The Army used a certain recruiting slogan for over 25 years that I’m sure many of you will remember: “Be all you can be.” The presumption behind that slogan is a common one that we all have an inner potential that only needs to be brought out, nurtured and developed, that our basic identity and personality does so much change as it moves along a continuum. It means, e.g., that I am now the person I always was, but more mature, better educated, slightly wiser, and that through growth and development I now have become all I can be. How sad!

Such was certainly not the case with Saul/Paul, nor is it the case with any of the baptized. Baptism does not bring out or promise that we shall be all we can be. Rather, it kills and makes alive, out of which a completely new person emerges in Christ. Our story today from the Acts of the Apostles is about the conversion of Saul from being a vigorous and dedicated persecutor of Christians to being an even greater witness to Christ.

Saul fell the ground when he encountered the risen Lord, the subject of Saul’s persecution. In this encounter Saul loses his sight for three days during which time he neither ate nor drank. It appears to be a death-like experience. It lasts for three days, and is, therefore, I think, supposed to be reminiscent of Jesus’ three days in the tomb. Those three days in Damascus were Saul’s death and burial, the absolute end of the persecutor’s life as one who breathed threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. Then after three days of this grave-like existence, the Lord’s emissary, Ananias, comes to lay hands on Saul saying, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Immediately Saul’s sight was restored. He got up, was baptized, ate, regained his strength and began proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” Saul, whose old self had died, is given a new life and receives a new identity and a new purpose from the risen Lord. The persecutor of Christians encounters the Lord and he is reborn. Everything about him changes. He stops going in one direction and begins to go in a new direction, following a radically different path. With a new personality, a new self with new loyalties and commitments, the Apostle Paul comes to life. Saul the enemy of Christ is dead. Instead it is Paul who lives in and for Christ and Christ lives in him. You see, Saul had become all that he could be, and that was precisely the problem. Now the Apostle Paul will be all that the Lord will make of him and that will be his salvation.

Something similar happens when the risen Lord appears to Simon Peter and the other disciples on the Sea of Tiberias, also known as the Sea of Galilee. At first clueless that it was the risen Lord they encountered, once John the beloved disciple recognizes Jesus, they eat a meal of bread and fish that the Lord had prepared for them, and after they had been nourished and strengthened by this meal—a clear reference to the Eucharist--Peter is charged by Jesus to “feed my lambs,” “tend my sheep,” and “feed my sheep,” leading to the final all-inclusive charge to “follow me.” That mission, given to the disciples directly from the risen Lord himself, forms their new identity and determines the new course their lives will take from that moment on; and the Eucharist will give the disciples--as it give us as well--the encouragement, the motivation, the vitality and the strength to carry out and carry on that ministry.

Thus the story about the conversion of Saul focuses on the word of the risen Lord that leads to baptism, while the post-resurrection appearance to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias focuses on the word of the risen Lord that invites Jesus’ followers to the Eucharistic table. Both baptism and Eucharist lead to mission. Word and sacrament enliven and sustain those reborn by baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection so that, nourished at the Table of the Lord, they may take on the church’s mission to proclaim Christ to the world.

But this proclamation and witness is multi-faceted. Our witness, mission and proclamation, is not by word only, but by word and deed. The words and deeds of Jesus’ disciples, moreover, will bring them into conflict with the commonly accepted words and deeds of the world. Just as the baptized receive a new identity in Christ, so also do they speak a new word and exhibit a new kind of behavior that will not always be understood or accepted. As Paul’s mission sends him to be God’s chosen instrument to bring God’s name “before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel,” so will this mission also bring with it a life of suffering for the sake of God’s name. We should recall that the word “witness” and the word “martyr” have the same root. Paul will be sent not only to proclaim Christ in what he says and in what he does, but he will also be sent into a hostile world to suffer for Christ and his church. But Paul’s suffering will be his greatest deed of love, a validation of the message he is sent to proclaim, and a conforming to Christ in his passion.

The world, of course, will understand none of this. It will regard his suffering, and ours, as nothing more than failure and weakness. This was certainly the view of the 19th century philosopher Nietzsche, who said, “What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness” [Antichrist].

The same view prevailed in Paul’s time. In fact, he would declare later about his ministry: The Lord said to me, “’My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” Whenever the church bears witness to Christ in word and deed, its proclamation of Christ inevitably will cut against the grain. It will be seen as offensive, dangerous, foolish and deranged; and yet it is that very weakness, vulnerability and self-forgetfulness that the world does not understand and which it clearly rejects, that characterizes the faithful response of the disciples to the call of Christ. It is that very weakness and self-abandonment that can say, as Jesus himself prayed to the Father, “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42), who also taught his followers to pray, “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

This means that, if we really are to live, we shall have to start our lives over: start over with a new sense of ourselves as a new people claimed by God; start over with a new past and a new history determined by God; start over with a new hope soon to be fulfilled by God; start over with a new future won for us by God in Jesus’ resurrection; start over with a new morality, a new sense of right and wrong, and a new commitment to a new obedience under the command of a new Master.

“Feed my sheep,” the risen Lord instructed Peter. But what shall he feed them: jealousy and rivalry, the will to power, not your will but mine be done, the same sort of fodder the world feeds its masses? Are we, like they are daily, to be fed with the expectation that we shall always and ever be merely all we can be based on the strength of our will and power? Definitely not! Jesus instructs Peter to feed the sheep with the bread of life and the cup of salvation, with the promise and the hope of a new life rooted in the love and mercy of Christ, and with the expectation that soon they will be all that God wants and intends them to be.

-Amen-