“God is talking to me at that moment and he says, ‘Don’t move. Stay where you are. All will be well and tomorrow go spread my gospel of goodness. That all men should work at this, that goodness is all that matters.’”

Last year, author-screenwriter-playwrite Neil LaBute debuted a new play, The Break of Noon. The Break of Noon takes a hard look at the emotional burden of extreme violence and the escalating occurrences of violence in the American workplace. It’s not a news piece or even an external one. This play is about the inner workings of a man who is the sole survivor of a workplace massacre by the hand of what he believes as divine intervention. While the main character, John (played by David Duchovny in New York), is evading the gunman he has a miraculous experience:

“I stop and hear a voice call out to me. Using my name, and it says to me, ‘remain here and you will be safe, John. Stay where you are and you shall be saved.’”

What I find quite wonderful is the parallel(s) between this play and the conversion of Saul. LaBute’s drama is a contemporary illustration of Acts 9 (which shades of ch’s 22 and 26). The play begins in the recall of the event and as the character develops, we learn that John, like Saul, was moving in the wrong direction. In terms of people the Junior class of Jesus High would nominate most likely to proclaim the gospel, he wasn’t one of them. In his words:

“I was not a good person. In my life. That must be obvious to you by now. There was no reason for God to single me out, use a man like me for any reason other than it being a part of his almighty and infinite plan.”

This song sings like 1 Cor 15:9-10, “For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.”

Hear Paul as he reframes his testimony for the church in Galatia, “You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors (Gal 1:13-14).”

Paul was not moving in the same direction that God was. Even though, in the apostle’s case, he thought what he was doing was what God wanted him to do…it wasn’t. Sometimes we do the work of God, without God, don’t we?. Sometimes our own preferences empower our zeal to produce ecstatic results. But God isn’t part of that. For Paul, it was using the Law to destroy Christ. It’s almost impossible to imagine that Paul would be the person that Jesus chose to proclaim the gospel and write the score, as it were, to the New Testament. But he was. That’s the indelible bewilderment that characterizes the emotional uncertainty of LaBute’s main character.

He’s trying to figure out what to do with the knowledge that God chose him.

That question is common to the journey of all who follow Jesus.

“Will the thirty-seven dead ever be worth the lives I’ll change or any good I might do? Impossible to say. But I do know that a life half-live is better than one not lived at all and what used to be my unrepentant heart is now awash in the love of Christ.”

[By the way, if you are looking for a good book on life half-lived, might I recommend Half-Life: Die Already, by Mark Steele?]

I realize that the author isn’t trying to write a religious piece, he says as much directly in the preface. It’s just nice to see a writer put something onto the stage that wrestles with the same material that I try and put into the pulpit. Take the wacky 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 witness, “I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven–whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person–whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows — was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.”

John articulates something similar. It’s not that people don’t have this kind of experience, it’s that you seldom hear about it and here is a mainstream author trying to work his way through something so mystical and mysterious. I’m grateful, truly I am. Listen to his words as LaBute attempts to describe the undescribable:

but I was steadfast…the voice of God was there and I could hear the…sound of angels from above. And for a moment – the briefest of tiny moments in my lifetime – I was free. No past to regret and no future of worries. Just the moment, hovering there, filled with tears and love and golden blessings. And I began to fill up…to be filled up with the goodness of a thousand tomorrows and, my God, I was floating…there I was in my suit and my tie but I was floating above it all…”

Drama has astounding potential to make us think and feel things that we normally won’t or don’t allow ourselves to. Language seldom captures the intent of faith or the experience of it. To his credit, I think LaBute really understands this. The Break of Noon is filled with ellipses and stammers, likes and really’s, inaccurate language for precise phenomena. But that’s honest. And engaging. And what I’m entirely used to and comfortable with. A real, credible witness is difficult to explain. But we have to try; to keep trying to make words do the work. That’s The Break of Noon and the conversion of Paul.

“I have a testimony now. I’m converted in a way…I don’t know! It was, like this flash and bright things or whatever. It was…this’ll sound just goofy but for a moment I felt as if I’d been lifted up…I mean, literally off the ground…like Saul on the road to Damascus, or, or…you know?”