Spontaneous Combustion

I think my folks were a little threatened when I found Jesus. Actually, they wouldn’t have put it that way. They were a little threatened when I found Charles and Margaret and Graeme and all the other folks I gave my Thursday nights to when I was in high school.

You see, I started to spend Thursdays at a socialization program for mentally retarded citizens in my junior year. But it wasn’t because I had to fulfill a requirement for school or because I was working on a merit badge. I went to Thursday nights because I had found Jesus or Jesus had found me. I had spent a week at a youth retreat in Staunton the summer before my junior year and working with a program very much like our ARC program here on the Shore I learned something I hadn’t known before – Jesus had new things for me to do. Following Jesus was more than personal fulfillment; it was discovering myself in serving the world. Jesus was waiting to meet me in new faces and new places.

It changed my life. I was on fire for Jesus in a way I hadn’t been before. I looked forward to Thursday nights. I got a little obsessed with Thursday nights. I had a T-shirt made that said “Thursday Night Fever” on it. And that’s what made my folks nervous. I was so into it that they began to suspect I was getting into trouble. They weren’t really threatened by Jesus but they were trying to understand what in the world happened to their son. I was too!

Have you noticed that when people have a life-transforming experience with Jesus that they often talk about ‘before’ and ‘after’ as if there’s almost no continuity between them? ‘I used to be that way but now I’m this way.’ I thought I knew what life was all about but now I know it’s something radically different. I once was lost but now I’m found. I was blind but now I see.

Following Jesus changes people. It turns them upside down or right side up. It gives them a passion for life. And even if we don’t share it because of where we are in life, we envy people who find new life in Jesus.

Do you think this true? In the people who are ‘lit up’ for Christ we see something that gives their life meaning and purpose and direction. They are living on a higher plane and experiencing a quality of existence we wish for ourselves.

Then again, sometimes our response to that is not so great. There’s the story of the young woman who goes to church one Sunday in a very staid, straight-laced church where everything is very proper and where you get looked at a little funny when you sit in the “wrong” pew. In the middle of the sermon she gets struck by the Spirit and she starts to shout out. She cries, “Amen.” And the people in front of her shift uncomfortably in their seats. A little later she feels the Spirit again and yells, “Praise the Lord.” The people in front of her turn around and give her the stare. A third time she says, “Hallelujah!”

This is too much. An usher comes up and tells her, “I’m sorry, Mam, but you’ll have to be quiet.”

She says, “I can’t help it, I’ve got religion.”

The usher says, “Well, you didn’t get it here!”

But in general I think I’m envious (even though it’s one of the seven deadlies)…I’m envious of those who feel possessed by the Spirit. I don’t want an ordinary life. I hear Jesus’ promise that he came that we might have life and have it abundantly. I want to experience that spontaneous combustion that leads us to live on the edge.

Paul felt it, too. “I can’t it explain it any other way except to say that Jesus revealed this good news to me himself.” The Apostle Paul was telling the Galatians how it was that he became a follower of Christ. “I want you to know,” he says, “that this is not some human invention. I didn’t just get indoctrinated by the disciples in Jerusalem and get sent out with some talking points. I didn’t get recruited by someone who promised me that I could make a good living as a motivational speaker. No, I had an encounter with Jesus and it changed everything.”

Paul goes on to then to talk about how much his life changed and I want you to listen because there are lessons here for us as well. Life Lessons for Those Consumed By Christ, you might call them.

What you need to know first is that Paul, before his meeting with Christ was…what’s the phrase I’m looking for?...a bad dude. He would not have said that about himself at the time. In fact, he thought he was very religious and he was. He seems to have grown up with some training in the Pharisaic tradition of Judaism. And he did well. “I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries,” he says. It was as if this religion thing was a competition and Paul was winning. He was good at it.

In his tradition, one sign that you were doing well was if you were a zealot. Paul tells us that he was one of those. “I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors than others were,” he tells us. Now when we think of the word ‘zealot’, (if we think of the word ‘zealot’), we think of someone who has a mindless commitment to the cause. Someone who is so driven that they will do anything to prove their devotion.

There’s good reason for that. The word ‘zealot’ in the Bible refers to people who do just what I’ve described in pursuing a cause. We think of Simon the Zealot, one of the disciples, who was evidently associated with the cause of overthrowing Roman control over Israel and reestablishing Jewish rule. These zealots resorted to any means necessary from refusing to pay taxes to assassinating foreigners to revolution. In the same way, characters in the Hebrew Scriptures are praised for their zeal in purifying their community from those they considered unfaithful. Usually they express this zeal in violent ways. Phineas, who is praised for his zeal in the apocryphal book of 4 Maccabees [8:12], gained his stature by taking a spear and thrusting it right through an Israelite and his foreign wife, whom he had taken in defiance of Moses’ command.

What I’m saying is that zeal, and being zealous, has a violent connotation in the old ways of the Israelites. And Paul shares with the Galatians that he continued in this understanding because: How did he show his zeal for God? He persecuted the new Christian church, approving the stoning and killing of its members and trying to destroy it. In fact, that was the mission he was on when he had his conversion experience.

But he did have that conversion experience. He did have that moment on the road to Damascus when he was thrown from his mount onto the ground. He did see a bright light and hear Jesus’ voice saying, “Saul, Saul,” (for that was his name at the time), “Saul, why do you persecute me?” It was a moment when everything changed for him.

