On the Road to Damascus
I was always good at doing my job.
I was born in Tarsus, Turkey, in the Roman province of Cilicia. My father was a wealthy man, I was a wealthy man. We were Hebrews but we were Roman citizens and I was proud, PROUD, to be a Roman Jew.
I was a Zealot, and a Pharisee, and why shouldn’t I be? From the time I was a little boy I studied the Torah written by Moses, and I memorized the oral histories- the laws and traditions Moses memorized and passed down.
I knew the law- Jewish law, Roman law- all of them. I lived my life by all of the rules and I did it well.
So there I was, an educated man, from the tribe of Benjamin, the house of Israel. I had studied with the Rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem, and I spoke koine Greek. I was no shepherd barbarian.
I was too young to have met Yeshua Ben Yoseph, the one they call Jesus, you know who I mean- the Nazarene fisherman from the house of David. He was crucified on a Roman cross. Anyway, I wouldn’t have wanted to meet him, unless I had a stone in my hands.
Calling himself the Messiah?
I would have called him a dead man. Who did he think he was, some fish-smelling teacher from the sticks, covered in dirt and sawdust. He wasn’t even able to speak good Greek- he spoke in Aramaic so that he sounded like a carpenter or farmer, and I don’t think he could read or write.
He was a wandering Rabbi who spent his time with the poor and the powerless and the sick, even though his mother’s people were wealthy. What a waste- what a disgrace.
I paid no attention to him really, other than to be glad that Rome had ended his madness.
Except, the madness didn’t die with him. It spread like a plague- infecting good men, good Jews with his messianic message. I had been studying in Jerusalem when a man named Stephen was accused of speaking against the laws of Moses, accused of claiming that his resurrected Jesus was going to tear down the temple.
I held their coats while they stoned Stephen to death, and I was proud to do it. It made me sick that someone would say the things he did, claim the things he did- that someone would challenge all that I had learned.
After he was dead I went out and began to search for followers of the Way, this church of the risen Jesus. I hunted them from house to house, dragged them out and into justice.
I did anything I could to protect the Law that I understood, and I rejoiced.
Nikos Kaz-ant-zakis got it right when he wrote The Last Temptation of Christ. He got my words exactly right:
I lied, I stole, I cheated...
...I gambled, I whored, I drank
and persecuted, tortured and murdered.
Yes, murdered!
I killed anyone
who broke the law of Moses.
And I loved it, I enjoyed it,
I relished it, I reveled in it.
Because I thought I was doing God's will.
I thought I was doing God's will.
And the high priest of Jerusalem sent me
to Damascus to scourge that city.
And on the road to Damascus, just outside
the city, in the middle of the day...
...I was struck by a white light
that blinded me!
Yes.
And I heard a voice say:
"Saul, why are you persecuting me?
"Why are you against me?"
"Who are you?" I said.
And the voice said:
"Jesus."
And he...
...made me see.
I was led helpless like a child,
into a city that I was sent to scourge.
And God sent me Ana-nias instead...
...and he put his hands on me
and I opened my eyes...
...and I was baptized and became Paul.
And now I bring the good news to you.
Everything I thought I knew, was wrong.
I was wrong.
The wealthy Jewish Pharisee Saul of Tarsus became the poor apostle Paul. This wasn’t so much an actual name change as a change from using the upper-class Hebrew name Saul to using the common Latin translation Paul. It was a way of showing the world that he no longer considered himself to be strictly a Jew, but was now someone who spoke for both Jews and Gentiles alike. Today’s closest equivalent would be a William becoming a Billy. The same, but different.
And once he was different? Once he had his revelation on the Damascus Road?
The original 12 followers of Jesus of Nazareth, and Jesus himself, taught a new set of guidelines for life and religious understanding.
Paul created a religion around their teachings.
He used his education, his knowledge of Greek and Roman culture, his understanding of how wealth moved and could be used, to do what the original disciples could not- he took the religion of a young Jewish Rabbi out into the wider world, to the Gentiles. He was the first to say you don’t have to be Jewish to live as Jesus taught you to live- this is a religion for all people
Paul, the Pharisee who had never actually met Jesus, became the first missionary, the first church planter. Almost immediately after his conversion he started to tell people about it; in the Christian Bible the Book of Acts says:
“At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. All those who heard him were astonished and asked, "Isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?" He grew more and more influential, and he baffled the Jews living in Damascus by now claiming that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.
Of the 27 Books of the Christian New Testament, Paul is believed to have authored 14. 7 are fairly definitively his writing and another 7 are disputed but probably his. These books came from letters he wrote to the early churches he helped to found- letters of advice, guidance, and information on understanding the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. These letters were the emails of their day- correspondence carried by hand to church leaders. In reading them we get to see one half of a conversation carried out over months and miles.
Until he was martyred in about 60 ACE, he built the new religion from the ground up.
Paul’s experience on the Road to Damascus remains with us in modern American religion and culture. Our Christian churches are built on his theological underpinnings. We have expressions like “the scales fell from my eyes” and “I was blinded by the light.” While Peter may have been the rock on which Jesus set out to build his church, Paul was the architect of the building.
