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Sermon May 1, 2022
The Rev. Canon Robert Schiesler
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Third Sunday of Easter, Year C
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Easter/CEaster3_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/Eucharist__May_1__2022
Video: https://youtu.be/JoFUCUUB_UA
One of the great Scriptural texts for us to dive into is the drama of Paul's conversion or "truth discovery". This Damascus Road incident is not one that occurs for most of us today. Either we stand firm in an intellectual assent to faith or we have come to a gradual understanding and emotional acceptance of the faith handed down to us or slowly revealed to us, not so much a dramatic "Paul like" conversion. After all, the great majority of us are rather comfortable coasting along in "normality" that God need not turn us around so graphically; thus, we find contentment and comfort in our faith and religious practice, not needy nor viciously unbelieving like Paul. But perhaps we are too quick to dismiss Paul's discovery as mere story telling, non-reality based and certainly somewhat unrelatable. We have been on wrong paths in our lives; we have taken wrong turns and sometimes those turns have even been injurious to ourselves and others. Like Paul, we can be accused of "breathing threats" against another, maybe not out loud out due to"niceness" or politeness but in our thoughts and wishes we have said to ourselves, "drop dead, you....." We have been headstrong, stubborn, blinded by ambition and desire, selfish to meet our own need to be correct, even caught in addictive behavior...not drug induced behavior, but behavior that might denigrate another, put someone in their place, look at the world negatively and see others as either threats or unworthy of attention and care.
The examples are myriad:
-the business person who is driven to succeed and loses her marriage in the bargain;
-the teen who rebels and dwells in anger and hurt, unwilling to accept a love that may be too demanding in his eyes;
-that A type personality who keeps his emotional life locked away, unable or more so, unwilling to share either love or his woundedness;
-the corporate president who fights for his shareholders while ignoring the inequality of pay and benefits for his staff
-the defiant and obstinate politician who speaks of principles but is incapable of being with others in seeking compromise for the common good
-the accommodating spouse who receives emotional blows again and again; and the abusive spouse who spews words that cut and wound the other again and again.
Wrong paths; destructive paths; Can we see the light? Can we allow ourselves enough reflective space to move off the path we are on and opening our minds and hearts, walk with another in a more collaborative, respectful manner? In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus reflects on this as he reminds us of the wideness of the road of destruction and how narrow is the gate to new life. On that wide road, we walk easily down the middle, striding as if we own the road; on the narrow road, we must watch our steps, working to stay on the path, being more thoughtful about doing such. When we choose that "road less traveled", we begin to put away our stubborn, selfish, overbearing selves. We become more aware of addictive behavior that shoves people away or off our path. We are more open to the one who dares to tell us the truth about ourselves, mirroring the shallowness if not the vacancy of our soul. In other words, something or most often, someone, knocks us off our high horse, or more colorfully and accurately, knocks us off our ass and the Spirit of God takes hold of us and our lives change. It's not that courageous friend who confronts or that child that speaks naively yet truthfully that does it....these are agents of the light because it is the Divine light that suddenly clicks on with us, making a turn around possible and even desirable. Emilie Griffin writes in her book, Turning, Reflections on the Experience of Conversion "It is clear that conversion begins with a restlessness of the human heart which can find no resting place on earth." She goes on to observe a human reality: "our disenchantment comes from success not from failure. It is success that ultimately disappoints us because we had so thoroughly expected it to be the crown of life." We get what we want and find it both lacking and in the end unfulfulling.
Conversions happen all the time. We are still stubborn. We are still caught up in our particular addictive patterns of behavior. We are still seeing only dimly and need the light. We still walk the Damascus Road, breathing threats and threatening destruction. Greed holds us and war looms over us. Cultural blindness threatens us and social bias blinds us. Yet, that familiar bumper sticker slogan remains so true: "God isn't done with me yet." God was not done with Paul; God is not done with you or me. Conversion is not won and done; conversion is that gradual, slow, turning of the heart ever towards the heart of God.
