The way I see him in my mind's eye, before he started writing the Bible as the missionary man, St. Paul, Saul lacked a sense of humor. Must have been an oldest child. I know about men like Saul. We have a hard time laughing at ourselves because we're too busy trying to be right. Laughter comes from seeing that even though you think you're spot on, you are really a little off. Which makes humor a close cousin to repentance.

The man on the road to Damascus, before his Damascus Road conversion, is too busy pointing out the faults of others to notice his own. He is breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, Luke tells us. He's not just traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus on business; he is on a mission-a mission for God, which is his mission in life. He must block the way of Jews who follow what they call The Way, which is the way of Jesus.

There's nothing so deadly serious or seriously deadly as religious people who are absolutely certain at all times that they know the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help them God. They have a way of making you feel like you are always driving the wrong way on a one-way street. Their way is the right way, partly because it's a way marked by winners and losers. You get the idea that they need you to join them on their religious way so that they will have someone else to compete with for the prize of most righteous.

Kathy Ormsby was the United States record holder in the 10,000-meter run for women. Today she is paralyzed. She did it to herself. In 1985 she was competing in the NCAA finals at Indiana University. She was running well, but not ahead. At about the 6,500-meter mark, she veered off the track, ran out of the stadium and down the street two blocks, then leaped off a bridge. She landed fifty feet below and crushed her spine.

Our best speculation is, one official said, she was a perfectionist, and she wasn't running as well as she wanted. Her father said, I told her over and over and over again, `Kathy, you don't have to win.' But her standards for herself were so high she could never accept less. Sadly, now she has no choice. [Thanks to Clyde Fant, "A New Way of Seeing," Stetson University Chapel (Oct. 22, 1986).]

Some people beat up on themselves for not running well enough; they think they are not serious enough. Others beat up on others for not running well enough, for not taking the race seriously enough. Saul persecuted those who didn't play the religious game his way. Being a follower of The Way of Jesus should not have been a problem, except that to Saul this was a dangerous new way and the wrong way. The Way is shorthand for the everyday pattern of life that faithful Jews were to observe. Saul could not accept conflict with his interpretation of the Law. The Law is the way. The Law is the way you are a Jew. The Law is the way Jews relate to God. And followers of Jesus did not seem to take the Law seriously enough.

Saul earnestly wanted to be a good Jew. He wanted fellow Jews to be good Jews. He feared that if you start messing with the Law, you are taking the whole religion down with you. And he was willing to do whatever it took to defend the old way of Moses against the new way of Jesus that he thought dangerous to Jews. So he sets out to Syria with papers from the high priest giving him the right to arrest or kill the followers of the way of Jesus. And then on the way everything changes. On the way to Damascus, Saul finds out he is following his own way, not God's way; and what's worse, he is in God's way by opposing the way of Jesus.

I was in Washington, D.C., this week and had some time to visit the National Gallery. I came upon a large dramatic 16^th-century painting by the Venetian artist Jacopo Tintoretto, entitled The Conversion of Saint Paul. It pictures the scene of Saul knocked to the ground by his encounter with the one from heaven. All round him is chaos and confusion: horses are spooked, riders are thrown; people are fleeing in every direction; and soldiers have lost their helmets and weapons. I was looking for a shaft of light from heaven, like the one that blinded Saul and made it clear that God was doing major business. But there is no light. It's as if Tintoretto wants us to see that when God breaks into our lives in powerful ways, everyone around us does not understand why we are so different. They do not all have the same experience, because God customizes our conversion to what needs to change in us.

Some people need violent, life-shattering Damascus Road experiences with the living Christ, and others are converted in smaller and quieter moments all through their lives. My Uncle Joe Nilsen is visiting today. He is a Lutheran minister like our speaker last week, Ann Svennungsen. Both of them, and of course my mother, too, grew up in the Norwegian Lutheran pietist tradition, which is actually a little more like Baptist than you would think. Conservative in spirit and evangelical in approach. My mother morphed into the evangelical movement, and my uncle into the more mainline Lutheran tradition. It made for interesting family dynamics, don't you know?! My mother's approach to the faith followed the Damascus Road conversion motif, while her brother pointed out the importance of growing up in the faith in such a way that you didn't need a blinding light or booming voice from heaven to be on the way of Jesus. So who was right? Both of them, of course.

