A New Creation

How can we engage this difficult-to-believe dramatic story about Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus?  Is this story historical fact or a metaphorical story designed to help us understand the profound depth of Saul’s re-naming experience?  Names were very important in the ancient world.  A person’s name was their bond, their oath, their identity, their ID, their passport.  When we say in the Lord’s Prayer, “hallowed be thy name;” we mean that God’s name is sanctified, consecrated, or set apart as holy.  God’s name is holy; God’s name contains the very holiness of God.  So when Abram’s name was changed to Abraham, or Sarai’s name was changed to Sarah, or Saul’s name was changed to Paul, we know that these people changed before God, their new lives marked with new names.  They became new creations.  When we accept God’s love, we become new creations.  No matter our old name, we are re-named “holy.”

Will you join me in prayer?  “Holy one of many names, we thank you that we have become new creations in you, renamed “children of the living God.”  We thank you for all of creation, and we thank you that through your grace, we are new creations in Christ.  Help us live into our new identity of new creations by following Jesus.  Amen.”

Saul was blinded on the road to Damascus.  Have you ever been blinded?  We can get lost in a blinding snow-storm or a blinding fog.  We speak of blind ambition, being blind-sided, being blinded in rage or having a blind spot.  Saul was completely blinded in anger at the early Christ-followers.  He was filled with blind ambition to attack the early church.  Saul had a real blind spot for seeing God at work in the world.  Saul was spiritually blinded.  Have you ever been spiritually blind?

After I had open-heart valve surgery, when I awoke, my eyes were mis-focused—my left eye had rotated 20 degrees, and even though I could see something out of each eye, the two images did not overlap when I looked with of both eyes.  I could see, but I could not comprehend what I was seeing unless I closed one eye.  The days and weeks recovering from the intense chest wound of heart surgery were even more worrisome because I wondered if I would ever “see normally” again.  I was two-eyed blind and was forced to wear an eye patch for weeks.  Then one morning after weeks of prayer giving the whole problem back to God, I awoke and my eye had corrected back to normal.  Trust me, I no longer take my eyesight for granted.  There was a spiritual blindness in my life as I yearned to control life.  I was blind to God’s hope because I was so worried about my health.  But through prayer and patience, and God’s love, my blindness resolved…

Whether we are physically blinded or blindly on the wrong path, I think that we all have wandered away from right-seeing at some time in our life.  Luke, who wrote both Luke and Acts, often uses physical blindness as a metaphor for spiritual blindness.  Saul was blind but Paul could see, both physically and spiritually.  Paul became a new creation, born un-blind again. 

The Captain of the ship Titanic refused to slow down that fateful night.  The ship had impenetrable multiple hulls of the strongest steel, so the ship was safe from any harm the engineers had told him.  He was blinded by arrogance and overconfidence.  There were ships close enough to have helped them that night had they been summoned when the Titanic collided with the iceberg, but the Captain still refused to believe his impenetrable  hull had been pierced, until water was ankle deep in the mailroom.  By then it was too late.  The Captain’s continued blindness caused many to be lost.

How is God revealed in our changing times?  When Saul was first blinded in his changing times, he was furious and angry, like the unbelieving Titanic Captain.  Our passage from Acts continues as Saul was blinded for three days after the incident on the Damascus road.  Three long days of darkness… 

