Conversion x 2

Sunday, June 30, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Acts 9:1-19a

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace. Amen

If you are someone who has from time to time felt like you are not good enough for God to use you in this world, then today’s story is for you.

If you are someone who has felt from time to time that the bad things you have done in your past disqualifies you from God being able to use you in this world, then today’s story is for you.

If you are someone who has ever felt an unwillingness or fear to take the risk of sharing your faith with someone who scares you or is different than you, then today’s story is for you.

In looking for bible stories where the unexpected happens, the story of Saul on the Damascus road is top five.

Let me provide just a little context.

The Jesus movement we call the church begins in Jerusalem with Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Thousands hear the message of Jesus and believe. And you know Newton’s third law of physics that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so the Jewish leadership reacts, Stephen is stoned to death for preaching about Jesus, many of the Jesus followers are scattered out of Jerusalem and Saul is on the move. He wants to help stamp out this illegitimate movement that threatens his Jewish faith.

Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest ²and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Saul believes the Jesus followers are enemies and they need to be stopped.

The Damascus road is where the unexpected happens to Saul. He doesn’t know it yet but his life is about to change. Conversion happens on the Damascus road.

Do you know about the Damascus road? Have you ever traveled that road?

It is a road where the unexpected happens.

It is a dangerous road because what we believe, how we understand God and the all-important question of who is Jesus is often confronted on the Damascus road.

As he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. ⁴He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” ⁵He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

This is the key question as we consider conversion. Who are you Lord?

Have you asked that question?

Maybe you didn’t have the light from heaven surrounding you or the voice from heaven speaking to you but has Jesus ever intruded into your life without you recognizing him and you ask yourself, who are you Lord?

A couple of months ago I was at the Speedway just north of church gassing up my car. Minding my own business, in a hurry to get to the next thing.

In my own little world of worry and hurry.

All of a sudden a woman walks up to me and asks me to buy her some gas. She said she didn’t have any money and she needed to get home. Her daughter was in the car. I was so taken aback I just stared at her. I can’t tell you what my first thought was. Who does that?

I was simultaneously indignant and convicted. Part of my brain was screaming, just tell her no, ignore the need and get onto your next church appointment. Who is this, I thought to myself as I walked over to her car and looked at the situation.

I felt like something else had control of my body and then my heart kicked in, the converted part of me that knows Jesus. What if she did need help? You could do it Mark.

And the unconverted part of my brain thought, is this a scam? Am I being used?

Is this a God test I thought to myself? Who are you Lord?

I was bothered that I felt such tension over such a small thing that I had the capacity to do something about. But that is what happens when we live a guarded life isn’t it.

There are scales on our eyes. We are blind to others and we don’t see our ability to inject grace and compassion into this hard world we live in.

Who are you Lord? That question has been bothering me and I don’t always like the answer.

I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

Conversion is when we see the answer to the question, who are you Lord.

When the scales come off our eyes and Jesus has taken up residence in our bodies the unexpected begins to happen to us and we are changed.

I’m still traveling my Damascus road. How about you?

The Damascus road is a dangerous road to travel. Saul needed to lose his sight before he could see. I think it is the same for you and me.

There is a second conversion in today’s story. Ananias is his name.

The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” ¹¹The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. He has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.”

¹³But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; ¹⁴and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.”

¹⁵But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel;

When God tells us to go to people we are afraid of, people who make us uncomfortable, people in need of justice and compassion or people who look and act differently than you and me, it requires another conversion.

It requires us to see with the eyes of Jesus and trust in his power to use you and me to help that person who barges into our world regain their sight. We do that thru the laying on of hands, literally and figuratively.

Ananias goes to Saul, perhaps a bit reluctantly, but he goes and he does what the Lord tells him to do. And Saul becomes Paul, God’s instrument to preach the good news out in the world.

It is an unexpected outcome. One that only God can engineer.

How do you know when you have arrived in Damascus, when you have traveled the same road Saul traveled?

You will know when you’ve had the second conversion.

You will know because you will no longer ask the question, ‘who are you Lord’. Instead you will simply say – ‘here I am Lord’. It can be a long journey for some of us – an ongoing road we travel.

The second conversion requires a giving away of our lives to Jesus – here I am Lord. But it also requires that we go where Jesus tells us to go. Even when we are uncertain, afraid or skeptical.

Because that’s what Jesus followers do. We no longer ask, who are you Lord.

We say each day, no matter our circumstances, no matter our failings or fears, here I am Lord, here I am.

Oh, and in case you are wondering. I listened to the Jesus voice at Speedway and I bought her some gas. I hope she got home.

Because that is where I want to be when I reach the end of my Damascus road.

Amen

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Conversion x 2

Sunday, June 30, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Acts 9:1-19a

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

About Augustana

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Conversion x 2

Sunday, June 30, 2019 Pastor Mark Aune

Acts 9:1-19a

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, June 30, 2019
Pastor Mark Aune

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson