Telling a Story: Acts 22:6-16
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
“As I was on my way and drew near to Damascus, about
noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me. 7 And
I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are
you persecuting me?’ 8 And I answered, ‘Who are
you, Lord?’ And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are
persecuting.’ 9 Now those who were with me saw the
light but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to
me. 10 And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’
And the Lord said to me, ‘Rise, and go into Damascus, and there you will
be told all that is appointed for you to do.’ 11 And
since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, I was led by the
hand by those who were with me, and came into Damascus.
12 “And one
Ananias, a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by all the
Jews who lived there, 13 came to me, and standing
by me said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight.’ And at that very
hour I received my sight and saw him. 14 And he
said, ‘The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to
see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth; 15 for you
will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard. 16 And
now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your
sins, calling on his name.’” (ESV)
I have two
last names. For reasons that are best
known to them, my parents decided when I was born that I needed to have both of
their names and that there should not be a hyphen between them, which means I
have an intimate knowledge of the limitations of government forms and official
identification options. Since using both
was often discouraged—and was no small feat when I was first learning how to write—I
experimented with which one made more sense to me as an identifier as I was
growing up. Clearly I've landed on
Waggy, now, but when I was younger I would go back and forth if I could;
sometimes it depended on whether I wanted to fit it or stand out, and sometimes
on whether I wanted to make sure that people knew I did not fit into one box.
My fourth-grade
teacher was a woman named Mrs. Bright, a condescending human who ruled her
classroom like a tiny dictatorship.
There is a deep dislike between us that will last until the universe
collapses. It may seem odd for a
nine-year-old to have an archenemy, but I did; it was a mutual antagonism. She was not impressed with me, and I did not
have much respect for her. I spent much
of fourth grade in the principal’s office for one thing or another because riling
her was far more important to me than mastering long-form division.
Even pastors are humans, remember
that.
In Mrs. Bright’s classroom of
oppressive order, she always had us line up in alphabetical order if we were to
leave the classroom to go to some other event like music or lunch. I quickly learned that I could either be at
the end of the line—Waggy—or toward the front—Duymovic—and that Mrs. Bright
could not tell me I was wrong. They were
and are both my name, and she couldn’t tell me not to go by my name.
She could send me to the principal’s
office, and did, but it was a fascinating lesson to me—how to be petty with
adults, sure, but also that identity changes depending on what you’re doing
with it and why. The story of who I was
to other people could shift.
As we continue through the book of
Acts, we come to Paul’s narrative of his own conversion. It may seem like you’ve heard this one
before, and should have—after all, we’re nearing the end of the book and we’ve
been with Paul a while; surely we’ve heard how he stopped being a Pharisee and
started being a Christian. And we
have: in Acts 9, the narrator Luke tells
a third-person overview of Paul’s encounter with God. The story in chapter nine is the one we
usually encounter in Sunday school or sermon-writing because it’s good
storytelling. We get the lead-in of the
persecutor Saul who hunts down the followers of the Way; we get the suspense of
those who were travelling with Saul and didn’t see the light that knocked Saul
off his horse; we get the interaction with Ananias and God when Ananias says I
don’t think I can do this and God says you absolutely can and I will be with
you.
Here in chapter 22, we don’t get all
those side characters. We get a
first-person account of Saul’s transformation into Paul with all the
limitations of the first-person point of view.
The encounter is remarkably similar to the one told in chapter nine, but
then it should be—both were written by Luke.
Paul, actual Paul, does mention his
own conversion in some of his letters, but he never gives the kind of narrative
flair that Luke does in Acts—he doesn’t need to.[1] Paul isn’t interested in storytelling, he’s
interested in helping these fledgling churches sort out their own interpersonal
and spiritual issues. But Luke is
building the foundations of the Church’s history and he needs people to know
that Paul, the great convert from violence, got it.
The audience in front of which he got
it, however, changes; the context for chapter nine is different than the
context for chapter 22, and like my understanding that my names could do
different things for me in different times and places, Luke’s description of
Paul’s emphases changes ever-so-slightly to fit the needs of the moment. This first-person account comes after Paul
has tangled with Roman and Jewish authorities yet again and is trying to
explain himself. A few verses before
today’s section, we learn that Paul is speaking in the “Hebrew language,” he-BRY-dee
dee-a-LEC-toe,[2]
which means he’s not explaining himself to the Romans here. In Aramaic, Paul rattles off a list of why he
is part of the Jewish community, why his credentials matter enough that they
should believe him when he tells this story of a light and blindness and a God
Who said, “Stop persecuting Me.”
Luke’s Paul is a very smart fellow,
really; who he is doesn’t change, but how he identifies himself does—and this
is a familiar reality to all of us. We
are not exactly the same person with our in-laws as we are with our best
friends; we are not the same in the workplace as we are at the grocery
store. This isn’t lying, or falsifying
our identity; it is recognizing that we are multi-faceted people and that not
all facets are equally helpful in all situations.
It is also recognizing that shifting
gears, shifting pieces of the story of ourselves that we feel comfortable
telling, can allow us to belong to one community or not belong to
another. After Paul tells this story of
conversion, it doesn’t go over terrifically well; the audience rejects his invitation
for they themselves to convert. Savvy as
ever, Paul switches to the Roman guard and speaks of his Roman citizenship, now
claiming the reality that he is part of the Roman community and explaining why
his credentials matter such that they shouldn’t imprison or thrash him.