Our Christian tradition talks of the dark night of the soul, when we are confronted with our mortality and the depth of hopelessness of our human condition.  Saul suffered in those three days of darkness, faced with the most important decision of his life.  Did Saul choose the old way of life, the old way of rules and laws and his tradition?  Or did Paul choose a new way, a new way following Christ in love and compassion?  I imagine those days were agonizing for Saul.  We also know that Jesus agonized during a dark time like this.  There was a dark time when Jesus hung on the cross as he lashed out at God, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”   But soon after this enormous lament, Jesus was re-covered in God’s arms of love again; Jesus forgave his tormentors, and gave up his soul to be with God forever. This epic battle, this dark night of the soul, is presented to us in Psalm 22, the Psalm Jesus quotes about God forsaking him.  At the darkest point in this Psalm, there is a small word, a change of heart, a new direction, when the Psalmist says, “But, you, O Lord, are not far away.” The Psalmist reverses course and faces God again.  The Psalmist becomes a new creation, and the new creation explodes into the joy of Psalm 23, “The Lord is Shepherd.”  The next time you are feeling down, read Psalm 22 and Psalm 23 together.  This same turning back to God, this same light piercing the dark night of the soul occurred within Saul on the road to Damascus that day.  But, some spark of new reality or recognition or seeing of the possibility of Christ appeared within Saul.  And with this new light, there was a turn to God and a new creation who now could see, re-named Paul. 

Saul’s story is not an unbelievable story about long ago.  This is the story of our lives.  Each of us has, at one time or another, taken the wrong fork in the road.  Somewhere, we each have gone down the wrong road or made the wrong choice.  We are all profoundly human.  We all have encountered a blindness on our road to Damascus, a dark night of the soul, when we are faced with the most difficult decision of our lives—do we follow Jesus or not?  But unlike the arrogant Titanic Captain, Saul struggled deeply and restlessly, trying to do the right thing for God.  Saul initially thought his persecution of the early Christ-followers was following God.  Saul’s deep twitchy impatient seeking drove him to finally turn around and zealously work for God.  This was driven by a deep unsatisfied spiritual connection that Saul so desperately sought, and in that seeking, God showed up in a blinding flash on the Damascus road.  Saul was forced to stop and listen for God in three days of blindness, three dark nights of soul.

We are all walking down our road to Damascus breathing threats and destruction as Saul did.  We are all stubbornly and habitually living our lives in patterns that may not be working.  When Saul was struck blind, he remained unchanged and blind for three days.  Are we stubbornly unchanged and blind even as God is calling us into being new creations?  But God was not done with Saul simply because Paul could now see.  Saul’s physical blindness focused his attention on his spiritual blindness.  Then, he turned back to God, changing his ways and becoming a new creation in Christ, named Paul.  But now that Paul could see, God was only beginning with this new creation.  While Saul was full of hate and discrimination, nothing changed for him;  but when Paul turned to God, he became a new creation, changing the world, and the church, forever.

Paul’s response on the road to Damascus is patterned after Jesus’ response in our Gospel lesson from John today.  The crowd of Jewish leaders asked Jesus, “How long will you keep us in suspense?  If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”  Jesus showed the people in the Gospel of John many plain signs that he was the Messiah, but still they would not see—they were blind to what Jesus was showing them.  They were physically seeing the signs, but spiritually blind to the sign’s meaning.  Jesus would show them a sign and they would see nothing spiritually.  At first, Saul was physically blind and spiritually blind.  But during Saul’s dark night of the soul, something shifted within him.  As he listened to God, his spiritual blindness ended, and Saul turned back to God.  Then God lifted Saul’s physical blindness and renamed him Paul.  So also with how people reacted to Jesus.  Some around Jesus believed, some did not.  When we enter the dark night of the soul, we either can harden our hearts and turn away from God, or be changed into a new creation.  It is our choice—God will not decide for us.

Where in our lives are we blinded physically and spiritually?  Have ambition, arrogance, tradition, stubborn habits or old ways blinded us?  Are we open to being led by God into new ways of being and new ways of seeing?  Are we stubborn and blind like Saul or the Titanic Captain, or are we receptive to become new creations like Paul?  This story of a blinding flash on the Damascus road reminds us all to stop for a moment and ask, “Where is God at work right now in my life?  Am I on the wrong path, blinded by arrogant habits or fear of change?  Where is God inviting me to see anew and become a new creation?” 

We are all walking along on the road to Damascus together.  O God, lead us to turn back to you, ending our spiritual blindness.  Make us new creations in you.  Amen.