The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
April 18, 2010
Vol. 13 no. 16
Few of us have traveled to Damascus. When Saul finally stepped into the city, it wasn’t him who entered - he had become someone different. At first he had to be guided by the hand, struck blind on the road. Only a day before he had been absolutely certain of his godly mission; now in the city that he could not see, God seemed to have become different to him.
Was Saul born again? Most know him as Paul, but his name wouldn’t be changed for chapters (13:13 to be precise). Few can vouch for a more dramatic transformation, being struck blind by a light and challenged by a voice from heaven about who he was and what he was doing. For many Christians this has been the model of how one is literally converted to the Christian way of life. If Saul’s experience were the only method, there would have been very few Christians throughout the millennia. Yet for every one of us, something has to give.
That is, you have to give yourself away. Your old self is no longer alive the way it once was, used-up, so give it away. No one here thinks and acts in the way they did forty years ago - a good Biblical period of wandering in the wilderness. Change is mostly glacial, an inch or so a year, but in time, we die and are born once more, resurrected to an entirely different life.
One of the reasons Karl Barth was perhaps the greatest theologian of the 20th century was his uncommon ability to admit that he was mistaken and had to change his mind. A number of times, he declared that he had been going in the wrong direction, so he found it necessary to “begin again from the beginning.” Most of us are afraid to begin again; we feel demoted and reduced. Instead it is our opportunity to be like a kid again.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan