Sermon Recording

Prefabricated concrete slabs.

I’ll bet you’ve never heard a sermon about prefabricated concrete slabs. But you know — there’s a first for everything.

These were the preferred building materials in East Germany, beginning in the 1960s. This communist country faced a severe housing shortage, so concrete slabs were used to build shoebox-shaped residential apartments in a quick and economical way. The advantage of these slabs was that they could be used as the building blocks of a variety of structures, from high-rise towers to rows of low-rise apartments.

The buildings were called “plattenbau.”

Literally, slab-building.

After East Germany and West Germany reunited, the demand for these ugly apartment buildings began to drop, and there are now about a million unoccupied units. While many plattenbau apartments are being renovated to meet a demand for more attractive housing, others are being torn down, and still others are falling apart.

All of a sudden, two young architects enter the scene — the Biele brothers.

According to Fast Company magazine (September 2006), these two are looking at the plattenbau apartments and seeing more than just the dwindling remains of communist culture. They are seeing raw materials.

These brothers are taking the concrete blocks from demolished apartments and recycling them into single-family homes. They get the slabs for nothing, and then their workers bolt the plates together, cut out windows, and put a finish on the exterior. These recycled slabs allow for construction savings of up to 40 percent.

Talk of the “communist bloc” is now ancient history.. The buzz today is all about “concrete blocks.”

I am taking the time to tell you about these blocks because they relate to today’s passage of Scripture. The story of Saul’s conversion takes on a new look when it is seen through the lens of this recycling effort. Saul is as solid and strong as a plattenbau apartment when he takes a stand against the Christians of Damascus — he is “a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:5-6).

Saul stands tall against members of “the Way” — Jews who have come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. He hits the road for Damascus, “breathing threats and murder” against these brand new Christians, and pledges to capture them, tie them up, and cart them back to Jerusalem for trial (Acts 9:1-2).

But a surprising thing happens on the road to Damascus. A light from heaven flashes around Saul, and he falls to the ground, like a high-rise plattenbau apartment building being demolished.

A voice says to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asks, “Who are you, Lord?” … and the reply comes, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (vv. 4-5).

At this point, you might expect Saul to be pulverized. After all, he is a persecutor of the church, one who has endorsed the killing of Stephen and engaged in “ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, [committing] them to prison” (8:1-3).

You wouldn’t blame Jesus for sending Saul to the scrap heap..

But instead, he recycles him.

“Get up and enter the city,” says Jesus, “and you will be told what you are to do” (v. 6). Saul pushes up from the ground, but he cannot see a thing. His companions lead him to Damascus, and for three days he lives with his blindness, neither eating nor drinking. Then Jesus contacts a disciple named Ananias, a man who is completely unenthusiastic about providing any assistance to Saul. “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem,” says Ananias — clearly, he would rather condemn Saul than care for him.

But Jesus has big plans for this persecutor of the church. He tears Saul down, but he doesn’t destroy him — instead, he recycles him into an apostle. “Go, for he is an instrument,” says Jesus to Ananias — an instrument to bring Christ’s name “before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel” (v. 15). The strength, intelligence, commitment and eloquence that Saul had before his conversion is preserved, and it is put to a new use.

Saul was solid before. And he’ll be solid again. But not without a complete renovation.

Ananias follows the guidance of Jesus, and makes a visit to his former enemy. The Holy Spirit goes to work, like a builder reshaping the concrete slabs of a plattenbau apartment building. Immediately, something like scales fall from Saul’s eyes, and his sight is restored. He gets up, is baptized, and begins to eat some food. His strength is regained, and within days he is proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God” (vv 17-20).

Saul is even given a new name — Paul. We can call him “Plattenbau Paul.”

The good news of this story is that nothing is wasted by God. Every strength, talent, insight, and experience we have — whether secular or sacred, rough or smooth, bad or good — can be a building block for the Lord to use. He doesn’t destroy the raw materials of the lives we have lived, but instead he recycles them and refashions them into something new. We shouldn’t hate ourselves for being a building block in a communist apartment building or an active persecutor of the church; we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over selfish choices and destructive decisions.

Jesus doesn’t want our regrets. He wants our raw materials.

I am amazed by the fact that nothing is wasted by God. Absolutely nothing. I spent years studying biology in high school and college, before I became completely turned on by religious studies. All that scientific work might seem like a total waste, but now I can talk about biology with teachers and scientists in our congregation, and dig into issues such as evolution and intelligent design. My brother spent years running a Jerry’s Sub Shop in College Park, hiring teenagers, training them, and acting as a mentor to them. When long hours in the restaurant became a problem, he sold the business and became a teacher. He discovered that all that time working with teenagers was perfect preparation for the classroom. God doesn’t destroy the raw materials of our lives, but instead recycles and refashions them into something new.

Today’s scripture is an invitation to plattenbau living. For some, this will mean turning a passion for contemporary music into a commitment to play in our Encounter praise band. For others, it will mean recycling a skill for administration into a position on the board of the Lamb Center. For still others, it will mean taking the pain of an unhappy childhood and transforming it into a passion for youth ministry.

God wastes nothing when he is looking for people to do his work in the world.

An author named Dean Merrill was visiting a Lake Michigan port with a friend. Together they were looking at a ship that was nearly a block in length. It had a gaping space, several feet wide, from bow to stern.

“What happened?” asked Dean Merrill.

“Just an overhaul to enlarge capacity,” the friend replied. Pointing toward workers who were climbing around on the sliced freighter, the friend said, “They cut the thing right through the middle, jacked up the top half, and now they’re welding pieces to fill the space. When they’re done, that ship will carry almost twice as much cargo as before.”

Dean Merrill was fascinated, and in his book The God Who Won't Let Go he wrote that “human beings get ripped apart as well.” Think of the man who broke his marriage vows or betrayed a friend’s secret … the woman who bore an illegitimate child or mishandled corporate funds … all the people who made undeniable mistakes or whose future seemed ruined by a single fateful act. “They become bigger people in the end,” he discovered. “The painful surgery has enlarged their capacity to serve.” God overhauls them to enlarge their capacity.

That’s plattenbau living.

Each of us have talents, insights, and experiences that can be recycled by the Lord for ministry and mission. The apostle Paul had a gift of eloquence that was used first for anti-Christian rants, and then for the proclamation of the gospel. The slave-trader John Newton saw the depths of human depravity firsthand, and his insights led him to write “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!” The Amish of Lancaster County had the excruciating experience of watching their children die of gunshots in a one-room schoolhouse, and they used this agonizing event to take a stand for forgiveness and non-violence. God can take all the raw materials of life — even the most painful and inexplicable events — and recycle them in ways that advance his will. Like ships being cut in half and jacked up, or buildings being torn down and rebuilt, we find ourselves being transformed in ways that enlarge our capacity to serve.

If we are going to follow in the footsteps of Plattenbau Paul, we have to be willing to be reshaped by the hands of our Master Builder. This means letting go of our former shapes and styles, and entering into a new way of life. We are challenged to change from Pharisees to apostles, from self-centered individuals to God-centered instruments of ministry.

But at the same time, we can embrace the fundamental goodness of our God-given building blocks. God has made each of us, and called us good — our strengths, talents, insights, and experiences are as solid as the concrete slabs that are being recycled into new houses in Germany today. God’s reworking can sometimes be painful, and the reshaping can be difficult to endure, but in all of these transformations God is doing the remodeling that is required. As Paul says to the Philippians, “it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:13).

With God, nothing is trashed. Instead, it is transformed. Amen.

Sources:

Dumiak, Michael, “Cement bloc: Builders recycle the stuff of communist-era Berlin.” Fast Company, September 2006, 39.
Merrill, Dean. The God Who Won’t Let Go (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998).