I have a theory. Sooner or later, God congronts every person. By itself no theory of mine deserves your attention. However, this is a theory that grows in biblical soil. Later in Acts we will have occasion to work this soil. For now I want to use that scripture passage to show you where my theory comes from.

The Apostle Paul said this about God and man in one of his sermons. "God (acted) so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him. For in him we live and move and have our being," (Acts 17:27-28). If God who created us is close enough to everyone of us that we can reach out for him and find him then it is reasonable to hope that God, who wants to be found, will confront his human creatures to stimulate them to reach out to Him.

My unscientific hunch is that people of all kinds experience God all the time. We may not recognize the experience for what it is. We may not know what to do with it. We may refuse to acknowledge it. In some of these encounters God can be very insistent. Scripture and the Church help us make sense out of these divine-human encounters.

Scripture has preserved for us many examples of these encounters. We will read about one of them today. This one literally changed the world. Most of them are not as far-reaching, but this one reminds us that every fruitful encounter with God has consequences, and we dare not underestimate their potential.

Saul on the Damascus Road
The encounter we no consider concerns the young firebrand, Saul, who took responsibility for the stoning of Stephen and the scattering of Christians. You have to wonder if he ever saw that his acts of terror were having the opposite effect of what he intended. They scattered people, and everywhere they scattered, they scored success in attracting more and more diverse people to faith in Jesus.

Judign from the opening of Acts nine, he soldiered on in ignorance or defiance of what his fury was furthering. Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He was not acting as a maverick. His ignorance or defiance was shared by the highest levels of power in Israel. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

Damascus lay outside Israel's borders. The plan to carry out arrests there and deport them to Jerusalem bears further witness to the intensity of official Judaism's hostility toward the followers of Jesus. Nopbody expected what happened next. The God who encounters all of us was about to act decisively. Verses 3-6 capture the act.

As he (Saul) neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

"Who are you, Lord?" Saul replied.

"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."

Take a time out, and consider what Jesus said to Saul. "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" He didn't say, "Why do you persecute the Church?" that's what Saul was doing, but Jesus didn't say church. He said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" The implication is clear. If you touch the Church, you touch Jesus. That should give us pause. We evangelicals hold the Church in lower esteem than any other Christians. To our way of thinking Christ is what matters, and the CHurch can come along for the ride, as long as it doesn't get in the way.

We may not like the terrible humanness of the Church. But the reality is that if you touch this terrible humanness, you touch Jesus. We may not like the individualism and fractiousness that divide the Church. But the reality is that if you touch this individualism and fractiousness, you touch Jesus.

A husband doesn't love his wife just from the neck up. Why should we love Christ only from the neck up and not love the boyd of Christ, the Church? The reality of such love finds concrete expression in how we esteem and build up and pray for the local church that we are part of. BVBC is not a club. It is not a weekend option. How we treat this community is a measure of how we treat Jesus.

Meanwhile, back on the road to Damascus, verses 7-9 say, The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

We would choose to be in that situation. A blinding light has prostrated him. The last voice he ever expected to hear declares itself personally offended by Saul's zealous persecutions. The voice tells him to go on to Damascus, and "you will be told what you must do." Does that mean punishment or penance or restitution? No answer. And then for three days he is as blind as a bat and either can't or doesn't eat and drink.

I said earlier that in some of these divine-human encounters God can be very insistent. Intimidating might better describe Paul's experience of Jesus. God was playing hardball with one very tough costumer.

Saul on the Street Called Straight
Saul, the fierce and fiery zealot, goes childlike to Damascus and to the house of a man called Judas on a street called Straight to await further instructions. Before he arrived there, another divine-human encounter of a different kind was taking place.

In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, "Ananias!" If you ever have a vision, don't keep it to yourself. Tell me abou t it. I will be receptive to your experience, and I have ways of helping you to assess what your vision might mean. Ananias didn't seem put off at all by the vision.

"Yes, Lord," he answered.

The Lord told him (we don't know how), "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Stree and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. IN a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place hands on him to restore his sight." Oh my, another vision! Heaven was breaking in all over the place.

Ananias didn't seem disturbed by a vision of or a conversation with God, but the name Saul brought fear to his heard. Verses 13-14: "Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call your name."

Doesn't it sound like Ananias already knew Saul was coming? The Church had some kind of early warning system. There is a lot that Luke did not tell us in this story.

