“Ugly Like Paul”

September 16, 2007

Scripture Reading:  1 Timothy 1:12-17

Rev. Dr. Carol  L. Kerr

 Blue Point Congregational Church

The Apostle Paul is the most important person in the New Testament next to Jesus.  Today I am going to spend some time talking about who he was and what he was about and why he was so important. 

The thing you need to know about Paul is that Paul was ugly.  Some descriptions say he was bald-headed, bowlegged, strongly built, a man small in size with a uni-brow, and large nose.  (Acts of Paul and Thecla)  Paul himself says someone who had seen him said, “His letters are strong but his bodily presence is weak. (II Cor 10:10)”  (Nice!  Translate – “He’s good with words, but boy is he ugly!”)  He also had something wrong with him.   He called it a “thorn in his flesh.”    We don’t know exactly what this was, it could have been malaria, epilepsy, or a disease of the eyes.  Whatever, it was chronic and debilitating.

At first, Paul  not only was ugly he did ugly things.   Paul started out hating Christians.  Jesus had died.  He was resurrected.  The day of Pentecost had happened and now there were early Christians around Jerusalem spreading the word about Christ.  Paul saw these Christians as a threat and dangerous to the real Jewish faith.  Paul started out an adamant Pharisee.  These were Jews who lived at the time of Jesus and who believed in the most strict adherence to the Jewish law.  Being pure was the most important thing.  They didn’t want to pollute themselves by hanging around the wrong people like tax collectors.  They wanted to eat only the ritually clean foods.  Jesus was the opposite.  He said the law was for the people and not the people for the law.   Jesus didn’t care what he ate.  Jesus hung around everyone and contaminated himself with their cooties all the time.  Paul hated Christians.  He hated them so much that he went around capturing Christians, beating them up, and throwing them in prison.

There was a very beautiful Christian named Stephen.  People said he had the face of an angel.  Stephen did beautiful things.

Stephen helped the poor a lot.  In addition, he would spread the word about Jesus, the one who’d gotten him interested in the poor in the first place.  He healed, and he preached, and he talked about how his own life had been changed.  The Jewish authorities like Paul, called him on the mat to defend what they thought were his far out views as best he could.  At the end of Stephen’s speech the authorities were so enraged that they decided to stone Stephen to death.

You heard me right – stoned to death.   Back then they would sometimes punish people by killing them by throwing stones at him.  It’s terrible!  It’s  horrible.  It makes you wonder about how mean can people be to one another.  What’s wrong with the human race anyway?  Well, ugly Paul thought it was a great idea.  Stoning a healthy young man was no easy feat.  So the stoners had to strip down and  take off their shirts and coats because they were going to start sweating and get dirty.    Paul volunteered to stand  over the pile of their clothes and watched that no one stole their shirts and jackets and purses,  while the others were busy hurtling one stone after another at the young angel faced man, Stephen – until he died.   

 It turned out that these stoning, beatings, and terrorizing weren’t working so well.    On the very day the Stephen became the first Christian martyr, a severe persecution broke out in Jerusalem.  Christians fled the city and scattered throughout the country.  And so, with them went the gospel as they continued to proclaim it wherever they went.   Like weeds where you cut off the stalk and the roots start sprouting  all over the place.  

 Paul was out for the kill.  He had to start traveling after these Christians.   He was riding on a horse to Damascus, muttering and swearing at the Christians.  Like a snake he was hissing murderous threats all the way.   He was hell bent for Damascus to round up some Christians, when it happened.    Suddenly he was surrounded by light.  A light so bright that it made the Sun look like a flashlight with a low battery.  He was knocked off his horse.  He heard a voice,

“Paul, Paul why are out to get me?”  He blurted out,

 “Who are you?”  Then to his horror the voice responded,

“I am Jesus of Nazareth, the one you have been hunting down.”  Ugly Paul was laying in the stones.  The very Jesus he persecuted, ridiculed, condemned, was in fact standing before him a resurrected Christ exploding with light.  Paul immediately thought

“O.K.  you win.  Go ahead kill me.”   But, Christ didn’t do that.  Instead, Christ said,

 “ I want to you get up and go to the city of Damascus and wait for further instructions.” 

