Rider Off His Horse

T

wo years ago Joe and I hiked a fair distance across the city of Rome to get to the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo to see two paintings by the famous Caravaggio. The hike was well worth every step. For hanging in a chapel so dark that one has to pay a coin to turn on a flood light just for a little while to see them, the paintings depict the crucifixion of St. Peter and the conversion of St. Paul. Peter is shown head down, the position in which tradition says he was crucified having refused to be affixed to his cross upright like Jesus. In the companion painting, Paul has fallen off his horse onto the ground. The viewer sees him too as head down.

Caravaggio, Conversion of St. Paul, 1601

Caravaggio, Crucifixion of St. Peter

That is the first of many clues that the artist has seized the core truth of Paul’s conversion. This is his moment of crucifixion—the earth-shattering experience of the Holy that amounts to nothing less than the death of Saul as he has been known by all including himself up to then. He later writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”[1] What Paul is talking about there is not just the incident of his conversion, though it is clear that that experience never left him. He is speaking of the way his whole life, his mind, his commitment radically shifted as a result. And that shift, we know from Paul’s own account, did not happen overnight. He tells the Galatians that though he once put his confidence in the Law those days are over as he sees that the only way one is made whole (“justified,” he calls it) is through a relationship (that’s what “faith” is) to and in Christ Jesus.

Quite frankly all of that sounds like so much religious talk, so divorced from everyday life, until I begin thinking of it in the terms and conditions of my own life. I invite you to consider, for example, what it is that you hinge your everyday life on. I’m not talking about your religious practices, which I don’t doubt you take seriously. But look at the things that keep the average person going. Any such general sketch would certainly be a dismissive caricature of the truth, but still I think we could probably say that for many of us it would be our need of basic survival. Will I have enough to eat? Do I have enough income to live on, and maybe even a bit more so I can do some things I want to? Am I secure? Will there be someone to help me should I need help?

We can go on from there. I can tell you that for most men I know the questions at the center of life are whether we can prove ourselves through our work, how well can we provide what we are expected to provide, how much we’ll be able to protect those who look to us for protection, and how well we’ll be able to perform in the various arenas in which men are expected to perform. Those questions dominate the way we live and the way we feel about ourselves, at least until we undergo a dramatic shift in the way we configure our lives.

And what about women? I can’t speak for women, but I can tell you what I observe. I observe that women value self-expression and find it devastatingly difficult to live in a world run by many men who both as individuals and as those who control systems consistently undervalue women, and sometimes devalue them outright. I observe women deeply devoted to home and children and friends in lifegiving ways. Women on the whole seem to me to value relationships not for what relationships can do for them but because they perceive themselves profoundly connected to others in ways that we men often do not.

I’m not arguing that these things apply to everyone, or that there is no interchangeability among those of different genders and sexual identities. But if you recognize anything that hints of your own life, then you can see what it is that your basic life structure is, and that is what I’m getting at. That is what the “Law” was for Paul. It framed his entire existence. It gave him his self-understanding. It provided for him a connection to what was the ultimate truth about his life. So when that was blasted open by this unexpected intrusion from the Risen Jesus, the old Saul breathed his last.

Interestingly, Caravaggio picks up on another piece of the story of Paul’s conversion. There are three accounts in the Book of Acts of this story, arguably the most significant event outside of the life of Jesus of Nazareth in the whole of Christian history. In this first one we learn that Paul lost his sight and was in darkness for three days. Who else was in darkness for three days? We can think of two. Most obviously Jesus: in the tomb until “the third day.” But don’t forget Jonah, the Old Testament man who spent three days in the belly of the fish, traditionally spoken of as the “whale.” Recall that Jesus is quoted as having once said that his generation would be given no sign but the sign of Jonah. Whatever else that might have meant or have come to mean, it is a definite reference to death and rebirth. So Paul undergoes what his baptism subsequently acted out and which he himself explained the symbolism of baptism to be: a union with Christ in his death. A whole new Paul is born, raised from the old life of obedience to the Law to a new life in union with the Risen Lord.