Saul's New Commission in Life
God's reassurance to Ananias in verses 15-16 lays out the startling agenda that He has for Saul's future. But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." Several matters deserve attention here.

First, the Lord calls Saul my chosen instrument. God really does choose certain people for certain tasks. He really chose Saul. He might choose anyone of us here for a special task. He might have in mind a task that is about the last thing you would expect.

That brings us to a second matter. The quite unexpected task the Lord chose Saul to do was "to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings." Only God would choose a Jewish zealot and send him to a Gentile audience. Do you remember Jesus' promise in Acts 1:8? "You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth." Saul will be the point man to carry that out.

The third matter here is the Lord's statement, "I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." I don't know if we should call suffering a theme of the book of Acts, but it runs through the entire story Luke told. Perhaps it is the absence of suffering that makes the story of our faith seem unusual.

There is a fourth matter. We call this event the conversion of Paul. A conversion certainly took place, but did you notice what is missing in Luke's account from the usual faith stories?Luke says nothing about repentance, nothing about forgiveness, nothing about faith, nothing even about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Maybe we should call this the commissioning of Saul. We hear the story of Paul's experience on the road to Damascus two more times in Acts. The focal point in them is also Saul's commissioning to go to the Gentiles with the gospel of Jesus. The story as it is told in Acts 22 says that Saul learned of his commissioning from Ananias.

Here verse 17 tells us everything else we know about Ananias. Then Ananias went to the house (bravely) and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul (isn't that an amazing way to speak to this once dangerous and still feared man?), the Lord - Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here - has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit."

He regained his sight, regained his strength, and within a few days something astonishing happened. Verse 20: At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. (Jesus is the Messiah.) All those who heard him were astonished and asked, "Isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?"

Note everyone was happy. Verses 23-25: After many days had gone by, the Jews (we should understand: the Jews who did not believe in Jesus and perhaps felt betrayed by Saul's conversion) conspired to kill him, but Saul learned of their plan. (The Christians' early warning system worked again.) Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall. He had set out to Damascus with the power of Jerusalem behind him and an impressive entourage around him. He left Damascus alone by night in a basket, but he was armed with credentials more impressive than any letters of authorization from the Sanhedrin.

His new credentials did not, however, immediately pen any doors for him in the Jerusalem church. When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple.

And who changed all that? But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. Good old Barnabas! I tell you, there was more to him than met the eye. He lived up to his name (Son of Encouragement) by encouraging his fearful brothers to open their doors and their hearts to Saul. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus.

Thanks to Barnabas, they welcomed Saul among their ranks. He lived up to Barnabas' billing, speaking boldly, says verse 28, in the name of the Lord. He talked and debated with the Grecian Jews, but they tried to kill him. The passions of the Middle East haven't changed much in 2000 years, have the? Violence settled disputes, and violence settled nothing - then or now.

Having Saul around was just a little too exciting. So, say verses 30-31, when th brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus, which by the way was his birthplace. Then and only then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord. The Church had survived another, great challenge to its existence and instead of shrinking under the pressure actually grew.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Have you had an encounter with the living Jesus? The form it took will differ from that of Saul, but many of us will answer, Yes. You may say, No, but don't be too hasty. That strange sense of the supernatural you experienced, that combination of events that defied all logic and saved your life or opened up life for you, that dream or vision - any of that may have been the Lord. Have another look and see if it might be so. If a friend goes through a tough time, sensitively ask, "Do you think God is in this?"

Was your encounter with Christ possibly a commissioning to Christian service? You said, "No, no, it couldn't be that. It couldn't be me." But it could. Revisit the experience again. In this congregation there is more than one Ananias, more than one Barnabas to help you interpret the meaning of your experience. Who knows?

Finally, God chose Saul. That offends our liberal, democratic assumptions about life. Not even God, perhaps especially not God, should play hardball with human free will. Or worse, maybe God cancelled Saul's will. I don't think He did that. More likely, Saul experienced what many a bull-headed person has experienced. Reality and the illusions of his mind came face to face, and reality set his will free at last.

I suppose someone might call that coercive. I suppose someone might call the results of an x-ray coercive. Maybe it is our illusions that make reality seem coercive. If we get beyond our illusions, we will know that reality, truth, always sets us free. I suppose Saul might have resisted reality. He did not in fact resist, and as a result he began to enjoy the only freedom that really matters to a human being: the freedom to serve our Lord in defiance of all illusions.

C.S. Lewis got it right. "The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men. And his compulsion is our liberation."