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Bulletin 148 Date : 21st Nov 2008
Damascus Road Inexperience

One of the better known incidents in the New Testament is the one we call ‘The Damascus Road Experience’. People outside of church will know what it means but may not know who it was who experienced it, in what circumstances, nor the outcome of that experience in his life and its impact on the world. I don’t need to remind readers that we are talking about an incident which happened to Saul of Tarsus (later to change his name to Paul) as he journeyed towards Damascus with letters of authority to arrest Christians and imprison them – such was his hatred against this new movement within Judaism.

Saul was a man who was drenched in his beloved Jewish tradition and was zealous for the Laws of Moses which he saw as a non-negotiable pillar of his faith and the primary means by which a person can please God. No wonder he hated Christians when they suggested that the place of the Law of Moses had now been taken by Jesus – a man crucified a few months earlier for having claimed, wrongly in Saul’s view, to be the Messiah.

But what actually happened to Saul on the Damascus Road? Luke’s account in Acts is less than helpful. In Acts 9 we read that there was a light from heaven and a voice. The people travelling with Saul heard the voice but were not affected by the light. However, in Acts 22:7 we read that they saw the light but heard no voice. Whatever it was, Saul was the man most affected by the incident.

But did everything change for Saul in an instant? A careful study of the letters of Paul indicate that there was a gap of over a decade between this experience and his first missionary journey with Barnabas. Clearly he had some sorting out to do in his theology before he was ready to present the gospel effectively to the gentile world. It seems that Barnabas had a significant influence upon him and was responsible for his acceptance by the existing Christian leaders – especially Peter and John.

And yet Paul (as he is now known) was clearly his own man and, although respectful of his fellow apostles, was determined to follow his own beliefs. Galatians 2:11 and the following verses depict the extent to which Paul differed with not only Peter, but his close ally, Barnabas. They were still wedded to the belief system which drove Paul on his murderous vendettas against Christians.

All this shows that faith is a living thing. It starts small and grows, not simply through reading the Bible or attending church, but also through our endeavours to share the gospel in a troubled world where many people have questions which we avoid at our peril. Paul was a skilled debater and had a brilliantly intellectual mind. And yet, as he walked the streets of Athens and encountered the altar to ‘the Unknown God’ (Acts 17:23) he was learning how to share his faith in a world which simply couldn’t understand.

Anyone who has embarked upon a preaching career will know that if they look back to their earliest sermons, they will sometimes cringe at the naivety of their first attempts. John Wesley, we are told, burned his sermons every seven years – a sign that he was growing in his understanding of the faith and the need to express it differently.

Could the same be true of our churches generally? Could it be that the way in which we present our faith has got stuck in a ‘time warp’ and needs to be upgraded? It is only as we look at the Bible on one hand, and the world in which we live on the other that we can make our faith relevant to the people we meet day by day. For most of us, we need to acknowledge our inexperience of the things which perplex people around us – the suffering of people with terminal illnesses, the premature loss of a child, the heart-ache caused by Alzheimer’s, the inexplicable loss of life in a tsunami. Our comfortable lifestyle shields us from so many of the harsh realities which beset the vast majority of people across the globe.

I thank God for the life-changing spiritual moments in my life but also acknowledge that God speaks and acts in some of the most unexpected ways every day of my life – if only I will listen and learn.