Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Acts 9:1-19a (NRSV)
Grace and peace to you from our Lord and resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
In our reading last week, we heard the story of how the Good News was beginning to spread. From Mary Magdalene, word of Jesus’ resurrection had spread to Peter and John and, then, last week to the remaining followers, including Thomas. We heard last week how Jesus breathed on the disciples. That he breathed into them the Holy Spirit and commissioned them to continue to spread the Good News. The Good News of the complete reversal that God had performed in raising Jesus from the dead.
This week and for the next few weeks, we are in the book of Acts. This is the book in the Bible that gives us stories of the early church--stories of how this first community of believers lived together and, particularly, stories of how the Good News continued to spread.
In the chapters before today’s lesson, the news of Jesus’s resurrection has spread throughout Jerusalem and beyond. The number of believers has continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem. So much that, as their numbers have grown, so has opposition among the Jewish and Roman leadership. This growing tension reaches a climax with the arrest of Stephen, who gives testimony about Jesus’ death and resurrection and, particularly, about the complicity of the religious and political leadership in his crucifixion. It is this testimony--this truth--that results in Stephen’s stoning and death as the first Christian martyr. It is after his death that we are first introduced to Saul--one of two main characters in our lesson today. We know Saul better as Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles and prolific writer of letters to the various faith communities he helped found throughout the Mediterranean area.
But, before he became Paul, he was Saul. We first hear of him in Acts 7. “Then they (speaking of the people Stephen had angered with his testimony)--then they dragged Stephen out of the city and began to stone him: and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul...And Saul approved of their killing him."
After Stephen died, a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem. All of the disciples except for the small group of apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria. In the third verse of chapter 8, we read that “Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women” and committing them to prison.
As the disciples were scattered, the Good News continued to spread. Not only throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria, but also into other places. One of those places was Damascus in Syria. It’s the same Damascus, Syria, we know today. Saul was determined to destroy the new believers, those who belonged to “The Way,” which is what they called this movement. Wherever members of “The Way” went, Saul was determined to go after them and imprison or even kill them.
The city of Damascus, which was 135 miles away from Jerusalem, was one of his target cities. It was on Saul’s first journey to Damascus to hunt out the people of “The Way” that we witness a great reversal. These reversals are characteristic of the Good News. These moments when God completely disrupts expectations and unexpectedly reverses everything. Reversals that indicate to the early disciples that God is at work. That, when God’s intentions are realized, the normal state of affairs is turned completely upside down.
This is what happens with Saul. He experiences a series of reversals. Of great change. Of transformation. God disrupts his experience along the road to Damascus. He changes from seeing to being blind. From a confident and zealous persecutor to one who confesses ignorance about the “lord” he can’t recognize. From a man planning to lead captives back to Jerusalem in chains to one who must be led into Damascus by others. From having authority over others’ bodies to becoming completely dependent with his own. From a man on a mission to one who must now wait to learn what he is to do next. From a man exercising great power over the church to one who has been completely overpowered. Completely overpowered by Jesus.
Reversal. Transformation.
But, Saul is not the only one. As we move through our story, we are introduced to Ananias, one of Jesus’ disciples in Damascus. Ananias has heard about Saul and his reputation. So, when Jesus appears to Ananias and tells him to go meet Saul, he argues with Jesus. Unaware of the reversals that Saul has already experienced, Ananias is determined that he will not confront this arch-enemy of his and of all of the other believers of The Way. So, he argues with Jesus. But, Jesus responds. “Go, for he is an instrument who I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.”
In his conversation with Ananias, Jesus has redefined Saul for him. Saul’s past or his reputation no longer fully express who he now is. Jesus has chosen Paul as his own “instrument” or, better, “vessel” through which to continue to spread the Good News among those who have not yet heard. And not by himself, but as a member of the community of disciples, as one of the The Way.
Reversal. Transformation.
As part of the process of becoming ordained, I was required to participate in CPE. CPE stands for Clinical Pastoral Experience. It consists of 400 hours of chaplaincy training in a hospital or other care situation, where trainees learn how to provide pastoral care for people who are sick or hospitalized, or in need of help to make meaning of a difficult time or situation in their lives.
In my CPE training at a hospital in Minneapolis, I was grouped with 4 other trainees. All of us came to the group with no or very little practical experience, other than a class or two we had taken in seminary. After one week of orientation, each of us was assigned as a chaplain to one or two of the medical units in the hospital.
I was terrified. We were all terrified. None of us felt ready to do this important work. Each week we would meet and process our experiences together and tell each other over and over that we were enough. That each one of us was enough. That God had chosen us as God’s instruments--as God’s vessels--and that, as broken and inexperienced as we were, we were enough.
By the end of our training, each one of us was transformed. Transformed with the understanding that we were enough and beginning to see all of the possibilities that God had in store for us.
Reversal. Transformation.
This is what God does. God dramatically re-orients our expectations and causes us to reassess what is possible. God did it with my CPE group. God does it with Saul. God does it with Ananias. God does it with you, too. You, a broken vessel. A chosen, broken vessel. Chosen by God to come into community here and together do the impossible.
This is the church that Acts imagines. A gathering of broken vessels chosen by God, coming together in a cooperative existence and building a community that lives into a future that completely defies human expectations. What if God continues to surprise and disrupt us as with the Acts church? To surprise us just as God surprised Saul and Ananias with promises of a different identity and an expanded future? To completely reverse and transform our expectation of what is possible? To nudge us to a new experience with new possibilities?
What if?
Amen.