In the hand of Caravaggio, this truth is painted in light and darkness. The blinding light that strikes Paul has knocked him off his high horse. We see him lying on the ground in the foreground, his face in full light. Almost nothing else is visible, only the horse and one lone figure partly in the shadows, obviously a groom who is apparently oblivious to this moment and all that it means as he goes about quietly caring for the horse. The horse is gigantic compared to the grounded Paul, helpless, defenseless, utterly dethroned from his previous perch. Paul’s helmet has bounced off his head and lies in the dirt, his arms are raised forming an upside down triangle with his light-blinded face the nadir. Caravaggio invites us into this strange episode in a human life, struck by the light that enlightens every man including this unlikely fellow who so recently was denying the Light of Christ and working to douse its spread. Paul will come to embody that old promise of the Light to enlighten the Gentiles and thus will he turn the Way of Jesus into a path of transformation for all into a kingdom where there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female but where all are one in Christ Jesus.

If there ever were an Easter story that is cut out for you and me, this is it. The others, like the story of the Risen Lord fixing breakfast for a band of disciples returned to their old work of fishing, tell us that this mysterious figure who at first we do not recognize is both one who knows us intimately and one whom we intuitively know because he is our Food far truer than the fish we catch and cook.[2]

That in a real sense is what Resurrection is. Not the far-off event of some heaven in the sky, but the Presence of the Holy One who shakes our lives like thunder. Many Christians have imagined through the years that faith in Jesus by necessity begins with a conversion experience that can be described, deciphered, and dated much like the one that happened to Paul. Sometimes that is true. But far more ordinary is the truth that conversion is an ongoing resurrection that continues throughout life. Paul’s own account of his conversion, most graphically detailed in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, indicates that it literally took him years to work through the implications of his conversion experience to the point that he became the first major interpreter of the Christ event, especially to the Gentiles. He tell us that he immediately went to what we today call Jordan, a land of Gentiles in the desert he calls Arabia. After a stint of three years he returned to Damascus. After one fortnight in Jerusalem visiting Peter and a few of the other leaders, he returned to Damascus. After fourteen years had passed he had a revelation that prompted him to return to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus, ultimately launching the full-scale mission to the Gentiles with the blessing of the Early Church’s leaders.

Fortunately we have this autobiographical account that dispels any fantasy that resurrection to a New Life in Christ is a breeze. Paul’s life, like that of Peter and the other apostles, was anything but a breeze. He bore in his body the marks of Jesus’ crucifixion. He hardly wore the cross as a piece of jewelry or a cool tattoo but on his soul as the inspiration for and seal of a changed life. At one point he describes himself and his fellow workers in these words:

We have commended ourselves in every way through great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors sleepless nights, hunger;… We are treated as imposters and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.[3]

Life in Jesus is not all sweetness and light, but it surely contains sweetness and light. And it contains both, neither ignoring nor exaggerating all the sufferings that Paul enumerates and more.

Most of us are content with looking on the bright side of things despite the gloom we go through. Sometimes in truth that is the best we can do. But there’s more. Not more that we must do or somehow more that God expects of us. But more because it actually can be a noble and brave act to let go rather than to double down on being cheerful or positive or whatever we might try by way of dealing with trouble. It is the letting go that we see in Jesus when he is in the midst of the agony in the garden. “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not what I will but what you will.”[4] It is the letting go that we hear Paul expressing to the Philippians:

Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him… I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death….”[5]

Paul sees that that is the way of living the resurrection, a resurrection that he lived from that day of his crucifixion when the heavenly vision and blinding light left him lying in the dirt of the Damascus road. He has learned to be abased and to abound, and to be content in whatever state he finds himself.[6] He has in himself and commends to us the mind of Christ Jesus who humbled himself to face and own his mortality, even though it meant death of a cross.[7] He knows and proclaims that there are only three things that abide after all else is done: faith, hope, and love. He knows that the greatest thing in all the world is love.[8] That is all the gospel we know, and all we need to know.

 A sermon  for the Third Sunday of Easter, Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary, on the text of Acts 9:1-20

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2019

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[1] Galatians 2:19-20a, NRSV.

[2] John 21:9-14.

[3] 2 Corinithians 6:4-10 passim, NRSV.

[4] Matthew 20:22; Mark 10:38; Luke 22:42.

[5] Philippians 3:7-10, NRSV.

[6] Philippians 4:12ff.

[7] Philippians 2:5-11.

