3rd Sunday of Easter – 2025c

Old Testament: Isaiah 61:1-3  

New Testament: Acts 9:1-20

 

On the House 

 

INTRODUCTION: On October 2, 1996, Lance Armstrong, then just 25 years old, was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage three testicular cancer, which by then had also spread to his lungs, abdomen, and brain. 

 

Given less than a 40% survival rate by his doctors, Armstrong set out on an aggressive treatment program that involved surgery followed by extensive chemotherapy treatments. 

 

And fortunately, in February of 1997 Armstrong was declared cancer-free. He had, amazingly, gone from staring death in the face to being free of cancer in just five months.

 

That same year, of course, Armstrong created the Armstrong Foundation, a non-profit organization intended to provide support and encouragement for people and families affected by cancer. 

 

Eventually, as many of you probably know, the Armstrong Foundation would turn into the Livestrong Foundation. Famous for its once very popular yellow gel wristbands and other paraphernalia, the Livestrong Foundation has generated more than 500 million worth of funds to support those with cancer.

 

And so it’s a great story, isn’t it? For out of his own painful encounter with cancer, Lance Armstrong went on to found an organization that has provided hope and support to thousands, if not millions, of other people. 

 

With courage and strength, Armstrong was able to turn his own ordeal with cancer into something good and beneficial for others.

 

ONE: But of course, as we now know, Lance Armstrong wasn’t nearly as decent and noble in other areas of his life, was he? 

 

After years of vehemently denying claims that he cheated by using banned performance-enhancing drugs to win 7 straight Tour de Frances, Armstrong finally came clean back in January of 2013. 

 

And while the lying was bad enough, it was the way he went about it that was really bad. After all, he violently impugned the character of those who claimed he had taken illegal drugs by making all kinds of cruel and mean remarks. He also sued many of them in an effort to bury their claims in a pile of legal documents and fees. 

 

When asked by Oprah during his mea-culpa interview several years ago how many people he had sued, Armstrong couldn’t even remember because the number was so high. Keep in mind the list of people Armstrong sued included former teammates, personal assistants, trainers, and even close friends.  

         

Betsy Andreu, the wife of a former teammate, was relentlessly bullied by Armstrong and his cronies for years. They, along with Armstrong, called her crazy, referred to her using that slang term for a female dog, and at one point an Armstrong associate even left a voice message on Betsy’s phone stating she hoped somebody might break a baseball bat over her head.

 

So talk about your walking contradictions! On the one hand, Armstrong was a humanitarian and a source of hope for thousands. And yet on the other, he was cruel and vicious and just downright nasty.     

 

TWO: Well Saul, of course, was his own walking contradiction, wasn’t he? For he too knew what it was like to be a mixed bag of both good and bad, right and wrong, and even ugly and beautiful.

 

As you no doubt recall, Saul’s darker, uglier side involved the persecution of Christ’s very first followers. He first gets mentioned in the Book of Acts for signing off on the stoning of Stephen, who becomes the first martyr for the faith. And although Saul doesn’t actually participate in Stephen’s stoning, he apparently takes pleasure in getting to watch it. 

 

In fact, the stoning of Stephen gets Saul so fired up for blood he quickly takes the lead in persecuting the “disciples of the Lord” in Jerusalem.

 

Or as Acts likes to describe it in chapter 8: “That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and…Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.” 

 

Of course, once Saul gets started, the flood gates open and he quickly becomes consumed with his quest to do away with those who would dare to follow Jesus Christ. Hearing that the disciples have fled into the countryside and are now sharing and spreading the good news there, Saul makes a special appeal to the high priest to be sent to Damascus in order to weed out the troublemakers. 

 

He’s a full blown headhunter on a personal mission to arrest as many followers of Jesus as he can. 

No wonder there were a whole lot of people that saw Saul as the living embodiment of evil.  

 

THREE: And yet Saul, the very one who was so bent on persecuting the early church, also ends up being one of its most famous and heroic leaders.  

 

On his way to gather up and persecute even more of Jesus’ followers, Saul soon finds himself blinded by a great light and surrounded by the voice of the risen Lord.

