It’s Okay to Change Your Mind
Text: Acts 9:1-19
The story of Saul on the road to Damscus is often framed as a conversion story. It’s referenced when people tell their own stories of conversion. And it’s a big deal within the narrative of Acts – Saul recounts it several times throughout the following chapters.
But’s not actually a conversion – at least not a religious conversion. Saul is Jewish when the story starts and he’s Jewish when the story is over. And, by the way, this is also not name conversion. He continues to have the name Saul so long as he’s working within the Jewish world. He starts being called Paul – the Greek version of his name – in chapter 13 when he moves into Greek territory. It’s like the difference between Joe and Jose if Joe moved to Mexico. So the name change is also not evidence of conversion.
There have been having been conversion stories in Acts: the Ethiopian official, Cornelius the Soldier. Both people who are converted from another faith to the Way of Jesus by combination of their encounter with scripture or and followers of Jesus.
What is similar in Saul’s story is that he is converted to the Way. He has this dramatic change of heart that we liken to a conversion because of the drama. We’re drawn to stories like this where the individual sees the light, as it were, and starts to think and act in ways that are totally different. Many of us may have thought we needed to have some kind of encounter story to be real Christians. May have doubted whether we were truly faithful because we didn’t have a story like that. And I’m sure a few of you do have a story of a moment when you heard his voice or knew Jesus to be present.
While this may not be a conversion story, that doesn’t make it any less important. Because it is a call story. A call story in line with many of the other key call stories in scripture. And there are parallels between it and stories like those of Abraham or Moses in the Hebrew Bible. Paul was a man absolutely hell-bent on rooting out Jesus followers from Judaism. Only a few chapters ago he was watching and supporting the stoning of Stephen and now he’s fired up to take it further.
I started to see parallels in Paul’s Jewish story to how the Christian story is playing out today in the United States. I started thinking about the narrative like this:
There once was a man who hated the way that people were distorting and diluting his faith. He was passionate about his faith’s purity and he was passionate about finding and arresting and expelling or even killing people who were ruining his faith and his nation. People feared him. People feared being grabbed from their places of worship or from the street and taken to an unknown fate by this man or his agents.
As I think of the story in this way, it sounds a lot like the way faith and enforcement are being weaponized here in this time and place. It also put me in mind of a song that I’ve seen and heard sung to the people who are acting as enforcers. A song encouraging defection and change. Minnesotans sang this song outside of hotels where ICE agents were staying or staging areas where they prepared to do their raids.
It’s okay to change your mind
Show us your courage.
Leave this behind.
It’s okay to change your mind.
And you can join us,
join us here any time
Annie Schlaefer, who wrote this song says this about it:
Inspiration for this song came from learning about Otpor! – the Serbian movement that overthrew a dictator in 2000. After Otpor! members were brutalized by the police, they would show up at officer’s houses the next day, telling them: “you may not join us today, but you can join us tomorrow”. When police and military were ordered to fire on the crowds in the final hours of the revolution, they refused!
It’s okay to change your mind. We need us all to be a part of this together.
[Check out the video of Annie and other SR members singing together on stage with Brandi Carlisle in Minneapolis!]
It is okay to change your mind! Our culture often sees changing your mind as weak or wishy-washy, but it does take courage to leave behind a place of belonging and power and conviction to join the unknown – even if you’ve heard it straight from the mouth of Jesus.
Schlaeffer says, “At what point can we admit, this has gone too far, surrender the ego, change minds and join the resistance?” One of the words that I really appreciate the translation/interpretation of in the CEB is the word many other biblical translations render ‘repent.’ In the CEB that word becomes ‘change their heart and mind.’ Saul’s story is a story not of conversion, but is a story of change and of God’s calling him to a new understanding of his faith.
And Saul’s is not the only call story in this drama. Luke – who is the author of Acts – likes to pair people up and bring people together. (And so does God, but Luke likes to do it narratively). Unlike Saul, the other call is to a disciple who has always been faithful. A call that’s not a dramatic shift, or at least not as dramatic as Saul’s. This call might feel more familiar to some of us.
Ananias is already a follower of the way. This is not a moment of repentance for Ananias but he does need some convincing. He does need his mind to be changed slightly. He too is protective of his people. Protective of the fledgling sect of Judaism that follows Jesus. Ananias has heard of Saul. Saul is well known for his persecution and cruelty. Ananias is one of those who fears being captured and disappeared.
He hears Jesus singing in his ear:
It’s okay to change your mind
Show us your courage.
Leave this behind.
It’s okay to change your mind.
And you can join us,
join us here any time
Ananias also has to trust the call. He needs to have the courage to know that he can join Jesus in welcoming even someone like Saul. Once he does, he can call Saul broth and like Saul he experiences a transformation that deepens his own faith and ultimately the whole of what becomes the church.
This is not a one to one parallel, but I did think of a community of faith who are taking a kind of a risk by inviting an outsider into their midst as a minister and leader as Ananias does with Paul.
In my role as chair of the Pastoral Leadership Team within PNMC I get to hear the call stories of lots of congregations and pastors. People who are new to ministry share the stories of their calls to ministry and churche representatives tell us about why they were moved to call the pastors that they did.
Right now Portland Mennonite is in process of welcoming a new pastor who will start this summer. But he hasn’t started yet and in fact he’s still at his current job – which isn’t as a pastor. He’s never been trained as a pastor. He didn’t go to seminary. He has no experience as a pastor and he’s about to lead a multi-staff team.
This is where there’s a little bit of risk for this community. Their new pastor is an academic. And not in a theology or bible department. Not in a seminary. He teaches literature!
So he’s not exactly persecuting Mennonites (I told you this isn’t quite the same.) but here’s where I see a parallel. The Holy Spirit has been at work both within the community and disciples at Portland Mennonite and within their new leader. As a leader, he will bring gifts from beyond the world of the church, a new perspective and also a genuinely received call that he will need to learn how to exercise in this new environment. He will need to learn and grow in his ministering identity.
Saul has a lot of growing and learning to do. He was going full tilt in the direction of zealous persecution of the Way. And in some ways that’s what makes him a great missionary. He is all in on whatever he goes for. Maybe God sees that in him. But it also means he has a steep learning curve. He stays with Ananias and the disciples in Damascus to do just that. When he returns to Jerusalem he has Peter and and Barnabas and Silas as mentors. does so with Peter, with Barnabas and with Silas. And he has many ministry partners as his mission throughout the mediterranean world grows.
Saul and Ananias are would-be enemies. Saul would have happily arrested or hurt or killed Ananias and his community. Ananias is in protection mode. He would have kept his distance, gone to ground. But God is in the business of calling and eye-opening and of mind changing. These two enemies both have their eyes opened. For Saul it’s literally. They become brothers in the body of Christ.
This story gives me hope for the church now. It gives me hope for the transformative ways that God can work, both in the hearts and minds of those who are really getting it wrong, like Saul did, and in the hearts and minds of those of us who are already on the Way. God’s call is for all of us. And it’s okay to change our minds – as long as we’re changing them toward Jesus’ Way of love, justice, welcome and connection. May we be vessels for the call of Christ.
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