Get the Picture

Acts 9: 1-20
April 26, 1998
3rd Sunday of Easter, Year C

© John Ewing Roberts

INTRODUCTION

Since we expect ancient streets in old cities to be narrow and twisting, a straight street leaves a special impression. Even today in Damascus Christian visitors see the "Street Called Straight" (Acts 9: 11) where Paul stayed. I am interested in how Paul (then called Saul) got from the Damascus Road to the "Street Called Straight." To help us appreciate how Paul got to this remarkable street, I want you to come with me to another ancient straight street, the via del Corso or "Corso," in Rome.

The Corso is the course of an ancient Roman road, the old Via Flaminia built by the consul Flaminius who lost the battle of Lake Trasimene in 217 BCE to Hannibal. For over 1,600 yards the street is a straight track connecting two great piazzas, Piazza del Ppolo and Piazza Venezia. During the Renaissance it was the scene of horse races and the address of handsome palazzos. Today its fashionable shops and cafes draw people at all hours. The greatest of German writers, Goethe, made his home in Rme here.

The street begins at the Piazza del Ppolo where the Flaminian Gate had stood. Northern Europeans taking the Grand Tour entered Rome here and savored their first view of the Eternal City. Just up the hill to the side were gardens of Lucullus, famous for hosting the most elegant and sumptuous of all Roman banquets. Now the Villa Borghese and nearby gardens and lakes draw lovers of beauty in art and in nature.

There is also horror and ugliness associated with this piazza. It was the scene of executions by repeated hammering of the prisoner's head or more "humanely" by the guillotine. In the Middle Ages there was a persistent legend that the ghost of the Roman emperor Nero haunted this area. Around a walnut tree near the gate his ashes were buried. People wondered if the ravens roosting in the tree were demons tormenting him for his hideous crimes. (Rome, Fiona Wild, project editor [New York: Dorling Kidersley, Inc.] 1993, p. 138).

A Pope who had had enough of this darkness said, "Let's cut down that tree and build a church on the spot." The church that stands there today is Santa Maria del Populo. The painting you have been looking at adorns the Cerasi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo.

CARAVAGGIO

At the front of the church just to the left of the altar is the Cerasi Chapel where there are two paintings by the master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610). He "earned a reputation as a violent and irrational man." He was known to the police for offenses including assaults and stabbings. Once he started a riot in a restaurant by throwing a plate of artichokes into a waiter's face. In 1606, he fled Rome after killing a man. When his enemies finally found him, hey disfigured him in a fight for his life. Although he died an early death on a lonely seashore, there was nothing "wild or undisciplined about his painting. It has an overwhelming truthfulness..." (Sister Wendy Beckett, Sister Wendy's Story of Painting [New York: DK Publishing Co.] 1994, pp. 177-178)

"I DON'T LIKE IT"

[Slide No.1]

This painting we've been looking at is one of Caravaggio's more controversial paintings, The Conversion of St. Paul. When I first saw it, I knew I was supposed to admire it, but I didn't like it one bit. I couldn't figure out where Paul was. Was he the old guy by the horse? No, that man is the groom. The only other man in the picture was the fellow in Roman armor on the ground who looks like a Roman soldier. Could that be Paul?

I later learned of a tradition that Paul, the Roman citizen, had gone to Damascus with orders backed up by Rome and therefore he had become in certain traditions a Roman soldier. OK, if that's Paul (he's really still Saul), there is still one big problem with the painting - the horse. Why does the horse dominate the painting? It looks like a giant Clydesdale who's broken out of an old Budweiser commercial.

My guidebook was of no help. It told me that "the effect of the divine light illuminating St. Paul on the road to Damascus should have been sublime but it falls first of all on the horse, which is out of proportion, before touching the foreshortened figure of the saint." (Michelin, Rome [London: Michelin Tyre Public Limited Co.] 1985, p. 98)

Caravaggio's contemporaries were not enthusiastic about this painting either. No contemporary copies exist. Nobody thought it was worth copying.

