SPEAKER_03 0:00

Good morning. My name is Sylvia. And the Old Testament reading is found in Exodus chapter 3, verses 1 through 4. Moses was taking care of the flock for his father-in-law, Jethro, Midian's priest. He led his flock out to the edge of the desert, and he came to God's mountain called Horeb. The Lord's messenger appeared to him in a flame of fire in the middle of the bush. Moses saw that the bush was in flames, but it didn't burn up. Then Moses said to himself, Let me check out this amazing sight and find out why the bush isn't burning up. When the Lord saw that he was coming to look, God called to him out of the bush. Moses, Moses. Moses said, I'm here. The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

The New Testament reading is found in Acts chapter 9, verses 1 through 4. Meanwhile, Saul was still spewing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest seeking letters to the synagogues in Damascus. If he found persons who belonged to the way, whether men or women, these letters would authorize him to take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. During the journey, as he approached Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven encircled him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice asking, Saul, Saul, why are you harassing me? The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

My name is Karen, and the gospel reading is found in John 15, 13 through 17. No one has greater love than to give up one's life for a friend. You are my friends if you do what you command. I do not call you servants any longer because servants don't know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends because everything I heard from my father, I have made known to you. You didn't choose me. I chose you and appointed you for that you could go and produce fruit and so that your fruit could last. As a result, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give to you. I give you these commandments so that you can love one another. The beautiful gospel of the Lord.

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Please remain standing with me as we pray this morning, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We ask that through your word today that you would speak to us, to open our ears to hear your voice, open our minds to understand your love and your ways in greater ways, and open up our hearts to receive everything that you have for us. Would you continue to form us into the image and likeness of Jesus? And all God's people said, Amen. You may be seated. Good morning, Saints. It's great to see you again. Happy Father's Day. And welcome again. If you're new or newer, or you're with your dad, we welcome you. We're glad you're here. And welcome to everybody who's watching online or watching uh the recording later on. We're grateful for you to be able to tune in uh this way. Um, the moment that I realized something had shifted for me um in the parenting journey uh was actually before uh Cora, our oldest, was born. We had uh that moment where we went into uh the teacher's office and had the ultrasound and found out that we were having a girl. And I was terrified. I grew up in a family of all boys, and I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do. Uh and I remember just kind of going like a little bit of panic starting to happen. And for some reason, sometime in the next couple of weeks, I ended up at the mall. Um, I hate the mall. Um, I hate shopping. I hate everything associated with shopping. So I'm I can't even remember why I was there. Uh, but it was like late winter, early spring, and I walk into the mall and I start walking like through the hallways, and I turn over and I realize it's prom dress season. And I'm like, oh no, she will not be wearing that and she will not be wearing that. And I was like, what has happened to me? Like something has shifted. Uh, and all of a sudden I'm seeing the world in a completely different way. Fast forward 17 years, and my daughter was going to her first prom this spring, and I'm going, oh my words, how my world has changed over these 17 years. Fatherhood has been one of those most significant uh changes that have happened in my life, according to a new book called Dad Brain, that even altered my neurons uh and caused my brain to shrink by 1%, according to some science. So you can go and check it out for yourself. I'm saying it was at least 1%, uh, if not more. But we all go through several major transitions in our life things that just happen uh or things that we choose. Some of those are biological, that we move from being newborns held in our parents' arms to childhood and running around on playgrounds, to dealing with all of the confusing emotions and hormones of adolescence, to moving into adulthood and the pressures that are associated with that, to moving into aging. We go through significant changes. Some of those are more educational or vocational, where we move from our kindergarten graduation through our elementary years, into middle school and high school. No one could pay me to repeat middle school at any point in my life. Into career and calling and retirement and thinking through, okay, what does work and significance and education look like? But we have other things that we go through that are less about passing from one stage or one status to another. Instead, they involve something internal, even like a shift in our sense of self and how we see ourselves and how we see God and how we see the world. There are transformations that we go through that change who we are and how we think and what and who we love. Some of those moments are sudden where a light bulb sort of goes off, or we're stopped in our tracks, or we're knocked off our horse. Some of them are a little bit slower. They unfold over time, sometimes at the end of a very long journey of looking for something. And we have a word for this. That word is conversion. In Christian theology, we use that word to talk about the initial conversion of faith, of coming to faith in Jesus, what some theologians refer to as justification or regeneration or