Easter 3 Year C, 4/18/2010

Acts 9:1-120; Ps. 30; Rev. 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

Kent introduced us to the basic idea of our preaching series for the next 8 weeks.

The People of the Way…the characteristics of the People of the Way.

The Way is one of the very earliest names for the followers of Jesus, the church.

The phrase is used in Acts chapter 9 in the lesson we heard today.

Then and now, the Way is the path in life to a new state of being that we can’t reach without Jesus.

In John 14, Jesus says…I am the way, the truth, and the life.

So what we want to do is talk over the next weeks about what it looks like to be on the Way, to be a Christian.

Partially because there is a good amount of confusion about what it means to be a Christian.

And because there isn’t really any good reason to be here if there isn’t any real difference between being on the Way and being a good person.

We will not be giving you the quiz to take to let you know if you’re going to heaven or not.

Fortunately we can leave salvation in God’s hands.

What we do want to talk about is what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus, to be on the Way…from the point of view of the Bible.

This week we’re going to talk about conversion and calling.

Which is super convenient because we have two of the most famous Bible stories about conversion and calling.

First is the story of Saul…who becomes Paul after his road to Damascus experience.

We often think of conversion as a personal, internal struggle and decision.

Sometimes conversion stories are dramatic and have a specific moment in time that can be described.

And often conversion stories are more about a gradual process over time with a gradual understanding of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Paul’s story is the dramatic kind.

Many of you have heard Kent and me share our own dramatic, conversion stories.

I can tell you the day, the weather, the smell of the summer air, the people…

I can give you all kinds of details about the day and the moment that I came to understand the reality of God’s love for me through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.

But honestly that is of little consequence if my life didn’t look any different.

Because conversion is not about intellectually deciding that the story of God and Jesus is real and applies to me.

In conversion God works in us a change of heart that converts our life from self-centeredness to Kingdom of God centeredness.

And conversion is one of those typically confusing God things.

Conversion is both an event and a process.

With conversion there really has to be a time when we consciously say yes to God and say yes to Jesus being the Lord of our life.

That conversion drops us into a new community of people.

A community of people who self-identify as Christians, as followers of Jesus.

It is with that community that we have a new kind of acceptance and support and sharing.

OK, that is the ideal.

But it is the Biblical ideal so I don’t think we can ignore it.

Even Paul got dropped into a new community after his conversion moment.

People weren’t happy about it.

Ananias, the disciple in Damascus who gets called to lay hands on and pray for Saul-Paul, questions the Lord about God’s plan.

Ananias is in the middle of a vision talking to God and says…really, Lord, I heard that this guy was killing off and persecuting people of the Way.

Are you sure that’s the guy you want me to pray for?

And the Lord says a very clear, yes, this man is the newest member of our community.

As surprising as it may seem, and God does seem to love to surprise us…

Conversion turns our enemies into our brothers and sisters.

That is one part of conversion that just drives people crazy, that people really fight against.

The idea that conversion actually does involve a body of people, not just an individual.

With conversion comes a new place in, a new responsibility as one part of the body of Christ.

Conversion in this sense may be unique for each of us but isn’t merely personal.

Because conversion is also the daily and moment by moment journey from human self-confidence and independence to child-like dependence on God.

And that happens in our daily lives wherever we find ourselves.

So here Saul-Paul, a big time persecuter of the Way, finds himself dropped into the very community he hated.

He was a faithful Jewish man who had done what he could to protect his faith.

Until God surprised him, and everyone around him, with this 180 degree conversion.

From persecuter to one called by God to bring this new message of God’s covenant to the Gentiles.

The unclean, the faithless, the bad guys.

How did Paul go from conversion to calling?

Do we tend to think that people who have dramatic conversions are the most likely candidates for actually hearing a calling…

And that their calling will probably be something hard and unappealing?

Maybe that’s why we so often resist conversion.

Because if we truly experience conversion then God is going to lower the hammer on us by asking us to do something really uncomfortable.

I wish I could promise you that won’t be true for you, but I can’t.

Because calling even at it’s most basic is hard.

