“He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’”
– Acts 9:4

    We came upon the 55-foot-tall green man while driving through rural Minnesota, a number of years back.  We were on our way to the Black Hills of South Dakota for a family vacation, having left our home in Dubuque, Iowa many hours before.  No, it wasn’t road fatigue, nor was it too many cups of bad coffee, that brought on that memorable apparition, rising up over the hood of our car.  The giant green man was real.
    If you’ve ever been through Blue Earth, Minnesota on Interstate 90, then you know what I’m talking about.  There, in the midst of the farm fields, he stands: a 55-foot-tall statue of the Jolly Green Giant.
    He’s just one example of something you may encounter all throughout this great land of ours: the roadside attraction.  Park your car, get out your camera, snap a few pictures, stretch your legs a bit – and, 15 minutes later, you can be back on the road again, refreshed and enlightened (more or less) having broken the boredom of your long journey.
    Here in New Jersey, down at Margate, there’s Lucy the Elephant – ever visit her?  They call her “the only elephant you can go into and come out alive.”
    Here are a few roadside attractions I haven’t seen – though maybe you have.
    Weston, Missouri boasts the world’s largest ball of string (not twine, but string): 19 feet across, 3,712 pounds.  A man named Finley Stephens made it in the 1950s, after asking postmasters from miles around to save leftover bits of string for him.  Who knows why – other than to put Weston, Missouri on the map?
    The world’s largest baseball bat – a Louisville Slugger – is located, appropriately, in Louisville, Kentucky.  It’s 7 stories tall, constructed of carbon steel, and leans up against a 5-story building.  It’s a little too big for even the Jolly Green Giant of Blue Earth.
    A dusty road in Amarillo, Texas is the location of the Cadillac Ranch – a line of 10 junker Cadillacs, half-buried in a wheat field, noses down into the earth, taillights reaching to the heavens.  They are aligned, the monument’s creator points out, at precisely the same angle as the pyramids of Egypt.  People come from miles around to be photographed in front of them – and to add their own graffiti to the cars (which the owner encourages).
    There’s something about a road – isn’t there? – that leads us to expect something new, coming up around the next bend.  In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien includes this humble little poem, called “The Road Goes Ever On and On.”  In the novel, it was written by the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins – who in his time certainly put some miles on the soles of his hairy hobbit feet:

"The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say."

    A man named Saul set out one day, walking the road from Jerusalem to Damascus.  He thought he was going on a routine errand.  Saul could never have guessed it, but something would happen to him along that road that would change his life.
    We’ve encountered Saul once before, in the book of Acts.  In the story of the stoning of Stephen, one of the earliest Christian martyrs, it was Saul who held the cloaks of the angry mob as they hurled the heavy rocks that caused Stephen’s grisly death.
    It’s bad enough to take part in such a lynching.  Yet, there’s something cold, calculating and downright evil about a man who stands by, behind the scenes, making sure the party runs smoothly.  It’s kind of like the Nazi engineers who calculated how many railcars full of people per day it would take to feed the ovens at Auschwitz.  That’s the sort of man Saul was.
    Luke uses a telling expression to describe him, in the opening lines of today’s passage:
“Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord...”
    That phrase says it all.  Threats and murder emerged from this man like ordinary respiration.  He breathed his bitter thoughts in, and breathed them out again, in the form of quasi-legal pronouncements.  In the previous chapter, Luke says “Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.” [8:3]  Not a nice man.
    Saul was never one to pull on a Ku Klux Klan hood and do his dirty work in the middle of the night.  No, he was quite adept at using the power of the law – both sacred and secular – to accomplish his purposes in broad daylight.  Here, Luke tells us he’s just come from the high priest, who’s granted him “letters to the synagogues at Damascus.”  These are a sort of search warrant. The law-enforcement sweep he’s about to conduct in that city has the full sanction of the Temple authorities – and, by implication, of the Roman overlords (who never permitted Saul’s sort of trade to go on without their knowledge, and at least tacit consent).
