Sermon Archives

April 18, 2010
Acts 9:1-20
Pastor Jim Bangsund

"The Gospel Gets Legs"
Luke 24:1-10

Let's begin with a trivia question: Anybody know whose 21st birthday it was yesterday? Are you ready? Dilbert! The first Dilbert cartoon came out on April 17, 1989. Bet you didn't know that - though I guess, in this group, I wouldn't be surprised to find someone else who keeps track of such stuff. I've got it on my Google calendar each year. And Dilbert came to mind in particular as I was thinking about this sermon. Seven years after starting the Dilbert strip, Scott Adams published a collection of cartoons with a title that took off on that of the well known book: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Adams' title: 7 Years of Highly Defective People.

And of course the Dilbert strip is an absolute celebration of malfunction, dysfunction and defectiveness. Because, of course, life is often like that. We're often like that. And the conversion of Saul, which we read about in our first lesson, is in some ways a piece of that, too - Saul: the last person you would ever expect God to turn to after Easter when he started to put legs on the Gospel.

God does seem to specialize in using the wrong people - in putting round pegs in square holes - and making them fit. More than specialize in it, God seems to delight in it. In fact, I really think that God is able to wink - and that he does so especially when you or I say, "Lord, there's no way I fit the bill for this situation." Saul certainly thought that.

When I was in high school, there wasn't a chance you would have convinced me that I would end up a pastor. I had a good friend named Steve who had quite a sarcastic streak in him and who certainly would have rolled his eyes at the idea of me one day standing in a pulpit. A few weeks ago I got back in contact with him for the first time since high school and we were both amazed. Really amazed because today he's a pastor, too. I don't think Steve even went to church when I knew him. But now he's a pastor in Denver and still not quite sure what to make of it.

And then there was Saul - also known as the Apostle Paul. No, he didn't change his name when he became a Christian. Saul was his Jewish name; but when he was out traveling in the Gentile world - among the goyim, so to speak - he used his Roman name, Paul. So we know him as Paul, because this guy did a lot of traveling among the Gentiles. All because God winked. Let me tell you what I mean.

You see, there are three major moves recorded in the Bible. Three major moves: toward the cross; through the cross, and out from the cross. And Saul's life winds through all three.

First of all, toward the cross. God spent a lot of time setting things up for his entry into the world in the person of Jesus. The whole Old Testament is a record of that - the windup before the delivery - the foundation before the structure. God's rescue of a world gone awry began with centuries of preparation through the forming and rescue and rescue again of a people called Israel. And Saul was a great student of all that. One of the greatest students of his time. He was an up and coming young Pharisee who studied at the feet of the famous Gamaliel. Saul: a young man on the fast track to a highly successful career.

He knew how God had called Abraham and told him his descendants would become a great nation - the nation of Israel - and how through them all the world would be blessed. Saul also knew how, when God later rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai, he said they would become a nation of priests. Their congregation? The rest of the world. And Saul knew how the prophets looked ahead to a great day when God himself would step onto the world stage - how Jeremiah looked for God to establish a new covenant to replace the old. All of this was God's moving toward the cross - preparing a people to be in place for the great event.

Like I said, Saul, also known as Paul of Tarsus, was an expert in all this - a Pharisee who knew the traditions and scriptures of his people like few ever did. Today, he would be serving on a seminary faculty somewhere - no doubt making good use of all of his great learning and putting it to work. But then God winked at all that, and Saul found everything he knew getting turned upside down. Saul had become so involved with the foundation that he missed the structure; so focused on the windup that he missed the delivery. Saul was so wrapped up in the preparations that he missed God's next great move ... God's move from toward the cross to through the cross.

What do I mean by through the cross? I mean that God chose to do things in ways that no one expected. In Jesus' day - in Saul's day - the cross was the same thing as the gas chamber, the noose, or the electric chair today. Only criminals or enemies of the state were crucified. It was a scandalous thing, the cross was. If a member of your family was crucified, you hoped no one would find out. So when God the Father sent his Son to the cross, for you and for me, he was making some statements: he was showing the seriousness of the charges against us, and he was showing that he could create victory through weakness. Like the fighter who offers to take on his adversary with one hand tied behind him. Victory over sin and even death through the scandal of a cross.

And then God continued to show power-through-weakness by calling Saul in a way that, to us, seems most inefficient and ironic. Saul, the Pharisee - the expert on the law and all things Jewish - Saul was perfectly prepared and placed to bring the Gospel to his fellow Pharisees, to the rabbis, to all the educated Jews and their religious leaders. And God instead winked and said, "Saul, I'm going to send you away. I'm going to send you to the Gentiles. I'm going to show that I can put a round peg in a square hole and make it fit." And so he did. And that means two things for you, my friend. First, you and I are here today because God sent Paul to the Gentiles - to folks like us. Second, whatever skills you have or lack, God's plans for you are neither defined nor limited by them.

When I was in seminary, the conversion of Saul was the starting point for the apologetics course - the course which worked on contending for the truth of the Gospel. Why start with Saul? Because nothing but God breaking in could explain Saul. Here was a young man on the rise, someone with excellent career possibilities, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by getting involved with this Jesus movement. Why, he had started off persecuting the church and was making a good name for himself in so doing. And then suddenly, unexplainably, he cast it all to the wind and went in a direction that made no sense from a human point of view.

What could explain that ... apart from God having done it? Sort of like Grant Desme, whom you may have read about this past week - one of the Oakland A's top young prospects. In January, he walked away from a lucrative career as a major league outfielder to become a Catholic priest. Everyone around him shakes their head and asks, "What on earth?" And God winks - because God delights in getting it done in ways we least expect.

And then the third move. God moves not merely toward the cross, not only through the cross, but finally out from the cross as he puts legs on the Gospel. Early on, as God moved toward the cross, he told Abraham that all the world - that's you and me - would be blessed by what he would do through Abraham's descendants. How would that happen? How could the Gospel get legs and travel to a world of folks like you and me? God's answer to that question began with the conversion and sending out of Saul, whom we know as Paul.

You know, sometimes even bishops' assistants can get befuddled by the scriptures. Some years ago I was at a gathering where the assistant to the bishop was present and was asked to read a text for devotions. Because of what happened next, I'm guessing the Bible was just handed to him, and that he hadn't chosen the reading himself. He read from the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Colossians, and got to verse 24 where Paul writes:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,...

... at which point the bishop's assistant stopped in perplexity, put down the Bible and looked up at us and asked, "Now what on earth can that mean?! What could be lacking in what Christ did? And, even if there were, how could Paul's suffering make any difference?"

Well, he'd made the mistake of stopping at the comma. Paul goes on to tell the Colossians that his suffering was "to make the word of God fully known" to them. In other words, Paul's suffering in his travels was a part of giving the Gospel legs. Christ's afflictions - Jesus death and his resurrection - accomplished everything for us ... everything. Your sin and mine was nailed to the cross and left there. Yet one thing was lacking: bringing that astounding news to the world. Carrying it from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth, as we read at the beginning of Acts. That's what God set Paul apart to "complete," and that's what he sets before you and me to continue today.

Three major moves: toward the cross; through the cross, and out from the cross. I think of an old Gospel song that some of us might know. Being a picky theologian - that's an occupational disease, you know - I find there are a couple of places in the song that make me nervous, but I still like it. It's the Gospel song titled: "I have decided to follow Jesus." The first verse:

I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back, no turning back.

The second verse:

Though none go with me, still I will follow;
...
no turning back, no turning back.

And then the third verse:

The world behind me, the cross before me;
The world behind me, the cross before me;
. . .
no turning back, no turning back.

And I can well imagine Saul, encountered by the risen Christ on that road outside of Damascus, joining in a chorus like that as he found himself in the grip of Christ crucified and risen again. But I can also imagine him taking that third verse and turning it around - as we all must ultimately do. Instead of "The world behind me, the cross before me," Paul learned to sing:

The cross behind me, the world before me,
The cross behind me, the world before me,
. . .
no turning back, no turning back.

And so must we learn to sing, as well. For that's how the Gospel gets legs: when we, like Paul, are gripped by the realization that it is always and only through people like you and me that others come to know what God has done in Christ. For it's true, as someone has noted, that "the church is always only one generation away from extinction."

So what about you and me today? Toward the cross: in some ways, we never get beyond this orientation. It defines us; it centers us. Only insofar as we keep the cross before us - only insofar as we keep centered in what Jesus did for us on the cross - will all of our other priorities fall into place and we will know the forgiveness and wholeness and purpose and direction God wants for us. You and I are people whose lives are defined, changed forever, by a cross and an empty tomb. At this very moment, a giant cross towers above as you sit facing "toward the cross."

But we also come here to hear, again and again, how our lives are lived "through the cross." God displays his power, his ability to do great things, using the most unlikely of materials. The church is like a building of stones, each one of us being one of those stones. Round stones in square holes, we often are. Yet God delights in using such odd-shaped stones as he builds his church. And know this, my friend: he has a place for you that only you can fill. It has little to do with your skills or abilities or experience; it has everything to do with what happens when God looks at you and winks and says, "Now watch what I'm going to do with you."

Lastly, there is also that sense in which we, like Paul, move out - out from the cross. In a few minutes, you will be nourished at our Lord's table - through the cross - through Christ's body and blood coming in with and under the weak and unlikely elements of bread and wine. But then, finally, the service will end and you will turn to go. At that point, as you move toward the door, you will begin to move out from the cross: The cross behind you, the world before you. Know that as you go through those doors you are moving into a world in which God wants to complete through you what he has accomplished once for all through Jesus and the cross. Because today it is through you that the Gospel gets legs. Amen.