"An Odd Sort of Comfort"
A Sunday Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Thomas C. Leinbach
April 20, 2008 - Harwich, Massachusetts

Preaching Text: "And Saul approved of their killing him." (Acts 8:1a)

This morning's passage from Acts offers an odd sort of comfort. At first blush, that comfort is far from obvious, for the passage witnesses to the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, at the hands of the religious authorities in Jerusalem.

Performing mighty acts in and through the Holy Spirit, Stephen and various other followers of the now crucified Jesus are stirring things up in the great city. Brought before the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the temple and nation, Stephen challenges his detractors with the truth of Christ resurrected. In response, they take him outside the city and stone him to death.

The oddly comforting part is hinted at in what seems a throw-away line. As the stoning is taking place, we are told, the witnesses lay their coats "at the feet of a young man named Saul."

Then the passage ends with these pointed words: "And Saul approved of their killing him."

So why is this at all comforting? Because we know that Saul eventually changes his name to Paul, and becomes one of the seminal figures of the church, whose words and deeds of faith have inspired countless souls for millennia.

If God could forgive Saul, the ruthless persecutor of Jesus' followers, if God could turn this self-righteous ideologue into one of the greatest witnesses to Christ's boundless grace, then God can do the same for us. This is the comforting part.

One of the arguments made often against Christianity has to do with the Christianity's failure always to honor the word and works of Jesus Christ. Talk of the church's participation in the Crusades, for instance, is cited often. A more contemporary example might be the recent clergy sex abuse scandal addressed by the Pope during his visit here. Time and again we are told that these and other sinful deeds negate Christianity, proving its utter hypocrisy and untrustworthiness.

I tend to counter such arguments with a question: do you think the world would be better off if Christianity, with all its admitted failures, had never existed?

What if, in other words, Christianity had not imparted its ethical and moral norms to our world? Or if countless individuals inspired by the spirit of Christ had not urged peace, justice, tolerance, self-sacrifice and service to the poor and disadvantaged throughout time? What about the founding of the world's first hospitals and universities? And what do you do with such world-changing figures as Mother Teresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr., to name but just a few contemporary examples?

But getting back to what we were saying before, putting it in personal terms, what if you were defined by your worst moments? And what if all people saw in you were your mistakes?

The good news, of course, is that God does not define us by our worst moments or our mistakes. Just as God did not define Saul's life solely on the basis of his.

The reason has to do with love. In love we are able to peer into the heart of another and find the goodness there. In love we are able to see that which others often fail to see. In love we see struggles and hardships placed in their proper context; we can discern one's hidden motives and intentions as they confront adversity and outward circumstance. The eyes of love see beyond and through the external and superficial, into the deeper, more mysterious inner recesses of heart and soul.

In John's gospel, we are reminded again and again of the supremacy of love - of God's love for Jesus, Jesus' love for us, and our love for one another. Only within this matrix of intertwining and enveloping love is it possible to discover the otherwise veiled meaning of life. Without it, we are blind.

The disciples in our gospel reading are invited into this deeper mystery during the waning moments prior to Jesus' appointed time on the cross. Only they fail to understand. So Jesus then clarifies the obvious: to see and know Jesus, he assures, is to see and know God, to be bound up heart and soul in the power of God's love.

Saul was a stranger to this, a stranger to Jesus, and so remained ignorant of this love. His persecution was an expression of this ignorance. His lack of love prevented him from seeing what the simplest eyes of faith see clearly. Being an outsider, removed from Christ's love, had rendered him blind.

One of the more curious truths of the Christian life is revealed through Jesus' insistence that in loving him, in being in intimate relationship with him, his followers could perform the same miraculous deeds as did he, and possibly more!

Generally, however, we recoil from such an outlandish claim. We do so, I suppose, because we focus on our shortcomings which blind us to the possibilities of love. We define ourselves instead by our worst moments and our many mistakes, contenting ourselves with smaller lives and limited vision.

Yet Jesus does not insist on perfect lives, only simple belief, and simple love. Love will teach us all we need to know, and grant us all the courage and strength we require.

Recently I was talking to someone who lost her husband. As it was, she had cared for him tirelessly for months on end, with no respite and with little or no free time to herself. Rarely was she even able to leave the house.

When I commented on what a blessing her efforts had been to her husband, she responded simply (and I paraphrase), "You never know what you can do until you find yourself in that situation."

That, I think, is what defines Christian love. We are indeed capable of far more than we normally assume. And that is true of lives that otherwise have known many mistakes and failures. For love, as 1 Peter reminds us, covers a multitude of sins.

Saul had not yet known the love of Jesus and, as such, failed to see what the simplest eyes of faith see clearly. His hardened heart could not bend to the gentle and pure urgings of the love of Christ. Absolutely convinced he was doing right, he later came to view his actions as utterly false.

Saul, who became Paul, did not shrink into self-hatred or give up on life. Once he saw the error of his ways, he dedicated his life fuller to living and knowing this greater love. His life in fact became a model of Christian salvation, a life of intense courage, loyalty and self-giving love. He founded churches all over Asia Minor and Greece, convinced the early church in Jerusalem to welcome the gentiles into the fold and endured countless beatings and humiliations for the love of Christ. And as tradition has it, he ultimately gave his life, as had Stephen before him - at his hands no less! - for that same love of Christ.

His words in the form of letters make up a large portion of the New Testament and have been used generation upon generation as inspiration and counsel, as witness to the profound love and possibilities of love in Jesus Christ.

My friends, we are not defined by our worst moments or by our failings. Rather, we are defined by our capacity to love in Christ. Jesus taught his disciples that in this love they would find strength, courage, truth, comfort, joy, grace and hope - and that they would be able to touch countless lives with these same precious gifts. And when their task here was complete, they would gather in that place Jesus has prepared for them in eternal life.

Amen.