    Here’s what those letters permitted him to do: “...if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”
    That phrase, “men or women,” is of more than passing interest.  The ancient Jewish society, much like Orthodox Judaism today, practiced strict segregation of the sexes.  For a man to touch a woman who was not his wife or mother or sister was to break the purity laws.  Over in Lakewood, they have to have an Orthodox first-aid squad that includes separate teams of men and women volunteers.  If it’s a man who’s the patient, one team goes out; if it’s a woman, it’s the other.  Yet, Saul has sought authority to arrest male and female followers of Jesus alike, bind their wrists and even their ankles together with strong cord, and haul them off to Jerusalem to face trial.  That’s how dangerous he considers this new Jesus sect to be – how much of a threat he thinks these radicals pose to his culture’s most cherished traditions.  Saul’s willing to put his own ritual purity on the line to bring them to justice.
    There’s another expression in that verse that’s also worth a second look: “if he found any who belonged to the Way.”  Hello.  What’s this?  Luke doesn’t talk, here, about “the church,” or about “the Christian community.”  He calls the early Christian movement “the Way.”
    The Greek word is ‘odos, and it means, literally, “the road.”  Now, these are the days before there was anything recognizable as “the church.”  Jesus’ earliest followers were not yet certain who they were.  Were they a new sect within Judaism?  Or, were they something more?   No one seems too concerned about such questions, actually, because the most important business before this community is survival.  Who has time to propose a set of by-laws, when someone like Saul is on his way to visit them, “breathing threats and murder”?
    Luke’s use of the term “the Way” suggests to me that the most distinguishing feature of early Christianity is that it was a set of practices.  Christianity was something you did – it was a way of life – even before it was a set of beliefs.  If you sought to live life the way Jesus lived it – honoring God, caring for others, making love real – then you could be numbered as one of his followers.
    There’s a renewal movement in the church today that focuses on this whole idea of Christian practice as the essence of the faith.  Prayer, scripture reading, generosity, working for justice, sharing good news, loving neighbors, healing the sick – all these, and more, are practices Jesus demonstrates in his own life, then teaches his followers to “go and do likewise.”   What is a Christian, anyway, if not someone who lives the faith?  Of what good is right belief, if all that doctrinal orthodoxy seldom finds expression in righteous living?
    As we read about Jesus’ mission in the Gospels, we find him constantly on the move.  The first time we encounter the adult Jesus in the Bible, he’s traveling.  He stops by the side of the sea where some men are mending fishnets, and says, “Come, follow me.”  He doesn’t sit them down and lead them through a training program, after which he awards them a certificate, suitable for framing.  He doesn’t found a seminary.  There’s no time for that.  There’s urgent work to be done, good news to be shared, a coming Kingdom to be announced.  Jesus says, “Follow me,” and gives them barely a moment to catch their breaths.  There he goes, off down the road.  Peter and Andrew and all the rest have to decide, on the spot, whether they’re going to leave their nets behind and follow after him.
    The Bible is full of spiritual encounters that happen to people when they’re traveling, when they’re on the way.  One of them we heard this morning: the call of Moses from Exodus 3.  Moses is herding a flock of sheep belonging to his father-in-law, but – if truth be told – he’s actually on the run.  Moses accidentally killed a man in Egypt, and had to flee the Pharaoh’s wrath.  He’s tried to put as much distance as he can between himself and that terrible, silent God of his people.  But, it’s no good.  God catches up with him even in the desert, sets a bush on fire, then speaks to Moses out of the flames.  The Lord tells Moses his journey must continue – not deeper into the grazing lands, but in the opposite direction.  God commands Moses to return to Egypt.  There, his task will be freeing his fellow Hebrews from bondage.  For an entire generation after that – the most formative period of time in Israel’s history – God’s people wander through the wilderness.  On the road, they learn unforgettable lessons of how to trust the Lord in everything.
    Then there’s the story of the Emmaus Road.  You remember that one.  After Jesus’ resurrection, a couple of disciples are walking along the road when a stranger overtakes them.   It turns out to be Jesus, although they don’t know it at the time.  He talks to them about the scriptures, and all along it seems to the two of them there’s something familiar about this man.  It’s not until they invite him to join them for dinner at the end of the journey, and they break bread together, that they understand: they’ve had a close encounter of the Easter kind!  That encounter, too, happened on a road.