[8] 1 Corinthians 13:13.

Bound

 Genesis 22:1-14

Many folks have a hard time with stories in the Bible in which God seems to be the opposite of what we want our heroes and heroines, let alone, our Deity to be. Sometimes God appears to be a trickster, capricious, and monumentally unfair. We tend not to find such a God either trustworthy or inspiring. So when we come upon a text like the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, revolt is in the air. It is one of those stories that one has to take pains to explain God’s actions on display. How could a just and loving God jerk around a good old fellow like Abraham with such a horrible, repulsive plan as to commit infanticide? And with that, a great many folks check out of the play completely.

Too bad, really. This story is less about God than about the wiles of the human heart. In fact, I’d say that any story about God is inseparable from the stuff of the human heart—for the only way we can know anything about God is by reading the tea leaves of experience. So if we begin not exactly as the text does, with God saying something outrageous to Abraham, but rather with the human relationship of a father and a son, we might more readily see what the story is driving at.

The twenty-second chapter of Genesis is about ten chapters into a story about an old man who was distinguished not by his morality but by his faith. And faith had nothing to do, as indeed it rarely does, with religious performance, but rather with a capacity to trust. Abraham picks up stakes and leaves his native land deep in the area near the Persian Gulf and moves northwest up the Euphrates River valley to a place called Haran, somewhere in present-day Syria. From there he moves southward towards the Mediterranean coast. Abraham is old. His wife Sarah is barren. One day three strangers come along and talk with Abraham, announcing that sometime the following spring Sarah will bear a child.  The child is to be named Isaac, a sort of joke riffing on the fact that Sarah, eavesdropping on the conversation, giggles when she hears that after all these years after menopause and no baby she is, as she puts it, going to "have pleasure."

To this aged couple Isaac is beyond special. He is the seal of divine promise, the proof of God’s faithfulness, the fulfillment of hope, the dream child bringing laughter to life. Who would not dote on such a boy? We know from other stories in this saga that Abraham is incredibly generous and no stranger to sacrificing and offering. It is a part not only of his culture but his nature. So we might imagine that as the boy grows, Abraham begins to ponder whether maybe he doesn’t love the boy a little too much, or a lot too much. He has another son, Ishmael, whose mother is or was Sarah’s slave, Hagar. By comparison, Ishmael holds nothing to compare with Isaac. Abraham is no fool. His relatively recent acquaintance with “God Most High” is bound up with the idea that absolutely nothing comes between him and that God. And yet—here is the boy. Could it be that Abraham becomes possessed of the notion that somehow Isaac has to go? See the neighboring cult of Moloch, where child sacrifice is regularly practiced? Maybe they have it right. The feeling becomes daily more powerful. Abraham becomes convinced that what is in his gut is nothing less than the movement of what you and I might call Holy Spirit. Take the boy to the land of Moriah and sacrifice him there, far away from the inevitable devastation of his grief-crazed mother. Abraham is bound and determined.

Caravaggio, "Sacrifice of Isaac"

Abraham is bound. He is sure that he is doing the right thing. You know what it is like because you have been Abraham. You have been utterly convinced that you knew what you were doing. Maybe it was the time that you quit your job, or said yes to a marriage proposal, or decided you had to move, or turned down an offer that was most attractive. Something deep inside moved you to believe you were right. And you might have been! But right or wrong, you were bound. It was as if on some level you were being moved by forces beyond your control.

The irony is that it is exactly that state that frequently makes possible the alliance between the soul and its Maker that will change not only you but others around you and perhaps quite literally the world you live in. It is the ability, or more precisely the gift, of letting go of your conscious willing need—your dearest love, your fondest hopes, your Isaac—and march off into the land of Moriah which is all misty and foggy in the early morning when only a hunch tells you that you’re on the right track. So you take your Isaac by the hand and walk up the mountain. It is anything but easy, but you know in your heart that you’re doing what you have to do.

Rembrandt "Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac"

But Abraham’s isn’t the only way of being bound. Isaac is a vulnerable child, not an adult. He instinctively trusts his dad. He wonders what’s going on, and feels in the pit of his stomach something’s amiss. He senses the tension in the older man. “Here’s the wood. Here’s the fire. Where’s the lamb?” They get to the place, a great stone table. Suddenly Isaac understands. Does he scream? Plead? Convulse with tears, begging as I did when I was a child about to get a whipping. “No, Sir, please, please, please don’t….” Blindfolded, bound, the splinters of the logs stab his young flesh.

