May 31 2020
Acts 24:10-21
This past week I finally felt good enough to go outside and do some yard work which included way too much running of a weed eater.In doing so, I started to really wonder if all this effort I was putting into doing all of this was really worth it, I mean after all, it sure didn’t seem to bother my son who mows the yard. He could let weeds grow up nice and tall and it doesn’t bother him a bit. As I thought about it I realized that the reason I can’t stand straggly weeds rearing their ugly heads around my property goes back to my grandmother. Every year about this time my Dad would go pick my grandmother up and bring her to our house. Now my grandmother did not come for a social visit; no, she was on a mission. She would head out to the garden with us grandkids in tow to get the weed situation under control. She sat on a small stool and bit my bit she would work her way up and down the rows. She would also watch the progress that us grandkids were making always pointing out the ones we had missed and reminding us to make sure we would pull them out by the roots. You see, for Grandma, weeds were on the level of an enemy which needed eliminated. She knew that weeds kept the garden plants from growing like they should but on top of that, weeds growing up unattended were a sure sign that someone was slacking off, a sign that someone had not done their job. So getting the weeds under control was also a matter of pride, a sign that our garden was a neat and tidy affair.
This is, I guess why I attack weeds with a vengeance but for me they aren’t a problem like they were in the garden growing up. I guess this is why my son could care less if there are weeds three feet tall next to the yard; what’s the harm. For me though it just bothers me. The reason it bothers me is that those weeds affect the way that I look at the world. To me a perfect world is a world where the weeds are under control just like Grandma taught me. You see, all of us have some idea of what a perfect world should look like. This is the idea behind what is called a person’s worldview. A person’s worldview has to do with more than their opinions on weeds though. A worldview is how we answer the big questions of life such as just why are we here, how do we define who we are, where did we come from and where we are headed, and just what is the meaning and purpose of life. What, after all, counts as a good life because after all who really wants to strive to live a bad life. All of us, somewhere deep in our hearts, have answers to these questions. They don’t often come up in our everyday conversations but they are there none the less. These answers help us make sense of the world we live and it is in times like we are living in, this is when these foundations of our reality are shaken and we get stressed out. The stress comes because we begin to wonder if by some chance we have the wrong answers to those big questions of life. I mean if you think that the measure of a good life is one without fear then having a deadly virus floating about is really going to call into question how you define life.
When we begin to understand that all of us have a worldview, a way of making sense of this world we live in, a way of making a reality we can live in, then we can begin to make sense of this puzzling statement of Paul in todays scripture where Paul states “It is with respect to the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.” In other words, Paul is in trouble with the Jewish leaders solely because of the resurrection. Take a moment and wrap your mind around that thought. The resurrection, this fact that Jesus stepped out of the grave three days after being brutally being crucified, this amazing event which gives us such joy and hope, this event has made some people so angry and upset that they, in essence, called the cops on Paul. Do you hear how crazy that sounds? Why would anyone get so angry with someone over something like the resurrection that they would want them locked up? The answer is exactly what we were just talking about, a persons worldview. The Jewish leaders were fiercely upset at the thought that Paul was adamant that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead and they wanted more than anything to silence him because this truth, if it was true, shattered their way of looking at the world.
What is interesting is that this wrong worldview of the Jewish leaders affected their reading of the Holy Scriptures. In the fifth chapter of the gospel of John, Jesus tells a group of Pharisees, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” Why did they refuse to come to Jesus to receive life? They refused to come to him because Jesus did not fit in to their view of the world. And because Jesus did not have a place in how they saw their world then they could not see him in the very scriptures they knew so well. This is one of the amazing truths around the coming of Jesus is that the very people who had read and reread the writings of the Old Testament for hundred of years did not recognize Jesus when he appeared even though these writings were to point to him.This is how a persons worldview can blind a person to the truth, the reality they create is a false reality.What shatters this false reality is the truth of the resurrection of Jesus.
It wasn’t the fact of the resurrection that the Pharisees opposed. They did believe in the resurrection yet they held that the resurrection would happen at the end of the age. The one who is like the son of man that they read about in the seventh chapter of Daniel was the promised king from the line of David who at the end of the age would rise up and lead the people of Israel into battle and defeat their enemies. The everlasting kingdom that Daniel also writes about, the Pharisees assumed meant the kingdom of Israel not the kingdom of God. The hope of the Pharisees then was centered on the restoration of the nation of Israel through victory over her enemies. What they had not thought about is that if this was the truth of Israels future then how would she be any different from all of the other nations of the earth who survive by killing their enemies? Was the difference the fact that their victory came through the power of God, is this what would sanctify their efforts? This worldview of the Pharisees is still common today as some believe that one can use the methods of the world for the purposes of God because as long as it is used for God, God will sanctify ones efforts. Nothing could be further from the truth. You see, the roots of this worldview are this: as God’s people who live through the power of the Spirit instead of the power of the flesh, suffering will always be part of the equation. To trust in the God who gives life to the dead, who calls into existence the things that do not exist, means that we also believe that our momentary affliction will be followed by an eternal weight of glory. Yet it is hard to hold fast to this thought when we are trying to answer the question as to what determines a good life. The temptation for God’s people has always been to desire to carve out a good life in the here and now even at the cost that others might not have a good life or any life at all for that matter. This idea goes against the very love of God who makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, who makes it rain on the just and the unjust. It is God’s love which defines the equality of all people and so to have a worldview in touch with the truth of Gods reality we must see our face in the face of others. As Jesus taught us in the seventh chapter of Matthew, the Law and the Prophets, the entire Old Testament can be summed up in this, “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.”So, when we know that the scriptures bear witness to Jesus and that they speak also of treating others in the same way we would want to be treated we begin to see there is a unity between Jesus and our treatment of others and this must be reflected in our worldview.