LIGHT AND POWER

On the Sunday evening in 1991 when Marylynn and I first saw the painting, we agreed not to give up on it too quickly.

We needed the explanation offered by Sister Wendy Beckett in her recent television series. Caravaggio was painting at a time after the Protestant Reformation when the Pope was trying to rekindle biblical faith. Painting, the church realized, was a way to inspire faith, to bring people closer to the drama and truth of the Bible. Caravaggio's art could entice the human senses and lead them to a religious awareness. He was dramatic and relevant to the lives of ordinary peopl. Some people didn't like it when Caravaggio painted biblical characters like regular people, but he was courageous and would not compromise. He understood that the power of God's light to illumine and transform ordinary people was at the heart of biblical faith.

The same idea was in an old poem my mother used to like; it went something like this:

Isn't it strange that kings and things,
And clowns on elephants in sawdust rings,
And common folks like you and me
Are builders for eternity. (emphasis added).

Kenneth Clark called Caravaggio "the greatest Italian painter" of his period because he was the first artist to look so powerfully at the full reality of human existence, its highs and its lows, its glories and its sordid materiality." ((Kenneth Clark, Civilisation [New York: Harper and Row] 1969,p. 178) "His paintings have a `lay Christianity,'...that appealed to Protestants no less than Catholics." (H. W. Janson and Anthony F. Janson, History of Art for Young People, 3rd edition [New York: Hrry N. Abrams, Inc.] 1987, p. 252)

Caravaggio's religious paintings declare a religious faith revealed spontaneously through an inward experience - that is what the light is all about. He experimented with the use of lighting that movie makers discovered in the 1920s and that we take for granted today. (Clark, op. cit., p. 182) He used light and shade to spotlight and control our reactions.

Often his paintings contrast light and darkness, good and evil, life and death. There is
down-to-earth realism and deep religious feeling, conveyed through sharply focused, expressive lighting.

With these praises of Caravaggio to encourage us to take a second look at the painting, consider with me now that monstrous horse. The large figure of the well lighted horse looms over the helpless man with a huge hoof poised above him. And that is the point - this is a static moment in order to penetrate the psychological core of events (Alfred Moir, Caravaggio [New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc.] 1989, p. 86)

One minute before the scene in the painting Saul was powerful, in control, arguably the best mind of his century, a Hebrew of the Hebrews (Philippians 3: 5) and a Roman citizen (Acts 22: 27), educated at one of the three top centers of learning in his time and a student of the brilliant teacher Gamaliel, a young man in his prime (Acts 7: 58). He was active, resourceful, masterful, zealous, and ruthless. (Sounds like the profile of Baptist seminary presidents these days, does't it?)

In a moment he would begin three days in a tomb of darkness and deprivation. "In his blindness he dies with Christ and through the instrumentality of Ananias is raised to new life (cf. Rom. 6: 1-4)." (Myrna Kysar and Robert Kysar, Proclamation 5, Series C - Easter [Minneapolis: Fortress Press] 1995, p. 22)

In a moment he would be led by the hand into the city, as passive and helpless as a child because he had met the One who said, "Except you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom..." (Matthew 18: 3)(William H. Willimon, Acts [Atlanta: John Knox Press] 1988, p. 76)

But now he is in the middle of the road with this hulking horse about to step on him. How the mighty have fallen! What's going on inside of Paul at such a moment? We strain to see his face but we can't. Paul is on his back at a 45 degree diagonal which compels us to crane our necks to meet Paul's eyes. We are frustrated by our efforts, but still drawn into the picture by this device of Caravaggio's. (Moir, op. cit., p. 86)

This is a painting about power, the weight of the heavy horse and the impact of the heavenly power of the divine voice which knocks Paul off his horse (there is no horse in Acts, just in the artist's imagination, but it's worth mentioning that the author Flannery O'Conner wrote, "I reckon the Lord knew the only way to make a Christian out of Paul was to knock him off his horse." (Willimon, op. cit., p. 73).