So here he is trying to explain to the Galatians what happened to him and he says, “What really changed was not that I was taken from one course and put onto another one. God set me apart before I was born, just like Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, and Samuel, and all those prophets God chose. I just finally got on track. God set me apart before I was born and God called me through grace and showed me Jesus so that I could proclaim him to the nations.” Actually what Galatians says in the New Revised Standard translation in verse 16 is that that God was pleased “to reveal his Son to me.” But the Greek is a little more ambiguous than that. It could be that God revealed Jesus to Paul, but it could also read that God revealed Jesus in Paul. Both seem just as accurate to me. It wasn’t just that Paul received a vision and then changed; Paul was changed by having Jesus revealed in him. He became Jesus to the others that he met. And all those things that he was before he was consumed by Christ are transformed.

Here’s where those Life Lessons come in. Before, Paul thought that being religious meant that he was in a competition with others in the faith. Now he recognizes that there’s a new order, a new ethic, a new community. He rejects competitiveness with other Christians and it is hard for him, because he’s a proud guy. He fights a battle with himself over the temptation to boast. And he’s faced with other traveling preachers who are seeking to tear him down. But he insists that it’s not about him anymore. He would agree with the words of 1 Peter where Christians are advised, “Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever.” [1 Peter 4:11].

Instead of competitiveness, Jesus leaves us with new networks of connectedness and mutual support. We are related to one another. And this is a lesson we forget, especially in our society. When I can sit at home and access anything I want on the Internet, why do I need to interact with other? Why do I need Church when there is religion all over the internet and TV and radio? And yet, what are people doing on the Internet? They are seeking to create new communities. Facebook, MySpace – these social networking sites are all about trying to build new networks of connection. Community is not optional, it is at the heart of who we are and it is one of our deepest desires.

When all of us Methodists head off to Roanoke this afternoon we will be making a witness just by gathering together. We will be saying that Jesus did not call us alone, but Jesus called us to be part of a body. We are the body of Christ. That’s why we do this strange thing of coming together for worship. It’s why we meet together in small groups for prayer and mutual support. It’s why we eat together, as we will do next week. It’s why we have conferences. It’s why you can no more become a better Christian by remaining alone than you can turn a better double play in baseball by practicing alone. Life Lesson #1 – Being on fire for Jesus means being connected with Jesus’ body.

Lesson #2 – Zeal is not about violence, it’s about service. What Paul learns is that the violence that characterized his earlier life did not reflect the new life he knows in Christ. He could have just become a Christian version of his old self, persecuting those he felt didn’t represent his new understanding of the faith. Now, it’s true, that he probably didn’t have that opportunity since Christians were often on the margins of the community. But as a Christian he knew that he had to have a new way of being with sinners, of being with those who needed to hear God’s message of love and justice. The gospel of John tells us that God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. [John 3:17] If Jesus’ story tells us anything it tells us that God does not write us off or give up on us. God does have a concern for justice and for the righting of wrongs. God cannot abide evil and sin. They are foreign to God’s intentions for the world, but God handles this, not by condemning us, but by saving us through the means of the cross. What God asks from us is that we believe and live out of the freedom of new life.

Part of that new life is defending the defenseless and seeking out the lost and making space for the stranger in our midst. This is why Paul’s mission is so radical. He sought out those that he previously would have condemned. He went to people who were considered outcast or unclean. He did not seek to use violence, but revealed his zeal by doing good. He tells the Corinthians, “If you are zealous for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them by building up the church.” [1 Co. 14:12] This is a man who has changed.

Finally, Life Lesson #3 – If we are really going to show the world who Jesus is we need zeal, a fire that seeks to be Christ for others. Being on fire for Christ does not mean being turned in on ourselves. It means being turned outward, offering ourselves to the world. The bishops of our church and the general boards and agencies of our church have put together four Provocative Propositions for The United Methodist Church in the coming years. They deal with things like developing leadership, beginning new churches, tackling poverty and global health. But the basis for the propositions is the conviction that it is a Wesleyan thing, a Methodist thing, “to reach souls for Christ and to make disciples to transform the world.”[i] It’s not just that we are to reach souls, we are to make disciples who can then transform the world.


So here we are. Do we have the fire? Do we have the zeal? Will we be consumed by a fire that does not burn us up, but which leaves us burning like that bush Moses met on the mountaintop – burning by not burned up? Will we be made not less than we are, but more? More of who we are because that’s how we were made – we were people set apart by God before our birth? More of who we are because of who we are claimed by – by Jesus who is revealed to us and who longs to be revealed in us? Is that the fire that we have? Is that the desire we have? Do you want to live on the edge? Do you want to be the person you were always meant to be? Do you want to change the world?

Because that’s what God wants to do on this little sliver of land on the edge of the world. God wants to change the world. God wants people who seek God, who reveal Christ, who are possessed by the Spirit, and who want to live in the world and with the world so that the world and all that is in it can be transformed. And what better place for that to start than the Eastern Shore? We have things to do my brothers and sisters. Thanks be to God.

Galatians 1:11-24 (NRSV)
For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord's brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, "The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy." And they glorified God because of me.

[i] “Provocative Propositions,” p. 7, http://www.umc.org/atf/cf/%7BDB6A45E4-C446-4248-82C8-E131B6424741%7D/Provocative%20Propositions10%2020%2007.pdf