mission in terms of the church's need (to grow) to focus on the needs of the people whom the church seeks to feed.
Does your church view its mission as "catching fish" or "feeding sheep"? Both are biblical images that capture aspects of the new vocation granted to children of the resurrection.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)
We have three different accounts of the conversion of Saul in the Gospel according to Luke (9:1-20; 22:6-16; 26: 12-18). They differ in a few minor details, but essentially they are the same. In addition, Paul writes of his conversion in Galatians 1:11-16, and in 1 Corinthians 9:1 and 15:8-9, stating that at the time of his conversion on the road to Damascus he saw the Lord. For Paul, that made him an apostle, equal to the twelve. An apostle, in Paul's thought, was one who had seen the risen Christ and had been sent to announce that good news. No mention is made of seeing the Lord in Luke's account, and for Luke, the only apostles were the twelve in Jerusalem who had been with the Lord during his life on earth. Luke always wanted to exalt the importance of the Jerusalem church.
Despite these differences, both Luke and Paul himself record that in the vicinity of Damascus Paul underwent a life-transforming experience, which changed him from Saul, the persecutor of the early Christians, to Paul, the Christian apostle to the Gentile world. The story in Luke stands in the middle of a series of conversion accounts -- of the Samaritans and of the Ethiopian eunuch in chapter 8 and of those converted by Peter in 9:32-42. The Spirit is moving mightily, out into the world. Certainly, however, the conversion of Saul is seen as the paradigmatic account.
The story of Saul is the story of an enemy of Christ. Saul hated Christians. He hunted them down and had them flogged and expelled from the synagogue (contrary to Luke's notice that Saul delivered them to Jerusalem). And because Saul hated Christians, he also hated Christ. That's what Jesus is saying in Matthew 25:40: "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." Paul was a strict Pharisee, and according to the teaching of the law, anyone who hung on a tree was cursed by God (Deuteronomy 21:23). Yet Christians were proclaiming that the Messiah himself had been condemned by the law and crucified on a tree. Moreover, they were maintaining that the law had been fulfilled and was at an end. That was too much for Pharisee Saul.
It has been the common stereotype to say that Saul was converted because he could not follow the law and that he finally realized that he could be saved only by grace. But that theory has no basis in fact. Paul himself states that as to righteousness, he was blameless under the law (Philippians 3:6). Paul could follow the law to the letter. It was not his own spiritual or psychological inner state that led to his conversion. We should give up that thought.
Indeed, Paul's story shows us rather clearly that we do not convert ourselves. There is nothing that we can do to transform our own lives. As the prophet Jeremiah once stated, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?/ Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). We cannot transform ourselves, because everything we do is tainted by our sin, and the more we rely only on ourselves, rather than on God, the farther we fall into sin.
Rather, we are converted to faith and our lives are transformed solely by the grace of God, by his active intervention in our hearts and minds. And that is what happened to Saul. He had heard about Jesus. He was present at the stoning of Stephen, and he knew what Christians were preaching. But suddenly Jesus himself confronted Saul on that Damascus road. A great light flashed around Saul from the sky, and he heard a voice call his name, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" When Saul asked whose voice it was, Jesus identified himself, told Saul to get up, and to enter Damascus. But Saul was struck blind and had to be led by his companions.
In short, Saul the zealot, a Hebrew of Hebrews, the Pharisaic fulfiller of the law, the active, energetic persecutor who could hunt down Christians to punish them -- that proud and vigorous man was suddenly helpless, needing to be led along like a little child and then unable to eat or drink for three days.
I wonder if that is not what happens to us when we truly become Christians, that we lose all reliance on ourselves and become solely dependent on the guiding of God. We too are an energetic, goal-oriented people, aren't we? We set our plans and arrange our schedules and work hard to fulfill our own desires and to reach our own goals. And then the risen Lord Christ intervenes in our lives and somehow our plans and goals become secondary. And what we really desire is to further God's purpose of love and to serve his will in the world. As John the Baptist said, we decrease and Christ increases (John 3:30), and the Lord takes over our lives. And we find, as a converted Paul found, that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Galatians 3:20).
That does not necessarily happen to us suddenly as it happened to Saul. We need not undergo a sudden conversion experience like Saul's to be taken into the Christian life. Some of us are raised in Christian homes, by truly devout parents, and we are nurtured and brought up in the faith, day by day and year by year, until our dependence on Christ becomes our way of life, and we become true servants of the Lord.
One thing is certain, however. Christ does not redeem us from our old life and from our old self for no purpose. In our text, when Ananias hesitates to go to Saul and lay his hands upon him, Ananias is told by the Lord, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel" (v. 15). Saul, who became Paul, was chosen by God for a task.
That is the way with all of the servants of the Lord in the Bible. Elijah, in the Old Testament, hearing the still, small voice of God on Mount Horeb, was not allowed to bask in the experience. Instead he was commanded to return to his people and to start a revolution (1 Kings 19). And Peter and James and John at the Transfiguration were not allowed to build booths on the mountain and to continue to enjoy the mystical vision. Instead, they had to go down and follow their Master to Jerusalem and to a cross.
So it is too with us. God has not transformed our lives by his active Spirit and made us his disciples just so we can enjoy his fellowship all by ourselves. And surely he has not made us Christians so we, in our pride, can claim some sort of spiritual superiority to those around us. Heaven help us if we exchange our discipleship for self-glorification, for then we do not belong to Christ, and he is not our Lord. No, we are called to accomplish tasks for our Lord. Each one of us has a task.
Yet, in fulfilling the purpose for which God converted us, we may even have to suffer. God says in our text that he "will show Paul how much he must suffer for the sake of his name" (v. 16). And Paul, in giving his litany of his past, tells how true that became: five times beaten with forty lashes, three times with rods; once stoned; three times shipwrecked; a night and a day adrift at sea; always on a journey and always in danger for the sake of his Lord (2 Corinthians 11:24-29). But he could also say these slight momentary afflictions are "preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17). And so he could advise his churches to "rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice" (Philippians 4:4). Our discipleship, our conversions by the grace of God, our service in his name, lead to glory, good Christians, and to rejoicing.
