The story of the Damascus Road is a familiar one. Flannery O’Connor once said of Paul, “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 knocking down is memorable, but notice the question Saul is asked on that road, the first words Paul hears from Jesus:
“Saul. Saul. Why do you persecute me?”
Paul is asked, “why do you persecute me?” Amazingly, given his verbosity in Scripture, here Paul doesn’t respond to the accusation. He doesn’t defend himself. The text tells us that Paul’s vision is taken away, not his power of speech, and yet Paul makes no audible reply.
It’s as if Paul silently understands what Jesus said in Matthew’s Gospel, “as much as you have done to the least of these, my sisters, my brothers, my siblings who are hurting, and vulnerable, and poor, and scared, you have done unto me.” Paul somehow knows Jesus identifies with those who are persecuted. God is on the side of the oppressed. Paul is not just persecuting a religious minority. He is persecuting Jesus, and upon meeting the risen Christ, Paul understands what he has done. He has offended not just men, but God, and so Paul remains silent.
That sense that God is with the persecuted is one of the most important themes we have in Scripture. There is a question in the heart of our tradition which asks: “with whom do you identify?”
Stories of Call and Conversion: Saul and Moses
If I was in charge of picking the lessons we read each Sunday, I would have us read this story from Acts alongside Exodus chapter three, the call of Moses. There’s a certain rhyme to the two stories of call and conversion. Moses has escaped Egypt. He’s making a living away from the oppression of his people, out tending the flocks of Jethro his father-in-law, when the burning bush appears. “Moses. Moses!” God calls.
Notice, in both stories, the callee hears their name twice. Watch out for repetition in scripture. Watch out for repetition if you feel a call from God. The divine one is often willing to repeat the call until we answer.
When Moses gets his call, God says, “I am here because I see my people oppressed. I have heard their cry. I’m sending you.”
God responds to the cry of the persecuted. God is a a God who stands up to the powerful who use their power for evil. God doesn’t care about the administrative warrants of government officials or religious leaders. God stands with those who are hurting.
On Persecution
The word persecuted is a tough one in our time for Christians. We are living in days of persecution, but it’s not the kind of persecution you often hear about from Christians on the news. Some of us Christians in this country are quick to cry, “religious persecution.” So hearing that word today, I need to point out Jesus uses it to protect people in a religious minority. Hearing that word from Jesus to Paul, I need to say, I am suspicious any time someone in the modern religious majority tries to claim persecution. It is often a false flag.
When Ellis and I were working to become eligible to adopt through the foster system in Missouri, it took months to finally find an agency that would work with us. The vast majority of foster adoptions in the St. Louis area were handled by two organizations, one was Baptist, one was Catholic. Neither of thee organizations would work with a same-gender couple. We finally were able to get a case worker from the city, but the process was convoluted. I worried about couples who were less well-connected and resourced. Two years after our adoption, a Catholic charity in Philadelphia claimed religious persecution before the Supreme Court, and the justices ruled that the city could not require religious adoption organizations to work with same-gender couples. The ruling was narrow, but still I disagree with the Supreme Court on this one. I don’t believe an organization should be able to accept my tax dollars and discriminate against families like mine.
Just like we don’t allow a religious organization accepting public dollars for housing to discriminate against people because of age, race, religion, or any historically marginalized identity, we should not accept discrimination in adoption, or in healthcare, because we are afraid of false flag calls of religious persecution.
The persecution complex, to me, is problematic for Christians. Don’t tell me you are persecuted when you are simply trying to defend your practice of discrimination. Don’t tell me you’re persecuted because you believe you should be free to ignore the rights and needs of the oppressed.
What I believe religious persecution DOES look like is the State of Texas attempting to shut down Annunciation House, a Catholic shelter for migrants in El Paso. It looks like the attorney general of that state trying to close a ministry that exists solely to give people who have crossed the border a safe place to sleep and warm meals. Religious persecution looks like trying to stop people of faith from responding to the hungry, to those who are fleeing violence, who are seeking asylum from those breathing threats and murder in their homeland. Religious persecution looks like the government trying to shut down ministries which respond to human need.
The scriptural test of whether we can call something persecution is simple: always to look to the effect on the most vulnerable. If poor women in rural counties can’t access lifesaving healthcare, if trans kids can’t talk to their school counselor for fear of being outed to their parents. If the most vulnerable are being harmed, God is apt to start calling out names.
In that sense, today I am praying for a Damascus Road experiences for Christians in this country. I pray that our elected leaders will turn their hearts toward the people who are hurting, toward the people whose rights are being abused, and toward the people who are trying to respond with compassion. Yes, I am praying these days for folks to get knocked off their horses, to be blinded by the light of justice, by the presence of love. We need leaders who will listen when God says, “why are you persecuting me?”
Conversion and Call and Choice
Before I sit down, a last word about St Paul’s conversion and call. I was struck as I re-read this scripture that Jesus doesn’t give Paul a choice. Paul doesn’t get to decide whether to follow Jesus. We don’t even hear that he decided to be baptized. The lack of agency is stunning to us free-will Americans. But Paul simply does as he is told by the one who says, “get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are going to do.” The hero in today’s story is not Paul, who heroically converts. No. He doesn’t get a choice. The central actor in story of Paul’s conversion is God, God who ends persecution, God who calls us, to listen and to love.
The Damascus road tells us that not every conversion in our life is a matter of choice. There are major turning points which come NOT because we choose them. We know this. Life can change on a dime when we suddenly become a caregiver for a parent, a child, a spouse. Our world can change instantly when we receive a medical diagnosis. Sometimes we don’t get a choice. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a chance for conversion.
Likewise, I have known champions of the oppressed who say simply “I did just what anyone would do.” Whether becoming a caregiver or an advocate, I have heard story after story of folks under sudden pressure who also had a sense, that God was walking with us through these new and often terrifying circumstances. I have had this quiet sense in my own life too. That we are not alone on this journey, that God meets us on the road. Thankfully a moment of call doesn’t always require us getting knocked down. Conversation can also be a quieter moment of deepening. Often the only decision we can make is to stop fighting the reality in front of us, to take steps forward, and to trust.
There’s a moment in the movie Conclave, which like much of the world I finally watched this past week. I won’t spoil the movie for you by sharing that there is a moment in the story where the violence of the world literally breaks into the silence of the Sistine chapel. A car bomb goes off in a square in Rome as cardinals are casting their votes for the next pope, and glass from the clerestory windows and dust rains down.
The cardinals escape safely to another building and as they are talking together, we see many have small cuts on their skin and dust on their vestments. One of the Papabile, one of the Cardinals who might become pope, an archbishop from Italy launches into an angry tirade against Muslims, against religious tolerance and dialogue. He yells, “This is why we need a pope who understands that we are in the midst of a religious war.” Another cardinal, the Archbishop of Kabul, stands and says, “respectfully my brother, what do you know about war?” The cardinal describe the bodies he had in the streets of Christians and Muslims. But he says, the religious war we are fighting is in here. He points to his own heart. It is one of those powerful moments of fiction you hope has resonance in reality.
As Christians, our work is always always an inner work of conversion. It is always an internal work to open our eyes to those around us who are suffering, who are persecuted, who are oppressed. Our call is always to respond to those who are hungry, who are ill-treated, who are in need of embrace.
I believe God is always out there, on the road, calling. And sometimes some of us need to be knocked off our horse.
Mike Angell 