“Something happened on the road…”: a sermon for the FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY (11 JANUARY 2026)
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Text: Philippians
3.2-11
Think, for a moment, of your most successful, conventional, respectable, upstanding, “normal”
friend. You know, the predictable,
dependable one – the one with a steady job (or perhaps retired after an
honourable career), the one who gives you a sense that all is well in the
world. Now, imagine the phone ringing
this afternoon, picking up the receiver (if you’ve got a land line) and hearing
your friend’s voice say – “I’m in jail. Can you please come and post my
bail?” Several things might go
through your mind at that moment – is this a joke? …a prank in poor taste? Then again, that kind of chicanery would be
completely out of character for my serious, respectable friend. What could they possibly have done? …has
there been a mistake? Should I just hang
up, forget my friend’s existence, and carry on with my quiet, pleasantly boring
life? Should I risk the embarrassment of
actually going down to the prison and seeing my friend in this shameful
state? What would you do? Now, imagine a group of Pharisees walking the
streets of Jerusalem a few years after that heretic, Jesus from Nazareth, had
been crucified. As they saunter along,
their impeccably loose-fitting robes flowing around them as they debate some
fine point of jurisprudence, they suddenly come to a halt, their mouths gaping
open – “Can it be?” “Is that who I think it is…?” A rather slovenly-dressed man approaches the
group of stunned clerics, breaks into a smile, and says “Hey guys, you’re
not going to believe what happened to me on the road to Damascus…”
Can you
imagine being a friend of Saul of Tarsus – that is, before his trip to
Syria? You probably would have admired
him – and considered yourself lucky to have such a brilliant, ambitious,
God-fearing person in your life. Talk
about successful, conventional, respectable and
upstanding – Saul had it all, in spades!
He was one of those people who inspired confidence, made academics look
easy, was completely devoted to Yahweh and the cause of the people of God – a
guy you would follow anywhere – even to Damascus. But something must have happened on
the road… it had been months since he had left on his mission, and Saul had not
turned up since at school or the Temple or the monthly meeting of the Jerusalem
Pharisee chapter – he had dropped off the face of the earth, dropped out. I guess you never really know people… Wait a minute! What’s this?
Saul’s face on a poster? WANTED
FOR HERESY: SAUL OF TARSUS. PLEASE
REPORT HIS WHEREABOUTS TO THE SANHEDRIN.
KNOWN ALIAS: PAUL.
Something
had indeed happened on the road.
What had happened was one of those things – you know, like Abraham and
the three strangers (Gn. 18), like Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3), like
Isaiah in the Temple (Is. 6) – one of those moments when God shows up and
interrupts your life. Moments like that
divide one’s life neatly in two – before…and after. Saul of Tarsus knew just about everything you
could know about God – but then God showed up! And blinded by the glory of the resurrected
Jesus, Saul realized that he didn’t actually know much at all…
REVEALING
As he sits
in jail – probably in Ephesus – Paul writes to the Philippians and tells them
that because of Jesus, he has lost everything. Saul’s Damascus-road experience – years before
– had made plain to him the shocking fact that Jesus of Nazareth – condemned by
the Sanhedrin as being a blasphemer and worthy of death – had been raised from
death and thus shown to be Israel’s Messiah after all (cf. Rom. 1.1-5). The Messiah had indeed come – and
suffered the horrendous death of a slave! – and was now enthroned in glory as
Lord of the world. All of Saul’s hopes
had come true, albeit in an unthinkably unexpected way! As Saul would come to realize, this
changed everything! If the Messiah
had to “suffer and die before entering his glory” (cf. Lk. 24.26), then that
meant that serving the cause of the Messiah could not possibly result in a life
of privilege and status – i.e. the life of one committed to the Messiah’s
kingdom would emphatically NOT look successful,
conventional, respectable and upstanding.
No, it would look more like slavery than anything else…(cf. 1
Cor. 4.9-13).
HUMBLING
In
Philippians chapter 2, we find a wonderful poem (hymn?) about the pre-existent
Jesus choosing to become incarnate and thereby undergo a “double descent” –
first, to adopt the status of a slave, and, second, to die the death of a
(rebellious) slave, i.e. to undergo crucifixion (cf. Phil. 2.6-11). Only afterwards can Jesus then re-ascend and
reclaim his divine prerogatives and receive “the name that is above every other
name”. This is an amazing
turning-inside-out of all conventional ideas about God/the gods. This Christological vision is a complete
deconstruction of the notion of power in the ancient world (indeed, in the
world at any given moment). What is even
more bracing is that Paul exhorts us to adopt the mindset (Phil. 2.5)
that inspired Jesus to “empty himself”.