Paul couldn’t see.  He had been blinded.  They had to take Paul by the hand and lead him to Damascus.  He was blind for three days.  He ate nothing and drank nothing.   

  A Christian named Ananias who lived in Damascus had a dream where Jesus said,

“Get up and go over to Straight Avenue.  Ask at the house there for Paul. ..”  Ananias said something to the effect,

  “Are you crazy?  Ugly Paul?  He eats Christians for breakfast.”  Jesus said,

 “Go I picked him to be my personal representative to many people.”  So Ananias did what he was told.  He found Paul, laid his hands on him.  Paul got his sight back.  And then Paul was immediately baptized a Christian. 

Besides Jesus, ugly Paul is the most significant person in the New Testament.  I want you to take your Bibles and hold up the pages.  Hold up the 4 gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Pinch them between your fingers.  These are the pages in the Bible that tell us about the life of Jesus.  They are sort of Jesus biographies.  Now,  pinch starting with the book of Acts, all the way through to letter to the Hebrews.  That is all about Paul and much of it are letters written by Paul to churches he started.  Ugly Paul is the second most important person in the New Testament. 

 Why did Jesus do that?  Why did he come to ugly Paul in a vision and pick him to be his greatest missionary?  I have no idea.   Paul had no idea. -   Which is where the quote from today’s passage comes in.  It is a passage that is written in one of these letters.  1 Timothy.  Let me read to you from Eugene Peterson’s translation, Remix:

I am so grateful to Christ Jesus for making me adequate to do this work.  He went out on a limb, you know, in trusting me with this ministry.  The only credentials I brought to it were invective and witch hunts and arrogance.  But I was treated mercifully because I didn’t know what I was doing – didn’t know Who I was doing it against.  Grace mixed with faith and love poured over me and into me.  And all because of Jesus.

After his conversion Paul did a complete about face.  He became  as enthusiastic about converting people to Christianity as he had been at killing Christians.  He went around starting churches everywhere.  Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Galatia, and Collossae.  This is not to mention side trips to Jerusalem, Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Athens, Syracuse, Rome.  He planted churches the way Johnny Appleseed planted trees.  Then he wrote letters to these churches.  He wrote lots and lots of letters.  That is what makes up most of these pages that we pinched together.  These are letters that Paul wrote to the churches he started.  That is why we call them things like “Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.”  This was the letter Paul wrote to the church in the city of Corinth.  In these letter he bullied, he coaxed, he comforted, he cursed, he bared his soul.  After being knocked off his horse by the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul was obsessed with Christ.  And he kept in touch with everybody. 

Ironically, ugly Paul got uglier – on the outside anyway.   It wasn’t easy spreading the gospel, because well after all, there still were Paul’s old Jewish friends, and the Romans who were out to persecute Christians.  He would often get run out of town, or thrown into prison.  He writes:  Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.  Three times I have been beaten with rods.  Once I was stoned.  Three times I have been shipwrecked.  At night and a day I have been adrift at sea.  In danger from rivers…robbers..my own people…. Gentiles.  In toil and hardship, in hunger and thirst… in cold and exposure.  (II Cor. 11:24-27)  All of this, no doubt, did not help Paul’s looks.  He got scars and bruises , burns and lumps on his head.  That chronic disease kept flaring up too.  He didn’t care though.  He said that he was a for Christ’s sake.  He knew that “the folly of God was wiser than the wisdom of men and the weakness of God was stronger than the strength of men. (1 Cor. 1:18-25)” And no doubt we might add the ugly of God is far more beautiful that the gorgeous of men. 

Perhaps the fact that we have absolutely no idea why Christ chose Paul to be his representative is the reason why Christ chose Paul.  Paul never forgot that he had done ugly things.  Paul knew that he was always capable of doing ugly things still. He writes:  “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not.  Isn’t that also your experience?  Yes.  I’m full of myself – after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison.  What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another…”

Paul never forgot that he would have gone on doing ugly things if it hadn’t been for Christ coming to him with all that light and all that love.  Ugly Paul understood perhaps more than anyone that we are saved by Christ alone.  Even though we still struggle with the sin within us, because Christ is in us a new power is in operation.  It is like a strong wind clearing the air, freeing us from a lifetime of brutal tyranny in the hands of sin and death. 

