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riversidemoravian.org
First Moravian Church of
Riverside, NJ
Located on the corner of
Bridgeboro and Washington Streets
Riverside, NJ 08075
F. Jeffrey Van Orden-Pastor
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Old Dog, New Tricks Acts 9: 1-20 June 1, 2008 "Free Bird," as many of you probably know, is the title of a long, some would argue endless, rock anthem by the American, southern rock n roll band Lynyrd Skynyrd. Starting out as a slow ballad, it features gospel-like organ, slide guitar, and a powerful instrumental solo that has been called an up-tempo guitar duel by some. All in all, most of the versions of the song are between 10 and 14 minutes long. "Free Bird" has been "covered" - recorded by other artists - dozens of times and has become something of a rock n roll cliché. Shouting, "Play Free Bird" at a concert has become a way to heckle the band. Even the hugely popular video game "Guitar Hero" gives you the option of playing "Free Bird" as a final encore. But setting aside all of its noteworthy musical features and pop-cultural appeal, it is the lyrics that prompt me to call this legendary song to your attention today.
"If I leave here tomorrow," lead singer
Ronnie Van Zant laments,
"But please don't take it badly, These lyrics - particularly the closing lines - always come to mind when I hear the passage of Scripture we just read. I think that if the technology had been available in the first century, Saul of Tarsus might have had "Free Bird" on his I-Pod. The song sounds like something he would have sung in the days before his encounter on the Damascus Road. "Lord knows, I can't change. Lord help me, I can't change." Little did he know. Little did Saul know, when he set out for Damascus, that he would henceforth be called Paul. Little did he know that his life would be turned upside-down. Little did he know that he would no longer persecute the members of the early Christian church. Little did he know that God would use him to spread the good news of the resurrected Lord throughout the known world. Little did he know that the old dog, Saul, could learn some incredible new tricks after all. We first encounter Saul the Pharisee at the end of the 7th chapter of Acts, where he is mentioned as the young man who held the coats of the people who stoned to death Stephen, the first Christian martyr. "Saul approved of their killing him," Luke writes, and shortly thereafter he "was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, committing them to prison." A bit later, in Acts 9, our text for this morning, we get an even clearer picture of just how despicable - and violent - Saul really was. "Breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord," Luke goes on to tell his readers, "Saul went to the high priest and asked for letters of introduction to the synagogues so if he found anyone who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them, bound, to Jerusalem." And then, on the road to Damascus, after literally being blinded by a light from heaven, hearing the voice of Jesus and spending three days without food or drink, he does a complete about-face, a 180. Saul disappears, never to be heard from again, and Paul, in his place, begins his career as an evangelist, proclaiming the truth that Jesus is the Son of God. "All who heard him were amazed," Luke concludes, "and all who heard him said, 'Is this not the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked Jesus' name?'" Luke occasionally still refers to him as Saul when he is preaching to the Jews, but the Pharisee that ravaged the early church is gone forever. The story of Saul's conversion is undoubtedly one of the great stories in the New Testament. It is gripping drama. We see Saul, the Christian's "Enemy Number One," struck down on his way to hunt Christians, blinded by light, name changed. And then, after his conversion, his life is so new that he is called Paul, great missionary to the gentiles. To understand the importance of the story, however, we need to get beyond the sensational, dramatic elements and understand three essential facts: First, we need to understand that Saul's conversion was really not a one-on-one encounter. It was not an individual matter at all. The community of believers in Damascus plays a critical role. The light on the road and the voice that spoke out of the light stopped Saul cold, but his transformation is taken to the next step by the loving ministrations of Ananias, a representative of the church in Damascus. The insight that Saul claims in the last verse of the passage, that Jesus is the Son of God, is not a private matter between him and Jesus. It took a community. And through the work of a community of faith a man of violence is transformed into a missionary for God. The notion that it takes a community of faith to change lives is underscored in another famous example, the story of John Wesley. Wesley was a proper Oxford scholar, a priest, a devout churchman who had devoted