Sermon text: Acts 9:1–22
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Both the Lutheran hymnal, the TLH, which is in the pews here at Immanuel, and LSB, the Lutheran Service Book, the newest of the LCMS’s hymnals, published in 2006: both of those hymnals have a theologically rich baptismal rite laid out for us, the church, to follow. But the new hymnal — that’s kind of heretical to say — the LSB, the new hymnal, does a better job presenting the Bible’s teaching on the doctrine of Holy Baptism. Listen to the baptismal rite, a portion of it from page 270 and 271 of the hymnal. I’ll begin where it says, “Do you desire to be baptized?” Then the instructions say, “The pastor pours water on the head three times of each candidate while saying, ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.’” Then the pastor places his hand on the head of the newly baptized while saying, “The almighty God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given you a new birth of water and of the Spirit, and has forgiven you all your sins, strengthen you with His grace to life everlasting.”
Then the pastor may place a white garment on the newly baptized while saying, “Receive this white garment to show that you have been clothed with the robe of Jesus Christ’s righteousness that covers all your sins, so that you stand without fear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive the inheritance prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Then the pastor may light a baptismal candle from the paschal candle and give it to the newly baptized saying, “Receive this burning light to show that you have received Christ who is the light of the world. Live always as the light of Christ and be ever watchful for His coming that you may meet Him with joy and enter with Him into the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which shall have no end.”
Then finally, the newly baptized may be welcomed with the following: “In Holy Baptism, God the Father has made you a member of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, an heir with us of all the treasures of heaven and one with us in one holy Christian and apostolic church. We receive you in Jesus’s name as our brother or sister, as it may apply, in Christ, that together we may hear His word, receive His gifts, proclaim the praise of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. Amen. We welcome you in the name of the Lord.”
Notice: there’s nothing about a great flash of light. There’s nothing here about a radical and frightening encounter with Jesus the Christ. There’s nothing here about a voice from heaven resounding in the narthex or in the sanctuary or in the nave of the church. We simply have the rite of Holy Baptism. No voice, no great moment. The whole episode results in just one simple act, in verse 18: “And he rose and was baptized.”
This great Damascus experience comes to its conclusion with the baptism of a sinner. So baptism must be something even greater than the road to Damascus experience itself. And indeed it is. At the moment of your baptism, you met Jesus. You were given a new birth and the forgiveness of sins. If your parents followed the tradition of the church, you were covered with a white garment or a white robe, which you wore at your baptism to signify that you had been clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ Himself, so that you would never need to fear death in Christ’s judgment seat. The baptismal candle illustrated the point that as baptized children of God, you now are a child of the light and not of the darkness. The baptismal rite concludes with the good news that you’re welcome into this thing called the church as a brother or sister to Christ and to all fellow believers.
In Acts 9:17, three terrible days after the Damascus road experience, Saul is greeted by a Christian leader in the city of Damascus named Ananias. And he’s greeted with the word “brother.” Now, you were likely baptized as an infant or at a very young age, so you probably don’t remember the moment you met Christ and became a member of His holy family, the church. But in the moment when you, or any person — be that a newborn babe or one with gray hairs — when a person is baptized and is vested with the gift of faith, everything changes for the one who has been baptized.
Not many people experience defining moments that change the course of their life forever. Sometimes those moments are marked by some dramatic event or epiphany like St. Paul had in Acts chapter 9. For a great many of us, life-changing events take place in bits and pieces and in little moments and subtle events. They add up over time and change the trajectory of our lives.
The apostle Paul started as a young man known by his Hebrew name, Saul: young Jewish Orthodox Saul. He wanted to wipe out from the face of the earth the church. So he started persecuting those who followed the Way, the original name for the Christian religion. He began shortly after Jesus’s resurrection and ascension to round up and haul off Christians to be put on trial for blasphemy. He was bound and determined to find every last Christian and throw them in jail or have them executed for their faith.
So when Stephen showed up preaching that the Old Testament is fulfilled in the person, the work, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Saul listened to that sermon with pure hatred. The text tells us that Saul stood amongst men. Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen rose up and disputed, argued with Stephen. And when they began to stone Stephen, making him the first Christian martyr in the Christian church, Saul nodded his head in approval of the execution. Then he received the garments of those who were throwing the stones at his feet as a sign of approval of both the murder, the execution, and the method — stoning — of Stephen.
Not long thereafter the stoning of Stephen, Saul was traveling to Damascus, papers in hand to arrest anyone who claimed to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. But then suddenly a blinding light surrounds Saul. Flashes in a moment, knocking him to the ground. And Saul came in that moment face to face with Jesus, who said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Saul, helpless, can only ask, “Who are you, Lord?” In the answer to his question, Saul heard three words that changed the course of his life: “I am Jesus.”