Slave
of all. The hymn in
Philippians 2 describes Jesus making himself a slave, and this is precisely how
Paul identifies himself at the opening of the letter – the slave of the
Messiah.[1] Paul has gone from being a rising
academic/clerical star among the Pharisees to being the slave of the One in
whose condemnation as a blasphemer many of his former colleagues had been
complicit. The slave of a crucified
heretic – that’s a long way to fall (from our world’s upside-down
perspective). However, from Paul’s right
side-up vantage point, it’s a cause for “boasting” (cf. Gal. 6.14). Paul is a free “slave”, he has been liberated
from his slavery to self, in order to serve Jesus, and everyone else for his
sake (cf. 2 Cor. 4.5; 1 Cor. 9.19).
Such is his desire to imitate his divine master, that Paul even
renounces his own rights as an apostle; i.e. he supports himself financially
while serving the very Christ-communities he had founded (1 Cor. 9.1-27). Indeed, he makes himself “all things to all
people”.
Imitatio
Pauli. Having instructed the
Philippians to imitate the Christ’s radical “self-emptying”[2],
Paul then makes an even bolder move – he invites them to imitate him
(cf. Phil. 3.17; 1 Cor. 11.1). Paul made
it his life’s goal to “become like Jesus”.
In chapter 2, Paul shared the hymn which described Jesus’ self-imposed
humiliation through his incarnation and death on the cross (2.6-11). In chapter 3, as he warns the Christians of
Philippi against Judaizers (who insisted that circumcision was necessary in
order to become a Christian), Paul describes the “confidence in the flesh” that
he had previously as a Pharisee (3.4-6).
Paul tells the Philippians that he has gone through an emptying
process similar to that of Jesus – indeed, he “has lost all things on
Christ’s account” (3.8). Moreover, he
considers all the things that had previously given him confidence and status to
be “excrement”[3] and
a liability. Paul turned his back on
each and every prerogative that his religious pedigree had given him. Paul has done this because he had discovered,
in Jesus, the path to true glory.
The way up is the way down. Just
as Christ descended to the lowest depth of shame and pain, only to be exalted
to the highest place (2.9), so Paul is “striving towards the mark for the prize
of God’s call upward” (3.14). For Paul,
Jesus is the standard of human “completeness” (i.e. “perfection”), the one
member of the human race who has been exalted to share in the very glory of God
(cf. Rom. 3.23; 2 Cor. 4.6).
The
risks of meeting your heroes. Have
you ever met a Christian who was convinced that Jesus would return in their
lifetime? How excitedly they speak of
the prospect of seeing Jesus – perhaps of being “raptured” – and how
passionately they speak of Jesus to others.
I think that Saul of Tarsus had a similar excitement throughout his
life, even before he took the road to Damascus.
Saul had always burned with “zeal” for the Law (cf. Gal. 1.14; Phil.
3.6), eagerly awaiting the day when the Messiah would come and rescue his
faithful people, “justifying” them and showing that they had been in the right (i.e.
were “righteous”) and that all of their enemies – who had perhaps made them pay
a heavy price for being loyal to Yahweh – would learn what God’s justice was
all about.
New
purpose. Of course, when he actually
met the Messiah, things didn’t quite go as Saul had imagined… Saul came to understand – and he spells it
all out in detail in his letters to the Galatians and to the Romans – that the
Messiah had indeed “justified” his people; however, this “justification” was
not based on anything Saul and his compatriots had done – it was a free gift of
grace. Justification was based on the
faithfulness of God to his covenant with his people, embodied in the
faithfulness of his Son, who represented Israel. On the cross, the perfectly faithful
Israelite – Jesus – offered Yahweh perfect covenant-obedience. At the same time, Yahweh, the covenant-God,
proved faithful to his people (cf. Rom. 1.16-17). The Messiah had embodied God’s faithful
covenant-justice, and thereby fulfilled the covenant between Yahweh and his
people…by dying the death of a slave.
Now that the covenant had been fulfilled, it was time – as God had
promised to Abraham – for the nations of the world to be blessed (cf.
Gn. 12.1-3; Gal. 3.14; Rom. 4.13). As
soon as Saul understood this, he hit the road (again). However, this time, he wouldn’t be hunting
for heretics in Damascus. This time, he
would be taking on the Empire, ready to endure the worst that Rome could throw
his way…
COMMISSIONING
They say
not to tell anyone your plans; rather, they say, show people your results. Well, true to form, the apostle Paul did
both.[4] Paul was nothing if not ambitious (Rm. 15.20;
cf. Gal. 1.13-14; Phil. 3.4-6). It seems
that even in his previous life as a Pharisee (Ac. 23.6), Paul had always been a
self-starter. Not one to follow
precedent or wait for instructions, Paul had always had the tendency to take
the initiative, to chart his own course, to blaze a trail into unmapped
territory. Whether it was hunting down
followers of Jesus in foreign cities (cf. Ac. 9.1-2), or out-pacing his peers
in terms of “zeal” for his Jewish faith (cf. Gal. 1.14), Saul the Pharisee was
always out in front, leading the charge.
