Matthew 6:19-24 on April 19th, 2026
Above is audio of the sermon pulled from the video and amplified.
Below is transcript pulled from the video and formatted by artificial intelligence. There may be inconsistencies or errors.
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Have you ever been convinced that you were right? You were certain, dug in, so sure that you were on the right path. Your way, your choices, your opinions were correct. So you fought, you defended, you held on to something so true, so good, so valid. Have you ever been convinced that you were right and then have it all come crashing down around you? Probably not, right? Because our perspectives, our choices, our opinions are always right. It's those other people who need to check themselves before they wreck themselves.
Well, let me tell you a little story of a man named Saul. Saul was convinced that he was right. He knew what he was doing was right by the Lord, saving his religion by keeping those dangerous disciples of the Lord in check. They were leading people astray, tainting the Jewish way of life. He was passionate that his way was the right way. And if anyone had reason to be confident in that, it was Saul. He could recite his credentials at the drop of a hat. He was a Hebrew's Hebrew, a faithful follower of the law, zealous for the Lord in every way.
Saul not only was present at, but approved of the stoning of Stephen at the end of chapter eight. He was a top persecutor of the church, having been given power by the high priest. Saul purged and purified the synagogue of those belonging to the way of Jesus. He was doing what was right, what he was certain was right.
And then it all comes crashing down. On his way to Damascus, he is dazed by a flash of light and it knocks him off his high horse. Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Jesus makes it pretty clear. When you persecute others, you are persecuting him. And blindness, no food, no drink. And an ise comes, prayer, sight, baptism, sustenance, strength, a changed man. What crashed down has now been rebuilt in a new way by God.
God surely can change things. So why doesn't God do that more? Why is there still so much persecution, exclusion, violence, killing, all in the name of we are right? Why don't we have more burning bushes, giant fish swallowing and flashes of light knocking people off horses? That's where I get stuck with this story.
I mean, can, yeah, indeed, it is good news that God can change things. And I believe that wholeheartedly. But right now, when so many people long for things to change, that just feels like empty promises. Well, God could do it isn't a gospel I want to proclaim. I want something more meaningful from God and from this passage.
And often, to get that quick gospel fix, we look at easier examples. More of us can probably relate to Ananias rather than Saul. Ananias has to take his own leap of faith, change his perspective on Saul and his actions and trust that God indeed was doing something new. But saying, yeah, well, Ananias had to change too, seems almost like a cop out, avoiding the elephant in the room. Avoiding Saul's situation also avoids doing hard theological work just to give ourselves some immediate satisfaction. And if I'm honest, we're pretty good at that part already.
To wrestle with Saul is to wrestle with grace and what grace truly means. And yes, Saul was shown grace, but it was a grace that changed him. He wasn't just graciously forgiven so that he could keep on going in his self-perceived right ways. It was grace that did the hard work of changing, of turning who Saul was. And that gracious turn shows up in a name change from Saul to Paul. It opened him up to a new way of seeing, literally and figuratively.
God's grace showed Saul a fuller representation of God's kingdom. He wasn't right when he was persecuting those who were different from him. Instead, he now sees that God intends for this good news to be for all people. So instead of persecuting, he was planting. And instead of breathing threats, he was writing letters. Instead of binding up followers of Jesus, he was proclaiming the freedom that God's grace provides for Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female.
And proclaiming this type of love and welcome cost him dearly. Because the way of Jesus is narrow, costly and difficult. Saul being wrong didn't keep God's love from him. Instead, that love gave him a fuller picture of God's kingdom. God met him in his certainty, in his violence, in his blindness to God's ways. And God gave grace, grace that confronted grace that interrupted grace that changes.
It's easy for us to wish this type of stuff on people we don't like. Boy, I wish God would knock them down a peg or two. But when we internalize this, when we take in that maybe we're wrong about the ways we're convinced we're right, maybe just maybe that is God's grace changing us so that we can love others more deeply.
So often we are afraid of getting it wrong. Afraid of admitting that we got it wrong. So we just hold on tight to those wrong ways. But getting it wrong does not keep us out of God's love. In fact, it is exactly that love and grace that helps us up, that opens our eyes, that sustains us in new life of living our God's kingdom of justice and truth.
So what is it that changes us? What loosens our grip on being right and opens us up to loving others more deeply? God, it is God at work. And God works through a community that truly welcomes people. God works through hard scripture passages that don't let us off the hook. God works through those moments when we are forced to confront the fact that maybe we don't have it all figured out. God works by showing us that being wrong doesn't separate us from God's love. Instead God's love is what opens us up to see God's kingdom anew.
It's God who does this and no matter how discouraged we are by our own weaknesses, our choices, our stubbornness, it is precisely then that God shows up in grace and love. And this is the same God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead in order to give new life to the world, new life to you.
So maybe the question isn't whether we're right. Because if we're honest, we're pretty good at convincing ourselves that we are. Maybe the question is, what is God doing in us even when we're wrong? Because this passage about Saul tells us that being wrong isn't the end of the story. That is often where God breaks in. God meets us in our certainty. God meets us in our blind spots. God meets us in all the ways that we've dug in and said, no, this is the way. And then through grace, God does what we cannot do for ourselves. God opens our eyes, God reshapes our hearts. God leads us into a deeper, wider love than we could have ever imagined.
So yeah, I guess the good news is that God can change things. Though it's not always with flashes of light, not always all at once, not always in ways that we notice. But faithfully, persistently, graciously, God changes us. And that is good news.
Amen.