Here, having just crossed the threshold into the 21^st century, we have just left the bloodiest, cruelest century ever, the 20^th century known for its genocide and World Wars.  We have now stepped over the threshold of the 21^st century into a new and equally horrific form of violence, terrorism.  We are not off to a particularly good start.  When I watch the plots and witness the barbaric atrocities of the terrorists I wonder what is wrong with humankind anyway?  Humans are still beheading people and stoning people.    Something is wrong with humanity.  How can any human do something like that to other humans?  I like to think that humanity is basically good.  I like to think that deep down we mean well.  But, I wonder is it just Pollyanna -ish?  These optimistic assertions seem silly next to what I witness on the nightly news.  We are ugly like Paul only we don’t know it.

This week we have heard the testimony of General Patraeus about what progress we are making in Iraq.  This week we hear about Iran just waiting for us to loose and to take over the country.  Iran with its nuclear bomb ambitions.  The fiasco in Iraq seems to highlight how even we Americans, who pride ourselves on our humanity, can get caught up in our shadow.  We set out to do good and unintentionally do great harm.  We try to set the world right with our armies and our power only to cause a bigger mess.   Are we fooling ourselves?   Are we just attempting to organize the whole world around ourselves, curving in upon ourselves, living just for ourselves.  We launch forth to make the world safe for democracy only to bomb and make mayhem among the very nations we presumed to save.   I like to hope that we are making progress.  I like to hope that Bush’s outlook is not entirely wrong.   But, I have a hard time doing that in the face of all this. 

But, that is why I like ugly Paul so much.  Christ called Paul by name.   “Paul, Paul.”

Paul writes, “I have become crucified with Christ.  (Romans 5:6)” – and all that was dried up became green again.  All that was full of hate and self hating and self serving became dead.   He writes to the Galatians (2:20) “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”  He reminds the Philippians, “For me to live is Christ.”  He sends off a note to the Ephesians “You he made alive when you were dead.” 

Our sin is not just private and personal but also systemic and social and political.  Paul says that the whole creation is groaning as it asks humanity, “Why did you do this to God and God’s world?” 

The good news is this,  the mercy of God can knock you off the ground, hit you like a missle, and explode upon you in dazzling love.   Filled with this love, the ugly person starts to become beautiful.  The person who found he or she was loved and chosen became capable of love.  The slob found out that God had faith in him anyway and became de-slobbed (F. Beauchner).  We are grafted on to the good tree of Christ and we become fruit of the spirit. Christ sap flows into us.  Paul wrote the church in Galatia.  Love was the sweetest and tenderest fruit.  But then there is also “Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…”

Paul was ugly, but he dreamt of being part of a beautiful body.  No, he wasn’t going for plastic surgery.  He dreamt of the church being the body of Christ.  By means of the Spirit we all can use our skills and gifts to build up the body of Christ. - Wisdom, understanding, trust, healing, preaching.-   After Christ died and resurrected and ascended to heaven, he didn’t have a regular body anymore.  Instead, God buttonholed people, but the life of Christ in their hearts and gave them something big to do with their lives.  -Apostles, prophets, teachers, miracle workers, healers, helpers, organizers, and those who pray  -He was using other people’s hands to be Christ’s hands and other people’s feet to be Christ’s feet.  This body of Christ has another name.  Can anyone guess?  It is the Church.  God will keep working with us in the church until we all become like Christ, “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”  (Ephesians 4:11-13) 

What happened to Paul?  No one knows for sure.  We only know that he got uglier and uglier.  Like I said, he was beaten, and whipped, and lost at sea, and sick.  He got wrinkles, lost more hair, and scars and maybe even a cauliflower ear.  We do know that he was planning to go to Spain and start a church there.  We don’t know if he ever got there or not.  Either before he went or soon after he got back, he had his final run-in with authorities and the story (a legend because it is not in the Bible) is that they took him to a spot about three miles out of Rome.  Right there on the road, where he’d spent most of his life walking with those bowed legs and bald head, and uni-brow and big nose,  from one city to the next starting churches, they lopped off his head.   I think Paul wasn’t afraid at that moment.  Because he often wrote how he longed to be with Jesus in heaven.  Paul may have been ugly but I think in the end his eyes were beautiful, like the eyes of Stephen.  There is nothing  more beautiful than eyes filled with a peace that passes all understanding.