Amazing Love, Amazing Grace
RCL Year C • Sermon • Submitted
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I don’t know about you but I am so accustomed to reading the letters of Paul, and knowing him as St. Paul that I think my mind and probably yours as well get clouded with his origin story; of Paul when he primarily identified himself as Saul the Zealot. The conversion of Paul is incredible but like many stories of the Bible I think we focus so much on the end of the stories of things that we gloss over the bad parts. For example Adam and Eve get kicked out of Eden but we don’t really think about how bad that really was. We see Noah’s Ark and yet we don’t pay much attention to the destruction. We see King David as the greatest king yet we aren’t as focused on or concerned with his adultery or Solomon’s countless wives and concubines.
Saul was a bad guy. We see two chapters earlier that Paul was a the stoning of Stephen. Stephen is the first recorded martyr of the followers of Jesus and Saul was there when that happened. It even says that he approved of what happened to Stephen. Then after that approval he then goes out himself and starts arresting people in their homes and carting them off to jail. Saul’s original reason for going to Damascus was for that exact reason. He was threatening and saying he would have more followers killed and imprisoned. He was getting the authority through written letters from the high priest himself to arrest and bring to Jerusalem anyone who was a follower of the Way. We learn elsewhere that Paul is a tentmaker, so he had a job and didn’t have to do this work, but he was, as I said and as Paul claims himself, so zealous for his faith that he wanted to do this work to do away with these blasphemers.
We also see just how much fear Saul had caused in the early followers of Jesus. Ananias is a follower of Jesus and he appears to him in a vision and tells him to go and lay hands on Saul of Tarsus so that he may regain his sight. Ananias is so afraid of everything he has heard about this man named Saul that he is willing to argue with Jesus to try and get out of going to see him. Ananias specifically says that he has done so much evil to Jesus’ followers and that he will arrest anyone who says Jesus’ name. He makes those as two different statements so that means that the arrest isn’t really the evil that he says when he says how much evil Saul has done. Ananias does not want to be near that kind of person even if Jesus tells him to go. Jesus eventually convinces Ananias to go telling him that he has changed and he will be used for good, but I wonder if Ananias was skeptical up until the moment he saw him for himself.
How often does that happen nowadays? Especially in our current society? We tend to be like how Ananias was at the beginning of the conversation. We tend to want to write people off becuase of something they have done and figure there is nothing else we need to do or associate ourselves with them. Yet there are times when people do change and surprise us. I remember hearing a song on KLOVE a number of years ago and I immediately loved it. The song is called “Rise” from Shawn McDonald. Not too long after I heard the song, I heard it again on the radio, only this time they played it because they were interviewing him about the song and his career. To make a long story short Shawn had a rough childhood and got into heavy drinking and drugs. Despite years of avoiding his grandmother’s invitation to come to church he did one day pick up the Bible she gave him and it talked about getting rid of your demons so he decided to get rid of his drugs and alcohol. He turned his life around and became a Christian musician. His song rise is about rising from the ashes of his old life into his new life. Nadia Bolz-Weber is a pastor in the ELCA and despite growing up in a Christian family turned to alcohol and drugs for a time until she again came back to faith. She now welcomes and engages with many of the people that society in general tend to stay away from because of their choices.
We already know that Ananias wanted to stay away from this particular member of society named Saul, yet Jesus convinces him he will no longer be an instrument for evil but that he will be Jesus’ instrument to bring the gospel message to the Gentiles, before kings, and to the people of Israel also. So Ananias goes. He trusts Jesus more than he let his fears control him. He goes into a potentially dangerous situation with a person he probably had little love for and did as Jesus commanded him. In that moment when Ananias meets Saul he lays his hands on him and restores his sight, gave him the gift of the Holy Spirit, he baptized him, and Saul ate. Through all that Saul regained his strength. I believe Ananias saw a changed man. He no longer saw the evil man that he had heard so much about. Just like Shawn’s grandmother always looked past the drugs and alcohol and I bet there was someone in Nadia’s life that felt called to be there despite all that she was going through.
What happened was that as people looked past the evil in their lives they experienced amazing love and amazing grace in their lives. They were offered forgiveness for all that had happened in the past. They were cared for and brought into a home and a family that claimed that they would never leave them. They were told that their sins were no more and that any persecution or wrongs they had done were in the past because they were now a new creation. The end of Paul’s conversion tells us that he was with the disciples which means that others had accepted him and his new life, not just Ananias. They too forgave and saw the new person that Saul had become, and I wonder what it must have been like for those who were so fearful that Saul might come to Damascus to imprison them, to then join him in the different synagogues proclaiming with a loud voice that Jesus is the very Son of God. That proclamation says that Paul believes that Jesus is the Messiah and that the redemptive work of God is done through Jesus.
Thanks to a once evil person like Saul and others Christianity has spread far and wide. He truly was an instrument for Jesus’ work in the world. Jesus can use so many different kinds of people, even people we wouldn’t expect to follow him and to become someone new through it. May we ever be thankful for that kind of love and grace that God offers to us and to this world so that all may know that Jesus is the Son of God, and through him we have life in his name. Amen.