being born again, of entering into this new world and this new life and new relationship with God. But then we realize that once we enter into that life, that we've really entered into a life of conversion, of one change and transformation after another, theologians often call sanctification, or the other writers have called the renovation of the heart, a full transformation of ourselves into the person that we were designed and created to be as bearers of God's image. If you have a Bible, you can turn with me to Acts chapter 9 or follow along on the screens. We're in a series through the book of Acts called Kingdom Movement. The book of Acts narrates the expansion of the kingdom of God by the power of the Spirit through the church from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and ultimately to the ends of the earth. The first seven chapters are focused on that church in Jerusalem, but then the focus shifts after the martyrdom of Stephen. After he's killed, the persecution intensified and the church scattered. And then we start to see the gospel go with the scattered church. Beginning in chapter eight, the gospel is proclaimed in Samaria. And then we get a series of conversion stories. Individuals who encounter the gospel in remarkable ways and it changes their life. The first is the Ethiopian eunuch that we heard about a few weeks ago. And the second is the most famous conversion story in history. If you're familiar with the Bible, it's the conversion of Saul, who we refer to as Paul, the man who moves from the church's public enemy number one to the most prominent leader in the early church. The story is so robust that it's actually three times in the book of Acts. It's repeated, Acts chapter 9, Acts chapter 22, Acts chapter 26. And it's viewed by a number of scholars as a paradigm or a pattern for conversion. In other words, like this is what transformation looks like in some way. There's a pattern to this that's maybe similar in Paul's life as in ours, or a pattern that we can see that sometimes this is how the initial conversion happens and continual conversion. And sometimes even those who experience deconversion experience the same kind of movements, but just in a very different way. So I want to look at his story today as a way to give us maybe some helpful language for our own spiritual journeys, for our own life with God, for our own moments of change and transformation. I want to name five of them and then give us some time to think, okay, where do I find myself today in the middle of whatever change Jesus is bringing about in my life? The first phase is this is that spiritual transformations often begin with a catalyst, some crisis, some challenge, some curiosity, thing that we're now sort of wondering about in a different way, or some new desire that we have. Or sometimes just a movement through those normal phases of life. We find ourselves asking different questions or needing different things as we move through. But this catalyst becomes an impetus for taking action of some kind. Paul was a Pharisaic Jew. In other words, he was the most Jewish of the Jews. He was a fanatical fundamentalist. He lived in this strict adherence to a particular interpretation of the Torah, of the law of Moses. He's devout in every way. And his belief is that if everyone in Israel would obey the same way that he and his group obeys, then it would sort of force God's hand into bringing about his kingdom. Then if we could just get everybody to do the right thing all the time, then everything will work out. That's been my parenting strategy. Um most of the time, and it hasn't really worked. But there's just deep desire in him. And all of a sudden, the Jesus movement comes on the screen on the scene. And the Jesus movement becomes a clear and present danger to everything that he holds dear. The growing church, its rapid spread, its proclamation about Jesus as King, the miraculous healings that are taking place, the crowds that are gathering present a disruption and a challenge to his carefully crafted worldview. And maybe for each of us, we can have moments where like, I, yeah, I've had catalytic kind of moments in my life, in my life with God. For me, it was my parents' divorce, it was the first one. And then there have been others, the sudden end of a relationship, the mortal failure of a pastor that I loved and looked up to, a miscarriage, a marriage crisis, a child in the hospital. All of those kind of things can be moments where like, I just don't know if I know anything anymore. I don't know where the ground is. I don't know what's true. They're not always negative either. Sometimes it's just a new relationship. David Pacquiaum discovered Jesus by meeting Carmen Pacquiaum. The only successful story of missionary dating in history, right there. Sometimes that becomes a catalyst, oh, I like that person and they like Jesus. Um, sometimes becoming a parent, sometimes starting a new job, sometimes entering into a different season. All of a sudden, we find ourselves asking different questions or looking for different things. If you were to think about your own life with God, can you chart out some moments? Like, oh, this has been a catalyst for me. Or maybe you find that you're in one right now. It's interesting, the catalyst for Paul, for Saul, was the life of the church. That he looked at the life of the church and the way that they were living, there was something about it that was like, I have to do something about this. I wonder if that's actually the call of the church to live our lives in such a way in the world that we're in that it becomes a catalyst for people asking questions. Why are you the way that you are? In the workplace, in your school, in your neighborhoods? Why is it that you think and believe and act that way? That catalyst becomes a movement, then oftentimes to what Louis Rambeau called this second phase. He called it a quest. It's a looking, a searching. Think a better word as a pilgrimage. A kind of long walk, just going, okay, something has happened to me, and now I am looking for answers in some way. Saul's quest was