Reading: Acts 9:1-21
Have you ever had an enemy? One who really was out to get you? Who was so against what you did or stood for, that they would stop at nothing to stop you, whose warning to you would be “you can run, but you cannot hide”?
Saul of Tarsus was that kind of enemy to the first followers of the way of Jesus. Wherever Saul was, the followers of Jesus ran as fast and as far away as they could. And Saul was convinced enough of himself being on God’s side, and God on his, that he was relentless.
In the meantime, Saul kept up his violent threats of murder against the followers of Jesus. [Seeing they had taken refuge in other cities], he went to the High Priest and asked for letters of introduction to the synagogues in Damascus, so if he found any followers of Jesus’ Way there, he would be able to arrest them – both men and women – and bring them back to Jerusalem.
As Saul was coming near the city of Damascus, suddenly a bright light from the sky flashed around him. He fell to the ground, and heard a voice …
A light from the sky, strong enough to make him fall down, and a voice … we know what this means! An encounter with God!
So he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying, “Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?”
What? Me, persecute you? When, O Lord, did I see you and persecute you? I am trying to serve you…
“Who are you, Lord,” he asked.
How interesting that he who is so fervently convinced he is on God’s side, and God on his, does not recognize the voice of the Lord when he speaks to him.
“I am Jesus, whom you persecute,” the voice said. “Get up; go into the city, where you will be told what to do.” The men travelling with Saul had stopped, saying nothing; they heard the voice, but saw no one. Saul stood up, opened his eyes, and could not see a thing. So, they took him by the hand and led him into the city of Damascus. For three days he was unable to see, and during that time he ate and drank nothing.
What an upset he has suffered! What a total toppling of all he believed and believed in! What a radical rethinking is being required of him!
Now, in Damascus there was a Christian named Ananias. He had a vision …
Ah! Another encounter with God. Maybe just as upsetting and transforming as Saul’s?
…and in the vision the Lord said to him, “Ananaias!” “Here I am, Lord,” he answered.
Unlike with Saul, God has to call Ananias only once. And Ananias right away knows the voice.
The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come in and place his hands on him, so he might see again.”
Ananias answered, “Lord, many people have told me about this man and all the terrible things he has done to your people in Jerusalem. And that he’s come here with papers to let him arrest us all who worship you.”
Interesting that Ananias doesn’t obey right away; this seems a little odd, scary and risky. But neither does the hardness of the mission make him say no or just ignore what God asks and hopes it will go away. He talks it over with God, and seeks clarification and reassurance of what God really is up to. Not a bad response, as tricky and risky as it can be actually to talk with God.
The Lord said to him, “Yes, go, because I have chosen him to serve me, and help make me known to people you can’t begin to reach. And I myself will show him all he must suffer for my sake.”
So Ananias went, entered the house where Saul was, placed his hands on him, and said, “Brother Saul, Jesus himself, whom you met on the road, sent me to you so you might see again, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” At once something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, he was able to see again, he stood up and was baptized, and after he has eaten his strength came back.
He stayed in Damascus a few days with the believers in Damascus, and right away started preaching about Jesus as God’s Son. Everyone was amazed. “Isn’t he the one who was killing the followers of Jesus? And isn’t that why he came here to Damascus?” But Saul just kept on preaching about following the way of Jesus, and no one could stop him or stump him.
Reflection
In the Book of Acts there are actually two Ananiases named among the followers of the way of Jesus.
In chapter 5 there’s the Ananias married to Sapphira. They’re members of the Way in the very first days of the church when, in their early enthusiasm to change the world, the members commit to giving all their worldly goods and possessions to the church, so the church can share out all they have with one another and with poor people around them, as each has need.
Ananias and Sapphira are part of this – except when they sell some property they have, even though they say they give all the proceeds to the church, they agree between themselves to keep a part back for themselves. Their lie soon becomes known, and when it’s made public each of them in turn falls down dead – struck down by the Holy Spirit for lying to God and to the community.
It makes me wonder if maybe that’s when the church changed its policy about everyone giving all they have to the church, because they couldn’t afford to have too many of their members dropping down dead.
Anyway, the Ananias involved in the shaking up of the world in chapter 9 is different.
He’s obedient to what God asks him to do. And even though he takes time to have a little chat with God about whether this is really what God wants, and why, once he is reassured this is God’s will, he risks it all to do what God asks of him.
Can you imagine being in Ananias’ shoes?
Go to the house of Judas! Not a good start! Everyone knows what happened the last time Jesus and his followers trusted someone named Judas.
To find Saul of Tarsus! The man has already killed who enough followers of Jesus, and has come here precisely to hunt us down, and take us back to have us examined, punished and maybe killed too.
Okay, so he’s blind! But instead of being able to say Hallelujah and thanks be to God for stopping our enemy in his tracks, for afflicting him and saving us, I’m supposed to lay my hands on him and help him be able to see again?
