Pastor Patty Ebner

October 27, 2019

Acts 9: 1-6

The Conversion of Saul

Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’

Romans 1:8-12

Prayer of Thanksgiving

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world. For God, whom I serve with my spirit by announcing the gospel of his Son, is my witness that without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers, asking that by God’s will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.

Message

You may be surprised to see me at the pulpit again after Lisa’s return.  But it is always my pleasure to talk with you.

Before I start on my message, I want to say that a call to ministry is a special thing but it is not limited to those of us wearing robes and stoles and headsets today.  So I want just to put that myth to sleep before I ever get started; otherwise, Lisa and I would just go back into our offices and we would talk about our calls to ministry.  But there is a reason I am standing in front of you, talking about Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus and how it relates to us so many years later.  You hear me talk about that often when I preach because one of the things that impresses me the most about the Christian tradition is how long it has lasted, that it has stood the test of time through many different movements, and those movements happening at the very same time.  And what we are called to, as a progressive Christian congregation, is to continue to find ways to make the text relatable to us, to greet a message that resonates with us and most importantly to hear a message to which we can respond to make a difference in today’s world.

I don’t remember when I began using the word “call.”  I clearly remember my own call to ministry as a vocation and I clearly remember the time when I went to Pacific School of Religion to “Come and See Weekend” and I began to hear the stories of other peoples’ call to ministry.  It was a moment of great unity for me, to be in the presence of other people who had shared the same experience I had shared and that I was currently holding.

When I entered seminary as an MDiv student, two years after that weekend, I noticed that people would often begin their sentences with, “Oh, well, I feel called to do ‘X, Y and Z,’” and it caused me a little bit of pause because I thought, “You’re just kind of using it like, “I’ve decided to have a Big Mac for lunch.”  So it raises the question of, “What is the difference between hearing a call, discerning a call or just choosing something you want to do;” and there is a difference.

Paul’s road trip to Damascus today is very enlightening in many ways and it is challenging in some ways.  So the first thing that causes us pause when we read today’s story is this flashing light that came on to Paul as he travelled.  The second thing that causes us pause is that he heard