more of a crusade. He was just trying to end the threat. He wanted to return to the status quo. And sometimes that happens to us too. Something happens, and we want to give all of our energy to just trying to make things go back the way that they were. Can I just set everything back in order again? Saul gets introduced to the end of chapter seven at Stephen Stoning and chapter eight. We're told that he wreaked havoc on the church, going into homes and dragging men and women into prison. He's reintroduced in chapter nine, which we just read a few minutes ago. And then at this point, he's doing all of his activity in Jerusalem, but he sets his eyes at this point to Damascus, an ancient city about 150 miles to the north, where there's a considerable Jewish population that probably was welcoming these new Christians that were fleeing Jerusalem. And the gospel is probably starting to spread there. And so Saul's getting more irritated and going, okay, now I need to take the job there. And he goes to the high priests and he asks for permission to go and to continue to arrest believers there. He's desperate for this new movement to stop. Sometimes the catalyst causes a desperation in us. We're just looking for something to stop or to return. We're desperate for answers, we're desperate for healing, we're desperate for peace, we're desperate for joy, we're desperate for direction, we're desperate for something to help us find solid ground or a new orientation. And here's what happened to Saul along the way. During the journey, as he approached Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven encircled him and he fell to the ground. He heard a voice asking him, Saul, Saul, why are you harassing me? Stronger word may be why are you persecuting me? And Saul asked, Who are you, Lord? And he says, I am Jesus, who you are harassing, who you are persecuting, who you are coming after. That was the reply. So he saw a light. It's the same word for lightning. So it wasn't just like a candle, but some bright flash. And then he heard a voice. It's the common elements of a theophany, of an encounter with the divine. It's reminiscent of places like Sinai, where there is fire and there is a voice. And the voice cries out and says, Saul, Saul. It's reminiscent of those Old Testament encounters. Abraham, Abraham, Jacob, Jacob, Moses, Moses. And Saul asks, Who are you? And he says, I am Jesus. The one you are harassing. The one you are persecuting. Quick sidebar here in the middle of that. That's a pretty phenomenal statement. That Jesus at this moment in this conversation with Saul identifies himself with the people that Saul is going after. Jesus is the one who identifies himself with his people. In other words, whatever it is that you are going through today, whatever emotions Father Day, Father's Day brings up, whatever you're walking through in your life, in your family, in your relationship, in your finances, and your medical condition, whatever it happens to be, what Jesus is saying here is that whatever his people go through, he also goes through it. That he is going through it with. That's the kind of intimate identification Jesus has with his people. But what Paul has here is really at the core of every conversion story, it's an encounter. It is an encounter with the resurrected Jesus. Some have that encounter in a dream or a vision, or they have that encounter in creation, or through the Holy Spirit, or in the church, through the scriptures. Sometimes people meet Jesus in and through his people, in the saints, and songs and sacraments. Even our prayer on Sunday morning is that as we gather, that God would reveal himself, that he make himself known, that we would have an encounter every week with him. Maybe not as dramatic as lightning and voices, but if it so be it. Say, Jesus, we want to know and experience your presence. There's even an anticipation and a prayer as we come into the building of saying, okay, Jesus, would you show up in some way? And the truth is we serve an infinite God who there are infinite things to know about. And we never reach a place in our journey of Jesus where Sunday's like, yeah, I got that all figured out. I understand Him and His ways. Sometimes say around here that discipleship is about our whole lives for our whole lives. There's no part of our life that Jesus is not interested in, and no time in our life that he doesn't care intimately about. There's always more of him to encounter. So he says this in Acts 9, verse 6, now get up and enter the city, and Paul and Saul, ye will be told what to do. Those traveling with him stood there speechless, for they heard the voice, but they saw no one. And after they picked Saul up from the ground, he opened his eyes, but he couldn't see. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind and neither ate or drank anything. Paul's encounter knocks him off his feet. There isn't a horse in the story, though all the art shows him on a horse. But instead, what we see is here's Saul, strong, confident, independent, self assured. And he has an encounter with Jesus, and he's Now confused, disoriented, dependent, and childlike. He's convinced that he saw the world so clearly and so rightly. And then he meets Jesus and he realized he can't see at all. And he must be taken by the hand and led into Damascus. Where he fasts for three days. Maybe a sign of contrition and repentance. But I think what we have to learn from this is that an encounter with Jesus most often results in a posture of humility. A posture of humility. Where sometimes when we encounter Jesus, we find ourselves still confused, or maybe realizing our helplessness, or realizing that the way that we thought or believed or imagined or loved needs to be transformed. The Ethiopian eunuch is reading the scriptures and he finds himself confused. In the very next chapter, Peter's gonna see a vision and Peter is going to be confused. In each of these moments, we have uh ties where people encounter Jesus and they're like, I don't know what to do with what just happened. And in every case, what ends up being the sort of beautiful