I Am Jesus Whom Thou Persecutest

“And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, …came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest ”

If you've ever seen a bully picking on a smaller, weaker child: it was the reaction in all the bystanders that I want you to think about today. If you stood and watched the mean kid calling ugly names, taking potshots, and demeaning his victim, driving him into the ground, laughing at him: why didn't you intervene? Did fear of the same treatment make you a second victim? Didn't anyone step in? Didn't anybody stand up to the wicked? Was everyone a victim, too?

I used to work in the industrial painting business as an estimator. In my 2 nd year in the business, I was given a car to drive, a dangerous old clunker without brakes. One day the boss asked me to transport some paint to a jobsite where our crews were sandblasting and repainting a bridge. The job foreman was a grizzled old operating engineer named Lloyd. This guy had a big beer belly and an enormous attitude problem. He liked picking on people. He thought he was funny. He made patsies of younger men. And the prevailing attitude among most of the painters was that this college graduate estimator-trainee kept his clothes too clean and lived too soft a life.

As I drove up, Lloyd came rolling over to my rattletrap and sneered at me. “Hey kid! What brings you out here? You looking for trouble?” The eternal bully & patsy arrangement played its way across my mind in a flash. If I let this guy ride me, I was going to be his boy whenever he saw me from now on. The college kid. The pencil pusher. The weakling. I couldn't let it happen. I had to stand up to my bully and not back down.

I've never really learn to fight. I was always the biggest kid in my school class; standing in the back of the class photo was my eternal position. Fearing my size, other kids just didn't pick on me. I got used to being left alone. Having to fight was always an uncomfortable thought to me: I'd had one fight, around 4 th grade. It hurt! Why would anybody want to do that?

Lloyd's three-day bearded chin stuck through my car window. “You looking for trouble?” still ringing in my ears. I turned off the ignition, slowly opened the car door, stood to my full 6 ft. 2, and said in my deepest voice: “Lloyd, I am trouble.” Shocked by my cheeky response, he grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a screwdriver that had been used for so many things in its long life that the blade was worn back to a rounded, dull chisel. He thrust his weapon to my stomach and held it there, ready to impale me on his Craftsman tool. We stood there, eye to eye, glaring, waiting for a flinch, for one of us to blink. I didn't know what else to do, so I just returned his impudent stare and held very still. I tried not to show the least little bit of fear in my eyes, my stance, my silence.

By now the other painters had gathered around us in a circle like wolves. One of them grabbed my hand and gave me a weapon: a folding knife he had used for opening bags of sand for the last five presidential terms. I looked down at this sad little tool and its butter knife blade, made a fast assessment and I immediately threw it to the ground. “Don't give me that!” I said, and then returned my gaze back to the face of the old foreman. A moment later a kind of tension broke, a recognition of something, the sum of a long computation was reached and the lines in his weathered face relaxed into a tangled smile and Lloyd pulled back his screwdriver, from my gut, put his hands on his hips and laughed. Everybody laughed. I managed to laugh too. It was over. I had won. I am trouble.

Facing a bully is one thing: you already know who the intended victim is—it's you. You're involved , whether you want to be or not. It's yet another thing when the bully is picking on someone else, but you're there, you're a witness, you could do something about it, but that would get you into it, make you a new target for his aggression, perhaps get you hurt. It's a rare person who can say he has stepped between a bully and his prey. He is saying, by his action, “You hurt this one, you hurt me. I'm standing up for us. You've got to go through me before you can lay a hand on my friend here.”

The world has many bullies. They can pick on you with their fists, knives, guns, insults, laughter, racial jokes and dull screwdrivers. They use words. They use medical equipment and privacy rights. They use lawyers and the courts to do their bullying. There is even a legal term for that: malicious prosecution . I know. Planned Parenthood maliciously prosecuted me once, and I fought back there too. I am trouble . I did it for the babies, not for myself. I did it for others who, like me, stand between the bully and his victims and count ourselves with them. Those of us who stand before the doors of Planned Parenthood every week are saying, “You hurt this one, you hurt me, too. I'm standing up for us.” We do this in love, because the women coming through those doors are just more victims.

Jesus played out three allegories of Judgment Day for his disciples. He told of wise and foolish virgins . He told of faithful and unfaithful stewards . Then he told of sheep and goats , separated into the saved and the damned because: what they did to the least of our human neighbors, he told them they had done it to Him . To the bullies, the uncaring, the selfish, the proud He said: “I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not… Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.” Matthew 25:41-46

Saul was a good Jew. He went to good schools, learned Hebrew and Greek, took rabbinical training under the best teachers and thought himself a Jew among Jews. He was the best in his class. He sought to prove it, too, so he established a militia squad that could hunt followers of Jesus, arrest them, bring them to trial, and stone them to death. St. Stephen was his first victim. There were more. Having driven this new religious uprising underground in Jerusalem, Saul heard of an enclave in Damascus. He received papers authorizing him to arrest and transport them back. Off he went, proud of his contribution to the peace of Israel. What he found on the road to Damascus was hardly what he had bargained for. The bully was closing in on his victims, men and women, when suddenly he was enveloped in a world of blinding light. His horse reared and he fell to the ground, groveling and hiding his eyes. A stern voice addressed him: “ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” He asked, Who art thou, Lord? “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.”

Jesus saw Himself as the victim of Saul's tirades—not because Jesus could ever suffer again as He had, but because His people, the believers of His new Church, were in Him and He in them. He identified Himself with the victims and stood between them and the bully. He did so with Saul, and that is what He has always done. He does it for you, in fact, He is doing it right now.

You have an enemy, a big strong tough mean bully . He has made patsies of our forefathers and parents, and he makes patsies of every generation. He tempts them, creates sinful diversions for them, makes excuses for their failures, and greases their slide into moral failure. Then he becomes their accuser, piling guilt and shame upon their heads and demoralizing them until they give up and just feel worthless . Jesus faced this bully in the wilderness, and again many times. He defeated him once and for all on the cross. And on the cross the bully found someone he could not turn into a patsy . That cross and our Lord stand between that bully and us. If we are with Jesus, then he tells that demon : “You hurt this one, you hurt me. I'm standing up for us. You've got to go through me before you can lay a hand on my friend here.” And Satan thought he was going to go through Jesus, that the cross was his final victory, that he would have a heyday after Good Friday. He was wrong.

Saul trembled at the words: Jesus whom thou persecutest . When he found his voice again, he asked: “Lord, what would you have me do?” Blinded, stunned with the realization that his proud life had been aimed only to persecute God: Saul became humble and teachable. His first public act after his sight was restored was to preach in the synagogue that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The radical turn around of this former bully became an incredible witness to the reality of Christ.

In time Saul would be called Paul, St. Paul , the greatest witness for Christ in his age. His letters instruct us, his example of life inspires us. But perhaps the most impressive of his achievements are his acts of suffering persecution for Jesus' sake. This former bully became a hero who would stand between the great bully and his victims. Paul did it for Jesus' sake, the one he had once persecuted. Now he was happy to be persecuted for Jesus' sake. “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.” 2 Cor. 4:8-9 “Five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” 2 Cor. 11:24-27 “For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” 1 Cor. 15:9

As Paul took his final voyage to Rome, the great centurions sneered at the little man in chains before them: “You come looking for trouble?” I can see him smiling with that knowing look on his face, bearing all those scars, and remembering the change in all those lives, in all those cities, where all those churches had risen to the glory of God. He simply said: “Friend, I am trouble.”

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