Acts 9:4-5 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.

This is one of the most dramatic, and rightly famous, stories in the whole Bible (though there are a lot of them). The expression, “scales from the eyes” (verse 18) is even used by Japanese, though most of them don’t know where it comes from. In Western countries, at least, the transformation of Saul from a persecutor to an evangelist is widely known, and “Damascus Road experience” is part of the vernacular. All of that said, this little exchange is one of the most meaningful in the whole story. Saul has been actively persecuting the Church, that is, the body of believers, and here Jesus informs him that he had been persecuting Christ Himself. When Saul, renamed Paul, later wrote repeatedly about the Church being the Body of Christ, he was doing so on perfect authority! We really don’t have a very good grasp of that, even though we use the expression freely enough. Part of that comes from our conflating “church” with “building,” and Christ is certainly not a physical structure. Doing maintenance on a church building is not necessarily building up the Body of Christ! Some preachers are careful to use the Greek ecclesia, to make it clear that the Biblical Church is the people, the gathering. That’s why we speak, rightly enough, of “the church gathered,” and “the church scattered.” This is something that calls for a great deal of thought and meditation, because it deals with dimensions that are outside our normal experience. It’s very related to what Jesus said repeatedly in the Upper Room Discourse about being in us and us being in Him and the Father being in us and all that. In physical terms it is an impossibility, but spiritually it is glorious reality! Because of our very limited understanding, we need to let the Holy Spirit work it into our hearts and minds so that we will indeed operate as the Body of Christ, doing His will in His strength for His glory.

This is something the Lord has been working in me for many years, but I won’t grasp it in totality until I stand before His throne. It is a very timely consideration, because this church is entering into a fairly major building maintenance project. The very first step of that happened yesterday, with a pomegranate tree that was up against the building being transplanted to a corner of the parking lot. Scaffolding is supposed to go up next week, and then the whole building will be power-washed and painted. Either right after that or concurrently, we will be replacing the flooring in the sanctuary, since the 26-year-old cushion flooring is getting pretty torn up. That will focus a lot of attention on the physical building, and I need to use the occasion to help the believers understand that they are the church, so that they will act like it. Like the majority of churches, people tend to think that ministry is something the “professionals” do, when Paul expressed clearly that God’s plan is for the “professionals” to “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12) I haven’t been as effective as I should have been to this point, so I need to do better from now. The fact that I’m 76 makes it a bit easier! I need to seek God for His wisdom, His plan for each detail, so that we will grow as He desires, for His glory.

Father, thank You for this reminder. It’s really exciting to see the tree beautifully pruned and transplanted. I pray that it, and we, would be fruitful as You desire and intend, for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!