Paul in his encounter with the risen Christ experienced this very unity. In these last chapters of the book of Acts, Paul tells of his encounter with the risen Christ no less than three times. For Paul, this encounter shattered his worldview which was the Pharisee party line. There on the road of Damascus, hot on the pursuit of those who belonged to the Way, the Way of the Messiah, Paul, who also went by the name Saul, was surrounded by a great light from heaven. Saul fell to the ground, and he heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul answered, “Who are you Lord,? The voice replied, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Now, in this brief encounter Saul or Paul very quickly must have figured out a few things. This voice from heaven was united with those who were believers in Jesus. Paul would have understood that in Scripture there was only one place where such unity was exhibited and that was in the prophecy of Daniel in the seventh chapter of his book. There, Daniel saw the one like a Son of Man was presented before the Ancient of Days. To this one like a Son of Man Daniel records, was given glory, dominion, and a kingdom. Yet a little further in this prophesy, Daniel also records that the saints will also receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom. So there is an implied unity between the one like a Son of Man and those saints, the Holy Ones of the Most High. So, for Paul, the voice speaking from the light of heaven was the Son of Man, the one that God, the Ancient of Days, had given glory, dominion and an everlasting kingdom.This one like a Son of Man was united with the saints, the very people Paul was persecuting, including Stephen whom Paul had participated in his killing. So, Paul also knew that if he had done these things against the one who was the Son of Man, he stood condemned and deserved nothing but death.Yet this Son of Man, this Jesus of Nazareth did not condemn him but instead this Jesus did something more than merely forgive him. No, what Jesus did was to appoint Paul as his servant and a witness to the encounter Paul had with Jesus and to any later encounters where Jesus would appear to Paul.” Here, Paul would have recognized a similar pattern found in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy where we hear that the people of Israel were to fear, be in awe of God, to serve him and by his name they were to swear, to stake their life to upholding the reputation of God. Paul was in awe of God, in his power and also his amazing mercy, and he was called to serve him. Not only that, Paul was called to be a witness, to speak out about the reputation of God that he had experienced in the life of Jesus.The truth Paul would uphold then was not an abstract proposition but this truth was for Paul to be truthful to the one who was the very truth of life.
Perhaps the most important part of Paul’s calling by the risen Christ was that Paul was to go to the Gentiles, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to turn to God, that they might receive forgiveness of their sins and find a place among those sanctified by faith in Jesus. Paul in hearing this must have thought of his ancestor, Abraham who when God called him out of Ur, promised him that he would make of him a great nation. God was going to bless him and make his name great in order that Abraham would be a blessing. God would bless those who blessed Abraham, and likewise God would curse those who cursed Abraham. This was a foreshadowing of the unity God desired with his people. Finally, God told Abraham that in him all the families of the Earth, those called the Gentiles, the people of the nations, they would be blessed because of God’s blessing upon Abraham. This is what Paul must have remembered when the risen Christ called him to to go the nations, that as a descendant of Abraham he was fulfilling this promise of God. Paul would also remember that Abraham was blessed by God out of God’s grace not by anything Abraham had done as Abraham was a Gentile when God had called him. Paul would also remember that it was Abrahams faith that caused God to declare him righteous and it is this insight that changed the world.
It was the encounter with the risen Christ that forever changed the worldview of Paul. It was also the resurrection of Christ that shook the foundations of what the Pharisees believed in. What if the resurrection had already begun with the life of this man, this Jesus? What if he was the Messiah, this one cursed by hanging on a tree? Why would God have done something so against their idea of scriptural truth? The answers to questions like these the Pharisees were unwilling to accept and so they were left with only one option which was to silence the witness of Paul. Yet Paul could not be silenced except by death because Paul had an encounter with the risen Christ and not only was he changed but his worldview was transformed as well. Paul could now understand that who he was was one of the saints redeemed by Christ who gave his life upon the cross for him. Where was Paul coming from? Paul would say that he began his life in the dominion of darkness, in the slavery of sin, unable to do the good he knew to do. Paul would also say that the reason he was here was to worship the living Christ, to be in awe of his mercy and his glory and in light of this love Paul knew that he had to give his life to serve Christ as Christ had served him. And Paul would say that he was here to witness to and to uphold the reputation, the name of Christ declaring to all the love and mercy Christ had shown to him. Life for Paul was found through the same faith as the faith of the Jesus the Risen One who had trusted his Heavenly Father with his life. So the good life for Paul was a life poured out in love for others and for God because of the hope of the resurrection. How different this worldview was than the one he had as a Pharisee! No longer was Paul desiring the restoration of Israel as a great nation through the death of their enemies but now he longed for the restoration of people to their original glory, to be the kingdom of God where enemies are loved into life, a kingdom where people treat others in the same way they want to be treated, with love. This is how the resurrection of Christ changed the worldview of Paul. The question only you can answer is thishow has the resurrection of Christ changed the way you look at the world? Is your reality founded on the bedrock truth of the resurrection of Jesus? Does the resurrection of Jesus affect how love God and love others? I hope and pray that everyone has an encounter with the risen Jesus and find themselves and the way they look at the world forever changed. Amen!
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