It's funny how the language of conversion always seems to touch on Paul's Damascus Road experience. Many of us think we need a dramatic testimony in order for our faith to be authentic. And when it's not, we either think there is something lacking, or we say we never had a Damascus Road conversion. I will just say this: when you are driving a car, you have a choice either to wait until you are close to going off a cliff before jerking the wheel and getting back on the road, or you can make small, nonviolent adjustments to stay in your lane. Both are conversions. One is dramatic and the other not so. But if you are following in the way of Jesus, what is the difference? They are both right: some of it is temperament, some of it emphasis, and some of it is life experience. But the point is not how far you have to turn in your repentance but whether you turn to Christ and the way of Christ.

What needed to change in Saul was his belief in Jesus and also the violence he was willing to use to defend the way of God. It's not surprising that God had to break into his path dramatically to get his attention. Saul had to be blinded before he could see. He had to be weakened in his capacity to do violence in order to be strengthened in his understanding of a Lord who would rather die for the sake of loving those who are following the wrong way than strike back at them.

The same Jewish leaders who thought they could protect their understanding of the way of God by baiting the Romans into crucifying Jesus also had Stephen stoned to death for preaching the way of Jesus as the way of God. Just two chapters we learn that young Saul was there at the stoning of Stephen. It says the witnesses to Stephen, who got to cast the first stones, took off their cloaks and laid them at the feet of Saul. It reminds me of Jack Nicklaus taking off his cardigan sweater on the 18^th hole at St. Andrews in the 1970 British Open playoff against Doug Sanders.He wanted nothing to bind his swing, and when he finally let loose, he drove through the green on that par four, made birdie and beat Sanders for the Open title.

Well, Saul had been well schooled in the Law and in proper punishments for transgressing it. He believed you had to do anything to protect it. But God's word doesn't need protecting; it needs proclaiming and practicing.

When the voice from heaven calls out, Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me?, Saul must have felt a wave of dread pour over him-the kind of feeling you get when you here a police siren behind you on the road. Saul would have remembered that line from the biblical story of King Saul, who was pursuing the young anointed one, David. David was God's chosen one, and Saul's reign as king was no longer approved by God. Instead of accepting God's judgment and allowing David to be who he had to be, Saul breathed threats and murder against David. He hunted him down in the caves of Judea. But in one memorable moment, while David was hiding in a cave, Saul went into it, well, for personal reasons. The text says that he covered his feet, which is a lovely Hebrew way of saying he was answering nature's call. At that moment David could have easily killed Saul, but he would not touch him. When Saul had left the cave, David called after him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? What Saul of Tarsus understood in that moment was that Jesus was in fact the Son of David, the anointed one of God, the living Lord. Saul had to get out of the way of the followers of the way. He had to be converted to the way of Jesus himself. And part of that conversion was relinquishing violence as a means of honoring God.

But Saul is not the only convert in this story. Notice that Ananias is converted, too. Ananias represents the church that needs to be continuously converted to the way of Christ. The church must accept its responsibility to authorize and authenticate the conversion of the very people we would rather not be converted. You can believe in Jesus and give your heart to him, but if you are living by his way, you will have to be brother and sister to many people you would rather not associate with.

Ananias was blind in a fashion, too. When God used him to open the eyes of Saul, two miracles of sight happened in that moment. Saul got to see that the church he had persecuted was his only hope, and Ananias got to see that his enemy was his brother.

Rather than using violence as a means of conversion, Saul and Ananias both were called to live by the way of Jesus-which is a nonviolent way of grace. The word for forgiveness in the Greek means "to let be" or "to leave alone." The idea is that we do not hold people's past sins over their heads. We may not be able to forget what they did, but we determine to forget to remember. We act toward that person as though it did not happen. We leave them to the mercy and judgment of God.

The Ford Motor Company has just unveiled its fortieth-anniversary edition of the Mustang. Although all the other Ford models have changed body styles so often that you wouldn't know them except by the name, Ford has seen to it that the Mustang has continued to bear the marks of the original in its body.

The marks of the Originator of our faith are kept visible in the world through the body of Christ that is the church. Only when we are constantly being converted to the gracious and forgiving way of Jesus will we be recognizable as the body of Christ. It may not be easy to say Brother Saul or Sister Sadie to people who have previously caused us to suffer, but it is the only way we remain connected to the God who is Father to us all.

Ananias would tell you it is hard to live by the way of Christ. Saint Paul would tell you it is harder to live by any other way. By the way, in my mind's eye I see them together now, Ananias and Paul-and they are both having a good laugh over it all. Can you laugh about it yet?