Sermons for the Month
Moles in the Church
DATE: April 29, 2001
SERVICE: Easter III
TEXT: Acts 9:1-6“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Somewhere in the soupy wetlands of the North American Piedmont, one of God's strangest creatures - the star-nosed mole - is burrowing deeper into his soggy world. With out-turned claws, he forages the earth for breakfast: a tasty grub perhaps, or a creamy caterpillar larva. Equipped with minuscule eyes, hopelessly weak ears and an inefficient smeller, this hairy little varmint with the body of a chubby rat has little chance of feeding itself - much less thriving - in the dark, underground tunnels of God's earth. Question: How is it such a blind, deaf, olfactory-challenged creature as the star-nosed mole can navigate in the subterranean darkness - and even thrive there? Answer: The Creator has made a stunning provision for its survival. The star-nosed mole has a face that only the Creator and nature-loving philosopher Annie Dillard could love. Where most rodents sport a rather ordinary nose, the star-nosed mole sports eleven pairs of pink, fleshy projections encircling a large snout. This "nose" fails miserably as a smeller. But as an instrument of touch, it transcends even the human hand. The star of appendages ringing this mole's snout contains 25,000 minute sensory receptors and 100,000 nerve fibers - compared to 17,000 in the human hand - which means, of course, that this helpless mammal wandering blindly in the darkness actually lives a quite robust, abundant existence in the world. Ability to detect trouble? Superb. Ability to determine something nourishing versus something toxic? Excellent. Over time, the mole, in a dark, underground environment has learned to survive. In fact, as we all know the mole has become a metaphor for those who burrow deep within an alien cultural, corporate or political environment but survive undetected, devouring secrets along the way. And as we all know such a "mole" was the star of a recent reality TV show that thankfully ended a few weeks ago. But Kathryn the mole, the law school lecturer and attorney in that TV series is not the only such character we know of this morning. Saul of Tarsus was such a person - sort of. He certainly had burrowed his way into the unsophisticated network of the leadership of the early church. He obtained warrants for the arrest of key figures in the early church and wreaked havoc wherever he went. He had assisted at the murder of Stephen, whose only crime was helping widows, preaching long sermons and insulting local religious authorities. Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 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. But it wasn't like Christians were not aware of Saul's burrowing activities. His poster was up in every house where Christians met to worship and pray, including Damascus, where Saul was now headed to roust a few more leaders and haul them back to Jerusalem for heresy. Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; 14 and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name." Ah but then our mole got blinded by the light. On the road to Damascus he experiences a metamorphosis, a life-transforming encounter with Jesus of Nazareth. It was an event that would unalterably revolutionize his life. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" 5 He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Saul had a conversion experience. It was a dramatic, name-swapping, identifiable point in time in which he was changed forever. Total transformation. He was a mole no more! For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, 20 and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God." 21 All who heard him were amazed and said, "Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?" 22 Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah. Obviously, Paul was not content to stay in the Straight Street Home for the Blind for long. Paul not only received his physical but also his spiritual sight. So convinced was he of the error of his ways that he tried to make amends so aggressively that he was finally forced to leave Damascus under the cover of night. Before Damascus Paul had been a mole-ster in the kingdom of darkness. After Damascus Paul would now be a committed counter agent for the kingdom of God, and perhaps still is the world's most effective evangelist and apologist for Christianity that has ever lived. That's Paul's story. But it may not be our story. Yet we too are followers of the Way. We too are Christians. We too are disciples. But I have to tell you, my friends, there was no Damascus Road experience for me, perhaps for most of you. No blinding flash of light. No voice from heaven. No wrestling with spiritual issues for three days. No date on the calendar to which I can mark the beginning of my spiritual journey. In fact, today in our postmodern culture, such events are exceedingly rare. Gone are the days of Rex Humbard tent meetings and Billy Sunday revivals that end with joining a church. Most transformations to discipleship that occur within people say under 50 today happen most often gradually over time. In fact, I am bold enough to say, that transformation to discipleship no longer equals joining any church. So when we read this story we who are long-lived disciples who have been living in a church home all our lives often feel like second-class citizens in the kingdom of God. We still feel like moles, groping in the darkness wondering when will our "Damascus Road Experience" ever happen. And that's okay. Here's why. Two points. First, the road to discipleship today more often than not moves generally from a desire to first change one's behavior to becoming part of a community of friends, then to a belief in the God seen in those new friends' lives. Today, conversion is more a looking back and reflecting on the presence of God in one's life already and then pledging to deepen that relationship within a group of like-mind friends. When people join the church today, as often as not, they are looking not for an institutional church to join but rather a group of friends who share a common need. Hospitality and friendship must be the first order of the day. Second, the important question is not "When" we became a Christian, but "What" is the character of our faith experience now. Are we practicing intentional Christianity? Is our daily experience of God a life that is bound in obedience to the Word and the person of Jesus Christ? If so, then it is still fair to describe our lives as moles, living underground in an often alien and hostile darkness. Moles in the church are most often those unheralded, dedicated disciples who quietly get the job done wherever God sends them regardless if they came to know Jesus dramatically or gradually. These are the Christians we'll never hear about on CNN Headline News. We'll never read about them in Time or Newsweek. But this coming week, like every week, hundreds of thousands of them will burrow out from Sunday worship into the world and get to work. They'll do pro bono legal work for the indigent. They'll build houses for Habitat for Humanity. They'll push for ethical standards in business. They'll volunteer to collect cans of food for OPEN M. They'll visit the prisoners in jail and perhaps preach a sermon or counsel inmates. They'll staff a suicide hot line or run pudding down to OPEN M. They'll doggedly introduce a new product that will help save a company and the environment at the same time. They'll teach in the Explorers' Club or chaperon the youth on their mission trip to South Dakota this summer. They'll set up a clinic in Kenya and distribute medical supplies in the Congo. They'll drive food trucks in South Africa. They'll take a casserole to the neighbor who just lost a spouse or phone a member of the church just to say "We care." They'll pray for hours as members of Faith's prayer chain. They'll paint, repair, vacuum, stuff envelopes, collate newsletters, mow the lawn, answer the phone, wash the linens after Holy Communion or help cook an Easter breakfast for their church. They're everywhere, and we don't even know it. Moles in the church working for the kingdom. And they can't tell you when they were "converted." They're like Judas and Ananias of Damascus in our text for this morning. We've heard nothing of either one of these moles in the Bible until now, and we'll not hear of them again. They surface in Scripture here in Acts 9 and then disappear. They're just two faithful disciples who were there when God called upon them for an extraordinary mission, risking their lives to minister to the most feared terrorist of their times: Saul of Tarsus. Of course, they had misgivings. Judas was asked to open his home and compromise the security of his family. Ananias was asked to lead this Saul guy into the Scripture, and in so doing identify himself openly as one of the very people Saul was hunting down. But when called, they answered. When chosen, they stepped up to the plate. And they followed through. In the early church, as in the church at all times and places in the subsequent 2,000 years, disciples of Christ, regardless of the nature of their conversion experience, have been making a difference in the world. The world could no doubt use a few more lions of the faith like the apostle Paul. That's a no-brainer. But the church is also doing quite well - thank you very much - with the moles of ministry, the Judas and the Ananais, we've got. Holy moley! AMEN