Sermon Tone Analysis

So Wrong

It wasn’t just that I “didn’t like coffee”, I was like a coffee persecutor.

I have a hard time just letting people like things that I don’t like.

It’s because I’m a terrible person.

As a teenager, I tried coffee.

It was bitter and disgusting and gross!

And no matter how you dolled it up, poured in creamer and sugar, at the root was this gross bitter awful taste.

So here was my theory that I spouted off to anyone and everyone.

No ever asked… I offered my “sage” opinion.

Nobody likes coffee the first time they try it.

They force themselves to like it or pretend to like it at first, maybe they come to actually like it later.

“The only people who like coffee are teenagers trying to pretend to be adults” - Dusty Mackintosh

The more I told that story, the harder it was for me to ever try coffee.

I was more and more committed to the anti-coffee league.

I went for tea, I ordered all kinds of specialty loose-leaf teas.

Obviously better than coffee in every way.

If herbal tea is tea, than so is coffee.

It’s just gross tea.

Of course, if miso soup is soup, then so is coffee.

I’ll let you think on that one.

The more I spouted this kind of ridiculousness the more entrenched I was in it.

Dusty - he hates coffee.

It becomes more a piece of identity.

Then one day, in my mid-30s, I had a sudden realization.

I’m an arrogant jerk.

Many people had realized this many times before me, but I am still figuring out all the ways.

I thought, can billions of people who love coffee be completely wrong?

The answer: yes.

They can be… but is it just barely possible that there is something there to discover and enjoy?

Yes, it’s possible.

So I forced myself to drink a cup of coffee every day for a year.

And now, ladies and gentlemen… I confess my sins as a coffee-hater and pledge myself to the Way of Coffee.

Saul - Before

Saul, who held the coats as men stoned Stephen.

Indicating at least his approval, and maybe that he organized the deed.

How committed is he to this course?

His whole understanding of God is wrapped up in this.

His career, on the rise, is all dependent on this.

His entire community, his sense of family, it is all fully committed here.

Likely his parents are influential Pharisees in order for him to have trained under Gamaliel.

Gamaliel whom we met speaking wise words in the temple.

A man so revered in the Jewish community that he himself was called the “beauty of the law”.

As in the law was never so beautiful as when Gamaliel taught it.

His own mentor, Gamaliel has already written Christianity off, so his whole support structure is anti-Christ.

He is committed in every way one possibly can be against the name and person of Jesus Christ.

And at the point you have started killing people.... dragging men and women to prison… “ravaging” the church… isn’t it too late?

What do you think the church was praying for?

Freedom from Saul, the ravager.

Saul the oppressor.

“Lord, protect us from him.”

The enemy in every sense.

For the first time, here, the community of Christ is given a new name.

Those belonging to “the Way.” “Any of the way”.

What a great name!

Way of salvation, way of the Lord, way of God… those are used interchangeably.

Jesus called himself the “way, the truth and the life.”

This is what the early church called itself.

The name “Christians” comes quite a bit later and is “their word.”

I think it is powerful and meaningful that the early church, when reaching for a way to describe themselves, described themselves as people of the road, people on the road, as if in motion or actively following, chasing after their Master.

Saul is on a VERY different road.

On the road to “Damascus”.

Traveling 135 miles to a big city, a prosperous commercial center.

He would not appear “close” or “ready” to meet Jesus in any sense we would understand it.

Absolutely nobody is looking at Saul and saying today is going to be the day that everything changes.

The road to Damascus is hate heading for violence.

It is persecution looking to persecute.

It is the enemy of God’s people

All of that brilliance.

All of that passion.

Sincere and, I think, from the heart.

“His truth” was that God was one and Jesus was a fraud, so all the “followers of the Way” were heretics.

Dangerous false teachers and idolaters.

And we live in a world where passion is everything.

“Live your truth”!

“You do you!”

Saul is living his truth out FULLY.

He is chasing his understanding of the Divine.

No matter how right you think you are, if you are in disagreement with Jesus, you’re wrong.

The Road to Damascus

A story so good, Acts tells it thrice.

I’ll read the story as Paul tells it himself in a few years.

Blinded by the Light

What happened here?

From who Saul was, proud and confident, full of self-righteous zealotry… to a humiliated blind man, led by the hand and waiting on the word of Jesus.

What happened?

Everyone else heard the voice… but didn’t understand the words.

They saw the blinding light, brighter than the noon day sun in Jerusalem (by the way, that’s very bright)!

What things do we have brighter than that?

Nuclear explosions, I guess?

Arc welding without a helmet?

Like a tiny nova above the road and Saul looking right at it...

On a road that looks NOTHING LIKE repentance.

NOTHING LIKE progress towards Jesus.

It doesn’t have to.

Jesus shows up.

In a moment of light.

Jesus identifies himself with his church.

Paul isn’t persecuting his followers or his people or his church… he is persecuting Jesus himself.

You cannot love Jesus and hate his Church.

(Church with a capital ‘C’).