Preached April 15, 2018, at Grace & Glory Lutheran Church, Goshen, KY.
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Readings: Matthew 6:24; Acts 9:1-19a.
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. (Acts 2:14a, 36-41 NRSV)
Grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our resurrected Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
I think most of you know that I’ve lived in a few different places. When I was 19 years old I moved from rural, West River South Dakota to the Los Angeles-Orange County metropolitan area. In looking back as an older and more mature adult (cough! cough!) I realize what a huge cultural shift that was for me at the time.
But I didn’t really recognize it then. I was so focused on figuring out what life looked like from day-to-day, that I didn’t really have the perspective I do now.
I lived in that area for just over 30 years. I was surrounded there by my entire immediate family--my mother, my brother, and my sister--and by a number of extended family. Over time, through either move or death, by 2008, which was the year my sister died, I was the only remaining member of my immediate family in Southern California.
It was after her death, that I began to feel a pull to move to Texas, to be reunited and to live in closer proximity to my brother and sister-in-law and their family, who had moved to Austin, Texas, some 15 years earlier.
It was quite a coincidence then, a year and a half later, that the organization I worked for announced that they were looking for someone to move to Texas to head up a new organization there. And, so, in the summer of 2010, I moved to Austin, Texas. In the three years I lived there, I was able to renew what had been a very close relationship. And, I was also able to regain another sister in my relationship with my sister-in-law, a relationship that so helped to fill the deep void left in my life left by my own sister’s death.
While I was going through all of this--the move, the re-establishing of relationships--I wasn’t really aware of why I was doing this. It was only in hindsight, that, as with my original move to California, I gained the full perspective of what was happening in my life and why.
Has that ever happened to you? I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Hindsight is 20/20.” Right? Sometimes when we’re in the midst of things that happen in our lives--both good and bad--we don’t fully understand everything that was happening until we are able, often with the help of friends and family, to gain a full perspective of what was happening and why. To rethink what happened.
Rethinking what happened. That is what is happening in both our Acts and our Luke lessons today. In both stories, someone is helping others rethink what happened.
In the Luke story, the story of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, some seven miles from Jerusalem. In that story, it is Jesus who helps them connect the dots. Who points out everything in the Hebrew scripture that refers to him. Who helps them understand. Who helps them rethink what happened.
And, then, in the Acts lesson, which is the second half of Peter’s sermon on Pentecost. (We heard the first half last week.) It is in this sermon that Peter is the one, filled with the Holy Spirit, who connects the dots for the people of God gathered there. Those people of God, part of the Jewish diaspora, who have so acclimated to their new homelands that they have forgotten their mother tongue. Who are only able to understand because the Spirit has had to engage in a linguistic miracle that allows the disciples to preach to them in the language of their newly-adopted countries. It is the Spirit-filled Peter who helps them understand. It is Peter who helps them rethink what happened.
This is what Peter means when, after he repeatedly appeals to them to see what has happened and why it has happened, he says to them, “Repent.” Here, repentance isn’t simply about a changed behavior or a confession. At its root, it refers to a changed mind. It means embracing a new way of understanding something. Peter is telling those gathered to recognize that God is at work in Jesus Christ. And, therefore, to recognize the authority of Jesus to announce and to put in place God’s salvation. “Rethink what happened,” Peter is saying to them, “And then, imagine new possibilities in what God continues to do.”
This is nearly the same thing that Peter is saying to them when he urges them to be saved “from this corrupt generation.” In the Gospel of Luke, written by the same person who wrote Acts, Jesus speaks of a similar generation and emphasizes its condition, which is an inability to perceive God’s activity. It is a condition that exists with us today--the inability and the unwillingness to move from our ignorance about what God has done to embracing God’s faithfulness, which is shown in Jesus Christ and is further evidenced in the arrival of the Holy Spirit.
That is repentance. That is rethinking what happened. That is seeing, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s salvation coming into our world. It is God, in God’s faithfulness, breaking into our world and disrupting “business as usual.” So that nothing is the same anymore.
It’s hindsight, really. The same hindsight that my friends and family helped me with--to see God’s hand at work in my own life. It’s hindsight that comes through the Holy Spirit, who works through those who surround us. And who leads us to see God breaking into our lives and our world, disrupting the dark things. Who leads us to repentance--to changing our minds and coming to a new way of understanding--an understanding of God at work through Jesus Christ.
And, finally, It’s the Holy Spirit who once again affirms for us God’s faithfulness. That our God is a God we can trust. That God’s disruptive activity is good. And that God’s promises are available for us. That not only were they available then for the assembled people of God. But they are here for us, too. Now.
Notice Peter’s statement near the end of this passage: “The promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls.” The promise belongs to Peter’s Jewish audience. It belongs to his audience’s offspring. It belongs to those not yet born. It belongs to us. Here and now.
It is the promise we heard on Easter Sunday. It is the promise Jesus helps the Emmaus disciples understand. It is the promise we receive when we repent, when we rethink what happened. It is the promise of God’s salvation. For those who heard Peter that day. For us today. And for all whom God calls.
The promise of God’s salvation. What does that salvation look like? Well, that’s for us to explore next week.
For today, though, we give thanks. We give thanks that God is a disruptive and intrusive God. That when God breaks in, nothing is the same anymore. That through the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to rethink what happened and to see our faithful God at work in our lives and in the world.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.
Preached April 30, 2017, at Grace and Glory Lutheran Church, Goshen, KY.
Third Sunday of Easter
Readings: Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35
With gratitude to Matthew Skinner's Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel: Encountering the Divine in the Book of Acts.