moment is there's a realization they need others, and others come into their story. That in those moments, when they find themselves lost or confused or helpless or disoriented, there's a trusted guide. How often do we need trusted guides along our way? And whenever there's a moment in our life and we start to rethink things, we start to begin looking for answers. A great question to ask ourselves is who are the voices that we're listening to? Who are the hands that we're holding and trusting that they're going to take us to the place that we need to go? Who are those that we're trusting to show us how to live in the right way? Are they people that we know? Are they people that know us? Are they people whose lives are worth emulating? That we say at the end of the day, I want to become more like them. This is actually one of the calls for spiritual moms and spiritual dads. That all of us as followers of Jesus are called to grow to the place that we become spiritual parents in the church. What does that mean? It means being a trusted God. Somebody who knows what it means to walk with Jesus in whatever sort of crisis, through whatever pilgrimage, who knows how to understand the encounters that we have with God and to come along with others and be able to grab their hand at whatever blindness they might be feeling and to walk with them in the way that leads to life. That's why community matters so much. And while you hear us say, like, we have these stay and play things afterwards during the summer. Why? It's so that we can meet one another. Well, why do we need to meet one another? Because we desperately need one another. We desperately need one another. We desperately need trusted guides to help us follow Jesus along the way. And so while all this is happening to Saul, the Lord spoke to a trusted guide. A disciple named Ananias goes to Ananias and he says, Go to Judas' house, you know, the one straight street. I don't know why that detail is in there, but it's there. And say, And go and lay hands on Saul and restore his height. And Ananias goes, You know, I've heard some things about that guy. I'd prefer not to go. And the blur replied, Go. Um like um, this man is the agent I have chosen to carry my name before the Gentiles, before kings and the Israelites. I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. It's a rough statement. Sometimes we want to interpret that as that this is a punishment uh for Paul's past acts. It's like he's he was the one causing suffering, now he's going to suffer. But what the text says is he's gonna suffer for the sake of Jesus' name. That the persecutors become the persecuted one, and Acts is not shy about the suffering of God's people. What reminded is the way of Jesus is not a way of comfort or ease. It's a way of sacrifice, it's a way of a cross, it's a way of self-denial, of self-giving. And it's on the other side that there is joy and there's freedom and there is hope. But there is a way of a cross. And so these moments sometimes for us can become a new catalyst. Or maybe we came into faith thinking, well, by following Jesus, it just means that everything in my life is going to be up and to the right. And then you realize, oh no, life still happens. And that's another another catalyst. Sends us on another pilgrimage with another deep need to meet Jesus in this current new state or season that we're in. So Ananias went to the house and he placed hands on Saul and he said, Brother Saul, the Lord sent me, Jesus, who appeared to you on the ways, you were coming here, and he sent me so that you could see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And instantly flakes fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again, and he got up and he was baptized. Ananias placed his hands on Saul and he called him brother. It's only the power of the gospel that has the ability to make an enemy a family member or a friend. And instantly Paul regained his sight and he was baptized. And the last movement here, he was accepted into community. He's now called brother. I think this is the missing component of so much of American evangelicalism, especially when we think about evangelism or discipleship or spirituality, we almost always think of them on individualistic terms. But genuine Christian conversion always leads us more deeply into the life of the church. It always leads us more deeply into the life of community. That a turning to Christ is inherently turning to others. Coming to know the triune God is coming to know the people of the triune God. This is Saul's story, is of course not everyone's story, but there are these common elements or common patterns. Things that we might find in our own lives and our own stories. So as we prepare to come to the table today, I want us to take a moment to reflect on our own stories as the worship team and our Eucharist leaders come forward. To just maybe take a moment and say, okay, where's the place that you find yourself in today? Are you in the midst of a catalyst, a crisis, a challenge, a change, maybe even the desire for something new? If so, it might be the pilgrimage that Jesus is inviting you to go on, or maybe today you're just desperately in need of a new and fresh vision of who Jesus is. Maybe a place where you're going. What I really desperately need is a trusted guide right now to help me through whatever it is that I'm walking through, or I'm looking for community. Every catalyst is an invitation to our more robust and resilient faith. Every catalyst is an opportunity for us to learn what it means to trust God in this new thing. Every journey, every pilgrimage requires trusted guides who know the way. Whatever the reason that we're walking, and whatever the route, the center of every conversion is an encounter with a gracious and loving God. The Jesus who meets us along the way. So as we come to the table today, where are you? Maybe more importantly, where is Jesus? And where is his subtle invitation to you? As we come to the table today, may you encounter him in the sacraments and the saints, the songs, and the scriptures. Worlds without end. Amen.