I’m going to tell you a secret, we could have heard a shorter version of the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, but I don’t like skipping or over simplifying things, so we heard the entire passage and because of that the service will be about 30 seconds longer today. Truthfully, when I read the story of Saul’s conversion, I immediately heard the faith story of us all.
Saul was a faithful Jew, in fact he was a Pharisee, which means he believed that all written and oral Jewish law should be strictly adhered to and this is why he didn’t like what the new Christians were up to. Interestingly, Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the dead, in the immortality of the soul, and that they would be either rewarded or punished after death. They believed in the importance of keeping rituals and the need to convert the Gentiles. However, their adherence to the law was so meticulous that it often came at the expense of their inner faith and which is the very thing Jesus was challenging time and time again.
One of the hardest parts of living a God centered life is not really understanding that faith in God is paradoxical by nature. There are moments when faith feels literal and tied to the rule book (hold up BCP) and there are moments when it feels emotionally raw. There are moments when we realize that the rulebook doesn’t matter because the rulebook is not God, and there are moments when we cling to the rulebook because it provides us comfort.
As Rev. Anna often says, we are shaped by how we pray, which is not unique to Anglicanism, but we are unique in our emphasis of it. What it means is that our liturgy, the work we do as the people of God, transforms us. Though this transformation does not come because of the rituals themselves, the ritual is simply a means through which we truly open ourselves to God’s redemptive love, and is why Jesus was constantly challenging the Pharisees to set aside the rulebook and listen to what God was asking of them.
As a Pharisee, Saul sought to persecute Christians because they were breaking all the rules and it was on his way to oversee the arrest of a new crop of Jesus followers that he truly heard the voice of God for the first time, and the experience blinds him; or perhaps the encounter reveals his blindness, which was caused by his refusal to believe that the rules he clung to are not truly from God. Ultimately it is Ananias, who being sent by God, restored Saul’s sight; but Ananias, knowing of Saul’s history, was also resistant to what Jesus wanted him to do, so doesn’t that make him just as blind as Saul?
The world is filled with Sauls and Ananiass. How many are blind to the teachings of God, and the story of redemptive love? How many of those who are blind to God’s teachings are professed Christians? How many professed Christians share the doubt of Ananias when faced with the Sauls of the world, but do not have the spiritual fortitude to follow through with God’s commandment to Love when we doubt the motivations or worthiness of others to receive that love?
We are all very aware of the current climate of our nation. Many things feel unfair and chaotic and many of us are aware of how changes to US immigration policy have affected this very community. I have met people who are ready to move overseas, I have met people who are shocked and I have met people who are indifferent. Whether we like what is happening or not the call to Love our neighbor does not change, that is a constant, and the only thing we can truly control is the degree to which we allow the politics of the human world to separate us from God and their mission in the world. I am wondering if Ananias would still have agreed to heal Saul if he knew he voted for the opposing candidate? Would he have denied the sharing of God’s love because he didn’t like what Saul believed or who he voted for? I truly believe that the answer is no, he still would have laid his hands on Saul and restored his sight because despite having doubts, Ananias trusted God. He trusted that the message of the Gospel would prevail despite his misgivings about Saul and we are called to do the same. God does not seek to improve the lives of their people by directly interfering in human matters, they don’t sit on a throne and issue judgements based on whether we follow their rules, let alone the things we think are their rules. God lives in us and thus improves the lives of their people through us, through our liturgy, through our work. The book of Acts says that Saul was healed when Ananias laid his hands on him, but we should not take this literally. Saul had faith, he loved God, and he placed his trust in the rule book. His healing likely came through the teachings of Jesus as conveyed to him through Ananias, which means that his figurative blindness to God’s true plan was cured by the teachings of Christ.
I am afraid that we are so wrapped up in the political climate of our time that we are forgetting that all of the issues facing our country, and the world, and our community remain the same. There are still people who are physically, emotionally, and spiritually poor and whether PBS exists or not that will remain true. I was recently giving a lecture on The Great Society programs, the crux of which focused on ending poverty in America. In 1959 there were approximately 39 million Americans who were considered poor, in 2023 the number was 36.8 million, which is not a huge difference when you are dealing with numbers of that magnitude. The problem is that we never talk about actual numbers, we like to look at percentages, so let’s do that. In 1959 22% of Americans lived in poverty and in 2023 11.1% lived in poverty. When we look at it that way it looks like we have cut our poverty rate in half and statistically we have, but not because we have greatly reduced the number of people who live in poverty, we have simply increased our population by nearly 50%. The truth is that we don’t really do anything to solve the issue of poverty, we simply change the definition of what it means to be poor so it looks like we have done something about the issue. The reality is that the number of actual people who are poor has remained relatively the same.
If Jesus were standing here, I suspect that he would be wondering why we are spending so much time worrying about things that we can’t control instead of doing the work he has given us, work that will have a real impact on the lives of others. We did that work when we rallied behind a family who needed our support as they uprooted their lives and moved over 2000 miles away. Ananias questioned the work Jesus wanted him to do, but ultimately, he did what was asked of him and because he did, we were given the gift of Paul, which is the Roman name of Saul, and his letters, from which we learn what it looks like to wrestle with the integration of faith and daily life.
When Saul was persecuting Christians, it was because he was trying to stop them from breaking the rules and it took an encounter with God, through his interaction with Ananias, to see the error of his ways and become a fully faithful follower of Jesus. When we are focusing our energy on doom scrolling or cuts to federal programs, we are forgetting about the people who are right in front of us and the fact that they are the people we are called to minister to. What happens to government programs, that are at best band-aids for symptoms not cures, does not change the mission because whether those programs exist or not there will still be poor people, some of whom are likely sitting in this room and are most certainly a part of our communities. Saul didn’t understand God’s call, but Paul did. Ananias understood God’s call and even though he didn’t like what Saul stood for he ministered to him because he was the person in front of him. We are called to minister to the people in front of us and trust that God is working on the other things through people who are better equipped to affect the change we hope for. Saul was transformed by his encounter with God, he truly saw God for the first time because of his encounter with the body of Christ and ultimately became the means through which countless others came to be followers of Christ Jesus. Are we prepared to be transformed by God into the next Paul so that we can be the vessel through which God reaches the world or are we going to be like Saul and stubbornly cling to our rituals and fail to recognize the risen Christ that is seated right next to us. Amen.
Learning by Fire! 