What Ananias saw, though, when he saw Saul through God’s eyes, was a man whose world was in disarray, whose faith was in tatters, whose life was unravelled, and who needed – and was open, to the kind of help, the kind of friend, the kind of love that would help him see everything in a new way.
So Ananias went. He took the initiative to go find his broken enemy. Ho took the risk of being open and personal with him. He prayed for him, and for his healing as a brother – as a fellow child of God, and companion now in the way of Jesus, the crucified.
Have you ever felt a nudge to do that? Seen an opening for forgiving and healing contact with someone across a dividing line? Someone you’ve been at odds with? Someone who you might be afraid of being up close and personal with, either because they’re really an enemy or they’re just different? And who, for some reason, just might be open to some help, a little friendship, a word and a gesture of love for a tired and broken heart?
“Here I am, Lord,” say the Ananiases of the community – the Anianiases, at least, who don’t hold back when they say they’re giving all.
At the same time, though, let’s not make too big a hero of Ananias. It’s not like he’s Superman able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and solve all problems in a half-hour, minus time for commercials.
God doesn’t ask him to be or to have the answer to all that has to happen for Saul, for God’s will to be done. All he’s asked to do, and all he does is take the risk of going to the house of Judas, ask to see Saul, place his hands on him, and tell Saul that God has a really good purpose for him once he sees things rightly.
That’s it. And job done, Ananias disappears from the picture. His job is over. The rest is up to God, Saul, and other people in Saul’s life along the way.
Does it make a difference – does it help to know not only the great, scary thing you might be called to do, but also the limits and the end of what is expected of you? That you are only one part of a much bigger picture that someone bigger than you – that God is in charge of painting and bringing to fruition? And that God gives you that part, because God knows you can do it, with God’s help?
One last thing about Ananias. When I talked with Japhia about this story, and this being a different from the Ananias in chapter 5 married to Sapphira, she said – with the riskiness of what he was asked to do, in mind – “It’s good he wasn’t married. Or at least maybe wasn’t. It was smart of God to pick the guy who was single to do a job like this, and take a risk like this.”
Can you imagine Ananias explaining to his wife – or his mother-in-law, where he was going, who he was going to find, and to do what for him? “You’re going where? To find who? And you’re gonna give him his eyesight back again, so he can find us all the easier? What on earth is the matter with you?”
I wonder if Ananias maybe even had that kind of response from some of his spiritual family – from other members of his community of faith when he told them what he was going to do.
Family – biological, marital as well as spiritual, for all its blessings and all the things it teaches us about loving and being loved, forgiving and being forgiven, and sharing who and what we are with others for the sake of a bigger, better identity and meaning than we have just by ourselves, can also constrain and restrict, can set limits on our willingness to venture and be open, can even become an idol and an unhelpfully exclusive community.
But then, I think of an image Pete added to our online worship last week. Right at the very end. The last thing for us to see and think about as we listened to Karen sing that very family-sounding image of God: “May God’s sheltering wings, her gathering wings protect you.”
The reading and reflection last week were about Jesus’ miraculous feeding of thousands of people starting with only five loaves and two fishes brought to him by a little boy. And here’s the image Pete found for our closing reflection.
In the story, we noted what an audacious thing it was for Jesus to think the multitude could be fed, what an innocently impossible thing it was to think that 5 loaves and 2 fishes would do, and what a miraculous thing it was that that’s exactly what it took to get the miracle started. In its multiple layers of radical foolishness, it was kind of like Anianias going to help the great enemy Saul see again, as a way of opening up a whole new chapter in the life and mission of the church of Christ.
In this stained glass telling of the story of the feeding, do you notice who brings the fish to Jesus? Yes, there’s a little boy involved. But it’s a woman with her arm around him – maybe his mother, who’s actually reaching the basket of five loaves towards Jesus. And it’s a grown man on the other side of the picture – maybe the boy’s father, reaching forward the two fish for Jesus to use.
I wonder, was the young boy’s gift that of urging his mom and dad to do something, to offer what they had, to open up and share what they had as a family to help feed the multitude around them?
Or did the mother or father have the idea of giving what they had to Jesus, and they’re doing it in the boys’ name to help him start to grow into a wider vision of what a family can do for the world beyond itself?
Whichever way it was, is this maybe the miracle, the meaning and the call for Ananias and us as well? In our own little way, unconstrained by the usual family or church boundaries, to be obedient to whatever voice and vision are ours, to do what God nudges us to do, which then also helps open up whatever family and whatever community we are part of, in some new way to what God is wanting to do in and with and through us all?
Like Ananias, do we say, “Here I am, Lord” when called to do that one risky thing – that one step across some boundary into dangerous territory, that will open up our family and our community of faith to some great new stage of the life and the mission God has in mind for us?
“Here I am Lord,” this Ananias says. How practiced am I – how practiced are you, at saying that, and by our one little, risky step, opening up our family and our church to some new and bigger way of engaging the world with the good news of God.
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