The animal motif is there. When Paul retells this story in Acts 26: 14, he mentions Jesus' comment, "It is hard to kick against the goad." "Saul is pictured as an unwilling animal, such as an ox or a donkey. The beast kicks vigorously at the driving goad...an extremely sharp piece of metal on the end of a staff." (W. A. Criswell, editor, The Criswell Study Bible [Nashville; Thomas Nelson Publishers] 1979, p. 1,289) Animal power, human power, God's power. The point is that there is power, and the there is power.

Paul's arms raised in prayer or in ecstasy. The real power is something Paul can see and hear -the power of the light that hits in square on his chest, the center of gravity, the power of light that strikes him in the center of his emotions, his heart. What we have here is more than a man fallen off a plow horse. What appears to be a banal incident - a sluggish horse, an ungainly heavy-handed groom, a man fallen off a plow horse - is in reality a life changing, world changing moment. Paul is in transiion, from the darkness of religious violence and death into the light and life of a new calling.

We do not all have such dramatic encounters, but we all know something about power and powerlessness. "The real questions are: Have we ever been brought to the end of our resources? Have we ever felt completely helpless without the Lord's (help)? Have we ever made an unreserved surrender of all we have and are? Have we felt the persistent pursuit of the Lord?...How are we resisting his overtures of love and forgiveness?" (Lloyd J. Ogilvie, Drumbeat of Love - The Unlimted Power of the Power as Revealed in the Book of Acts [Waco, Texas: Word Press] 1976, p. 130)

Paul's memory of this event was an impression of "a tremendous shining light, like the light of the first day of God's Creation shining out of darkness." "It is the God who said, `Let light shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (II Corinthians 4: 6) (Adolf Deissmann, Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History [New York: Harper Torchbook, 1957 (first edition, 1912] pp. 129-130)

But not every one has "a Damascus Road experience," a dramatic thunder and lightning life changing experience. Some of us see the light in other ways.

I like the story of a young man who felt the need to commit his life to Christ in a revival meeting.

One person said, "Hold on. When I was saved, I really had to hold on."

Someone else said, "Let go. When I was saved, I really had to let go."

A third person said, "Look for the light. When I was saved, I saw the light."

In spite of all this advice he became a Christian. Later he said that between holding on, letting go, and looking for the light, he almost missed being saved. "Actually, no one form is normative for all Christians." (emphasis added) (Brian L. Harbour, Living Expectantly: Acts [Nashville: Broadman Press] 1990, p. 79)

Some of us see the light in other ways. Caravaggio, that master of light, can help us here with another painting from another church in Rome, The Calling of St. Matthew from the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi.

ANOTHER CALLING - MATTHEW'S

[Slide No. 2.]

"Now as Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting in the tax-collector's place, and said to him `Follow me.' And he arose and followed him." (Matthew 9: 9)

This painting is part of the first commission Caravaggio ever had for religious subjects. What a great start!

Let's start at the left side of the painting where the five men at the table make up a horizontal block; on the other side we see a vertical rectangle composed of the two standing men on the right; separating the two groups and perhaps connecting them are a black void and a long triangular shaft of light. (Moir)

Matthew, the despised tax collector, is in his tavern-like office. It's a sleazy, corrupt, money-obsessed world. He is seated at table surrounded with four assistants: the two on our left are so focused on the money that they do not see Jesus; they look like two gamblers absorbed in their cards. In fact the posture of these two men is something Caravaggio borrowed from an earlier artist. (Artists "quote" other artists the same way writers quote earlier authors.) They are so preoccupied with the day's tae that they will miss Jesus, what he calls for and what he offers. The two boys respond - the younger drawing toward Matthew. Some say he looks scornful; others that he seems to be seeking protection. (His face appears in other Caravaggio paintings.) The older youth is armed, and instead of leaning back toward Matthew, he leans out a little menacingly.

