Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 18
October 8, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
CONVERSION AND COMMUNITY
Acts 9:1-20; Acts 10:1-33
Today we hear the stories of two conversions. They correspond with our Sunday School lessons from this week and next. The first story is the story of the conversion of a nonbeliever, Saul of Tarsus. The second story is the story of the conversion of a believer, Peter, the disciple of Jesus.
If you grew up Baptist, most likely you were taught to think of conversion as a once-in-a-lifetime experience where nonbelievers become believers. And sometimes conversion is like that. Something dramatic happens in our lives, or we are in a service of worship and we feel Christ calling our name, and we are baptized.
Some people can date the moment of their conversion experience. But there are others whose lives have been so permeated with the gospel that they cannot remember an exact time they said yes to God.
I’ve heard parents share how their young children already believe themselves to be Christian. They have been taught the way of Jesus all their lives and it’s already a part of who they are. They know Jesus loves them and with all their heart they love Jesus. They may not be old enough yet to make a decision to follow Christ and be baptized, but they live in the awareness of God’s love for them and in the awareness of how God wants them to live. And for them, conversion will be a gradual step rather than a life-changing turning point.
Billy Graham can remember the moment he accepted Christ, and yet his wife cannot pinpoint such a moment. Ruth Graham says at some point the dark turned to day, but all she knows for sure is that now she lives in the light. It’s like going to sleep at night and waking up in the day and you don’t know the exact moment night turned to day, but you know you now live in the day. In that same light, minister and author Frederick Buechner describes his conversion as “a dawning,” a gradual realization of grace.
However, whenever conversion happens, it continues to happen as we continue to open ourselves to the wind of God’s Spirit. We may experience dramatic conversion moments. But conversion will continue to be a process. Martin Luther said of baptism that it “is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that takes our whole life to complete.” (As quoted in Anthony Robinson and Robert Wall, Called to Be Church, Eerdmans, 2006, 149). The same is true of conversion.
Conversion never ends. It has been said that the demands of Christ are so great and the pull of sin so strong it takes a lifetime of conversions to become the new creation God has made us to become. We are forever in the process of conversion.
Conversion often begins with confession. This past Monday was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement for our Jewish brothers and sisters. Among other things on that day they seek to make amends to those they have wronged, even personally confessing their wrongs to those they have hurt.
My daughter Kristen has a wonderful teacher named Mr. Beasley. He is a Christian. His wife is Jewish. This past week he told his class that on Monday, in his humorous way, he called his wife during the day, as well as some of his other Jewish friends to ask them if they had anything to say to him. He wanted to give them every opportunity to make amends.
But conversion goes beyond confession. Anthony Robinson says that conversion can mean “crossing boundaries and barriers and reaching a whole new way of seeing and understanding life.” It is “changing one’s mind as well as one’s heart.” (Robinson and Wall, 141).
Conversion can turn your life around. That is the case with today’s first story.
It is the story of the world’s most famous conversion - Saul of Tarsus. One day he is a terrorist to Christians, persecuting, jailing and killing the “people of the Way.” The next day he is God’s appointed missionary to the non-Jewish world and will become the world’s most famous Christian.
Saul is on the road to Damascus, breathing threats and murder upon Christians, because that’s what he believed God wanted him to be doing. They were distorting what he believed to be true religion - Judaism according to the Law of Moses.
He is struck by a blinding light and a voice from heaven, the Risen Christ, who tells him his life is about to change.
Flannery O’Connor said of Paul that the Lord knew the only way to make a Christian of that one was to knock him off his horse. She’s probably right. Sometimes we need to be knocked off our horse in order to see and understand differently.
When Saul got up he could not see. He was led by the hand to Damascus where for three days he did not eat nor drink. Something radical was happening in his life.
Meanwhile, the Christ who met Paul on the Damascus road appeared also in a vision to a man named Ananias who told him to go and meet Saul. “He is blind and praying,” Jesus said. “Go lay hands on him and heal him.”
Ananias was appalled. “Lord, you can’t mean that. He is an evildoer. Do you not know the evil he has done?”
But the Risen Christ said to Ananias “Go, for he will be my instrument of the gospel to the Gentiles, to kings, and to the people of Israel.”
