He Is The Discordant Note. Part 3: The Young Man
As with most trilogies, Part 3 is greatly improved by seeing parts 1 and 2 first, so if you jumping in straight into part 3 don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Jesus has twelve disciples. A bunch of misfits and rejects. Actually he has way more than twelve by this part of the story because this twelve keep talking about Him. And one of the twelve, a man called Stephen, speaks of Jesus with such passion that the crowds of Israelites drag him out of town and start scooping up rocks from the ground and smashing them into Stephen.
And the baying mob, strip off their coats so they can throw properly. They peel off the outer garments and lay them with a young man. A zealous leader. A Pharisee. A purist. A man called Saul. A man whose story is all about the rejection, the quashing, the systematic expulsion of the people who would tell the story of Jesus. A man who epitomises the rejection of Jesus and his message.
And then on a dusty road leading to a town called Damascus this man called Saul encounters Jesus. A bright light blinds him and he hears the voice of Jesus himself. And the bright light is like a discordant note. It shouldn’t be there. It doesn’t work with the story Saul has been telling. But it’s there and it’s glorious. It’s wonderful.
And this man changes his name to Paul and starts a new story. One which jars with his old story. One which is of the passionate telling of the Jesus way. One of prison, of shipwreck, of mobs, of miracles , of transformation, of salvation
The discordant note comes, and jars with his story. And tells a better story, one of beauty, and depth and power and shade and wonder.
This blog post was brought to you by....Oli Higham
Oli Higham is part of the leadership team at the Rock Community Church. He finds it hard to sum himself up in a few sentences. However he loves Jesus and is also rather fond of his family, films, coffee, rugby, Arsenal FC, poetry, spray paint, beards, cooking and laughing.