 

Told to take himself to Damascus, Saul eventually learns that he, of all people, has been selected by God to now be one of the main evangelists for the gospel.

 

Before his Damascus road experience Saul had been seeking to do in as many followers of Christ as he possibly could. 

 

Yet afterward, he’s no longer a persecutor of Jesus and his followers but rather a great proponent who, ironically, spends his last days on earth living under house arrest in Rome for being a practitioner of the very faith he so abhorred.

 

Talk about your two sides of the same coin! On the one hand, Saul is a vicious and ruthless persecutor of Christians. Because of Saul, people were pulled from their homes never to be seen again. Because of Saul, families were torn apart and lives were destroyed. Because of Saul, people lived with dread and fear.  

  

And yet that very same person would also eventually become Paul – the greatest evangelist for the faith that has ever existed. Because of Paul, the church would spread throughout the world. Because of Paul, the good news would be shared with gentiles. And because of Paul, people would be shown the way to new life and given hope.

 

So if there was ever a mixture of saint and sinner, Saul was it. On the one hand he was a heroic leader of the early church. Yet on the other, he was, for a time, its chief rival and persecutor.

 

FOUR: So do you see how being a saint isn’t so much about people living sin free lives but more about how God ends up working through them despite their very foibles and failures?

 

Rather than be totally virtuous people who’ve never made a single mistake, saints are actually just the opposite. Turns out they’re the very people who in the midst of their brokenness are called by God to be about his business and work in the world anyway.

 

And surely there can be no better example of such a saint than Saul. Persecutor of the church, a destroyer of homes and lives, God ends up working through Saul nonetheless changing him into a leader and hero of the faith. 

 

One writer sums up Paul’s transformation this way: 

 

“As far as Paul was concerned, he was the last man in the world for God to have called in this way, but God had, thereby revealing himself to be a God who is willing to do business with you even if you were in the process of mopping up Christians at the time…

 

At a moment in his life when he had least reason to expect it, Paul was staggered by the idea that no matter who you are or what you’ve done, God wants you on his side. There is nothing you have to do or be. It’s on the house. It goes with the territory. God has ‘justified you,’ lined you up. To feel this somehow in your bones is the first step on the way to being saved.” 

 

Or as a stunned and baffled Paul was able to put it himself in 1 Corinthians, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.”

 

FIVE: Of course, what’s true for Paul is also true for us. 

 

God, it turns out, is also in the business of changing us too, right? Not just for our own benefit, of course, but so we might then be examples of the kind of change God desires for all of us. 

     

There is a story about an old Middle Eastern mystic who, looking back on his early years, had this to say:  "When I was young, I was a revolutionary and my prayer to God was always the same: 'Lord, give me the energy to change the world.'” 

 

Of course, the years went by and the mystics’ view of change slowly started to, well, change. Realizing he had not changed a single soul by the time he reached middle age, the mystic altered his prayer. Said the mystic, “I changed my prayer to: 'God, give me the grace to change all those who come into contact with me. Just my family and friends and I shall be satisfied.'”

 

Well, made wise by the passing of even more years, the mystic at the end of his life admitted how foolish his altered prayer to change just the lives of those who came into contact with him had also been.

 

“Now that I am an old man and my days are numbered,” said the mystic, “I have begun to see how foolish I have been. My one prayer now is: 'Lord, give me the grace to change myself.'” 

 

Jesus, I think, pretty much said the same thing at various times during this ministry. Perhaps most concisely when wondering why we worry about the splinter in our neighbor's eye, when we should be worried about the plank that is in our own eye.

 

CONCLUSION: Well, we all want to see change in the world, right? At least I know I do. After all, the place can be kind of a hot mess sometimes.

 

But in wanting change, it can be easy to forget the need for change doesn’t just apply to others. Sure, there are people out in the world that need to change, Lord knows that! But we need to change too, right?        

 

And so maybe that’s the best place to start. Because when we change, we show others they can change too. So may God help us all. May God help us all, well, change.     

 

And now blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.