These five men in the rectangle on our left are dressed in fashionable clothes of their time. They might have stepped out of the Roman edition of GQ. Matthew and his group dress as people of the contemporary world; Jesus and Peter wear timeless "biblical" cloaks. They appear to sit in a Roman tavern, a scene with which Caravaggio was familiar, since he knew well contemporary low life.

In the vertical rectangle to our right the man closer to the door, the man with a barely visible halo, comes into this sleazy world. It is Jesus; beside him is Peter. They are not wearing fashionable Renaissance clothing, but have dressed as poor people with bare heads and bare feet. They have different values; they are from another world; their clothes are timeless because they are for all time.

SEEING THE LIGHT

Now we need to concentrate on the light and on the hands. Matthew's right hand is still on the coin he had been counting. His left hand sends the signal, "Who, me?" in response to the beckoning gesture from Jesus. Matthew is in a static moment, like Paul in the dust on the road, receiving a challenge and a command, torn between human indecision and the time for a life changing reaction.

The strong beam of sunlight above Jesus carries his summons across the room to Matthew. There is a divine presence here; Matthew cannot ignore it. (Janson and Janson, op. cit., pp. 251-252)

The light on Jesus' face and Peter's is no ordinary light. Ordinary light would cast a shadow on the youth with the sword. The ordinary is in the presence of the extraordinary. We begin to see things from a more than human perspective. We see a cross backlighted by the window.

Peter gestures with his hand as if to calm resistance. No one is doing anything - Jesus' entrance has suspended action for a shocked instant (Moir, p. 72). We are waiting for a reaction - it's the moment of invitation. In a second Matthew will respond. Jesus does not beg, he commands; he expects obedience. Look closely at Jesus' feet. They are already turned to leave the room. He expects Matthew and anyone else he invites to get up and go forward. "Follow me!" (Matthew 9: 9)

[Slide No. 3]

Our eyes move to the hand, and the longer we look at it, the more we feel like we've seen it before. And we have. It is another quotation of an earlier artist, a very famous artist and one of his most famous paintings.

[Slide No. 4]

The hand of Jesus is the reverse of the hand of Adam in Michelangelo's Creation from the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

THE CALL TO SHARE IN CREATION


[Slide No. 5]

Adam lifts a languid hand to his Creator, who moves with energy to bestow the gift of life. The hand of God is a life-giving hand, a creative hand.

"Through the centuries, the creative and healing power of God has been represented through the gestures of the human hand and fingers. Beginning in the early Christian catacombs, frescoes showed God touching and healing through Jesus. During the Renaissance, Michelangelo dared to symbolize God's `human hand gesture' bringing humanity into being." (Imaging the Word: An Arts and Lectionary Resource, Vol. 1, Kenneth T. Lawrence, editor [Cleveland, Ohio: United Church Press] 1994. p. 41)

Caravaggio has taken the same gesture of response that gave Adam life and humanity. The same languor is there, but it has become powerfully compelling. (Moir, op. cit., p. 72)

There is some brilliant, but subtle theology at work here. Jesus the Christ is the One the Bible calls the second Adam (Romans 5: 14; I Corinthians 15: 22, 45).


[Slide No. 6]

In Genesis 1: 3 how did God create? He spoke, "`Let there be light!' and there was light."


[Slide No. 7]

In Genesis 2: 7 from what did he create? "Then God formed man from the dust of the ground..."

