The Rev. Rob Fisher

St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley

Texts: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

There is a theater on Cannery Row that shows movies in IMAX, which simply means that the movie screen at this theater is so large that it takes up all your scope of vision and you practically forget that you are sitting in a theater.  A few nights ago, Sarah and I saw a movie about surfing in Tahiti, where the waves are perfectly formed and intensely powerful.

The movie was also in 3D, so we felt like we were really in the ocean, and the walls of water were about to crash over our heads.

I thought they should have gone all the way and had misters spraying us, or, even better, they could have had volunteers with buckets of water to throw on us during the wipe-out scenes.

The filmmakers took us under the surface of the water, too, gliding right above the rich Tahitian coral reefs.  We could see exactly why the waves are formed the way they are.  As the camera brought us through clusters of tropical fish, it felt like we could reach out and touch them.  They swam just inches in front of our noses

Then all of a sudden, the narrator’s voice turned grave.  He spoke of the dangers of the ocean off of the shore of Tahiti.  He spoke of the ocean’s unpredictability.  He also spoke about how these gorgeous, shallow reefs create powerful waves—all of which makes this one of the most deadly places to surf in the world.

As the narrator spoke of these dangers, the camera continued to take us through the blue world just below the surface of the water.  Then we saw an unusually geometric reef emerge.  It was covered in sea life like the others, but still somehow different.  As the camera took us closer, it became clear that this was not a naturally formed reef at all.  It was a sunken ship

Moments later, we saw another curious reef, which we glided slowly above until we could make out that it had once been the wing of a sea plane.  The graceful, aerodynamic lines of the nose and windshield—built for velocity in the air—now sitting underwater, settled forever among the fish and eels and other amazing sea animals.  The metal was coming apart, slowly disappearing and being overtaken by marine life.

It was a mesmerizing scene.

One existence ends, and a new and more wondrous existence comes to life in its place.

***

This morning we hear the famous conversion story of St. Paul, when, on the road to Damascus, his old existence comes to a sudden end, and he begins a brand new life.

It is very much an Easter story.

Before his conversion, Paul was a formidable presence, persecuting the Jews who followed the way of Christ.  At this time, Christianity was still mostly a movement within the Jewish community.  This movement was not yet called Christianity; it was simply called “The Way.”  And to many of the religious authorities, these followers of The Way were seen as a dangerous, heretical threat.  Paul sought to capture these early Christians, and he was known for his severity.

But everything changes for him on the road to Damascus.

Paul is struck down by a light from heaven that flashes around him.  God speaks to him in this light, and asks him why he has been persecuting God’s people.

The flash of light causes Paul to completely lose his sight, and his friends take him by the hand and lead him to a home in Damascus.

He is without sight for three days, and during that time he takes no food or drink.

It is interesting that it is three days.  It is the same interval as the three days in the tomb for Jesus—the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection.

God asks a man named Ananias to go and find Paul and heal his blindness by laying hands on him.

Ananias has heard of Paul, and thinks that this must be some sort of mistake.  Is this the same man who has done such terrible things to the Christians, to the “saints in Jerusalem”?  Ananias asks God if this can be the same man he is meant to go and heal.

God says that it is.  This is the same man.  And God asks Ananias to be an instrument of God’s healing in spite of all that Paul has done.

God knows, and Ananias will surely learn, that Paul is being forgiven and reborn—emerging now as a new man who will become God’s instrument in the world.

It is no mistake that Paul’s three days of physical blindness mark the end of his spiritual blindness.

***

Few of us have had flashes of light that knocked us to the ground and took away our sight.  But many of us have had those moments of epiphany, when the light with which we viewed the world became forever altered.

These moments are gifts from God.

We lose old ways as we gain a new life.

For most it does not all happen in a single moment.  Rather, the Christian life is a life of constant conversion, of constant growth, of constant rebirth.

And like the former ships and sea planes, we yield what we have been to make way for a new and wondrous life that builds itself on the shell of that we cast away.

It is a movement of hope.

We grow and we become transformed when we allow the love of God to touch us.  We discover the closeness of God, which has been waiting to be seen by our blind eyes.

Paul’s words in the New Testament are filled with this hope.  He speaks from his own experience when he writes:

I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

—Amen.