I’ve talked to many Unitarian Universalists who came to our creedless faith later in life- people who began their religious experience or life experience as “not Unitarian Universalist.” Quite a few of us have had our own experience of being blinded by that light, moments when a new truth came into sudden, blinding clarity.
One friend, a former Evangelical Christian says that for him it was like sitting in a bathtub filled with water that was slowly getting colder. One day his church was still warm enough, the next day he was too cold to stand it anymore. Another friend said “One day I put God down- and I just couldn’t pick him up again.” For one woman it was instantaneous- she picked up a book on Buddhism on a whim, and when she read about the Four Noble Truths she felt like she had been hit by a bolt of lightning.
An atheist joined a UU church after finding God through reading about the Baha’i faith, a former Lutheran after realizing she actually believed in a Goddess.
We are deliberately different from Paul in one sense- he set out to convert anyone who heard him. He intended to make sure that anyone he met had a chance to follow the teachings of Jesus. I would not ask anyone to follow a path of coercion and conversion.
I would, however, ask that you look at two things- his boldness, and his positivity.
Paul never met Jesus of Nazareth. Never spoke to him, never sat down peacefully with his followers while Jesus was alive.
He didn’t know the man.
He listened, really listened, while Jesus’s teachings were being explained. He made sure he understood well- so well that he could bring charges against Jesus’s followers for every point where they diverged from Jewish law.
And when he changed his mind- when he had that moment of blinding clarity which told him he was going in the wrong direction- he never doubted the revelation he had been shown. It took him three days to recover from his blinding- three days in which he could not see, and did not eat or drink as he tried to understand what had happened to him. Three days to process.
The number three had meaning for the people of that period. When we see periods of time like three days, or three weeks, or three months, or three years, this was a literary device- it let us know that what the writer meant was “a significant number of” days or weeks or years.
So when the writer of Acts tells us that Paul was blind and spent his time praying and thinking for 3 days, it may have really been 3 days, or that may have been the way to tell us that it was a meaningful period of time, enough time to truly experience the confusion and fear and dismay. Enough time to understand all the weight of the new course he was setting out on.
It was a way to tell us that Paul didn’t just have a revelation- he thought about that revelation before he did anything.
But once he had processed, he began to act.
He immediately began teaching. He immediately began preaching. He trusted himself and what he had seen to be true.
He trusted his own vision so much that he went to find the apostles who had actually known Jesus, and he told them he would be joining them.
When he disagreed with their opinions- the opinions of the men who had actually walked with Jesus- he told them they were wrong.
Sometimes loudly. Often publically.
Always boldly.
In Unitarian Universalism, each church stands alone. Our association, the UUA, lets our congregations work together to support one another and to achieve some desired goals, but we have no shared creed, no Bishops or Popes.
Each church is what its member and friends make it to be.
Each of you is Paul, after his revelation- equal to all the other apostles who came before you. You may not have been around when your congregation was born- you may have been a part of another religion, you may have taught that Unitarian Universalists were going to Hell or perdition. Hopefully you never stoned anyone but I’m not asking.
But like Paul, you are here now.
Claim your church. Claim your religion. Help to mold it and shape it.
Don’t get me wrong- I don’t think you will find many scholars who would make the claim that Paul was an easy man to get along with. He could be pedantic, violent, demanding, scolding- if he truly wrote everything attributed to him you can add misogynistic and even sometimes cruel to that list.
But the same man who said it is better to marry than to burn also said:
13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Paul knew what he believed to be true. He devoted no real time to trying to convince people that it was bad to worship Mithras, he told no one it was wrong to be a Jew. Instead he focused on why it was right to follow Jesus.
I have heard so many times “I used to be a … fill in the blank- Catholic, Lutheran, Jew, Buddhist” but here’s what didn’t work for me. That is fine information to share.
But the power, the beauty, comes from hearing the opposite.
Here is what I believe. Here is what I am called by, pulled by, spun and twisted and challenged by. Here is what I live for. Here is what I would die for. Here is what informs the decisions I am making as I help to shape this church.
If Paul could stand shaking on that road- terrified and blinded by the enormity of the revelation he had had, knowing he could die for the new faith he was about to claim. If he could stand on that road knowing that he had to face the men and women who had actually walked with Jesus- and tell them he had better ideas than they did- then you can face a group of fellow UU’s, and tell them you believe in prayer, or that you don’t. That you worship a God or goddess, or that you have invented a completely new version of Islam.
You can tell church founders that you have a pretty great idea about how to organize, or let a minister know you can see a better way to arrange a service. You can be a founding member and see a whole new way to be in community.
Claim your beliefs- not just where you were but where your days of blind reeling and reflection have led you to be. Tell your story of where you were when the lights went on- but focus on the light and where you ended up.
Claim your place in our shared faith and Our shared church. You have just as much right as those who came first and those who are yet to come.
Be open to on-going revelation, on any road you are traveling- welcome it when it comes and like Paul be unafraid to let the scales drop from your eyes.
Over and over again claim your new understanding and say with conviction not I was wrong, but praise the Lord, I saw the light.
Amen.