Imagine how those words must have hit Saul. “I am Jesus.” And then the voice continued, “whom you are persecuting.” To persecute a Christian, to persecute the church, is to persecute Christ Himself. Paul had been struck blind. His now physical condition mirrored his spiritual one: blinded. Saul had to be led by the hand to Damascus. And there he waited three days in blindness. He fasted three days. For three days, he remembered all that he had done to lay waste to the Christian church on earth. For three days, those words, “I am Jesus,” penetrated every thought and feeling in his body. It had become the defining moment of his life.
So now Paul begins to realize that the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the Messiah have been fulfilled in Jesus. Stephen’s testimony concerning Christ comes back to haunt him — but also to give him his new life. Saul knew things were about to change. He just didn’t know how dramatically and drastically they would. Still blind, Saul makes it to Damascus. He waits three days — which is an interesting number for anyone waiting for a new life in Jesus Christ. In darkness, Ananias, a Christian leader in Damascus, comes and visits Saul and lays his hands on him. And Saul’s eyesight is restored. He is filled with the Holy Spirit and he is baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He eats and is strengthened and is welcomed into the church by his now brother in Christ, Ananias.
Ananias himself was a man who previously feared Saul. He wanted to stay as far away from Saul as he could stay. He had heard what Saul had done to believers in the city of Jerusalem. Yet Ananias is told to go and to minister to him. And he enters the house and he calls him brother: a fellow follower of Jesus. Everything had changed for Saul, and he had just joined the Christian church: the very thing he sought to destroy.
Listen to what changed for Paul — Saul: he went from writing letters to arrest believers to writing epistles that the church relies on to this day and will rely on until the return of Christ when He comes to judge the living and the dead. He went from one who brought suffering to the church to one who would suffer for the sake of the church and for Jesus Christ Himself. He went from one who arrested believers to one who would be arrested time and time again, city after city. He went from one whom Ananias hated and feared, Saul, to a man who was welcomed as a brother and an apostle of Christ Jesus our Lord. He went from one who depended on what he did and his family heritage in order to stand righteous before God, to a sinner who depended solely on Christ’s person and work for his appearance as righteous before the heavenly Father. The list could go on, but those words, “I am Jesus” — those three simple words changed everything for Saul.
Now Paul, as we remember him, met the resurrected and glorified Jesus, and life for Paul changed course. The first stop on this new life: the sacrament of Holy Baptism. “And he rose and was baptized.” Now, none of us will have the same kind of dramatic experience that Paul had on the road to Damascus. But the point of this sermon is to point out how that journey ends. It ends with the beginning of the baptism of a sinner. Paul needed forgiveness. He needed to repent. He needed faith. He needed Jesus. He certainly needed all this, given what he had done to the church in the opening months and years of the church’s life.
But don’t put Paul on a pedestal. Just because he’s converted doesn’t mean he’s no longer a sinner. Now claimed by the Lord Jesus Christ in baptism, Paul still struggles like the rest of us with sin. Though a Christian, part of him remains a sinner through and through. He wrote, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” That’s what he wrote to Timothy. He wrote in the letter to the Romans that the good that he wanted to do, he couldn’t always do. And the evil he was trying to avoid, sometimes he ended up doing it anyway. Left him in pure frustration. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” he asks. Yet Paul knew Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. So he answers his own question: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
You can hear his absolute confidence in the forgiveness of sins when he goes on to say, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Imagine Jesus coming to you as you were going about your ordinary business, suddenly saying, “I’m Jesus, and there is no condemnation for you because you are in me.” He will say that when He meets you at heaven’s gates.
Before Jesus took us to Himself, we were all hellbound, trapped in a life of sin and unrepentance. The course of our life: fixed for judgment day. Then suddenly, in the waters of Holy Baptism, the course of your life changed. Romans 5:10 says it this way: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
What happened to Paul happened to us. I’m speaking here of baptism. What we see in the rite of baptism is not as dramatic as a Damascus road experience. Those are the kinds of things that get you invited to speak at these big giant mega churches to tell the great story of your great conversion, when in fact most people are converted by the simple act of the water and the word. Jesus comes to each one of us in our baptism and effectively says, “I’m Jesus. I’m your brother. You need not fear anything that you have done. You are forgiven. You are covered up by my righteousness. There’s no condemnation for you in me.”
Just as eternity with all of your brothers and sisters and the whole host of heaven, you will reside in perfect holiness, righteousness, and innocence. The whole of our lives is lived under these words: “I’m Jesus, and by your baptism into my death and resurrection, you are welcomed into the church, into my very body, to share eternity with your brothers and sisters in the faith.” For your sins are forgiven, your sins are forgotten, your sins are carried away, and your sins are covered over. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.