Feb. 22, 2015
Jesus said to those around him several times, “You who have
ears to hear, hear!” He
Jesus also echoes Deut. 29, where Moses says to all Israel, “Your eyes have seen all the LORD did in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land; the great testings which your own eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles: yet the LORD has not given you a heart to perceive and understand, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, up to this day.” Then Moses called on Israel to enter into the covenant wherein they know that God is the LORD their God. “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to God’s voice, and hold fast to God. For the LORD is your life…”
God gives people hearts to perceive and understand, eyes to see, and ears to hear. Further, when God gives the ability to hear, we need to take into our inner selves the truth that we have one God and no other, that we will listen and do what God tells us to do.
Saul hears but
doesn’t listen
We have an excellent example of hearing without listening in
the life of Saul, also known as Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. Saul enters
the story as an enemy to the Gospel. Saul may in fact have been one of the Jews who
hauled Stephen in before the priests; Acts 6 mentions people from Saul’s home province
as disputing with Stephen and being
unable to win. Their frustration moved them to get people to witness falsely
that Stephen had spoken against Moses and against God and had said that Jesus
would change the customs which Moses had given them.
When Stephen is given a chance to speak in his own defense,
this is what he says:
Acts 7:1-60
1)
Stephen reviews the high points of Israel’s
history
2)
Stephen reminds the Jews of what God directly
said at two moments in the history,
A)
God promised Abraham that his descendants will
possess the land after a period of slavery in a country not their own, and gave
him the covenant sign of circumcision
B)
God called Moses to deliver Abraham’s
descendants from slavery; God sent him to rule and judge the same people who
had earlier rejected his authority as a ruler and judge
3)
Stephen reminds his audience of what the
prophets Amos and Isaiah said to the people of Israel: “You have turned to
idols and I will send you into exile in Babylon”; and “I do not live within
creation or any house you build for me.”
4)
Stephen brings it home to his audience with a
prophetic word: you are stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in your inner self
and in your ability to hear.
A)
You are just like the ancient Hebrews who turned
to idols.
B)
You always resist the Holy Spirit.
C)
You and your fathers persecute every prophet God
sends you.
D)
And you
have betrayed and murdered the Messiah.
E)
Even
though you are the ones who received the law from God’s direct messengers, you
have not obeyed it.
5)
Then Stephen said out of the fullness of the
Holy Spirit, “I see heaven open and Jesus standing at God’s right hand.”
6)
Unsurprisingly,
this was Stephen’s last sermon. They were infuriated and began to stone him. As
he died, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” and “Lord, do not hold this
sin against them.” (clear echoes of what Jesus Himself had said on the cross).
In this sermon are several lessons for Saul: You are not
right—you have attached God to the land, the law and the temple and are
worshiping the creation rather than the Creator; you are blind and deaf to the
actual presence of God in your midst through Jesus and the Holy Spirit; you are
in agreement with those who betrayed and murdered Jesus and now you resist the
Holy Spirit.
Saul took none of this into his heart but instead reacted against it with violence.
Saul took none of this into his heart but instead reacted against it with violence.
I mentioned to a friend that I was thinking about Saul’s conversion
into Paul, and she said, “Was he
converted?” and that made me think about conversion in general. The inner
meaning of convert is “to turn around” or “to cause to return” and literally
this does not apply. Saul continued to
journey toward Damascus, continued to believe in the God of Israel. So I
wondered whether “repent” might apply; the Latin root of repent includes the
idea of regret or penitence, but we don’t see that in this story. However, the
Greek of the New Testament uses the word metanoia,
which means essentially to change the direction of the inner self, to change
attitudes and conduct. This is a good picture of what happened to Saul. Because
of the direct encounter with Jesus, he changed how he saw everything, how he
heard. He changed his mind.
Saul listens and
changes his mind
Acts 7:58, 8:1-3; 9:1-9:31
Saul was already a believer in the one true God and was
zealous against those he perceived to be traitors to that belief (“I am a Jew,
born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, but brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of
Gamaliel, taught the law of the fathers with strictness and thoroughness, and I
was zealous for God, as are you all today” Acts 22:3).
Saul was moved by the spectacle of the stoning of Stephen to
embark on his own purifying mission; he was pleased by Stephen’s death; he
agreed with those who stoned him. (“And when the blood of Your martyr Stephen
was shed, I also was standing by, and consenting unto his death, and I guarded
the clothes of those who killed him” Acts 22:20). Saul condoned and encouraged violence.
Saul imprisoned people to preserve the purity of the faith (“I
persecuted followers of the Way to their death, binding and delivering both men
and women into prisons” Acts 22:4).
When Saul met Jesus, he did not recognize him (“And I
answered, Who are You, Lord?” Acts 22:8).
When Jesus met him personally, Jesus said that Saul was
persecuting him personally (“And he said to me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you
are persecuting” Acts 22:8).
Saul’s subsequent physical blindness made obvious his
previous spiritual blindness (“I could not see for the glory of that light”
Acts 22:11).
But remember, he was a devout believer in the God of the
Hebrew testament and was working to preserve and purify that faith (“And I
said, Lord, they know that I imprisoned and beat those who believed on You in
every synagogue” Acts 22:19).
Thus we learn that a zealous defense of the truth and the
true God may coexist with spiritual blindness to how God is presently at work. We
also learn that persecuting those who love and follow Jesus is the same as
persecuting Jesus.
The road from blindness to sight for Paul ran through the
community he had persecuted—that very community had to risk reaching out to
Paul in order for his healing to take place (“And there was a certain disciple
at Damascus named Ananias; and said the Lord said to him in a vision,
Ananias…Arise and go into the Straight street, and enquire in the house of
Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prays and has seen in a
vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he
might receive his sight. Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many
about this man and how much evil he has done to Your saints at Jerusalem: and
here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on Your
name” Acts 9:10-14; “And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having
a good report of all the Jews who lived there, came to me, and stood, and said to
me, Brother Saul, receive your sight. And the same hour I was able to see him”
Acts 22:12-13).
Jesus incapacitated Saul thoroughly enough to halt Saul’s persecuting
activities, and then Jesus worked with Ananias to overcome Ananias’s justifiable
prejudice and fear. Saul never returned to his condoning of violence.
After recovering his physical sight, Saul threw himself so zealously
into defending the followers of Jesus that his life was in danger. The
believers sent him home to Tarsus and then enjoyed a time of peace. Saul’s
trait of zealousness didn’t much change but his direction in life did. Instead
of being the defender of the Law and the Temple, he brought to the Gentiles the
good news of Jesus, in whose resurrection power we also live. Instead of
putting people into prison, Paul told us how Christ’s resurrection sets us
free.
This speaks a truth about knowing the Law and hearing
sermons: they do us little good by themselves. This speaks a second truth: when
we refuse to listen, we justify our refusal and become violent against those
who are listening. This speaks a
third truth as well: meeting Jesus personally, which is possible every day of
the week, and every day of our lives, blows away what we think we know and
moves us to change our minds. Then, like Paul, we can be apostles of the Good
News of Jesus.