Could God really use someone who gave no value to the lives of those who disagreed with him?
When Ananias met Saul, he embraced him as his brother. And the text says of Saul, “something like scales fell from his eyes.” And he never saw things the same again.
The story goes on to say that Saul rose and was baptized and took bread and was strengthened. Which means someone was there to help him, to baptize him, to make food for him, to be family to him, to be church to him.
Conversion, full conversion, cannot happen without some kind of community. Some church to be family to us.
Sometimes conversion turns a nonbeliever into a believer.
But even believers need conversion.
In our second story, we encounter Peter, the disciple of Jesus, a Jew who had been taught all his life that certain things were clean and certain things were unclean, certain things were right and certain things were wrong.
In the tenth chapter of Acts, Peter has an encounter with the Risen Christ that changes all of that. It happened in prayer. Peter was up on a roof praying and became hungry. The text says “he fell into a trance.” And a large sheet came down from heaven with animals upon it, animals the law of Moses said were unclean and should not be eaten. Peter heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat.” Peter, believing the voice to be that of Christ, said, “No, Lord, I would never eat anything that is profane or unclean.” And the Voice said, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Peter refused to eat. But the lesson was learned.
This lesson on unclean food was symbolic of the lesson Peter was about to learn regarding unclean persons. The next day, Peter encountered Cornelius, a Roman soldier, a Gentile considered unclean by Jewish law. When Peter met Cornelius, Peter said, “You know it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile, but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”
God has shown me that I should not call anyone, anyone, profane or unclean.
Is that God’s Word for us today? Are there people you consider unclean? Muslims? Blacks? Whites? Hispanics? Japanese? Republicans? Democrats? Gay, lesbian, trans-gendered persons? The poor? The rich? Teenagers with the waistline of their pants half way down their legs? Are there those you consider unclean, second or third class persons? Hear God’s Word to Peter as God’s Word to us today? “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”
Is there a conversion that needs to take place in your understanding today? Is there a conversion that needs to take place among us as God’s people? Are there those in our who are treated as unclean in our midst? Can we embody God’s Word with our acceptance and embrace that they are not unclean? Does the church, our church, you and I, need conversion?
I have a third story of conversion for us today. It comes from Donald Miller who, as a college student, was a member of a Christian organization on the campus of a secular university. Each year the university shut down the campus for a festival where the students could party to the extreme. The school would actually bring in a medical unit that specialized in treating bad drug trips.
Miller says that some of the Christian students in his little group decided this was a pretty good place to let everybody know there were a few Christians on campus. As a joke he suggested that since a lot of people would be sinning they could build a confession booth in the middle of campus and paint a sign on it that said “Confess your sins.”
His friend Tony thought it was a great idea.
Another friend thought it was crazy: “They may very well burn it down,” she said.
“We’ll build a trap door then,” Tony said.
After a while Tony gathered everyone’s attention in the little group and said, “Okay, you guys, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to build a confession booth, but we’re not actually going to accept confessions. We are going to confess to them.
We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter and for that we are sorry.
We will apologize for the Crusades, for Christians killing in the name of Jesus.
We will apologize for Columbus and the genocide he committed in the Bahamas in the name of God.
We will apologize for the missionaries who landed in Mexico and came up through the West slaughtering Indians in the name of Christ.
We will apologize for televangelists.
We will apologize for neglecting the poor and lonely.
We will ask them to forgive us, and we will tell them that in our selfishness, we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus.
We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them.”
We all sat there in silence, Don said, because it was obvious that this was something beautiful and true. It would feel so good to apologize. I wanted so desperately to say that none of this hatred and violence was Jesus, and I wanted so desperately to apologize for the many ways I had misrepresented Jesus. I could feel that I had betrayed Jesus by judging, by not being willing to love the people he had loved and only giving lip service to issues of justice.
I prayed about getting in the confession booth. I wondered whether I could apologize and really mean it.
On Friday night, the first night of the festival, Don and Tony dressed up like monks and walked among the anarchy smoking their pipes, soaked in the spray of beer spewing from the crowds. People would come up to them and ask them what they were doing. They told them that the next day they would be on campus taking confessions, to come by and see them, that they were going to build a confession booth.