"Why are you persecuting me?" the voice asked Saul. As he lay in the dust from which he would rise a new creation Saul didn't quibble by saying, "I'm not persecuting you. I'm persecuting the followers of the way, the people who are becoming the church." He was in no position to argue; and besides, he got the point -- Christ was identifying himself with the church. "It was he whom Paul persecuted by persecuting the church." (Johannes Munck, The Acts of the Apostles [Garden City, New York: Doubleda and Co.] 1967, p. 81) In Ephesians the church is called the Body of Christ, an extension of the incarnation, an agent of the new creation. Caravaggio was right to link God and Jesus and Adam and by extension you and me in the creative work of God. "We are laborers together with God." "Christ has no hands but our hands To do His work today; He has no feet but our feet To lead men in His way; He has no tongue but our tongues To tell men how He died; He has no help but our help To bring them to His side." (Annie Johnson Flint, Christ and the Fine Arts)

THE CALL OF THE TRANSFORMING LIGHT

The good news from the picture is that we can change, or, better yet, given our weakness, we can be changed.

We can see the light; we can know the ecstasy of a transforming moment.

We can "get the call," be it a radiant inner voice or a beckoning and even blinding light.

We can move from an artificial sense of power in the pride of life (I John 2: 6) to complete dependence and then with a simple, "Here I am, Lord," connect with the power of creation itself. In fact, we can join in the very act of creation...out of dust God created Adam, out of the dust of the Damascus Road, Jesus recreated Saul into Paul, changed a murderer into a missionary.

We can "get the call,"
the call to be a Christian,
the call to do something special (like go to the Gentiles),
the call to serve.

We can "get the call," be it a radiant inner voice or a beckoning and even blinding light.

Dag Hammarskjld wrote on Pentecost, 1961:

I don't know Who - or what - put the question. I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone - or Something - and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

(Dag Hammarskjld, Markings, translated from the Swedish by Leif Sjberg and W. H. Auden [New York: Alfred A. Knopf] 1964, p. 205)

CONCLUSION - "GETTING THE CALL"

We can "get the call," be it a radiant inner voice or a beckoning and even blinding light.

We can "get the call,"
the call to do anything that connects us with the creative, loving power of God,
the call to join with God in any creative, loving act,
the call to keep vigil by a sick bed,
the call to say a good word when the talk gets coarse,
the call to be gentle in a rough world,
the call to encourage in a bitter, cynical conversation,
the call to treat the dregs of humanity as if they were Jesus Christ,
the call to join with God in any creative, loving act.

The brilliant British man of letters, Malcolm Muggeridge, was an atheist for the first 79 years of his life. He resisted all the great books, the great sermons, the great music, but when he saw Mother Teresa in Calcutta with the poor, he said, "If this is it, I've got to have it."

We can "get the call."

When I was a student in Divinity School, I met over dinner a graduate student named Smith. Later I learned his father was the Smith whose name appeared in a Wall Street partnership list which begins Merrill, Lynch, etc. But, I was told, his mother was far more impressive, a woman named Gert Behanna. She had grown up wealthy, over privileged, a hothouse flower, who married and divorced three times, became an alcoholic, did drugs, and was suicidal.

Once at a dinner party in Connecticut Gert Behanna tried to shock a Christian couple seated next to her by telling her life story, how bad she was, what a mess she was.

The husband from the Christian couple responded, "Gert, you've had a tough life. Why don't you turn it over to the Lord."

She was indignant - "What? You mean like asking a redcap to take my bags?"

"Exactly," he said. Gert found the whole thing disgusting.

She went back to her home in Lake Forest, Illinois, glad to be rid of these Christians. But they wrote, they sent books, and they prayed. One day she found herself kneeling beside her bed saying, "Lord, take all the baggage I've been carrying, my life, the whole thing." He did. Gert Behanna became an evangelist, wrote her autobiography, The Late Liz, which sold over a million copies. (Bruce Larson, Wind and Fire - Living Out the Book of Acts [Waco, Texas: Wor Books] 1984, pp. 90-92)

Paul in the dust, Matthew in his office, Gert on her knees at her bedside, any time, any place, the creative, transforming light can shine and call us to life with Jesus, in Jesus, for Jesus.

John Ewing Roberts
Woodbrook Baptist Church
(Formerly Eutaw Place Baptist Church)
Baltimore, Maryland
[This sermon is for circulation within the Woodbrook congregation and may not be reproduced without permission.]