his life to study and proclamation of the gospel. But he had no fire. After a disastrous stint as missionary in Georgia, he went, in his words, "unwillingly" to a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate Street in London. There, Wesley's heart was "strangely warmed." His soul struck fire and the Wesleyan Methodist revival began. For Wesley, it was just like it was for Saul on the Damascus road. God transformed him to be sure, but it took a community - a Moravian community in this case - to complete the job. Second, we need to recognize that while authentic Christian faith is radically transformative - it always changes us - it is not always characterized by "bolt of lightning" conversion experiences. Some of you have heard the story behind our adoption of Doc, the third member of our parsonage family. We adopted him as an adult dog, and before we met him he had been raised as a show dog, in a kennel along with 18 other curly coated retrievers. He never learned to play as a puppy. He never learned to retrieve, for that matter. Fortunately, his primary job in the Van Orden household today is to make us smile - a job he accomplishes just about every day. He's not much for tricks, however. Beyond "sit" and "come," he's pretty much clueless. On the surface, you could easily conclude that Doc is the poster dog for the "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" point of view. And if not the poster dog, certainly a case in point. If you concluded that, though, you'd be dead wrong. As a matter of fact, Doc has learned a whole host of new things since he became a part of our family. He's learned that breakfast time is 6 AM. He's learned that he gets a big biscuit every night at 9 PM. He's learned that if he walks with me in the morning he'll get a treat when we come in. And he's learned that if he rolls over onto his back and wags his tail as I'm walking by, I will bend down and rub his belly. In point of fact, Doc is nothing like the dog we adopted nearly five years ago. He has changed. So looking at Doc, you'd have to conclude that old dogs can, indeed, learn new tricks. He just learned them slowly, over time. Most of the time the Christian life is like that. It's a process of orderly progression, spiritual disciplines and faith development. We spend time each day in prayer, we make sure we're here on Sundays from eleven to twelve, we read and we meet and we work together. Sometimes, someone gets grabbed and smacked upside the head; sometimes God initiates a dramatic conversion like Saul's on the Damascus Road, but most of the time we work out our salvation over time. The old dog changes, but he changes gradually, sometimes imperceptibly, but changes nonetheless. The lasting mark of conversion, for most of us, is not one date circled in red on the calendar. It's the whole story of our life. In the final analysis, the story of Saul's dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus that day is worth telling only because of what he did afterwards. And so it is true for us. If the story of our faith journey is worth telling, it is because of what we do with that faith. And finally, we need to recognize, as we sit here this morning, that we have much more in common with Paul than we think. Paul, the greatest of the Apostles, never knew Jesus in his lifetime. He was not called to be one of the twelve; his encounter with Jesus was an encounter with the crucified and risen Christ. In this sense, our own call to follow Jesus is more like Paul's than Peter's, James's, Mary Magdalene's, or the others who knew Jesus in the flesh. Like Paul, you and I meet Jesus crucified, risen, and coming. Like Paul, you and I meet Jesus through those who follow him. Like Paul, you and I meet Jesus because he has a habit of showing up in the most unexpected of places. Sometimes, if we're not careful, Jesus shows up and we miss him completely. When we pass by the hungry, the naked, the homeless, for example, we pass by Jesus himself. Since we Christians today are typically not knocked to the ground and blinded for three days as Paul was, we may fail to recognize the call of Jesus and all of its life-shattering implications. One scholar puts it this way: "Jesus' call, he writes "is in the faces of our family from whom we may be estranged; it's in the coworkers who may annoy us; it's in our church as we struggle to be faithful to the Gospel we preach. And we become disciples not in addition to who we are and what we do in the world but in and through our passionate commitment to make the Gospel visible wherever we are called to be." May our response, to that gospel, be like that of Ananias, and, indeed most of all, like that of Paul himself: "Here I am, Lord," Paul said, "I may be an old dog, but I'm prepared to learn. To learn to follow you. To learn to serve you. To learn to make you the center of my life." Or, if I may turn the words of "Free Bird" on their head, may our response sound like this:
"I'm as free as a bird now, AMEN Go Back To Sermons |