The next morning, while everyone else was sleeping off their hangovers, they built the booth and painted in large letters on the outside, “Confession Booth.” Some who walked by said it was the boldest thing they had ever seen. All of them were kind, which was a surprise.
That night, as the party hit full steam, Don said, I was doubting whether or not I wanted to do this, when our first customer walked in.
“What’s up?” the customer said. “Your pipe smells good.”
“Thanks.” What’s your name?
“Jake.”
I shook his hand, not knowing what else to do.
“So, what is this?” he asked. “I’m supposed to tell you all the juicy gossip of what I did this weekend? You want me to confess my sins, right?”
“No,” Don said, “that’s not what we’re doing, really. We’re a group of Christians on campus, and, well, there’s this group of us who were thinking about the way Christians have sort of wronged people over time. You know, the Crusades, all that stuff.”
“Well, I doubt you personally were involved in any of that, man.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Don said. “But the thing is, we are followers of Jesus. We believe he represented certain ideas that we have sort of not done a good job at representing. He’s asked us to represent him, but it can be hard.”
“I see,” Jake said, being very patient and gracious.
“So there is this group of us on campus who wanted to confess to you.”
“You’re confessing to me!” Jake said with a laugh. “You’re serious.”
Don told him he was. Jake looked at him and told him he didn’t have to. Don told him he felt very strongly at that moment that he was supposed to tell him that he was sorry about everything.
So he began. “Jesus said to feed the poor. I have never done very much about that. Jesus said to love those who persecute me. I tend to lash out, especially if I feel threatened. And I know that a lot of people will not listen to the words of Jesus because of people like me. There’s so much we Christians have done wrong.”
“It’s all right, man,” Jake said, very tenderly, his eyes starting to water.
“Well, I’m sorry for all that.” Don said.
“I forgive you,” Jake said. And he meant it.
“Thanks,” Don said.
“You really believe in Jesus, don’t you?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, most often I do. I have doubts at times, but mostly I believe in him. It’s like there’s something in me that causes me to believe, and I can’t explain it. I believe God loves us and forgives us. All of us. Jake, I guess I’m just saying if you want to know God, you can. If you ever want to call on Jesus, He’ll be there.”
“Thanks, man. I believe you mean that.” His eyes were watering again. “This is cool what you guys are doing. I’m going to tell my friends about this.”
“I don’t know whether to thank you for that or not,” Don laughed. “I have to sit here and confess all my crap.”
Jake looked at him very seriously and said, “It’s worth it.”
Don writes: It went on like that for a couple of hours. I talked to about thirty people. Tony talked to several others. That night was the beginning of change for a lot of us. We started taking a group to a local homeless shelter to feed the poor, and we often had to turn students away because the van wouldn’t hold more than twenty or so. We held an event called Poverty Day where we asked students to live on less than three dollars a day to practice solidarity with the poor. More than one hundred students participated. We held a talk on poverty in India, and more than seventy-five students came. Before any of this, our biggest event had about ten people.
We hosted an evening where we asked students to come and voice their hostility against Christians. We answered questions about what we believed, and we apologized again, and asked for forgiveness. We enjoyed new friendships, and at one time had four different Bible studies on campus specifically for those who did not consider themselves Christians. We watched a lot of students take a second look at Christ. But mostly, we as Christians felt right with the people around us. Mostly we felt forgiven and grateful. (Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, Nelson, 2003, 116-126)
Sometimes the church needs conversion, beginning with the confession of our sins. I think the world is ready to listen. For there is much done in the name of Christ that needs confession.
What about you? What conversion needs to take place in your life? To whom do you need to confess? What needs to change about the way you see yourself, the world, and those around you? Would today be the day you take that initial step toward Christ, toward grace, toward a life formed around the way of Jesus?
As we are led into the silence would you listen for the voice of Christ calling you, teaching you?
Would you receive the grace of God that washes away your sin and empowers you to follow the Christ who calls you?
Would you let your heart be quiet and in silence and prayer be changed?
feed back to Greg
return to Sermon Index
CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
We would like to hear from you.
Return to oldsite Home page
Return to newsite Home page