Conversion and Transformation

July 27, 2017

Acts 9

A Sufi Story: The Stream, the Desert, and the Wind

Once upon a time, a stream, from its course in far-off mountains, passing through every kind of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to flow across the sand, yet as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared. It was convinced its destiny was to cross the desert, and yet there appeared to be no way.

And then it heard a murmuring from the desert itself. A whisper: “The wind can cross the desert, and so can the stream.”

The stream replied that it was flowing into the sand, and only being swallowed: that the wind could fly, and this was why it could cross a desert.

“By trusting in your usual methods, you will never get across. You will either disappear or become a quagmire. You must allow the wind to carry you to your destination.”

“But how is this possible?” the stream asked…

“Ah…By allowing yourself to be absorbed in the wind” came the answer.

This idea was not acceptable to the stream. It had never been absorbed before. It did not want to lose its individuality because, if it lost it, would it be able to get it back?

“The wind,” said the sand, “performs this function. It takes up water, carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again. Falling as rain, the water becomes a river once more.”

“But can I not remain the same stream I am today?”

“You cannot remain so,” the whisper said. “Your essential part is carried away and forms a stream again. You only think you are what you are now because you have forgotten the essential part of yourself.”

When it heard this, certain echoes began to arise in the thoughts of the stream. It vaguely remembered a state in which it — or some part of it? — had been held in the arms of the wind. It also felt that somehow this was the right thing to do, even if it didn’t seem to make any sense at all.

So, with yet some hesitation, the stream raised itself into the welcoming arms of the wind, which gently and easily bore it upward and along, letting it fall softly on the roof of a mountain, many, many miles away. And because it had such grave doubts, the stream was able to remember and record more strongly in its mind the details of the experience.

“Yes, of course,” it said as if waking from a dream… “now I know who I am.”

On this morning we have come midway through our study of Acts and our midpoint of the book gives us a shift. We move from the primary person of Peter,  and the 12 we know so well who have been directing the life of the Jesus movement since his resurrection. 

So far we have seen them stay pretty close to the world that they have know and every movement we see brings them a little further out of their comfort zone. 

Then we have this. 

Our reading this week has shifted our protagonist from Peter, to the person who had been just a chapter or 2 before, the main antagonist. Paul had been actively approving and participating in keeping the religion that he was part of pure. Saul, when he was not yet Paul, just to keep things confusing.

Saul was a Jewish zealot, not unlike Christian evangelicals in our day. He was so committed to the cause, so committed to what he knew was the truth that there were no means to great to reach his ends. He was doing everything literally and right. This isn’t always the person we’d expect to have to go through a transformation. 

This story of Paul’s, well it has influenced all kinds of people and what they think it means to be saved and what it means to be living for Jesus. See, there are those in the christian tradition who don’t believe that you should be baptized until you have accepted Jesus. I had a young person who was waiting for an emotional encounter with the divine before he was baptized and confirmed. 

It’s my cousins who waited to accept Jesus in their hearts, it’s when someone asks when you were saved. Looking for date, a place, a moment, to pin down that moment you went from just who you are to Child of God.

And while in words all this could be considered true. I remember being 11 or 12 and understanding that if I am in that much need of forgiveness, that it is brought up so much that I must really be terrible. I must be the worst person ever, when Luther would talk about us all being sinners and saints, clearly that means that someone else got all the saint for here I am, nothing but sinner. 

So I prayed the prayers and I accepted Jesus into my heart as often as possible. Time and reflection have revealed that I wasn’t a bad kid. But such moments influenced how I felt about myself and my relationship to God for many years of my life.  

I think about conversion experiences, and I think about those moments. I think about sitting in a time of worship. I spent the better part of a semester in college with the Campus Crusade group and every weekly gathering, someone would get up and give their testimony about how they were drinking and smoking. Maybe even… sex (because there is little worse for a good christian kid that those things).

Or as adults they have been involved in a myriad of things that have been considered wrong, whether they be unsafe or unhealthy or none of the above. And they tell how they, like Paul, experienced Jesus, and now they’ll do better. They will be new. They will be different people than the person they were before.

