As One Untimely Born

1 Corinthians 15:3-11

Paul was liberated from being Saul.

As with all liberations, it was hard, painful, and life altering. The struggle to become free to be who we want to be is a difficult road, a rough-trod trail, as an old spiritual sings.

We are so free that we take it for granted, and even, missing the irony completely, complain that we are NOT free. We claim others are impinging on our freedom, denying us the ability to be all we want to be.

Please.

No one stopped anyone from leaving their home to come to church. Try that in Myanmar. No kept you from spending your holiday any way you wanted. No one threatened to imprison you for speaking your mind or being critical of our government. No one sent you to school, mandating that you take a certain regimen of classes because the government needed a quota of janitors. You did not awaken to find your assets frozen. We are free.

We are free to be as foolish as we want to be, and also as wise. We are free to spend our money on what we want, even putting ourselves in bankruptcy, and even then knowing there will be safety nets to keep us freely out of debtors prison. We are free to choose what we want to be. We are free to read what we choose. We are free to watch whatever TV agrees with our mindset. We are free to travel anywhere in the world, nearly. We are free to stay at home forever.

But are we truly and actually free?

A man named Saul assumed he was master of his world, and to some degree he was right. He was a well-educated Pharisee, a shining light in his faith community. He knew his God, what his God wanted, and he lived it. So right did he assume he was that he felt free to correct others who did not share his presumption. There was a man Jesus who roused the rabble, threatened to challenge the powers from which Saul benefited. This man said he was a rabbi, yet had no credentials. His ridiculous cohorts named him the messiah, but he had none of the backing of the Temple and its traditions. He came from outside, so there was no way he could be the pinnacle of being inside. Saul was free to believe this with all his heart. He freely joined in the violent suppression of those who claimed this Jesus as something other than a charlatan. He helped stone to death these miscreants. Better dead than led by these delusional idiots.

We have been too schooled in the story to see how closely Saul resembles us, but if Saul were among us this morning, we would welcome him. He would be one of us--and maybe a bit shaming--for he was a strident man of faith. He was willing to define right and wrong, good and bad, and name names. He was steadfast and stalwart, a great example for whom we might want to be. He would be among us with the zeal and passion of the missionaries who come by sharing their experiences among the Least of These. We want to be that sure and certain of ourselves as we make our way through the world. We want the clarity, the focus, the clear-headedness of being certain. A man like Saul makes the world less frightening because his way of thinking makes it manageable. He helps us clearly delineate between persons, knowing whom we should follow and whom we should leave behind. We long to be that free.

But Saul was imprisoned--he was trapped by the very things we might claim set him free. His world order was of his own devising. His god was of his own making. So ensnared was he that he missed the God he claimed to adore. In fact, so blind was he that he sought to eradicate the ambassadors of God! He had built a mighty fortress and forgot to leave it open, now it was a prison.

We do that, too. We do it well. We carefully craft and construct a world in which to live. We delude ourselves into thinking it is real. We blind ourselves to the places where the actual world makes a mockery of our model one. We will turn away from people who challenge our construct, who argue against our presumptions, and who have the audacity to ask, "Have you ever thought you might be wrong?" We will lash out at those who are different from us. We will make completely made-up lists of reasons to reject someone that does not require that we actually get to know them as a person. The walls go up and the prison keeps us.

Saul had a vision. God interrupted him. That intervention hurt--left Saul literally blind. It also altered him--God renamed him--there was nothing left of Saul--he was now Paul. Any psychotherapist will tell you that such a radical shift in identity can be more illness than cure. But here, it was a gift of grace. God loved Paul so much God would not leave him as he was. God liberated Paul from being Saul.

The question for us is whether or not we want such a radical liberation.

As we come to Christ, most of us come on our own terms. We freely chose our congregation and we freely choose how we will participate. We get itchy if someone tries to direct us or lead us into an alternative way of being, or challenges our carefully wrought practice.

Yet, Christ is a challenge. Christ will not conform to our wants and wishes. Christ is truly free from us and our presumptions.

And that is liberating.

Christ frees us to be a child of God by erasing the power of presumption. Christ calls us to see one another and everyone in the whole world as a child of God, first and last. Christ, in his refusal to abide by the categories and divisions of humanity imposed by the likes of Saul, sets love free within the world. No one is beneath contempt. No one is trash. No one is outside. God comes with a simple invitation--to participate in this absolute freedom to be all that God made us to be, lose yourself. Lose your presumption. Lose your assumptions. They cannot save you. God destroys the walls of our self-made prisons. God does it through love. God frees us to live within the world as one without fear, despair, or isolation. Other people are not a problem, they are family. The world is safe because God made the world and all that is in it. That means no one need be segregated out--they are all objects of God's love.

Paul saw the loss of his world, name, and life as grace--a grace so great he knew there was nothing he deserved less--he had opposed his redeemer, for goodness sake. Yet, he was freed.

We can be, too.