    Then there’s the story from Acts we just looked at: the meeting of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.  Two men who would never ordinarily have had the opportunity to meet – but, they’re both on the road, and it’s on the road that remarkable things can happen.
    How could the people of God have learned such things in a classroom?  That would have been impossible!  Christian education is a fine thing, but the only way to learn to be a Christian is by being one, by taking our act on the road  – by seeking to live the sort of life Jesus lived.  It’s like the slogan of a certain sportswear manufacturer: “Just do it!”
    How was Saul, of all people, going to become a Christian?  It wasn’t a matter of someone presenting an intellectual argument to him, that he wrestled with and eventually accepted.  No, Saul needs something a lot more direct, to change not only his mind, but his life.  The novelist Flannery O’Connor once said of him: “I reckon the Lord knew that the only way to make a Christian out of that one was to knock him off his horse.”  (The Bible says nothing about a horse, by the way; Paul might just as well have been walking.)
    Either way, Paul needs something to knock some sense into him, and the Lord is happy to oblige.  “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.”  Maybe it’s lightning, or maybe it’s something even more awe-inspiring – but, whatever it is, it knocks him to the ground and takes away his sight.  Then, there’s that disembodied voice: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”  The speaker is  not the Christians Saul’s accused of persecuting, but Jesus himself.  Jesus identifies himself by name, saying, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”  It couldn’t be any plainer than that.
    Luke tells us this is no inner, spiritual experience.  The voice from the heavens is audible.  Paul’s traveling companions hear it, too, and are paralyzed with fear.
    In one, terrible moment, Saul’s entire life is smashed into a thousand pieces.  The one task he has followed relentlessly, even ruthlessly – the detection and arrest of Christians – now proves to be completely misguided.  Not only that, he is blind.  Losing one’s sight is never easy, but in the ancient world it was a catastrophe – even more so for a learned Pharisee and scholar of the scriptures like Saul.  Will he ever study the scriptures and the commentary of the great rabbis again?
    “Who are you, Lord?” he asks.  It’s the traditional question to offer up in the midst of a divine-human encounter.  Moses asks the very same question at the burning bush, you may recall, but the Lord is very cautious indeed in answering.  “I am that I am” is the only name the Lord reveals.
    Yet, this is not what happens here.  “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”
    What a profoundly disorienting experience it must have been for Saul!  Here, he’s gone, in a few short moments, from being in command of himself and others, to being a poor penitent, dependent on the mercy of this Jesus to spare his life.  Not only that, his blindness drops him down even further – down to the lowest level of the social order.  From this day onward, he thinks ruefully, it’s going to be the begging bowl for him.
    That’s not how it turns out, of course.  This Saul will eventually change his name to Paul, and become the second most important figure in the early church, after Jesus himself.  Who but God could have recognized, behind the frightening facade of this religious bounty hunter, the heart of a man who wanted and needed to be loved?   In the weeks and months to come, under the tutelage of a humble Christian named Ananias, Paul will be schooled in everything he needs to know about venturing out onto that new spiritual road known as the Way.  That story is for next time.
    For now, though, let me sum up by reminding you that the Christian life is not an idea or a doctrine, but a way of living.  During this season of Lent, you and I are meant to step out onto the road of Christian discipleship in new and challenging ways.  We’re meant to renew our attempts to practice the faith.
    And, who knows?  Maybe, as we head further on down the road, placing one foot in front of the other, we’ll come to experience something of what Paul did – what we might call a roadside attraction.  This attraction, though, is no giant green statue or huge ball of string, but a deepening bond between ourselves and Jesus Christ, who very much wants us to allow him to become Lord of our lives.
    Do you feel the tug of that attraction in your life?  My advice to you is to stop trying to fight it.  It’s a force stronger than any you or I can imagine.  The only thing to do is to stop, turn around, and then ,  set out on the marvelous, exciting journey of Christian discipleship: this life that – then and now – is known as the Way.

Copyright © 2010 by Carlos E. Wilton.  All rights reserved.