You know what it’s like to be Isaac because chances are you have been bound like Isaac. Bound to someone’s agenda. Bound by somebody stronger, bound by circumstances you had no way of changing, bound by habits you honestly couldn’t quit, bound by forces well beyond yourself, but in a different way from the bound and determined Abraham. Isaac is a victim, handed over to suffering and in just a hair’s breadth of being handed over to death.

When we look at the story like this, though we might not be able to match it up exactly with our personal experience, we can see that what is playing out is a well known dynamic in human history. Yet something happens that changes everything. At the moment when the knife is drawn and the shaky old hand is ready to come down with the fatal blow, time stops. Maybe it is a moment of insight. Abraham! Abraham! What are you thinking? Hold on! This is not what God wants. Not death, Abraham, but life! And as the knife falls clattering on stone, Abraham must think something like, “Oh my God! Oh my God! How could I have been so wrong, so stupid? I just didn’t understand. I thought I was following the deepest voice within me. Now I see that I was way off base.”

That, you may argue, is not how the story goes. But it is how my story goes. Sometimes when I have been most certain that I was doing exactly the right thing in the right way I have come to see that I had it all wrong.  One such time happened when I was rector of my first parish.  We had a youth retreat.  One of the kids invited a friend to come along.  His name was Ian.  He was Jewish.  A cute kid, he was a spark of light in the group, and obviously liked being among us.  On Sunday morning I foresaw what was coming.  We were going to celebrate a eucharist and, as a priest who wanted to do everything just right, I knew I couldn’t share the Body and Blood of Christ with an unbaptized person.  So I pulled Ian aside and told him what was about to happen.  I explained why I wouldn’t be able to share the communion with him, and asked him if he understood.  He said he did.  Well, he didn’t understand what I was saying and was probably too embarrassed to admit so.  When I was distributing communion around the circle, Ian reached out his young Jewish hands and I reached up and gave him a blessing instead of the bread.  He blushed scarlet.  At the end of communion he made a bee line  out of the circle.  I went to him and tried to explain.  He was polite.  Polite and devastated.  He never came back.  If I had the chance to relive my ministry I’d make a bee line to that moment and change it.  I look back and say about that “Abraham” moment, “How could I have been so stupid?” So now what do I do? Wail on myself? Or take a deep breath, realize that I was and am simply human, and come to my senses by the grace of the one whom I really do at bottom love profoundly and want to serve?

I once knew a woman who had an Isaac moment. She sat in her bathtub, razor blade in hand, ready to slit her wrists. She was bound, you see, to depression, which is a cruel master. One might say that it was not she so much as the inner darkness that possessed her that held the blade ready to do the deed. And at that moment came a voice. “Whose woods these are I think I know, his house is in the village though…” She began remembering Robert Frost’s poem and got down to the last lines, “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and ….” She could not for the life of her remember the last line. Finally, she laid down the blade, got out of the tub, dried herself off, and went in search of the poem. “Do you know,” she wrote to me, “that voice of Frost’s saved me?” Tell me that is not Providence. “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” Right there in the land of Moriah, a bath tub, a bound woman, and a voice.

But then there’s a lamb—a ram, really, but let’s call it a lamb—waiting in a thicket, mute, ready for the moment when nothing but a lamb will do. And you know the name of that Lamb. He is the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God that liberates both those who are bound and determined and those who are bound in helplessness. He himself has been bound as he was when he set his face towards Jerusalem, his own Moriah, bound and determined to get there where he would be bound in another way, mounted on and tied to wood.

In these days when we are thinking about and celebrating liberation and freedom, we would do well to remember that more is in play than our national story. Moving not only in the global sphere of human affairs but in lives like mine and yours and Abraham’s and Isaac’s is a mysterious Stranger who at once likes us bound to his service but at the same time teaches us that that service is perfect freedom. When at times we have it all wrong, he is there to stay our hand calling us back to our senses. And when we are most helpless, there he is, waiting for the chance to set the captives free, even to the point of becoming a captive himself.

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2017

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