Far more than my small act of
defiance by using both of my names to complicate my teacher’s life, Paul is using
whole other parts of his cultural and linguistic identity when moving between
his conversion narrative here and his plea for his life later on. It’s a form of communicative adjustment
called “code switching,” something that’s been getting a lot more attention in
scholarship and general parlance these days because folks have realized that
minorities have to do it a lot. The linguistic
and cultural markers of, say, an African American aren’t necessarily the same
as the markers of a white person even if they come from the same geographical
area, and since “white” is the majority in America it means the African
American has to learn both her markers and that of white people and be
able to switch back and forth as needed.[3] Paul, who was a minority as a Jew in the
Roman Empire, had to learn both his own Jewish culture and Aramaic and the
culture of the Empire and the Greek language.
He had to be able to tell different parts of his story to the different
kinds of people who would listen.
White folk rarely have to do the kind
of wholesale code switching that those moving in and out of white spaces do,
but we are all doing some kind of dance to belong at any given point. Paul knew that he was telling his story to a
specific group and tailored it appropriately.
Joel B. Green writes, “Even [Paul’s] report of his commission on the
road to Damascus is saturated with demonstrations of Jewish faithfulness. He refers repeatedly to ‘the Lord,’
mentioning the name ‘Jesus’ only because this was the name given to him in his
vision. Ananias is presented not as a
Christian but with transparent credentials as a devout Jew. Although Luke’s readers know that the ‘him’
and ‘his’ to whom Paul refers is Jesus, Paul himself never makes this clear.”[4]
If I am giving a sermon here at St.
Luke’s to this congregation, I’m not going to saturate it with references to
inside jokes from my college days.
That’s the wrong way to reach you, the wrong language to use to
communicate that I belong in this community, that my story or my sermon should
matter to you. But a sermon is not a
conversion story and some of us may be uncomfortable telling that kind of story
differently—after all, it happened a certain way, right? Yes, but the things we highlight help our
listeners be able to hook into why this is important in the first place.
“What shall I do, Lord?” Paul’s question after figuring out Who was
speaking to him indicates that he understands this is not merely God making a
point but God inviting him into something else, and Paul who is trying to invite
those listening to him knows the power of a good story to draw you in. Paul can’t create a bright light that blinds
his listeners and pulls them in via miracle, but he can say I am one of you, I see
and uphold your faithfulness, I’m not selling you something that is
useless. His evangelism starts in
similarity of relationship.
The concept of Christian evangelism
is a sore spot for many these days because it often conjures images of pushy
Bible salesmen and people who hand you small New Testaments because you’re
going to Hell. But what Paul teaches us
about evangelism, good and helpful evangelism, is that the story cannot be told
from a place of other-ness. It is of no
help to anyone to walk up to someone who is not of the faith and say, “You
don’t know as much as I do about this truth, you should believe it or death
will be terrible and the afterlife full of condemnation.” Fear is a tenuous and sorrowful way to begin
a life of faith and it paints a God Who is always one step away from kicking
you back out.
But a relationship? “You don’t know what I do about this truth
but you and I share all these cultural markers, we went to the same school or
love the same band, here’s a thing that has been so important to me and I would
be delighted to talk about it with you and see whether it might become
important to you, too.” There is honor
of the other person’s experience there; there is value in the shared
connection; there is the use of who we actually are in the world, we who have
lives of faith rather than just faith in our lives.
And then, sometimes, it doesn’t
work. Sometimes we tell the story and,
like Paul, find our audience less than receptive and we need to walk away. Okay.
Hopefully, if you ever find yourself having a conversation about the
faith you hold, it doesn’t end in folks trying to imprison you or flay you with
a whip, but even when it is people simply saying don’t talk to me about this,
that’s fine. Paul walks away from the
situation and moves on to the next thing because it is not our job to save the
world.
Let me say that again because it’s
kind of important: no matter what
stories we tell of ourselves or how we tell that story; no matter whether we
are timid or bold in sharing the faith we hold; no matter how many times we say
that Jesus called my name and I answered, Christians are not the ones saving
other people. Salvation is God’s job. The work of the soul is the work of the
Spirit. The ways in which people do or
do not have faith, do or do not believe in Jesus the Christ as savior,
sanctifier, redeemer, and coming King, do or do not believe in whatever doctrine
of the Christian faith are not ours to mandate.
We Christians are the
storytellers. We are the seed planters,
the wandering preachers, the invitational presences, the willing friends. We are not, have never been, and absolutely
cannot be the caretakers of others’ spirits.
I find this delightfully reassuring because I often have enough on my
hands trying to manage my own spirit; I don’t have it in me to take that on for
others.
Do you hear the difference,
Church? When Paul speaks in Aramaic of a
God Who called to him to go to Damascus and meet a man who should have feared
him but instead helped him to be baptized and begin a whole new journey of
faith, he is not manipulating his audience into the soul quota he needs to hit
for the day. He is telling a story, his
story, of how his whole life changed and it mattered, it mattered that
God knew his name and called him to be a witness to everyone.
How do you tell your story? How do you align yourself with the various
groups you’re in, recognizing the ways you belong, using the relationships you
have not to maneuver but to connect? Saul
isn’t the only one called into a different kind of life than he had planned,
into a relationship he didn’t see coming.
“And now, why do you wait?”
May God grant us the cunning to see the
ways we can tell our stories that honor the teller and the hearer; may the
Spirit open our hearts to listen for Her words at the best times; and may the
Christ walk beside us with the strength and wisdom to be people of faith in a
hurting world. Amen.
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