This happens. And you know what? Praise God that it does.  There are people who have had an experience that has kept them safe and clean, restored relationships, but this narrative has been so fetishized in both churches and pop culture. 

We love a good redemption story, from the darker places the better. It’s Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas morning. It isn’t Paul on the road to Damascus. 

Paul was a zealot with a very narrow view of Judaism. He had a very clear understanding of what was doctrine and dogma. And Paul’s conversion isn’t from one religion to another or from sinner to saint. It was a widening of his mind. It was an expanding of her theology. It was the ever reaching out of this small movement; from one little place to EVERYWHERE.

While yes, Paul was a Jew, he was also a Roman Citizen, it means that with Paul as an evangelist, the little movement will start to reach all that Rome touch. Which was pretty much everywhere. Paul was going to have to grow. It was going to have to see that these followers, these Jesus People, were not some other. Not some outside group. Not something that would ruin everything but they had a place, they had something to offer that there was good news in the story they told and the life they lived

And HE could be a part of that. 

The Divine interjected into his life and said the world you see is too narrow. It’s too small. “Let me show you how much more there is.“ And his life was never the same. 

But those early followers had to grow too. With almost every story in Acts, the blessings move from this small group, to more and more people. This small community that had known Jesus, walked with him, talked with him, studied with him; to those who just knew the disciples and studied under what they taught, to the city, to those who were considered impure of by their religion or their actions, and then expanded To everyone. 

It was no longer a group of people who were just like each other but it included religious half breeds, the ritually impure, the Romans. This wasn’t going to stop and what was it going to make them if they had to reach out to these people . 

And I know what you’re thinking: We know people and churches like this the one who just need some kind of interventions so that they can expand their heart and their minds and their theology to include everyone. 

Maybe if they just knew someone who…

Or if they could experience something…

I think it’s human nature that we want to think that those with the actual troubles are over there. And that we have it figured out and Plymouth church, there is so much that we do well. But there, of course, are always ways in which we can learn and grow and be part of the mission and ministry that is already at work. 

We must continue to find ways to throw open the doors to new people, to invite them in, to share the stories that we have.

For when Christ became real; for what the church has meant to each of us as individuals and collectively, we share the stories if they are lightening moments of transformation or more subtle quiet moments, a shift in direction. 

We welcome new and we remain vigilant. Paul had a breakdown on the side of the road and the next thing that happened was that he was invited into community. He spent some time in study and in fellowship before he dusted himself off and got back to work. 

We know that there are moments of breakdown. I have them, you have them, although i’m sure yours are much less serious. You might not be blinded on the side of the road but maybe there comes a moment that requires change. We know that these moments exist in the world around us. 

Paul was lucky, sometimes those moments come from the divine. Sometimes they come from a friend speaking truth in our lives. And when it’s us, we make a decision: are we going to dig into where we had been before or are we going to let it open us up more to the world around us. 

And it’s hard.

Often the break down comes after hard work and trying and struggling and failing…

Church, we try hard. But it’s waking up to whatever the news is: to the election, to a supreme court ruling, and having realized we haven’t made it yet. 

Sometimes, there’s nothing holy about a breakdown. There are moments that bring us to a place of change, sometimes in n violence and trauma

It’s Charlottesville

It’s Standing Rock

It’s Charleston and Pulse and and Oak Creek and Parkland

It’s every community that has been visited by violence, trauma, hatred. These breakdowns are clearly not divine. But there is a moment when it’s the those who have been hurt, when they decide who they will become after.

Who is the community that they gather with? What do they study? What gives them hope and courage and strength to get up every day and march? And walk? And tell their stories?

And we get to ask ourselves, how do we support them? How do we make space for their stories while still sharing our own?

It is a small course correction

It is a small voice speaking up with hope 

It is a chance to study, learn, grow, expand. It is a new course with all that we are on. It is riding on the wind. 

For we are people of hope and new life and we know and believe that any breakdown and moment of devastation doesn’t last forever. 

We open wide the arms of this community of this church to welcome any in need of good news, any in need of strength and courage, in need of community and place to be whole and people, striving to be the beloved community, waking up each day, living as church.