For People of the Way our calling is to live our whole lives bearing witness to Jesus’ love.

Simple words that are a life long challenge.

It’s not enough to love Jesus in our hearts.

Jesus’ love is designed to convert, to transform us from the inside so that we will act more and more like the loved and forgiven people that we are.

Think of it like sports.

You can visualize hitting the golf ball or tennis ball or baseball all you want.

But if you do that without ever picking up a club or a racket or a bat you won’t look like you know how to hit a ball.

Human beings are just made this way.

We have to actually do something for the thinking behind the doing to make us better at it.

I can think about being a good golfer but if I don’t play, I’m just not.

I can think about how much I love God and how God loves me and how filled up with love I am…

But if I don’t act and speak with love then it’s hard to make a case that I am following Jesus on the way.

Which is not to say that our goal is to be a good person, a better person.

Our goal is actually to be a better follower of Jesus, a better Christian.

That may seem like I’m splitting hairs there, but there actually is a huge difference.

Depending on myself I strive to be a better person.

Maybe I even ask for God’s help but the focus is on me getting better.

If my goal is to be someone who follows Jesus and tries to get better at that…

Then the focus is on the one I’m following, on Jesus, not on me.

Look at this story from John with Jesus and the disciples having a post resurrection fish fry.

The disciple John recognizes that it’s Jesus and tells Peter…It is the Lord.

And then Jesus describes to Peter what it looks like to be a follower.

Jesus does the Q and A with Peter…do you love me, do you love me, do you love me.

And he tells us, if you love me then…

Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep, follow me.

If you love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength you will love your neighbor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoners, give water to the thirsty.

We tend to get hung up in thinking about calling as a uniquely designed plan with step by step instructions for us to follow.

For most of us most of the time, that just doesn’t happen.

I would venture to say that for all of us, all of the time God feels no real need to show us what the way will look like for us 5 or 10 miles down the road.

People of the Way have a calling to love and feed the sheep and to follow Jesus.

Now that calling looks so different in different people’s lives.

Paul was called to reach out for Jesus to the Gentiles.

Peter and John were called to different things in their lives.

We all are called according to our talents, our spiritual gifts, our stage in life.

If you find yourself looking for a convenient calling, you may want to take a moment and reflect on that.

Calling doesn’t have to be painful and hard and impossible to do without selling all we own and going to a foreign country.

But calling is rarely convenient just because true conversion begins changing us in ways that aren’t convenient.

If it feels easy to be a Christian you may need to think about that.

Kent told the story about Dr. Kellerman telling him how challenged he felt by reading the book…The Hole in Our Gospel.

For anyone who knows about the Kellermans and their work with the Pygmys in Uganda, that doesn’t seem possible.

And yet, the people of the Way are always looking for conversion, listening for their calling, walking the journey with simply the next stone on the path lit.

Whether you’re 5 or15 or 50 or 80, your calling is your calling.

The amount of influence or power or control you may feel you have in life is insignificant to Jesus.

Don’t try to use those excuses with Jesus.

Our lives, our life as a community is grounded in God’s fullness and in God’s surprising gifts.

There is no step taken, no word spoken, no prayer said, no kindness offered that is too small to be significant when offered as an answer to God’s call on your life.

When offered as an obedient and faithful witness to the love of Jesus.

There is a handout in your bulletin I’d like you to take out.

This one…People of the Way.

It outlines 7 sermon topics that will cover some of the characteristics of people of the Way.

The dates for each sermon are on the back of the flyer.

If you can’t be here on a Sunday for some very good reason, you can go online and read or listen to the podcast of a sermon.

We want to be practical and Biblical here.

What does it look like to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus?

You’ve just heard one answer.

People of the Way experience conversion and calling in their lives.

And their words and actions look different because of it.

Not every moment, not to perfection.

But to paraphrase a saying said in many ways in many places:

Don’t do nothing at all just because you can’t do everything right.

We’re in this together.

People of the Way walking together, being converting day by day, answering the call of Jesus in our lives.

Thanks be to God.