As Paul the missionary of Jesus would quickly discover, taking
life head-on means absorbing a lot of hard knocks (cf. 2 Cor. 11-12). It might be easy for us to accuse Paul of
having lacked prudence, wisdom, or even good old common sense. “What a sucker for punishment,” we might say
to ourselves with a smirk as we read the accounts of his many
(mis)adventures. Whatever our opinion of
Paul may be, one thing is clear – Saul of Tarsus was built differently. Once he was convinced of something, there was
no possibility of half-measures – it was always all or nothing, come hell or
(often literally) high water (cf. Ac. 27.1-44; 2 Cor. 11.25).
Whether as
a Pharisee or as an apostle of Jesus, Paul had ever seen himself as a man on a
mission – whether striving to defend the integrity of the Jewish faith “against
all enemies, foreign and domestic” or striving to “proclaim the good news in
places where no one had yet heard the name of Jesus” (cf. Rm. 15.20). This was because he did not want to “build on
someone else’s foundation” (cf. 1 Cor. 3.10-15). Paul was a true pioneer, he wanted to be on
the cutting edge of the kingdom of God, to push the frontiers of the gospel to
the (literal) “end of the earth” (cf. Ac. 1.8).
As Paul concludes his letter to the Christians of Rome, he informs them
that he wants to pay them a visit “on his way to Spain” (Rm. 15.24, 29). Spain was quite literally the western edge of
the (Roman) world – beyond which lay the vast unknown of the “Outer Sea”. Paul tells the Romans that he has “fully
proclaimed the good news” in the eastern end of Rome’s domains (cf. Rm. 15.19),
and that it is now time for him to strike out westward, beginning in the very
heart of the empire.
It might
sound cliché, but Paul truly believed himself to be living at the most
important moment of world history. From
a Christian perspective, Paul was indeed part of the generation that witnessed
the events which were the turning point, the “hinge of history” (BC/AD). This might strike us as odd, seeing as how
our culture is so future-oriented – how can events which occurred in ancient
times have any bearing on our lives today?
Shouldn’t we be looking ahead?
Well, no and yes. Those who
believe that “the Word of God became flesh” (cf. Jn. 1.14) two thousand years
ago are convinced that the most significant chapter of the world’s story is
indeed behind us. There is of
course something to look forward to – the second advent of Jesus and the
consummation of God’s plan of new creation (cf. Rm. 8.18-25). The fact remains that whatever hope we may
have about the future (and we do indeed have reason to hope!) is possible only
because of what happened in the first century, what Paul called “the ends of the
ages” (cf. 1 Cor. 10.11). Paul believed
himself to have been entrusted with a sacred task – to summon all nations to
“the obedience of faith” (cf. Rom. 16.26; 15.15-16), i.e., to trust and obey
Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s Messiah and the world’s Lord. “To live is Christ, and to die is gain”
(Phil. 1.21).
To know
Christ. Jesus became Paul’s everything. One could be forgiven for thinking it an
obsession. I don’t think there is any
other figure in the New Testament that is in love with Jesus to the
extent that Paul is. Let’s be clear – there
is nothing sentimental about this. Yes,
Paul can wax quite eloquent in his statements about love (cf. 1 Cor. 13; Gal.
2.19-20, Rom. 5.1-8; 8.31-39, etc.). But
it remains the case that for Paul, love was a verb. Jesus the Messiah (“Christ”) had spent his
life announcing – and substantiating – the kingdom of God among the people of God;
Jesus did this, ultimately, through the cross.
Paul took a look at the risen Jesus, and then he took a look at the
Roman empire; then he said, let’s do this!
I will proclaim the good news that Jesus is Lord to every corner of the “kingdom
of the world” and thus contribute to the expansion of the kingdom of God (cf.
Ac. 28.30-31). After what happened on
the road, Paul spent the rest of his life relentlessly pursuing the cross – the
gateway to glory (Phil. 3.10-14; 2.5-11).
Tradition has it that, in the end, his Roman citizenship deprived him of
the “honour” of dying the way his Master had; he was martyred by beheading – in
the imperial capital. In the end, Paul
lost his chains of his former successful, conventional, respectable and
upstanding life and he gained true freedom – that of living and dying for
Jesus, the One “who had loved him and had given himself for him” (Gal.
2.20). Paul returned the favour, in the
hope of knowing the power of the resurrection.
May we do likewise. Amen.
[1] Phil. 1.1; cf. Rom. 1.1; Gal. 1.10; Titus 1.1.
[2] Gr: kenosis.
[3] Gr: skybalon.
[4] Or did he? We actually don’t know if Paul ever made it
to Spain (see below)… in any case, his prayers (Rom. 15.30-32) weren’t answered
in the way he would have wished (cf. Acts chapters 21-28). Paul did indeed get to Rome, but his journey
was anything but “restful” (cf. Rom. 15.32).
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