Saul on the Damascus Road and Ananias the Presybter

We come this morning to the greatest of all of Luke’s stories of conversion in Acts, the story each of us will know well, the story Luke tells three times to underline its remarkable nature, the story which has its own feast day in the Anglican calendar: Saul on the road to Damascus. Saul’s story is also the story of Ananias who ministers to him in a remarkable way. Saul’s story is also the story of the risen Jesus active and meeting with those whom he chooses, calls and commissions as Christ is present with us today in word and sacrament and in one another.

We first met Saul at the opening of Acts 8 where he approves of the murder of Stephen. Acts tells us he was ravaging and hurting the Church, dragging off both men and women. The same phrase men and women is repeated here in Acts 9 and again in Acts 22. The phrase seems to me to be strong and tragic evidence that the leadership of the church comprised both women and men in these very early days of Christian faith.

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.

We know from Acts 22 that this was not Saul’s first mission of this kind. His commission extends to other cities as well. He has already ravaged the church. But this journey will be different.

Here on the road to Damascus, without any human intervention or plan or strategy, Saul encounters the risen Lord:

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?

The double use of Saul’s name is meant to remind us of the great call stories of the Old Testament: of Moses and Samuel and Jacob – the flashes of light and the pulling back of the curtain remind us of Isaiah in the Temple.

We must not pass lightly over Jesus words here. Why do you persecute me. Saul thinks he is persecuting the Church, the Body of Christ as are many others across the world today. The risen Jesus says why are you persecuting me. This community we are called to nurture by word and sacrament is the very body of Christ.

He asked, Who are you Lord? The reply came: I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. The response to Saul’s question is deeply personal. This is the risen Christ, offering evidence of the resurrection in a deep and powerful way to Saul his persecutor. Remember the testimony of the Apostle Paul many years later in 1 Corinthians 15:

Last of all as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

We are witnessing now this untimely birth. But this risen Christ, offering evidence of the resurrection, introduces himself simply as Jesus. No titles, no aggrandisement, no statement of the resurrection. And a curious vulnerability. The risen Christ is also the suffering Christ, sharing in the suffering of the persecuted Church and even of the persecutor. Whatever we are experiencing as a Church whether shame or guilt or weakness Jesus shares that experience with us now.

The choosing and the calling pass very quickly to the commission. But get up and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do. The men who were travelling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no-one.

Saul is blinded by this heavenly vision of the crucified, risen Lord even as the eyes of his soul are opened. The Ethiopian encounters the life giving truth of the gospel in Scripture and the message of the cross, the redemptive suffering of the Servant of the Lord who will rise. Saul the persecutor encounters the gospel first through the power of the resurrection, but this is the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, the vulnerable Jesus who shares still in the suffering of the church. There are many starting places in our comprehension of Christ as our knowledge and understanding deepen year by year. Many points of connection with the joys and sorrows and questions of the world.

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 and nights he was without sight and neither ate nor drank.

Saul’s encounter with the risen Christ itself leads to an experience of death and resurrection in Saul himself, emphasised by the language Luke uses for his conversion.

The English phrase “get up and enter the city” is the word anastethi, which means also, be raised up. The phrase Saul got up from the ground is a similar allusion to being raised. Most telling of all is Luke’s observation that Saul was without sight and neither ate nor drank for three nights, like Jonah in the belly of the whale; like Jesus crucified and laid in the tomb. This is Saul’s own dying to self, this deep conversion, this complete reorientation to a new life. The encounter with the risen Christ is the work of a few moments but the implications will reshape Saul’s entire life. There is a need to pause for at least three days, to reflect, to reorientate to the world. The cross and resurrection are the pattern not only the substance of this conversion and the life which will follow. We are in this place for just three days. Saul’s story reminds us of just how much God is able to do in our lives in that span of time.

Notice at this point if you will that we are only halfway through this narrative. We might think the main event has happened: Saul has met the risen Jesus without strategy and contrary to expectation. But again there are lessons here about ministry as well as about mission. The missional lessons are clearly that the risen Christ is active through the Spirit, calling men and women to himself, often working in the most unpromising and painful circumstances, going ahead of us into all kinds of places.

But the lessons for ministry are equally important. How are we to work with this God of mission and extraordinary love for the whole world where God’s mission touches our ministry? This is why Luke continues the narrative and now changes the perspective and the viewpoint.

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias.

Ananias is not just any disciple. Paul will tell us in Acts 22 that Ananias was a devout man according the law and well-spoken of by all the Jews living there. Ananias is a person of prayer, a leader in the community. We don’t know exactly when the term presbyter begins to be used of someone exercising leadership in the early Church – but Ananias is certainly exercising representative ministry; offering the ministry of word and sacrament and authorised to admit people into the Christian community. If Philip is a paradigm for the deacon, the wandering evangelist and ambassador we are all ordained to be, Ananias is a paradigm for the priest- presbyter in these narratives – the authoritative leader of the community who is likewise chosen, called and commissioned for a most difficult task.

The same Jesus who speaks to Saul now comes to speak to Ananias and calls him by name:

The Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias. He answered, Here I am.

Hear again the echoes of the call of Samuel and the call of Isaiah, the call each of us has heard. Ananias teaches us that the big picture of our vocation comes from the risen Christ but so often do the smaller details as we seek to live our life in the flow of the Holy Spirit’s work. Life in God’s service is more than: am I called to serve in this parish for these next years. It is also about where I go and visit and spend time tomorrow and the next day. Who I speak with over coffee. I wonder how many of us remember to pray: Here I am at the beginning of each day?

But then Jesus commissions Ananias to do a very hard thing.

The Lord said to him, Get up and go.

It’s tempting to make more of that phrase. Perhaps many of us feel the Church in our day has lost its get up and go. Lost our sense of confidence, of mission and commission. Perhaps you identify with that and need to catch the words of the risen Jesus afresh. Get up and go. Again there is that allusion to resurrection which runs through the passage: anastas… The two words have occurred together in Luke’s gospel in the words of the prodigal son: “I will get up and go to my Father”. They echo Jesus words to Saul exactly: get up and go into the city. They echo the angel’s words to Philip. Get up and go towards the south.

Get up and go to the Street called straight and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul.

These are very precise yet very symbolic instructions. The street is called Straight. The name of the owner of the house is Judas.

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.

This symmetrical vision will recur in the story of Cornelius. But Jesus is asking his friend, commissioning his friend to do a hard and unnatural and radical thing – to risk his life for the sake of the gospel.

The commissions Jesus gives are not easy or straightforward. We should expect to find them hard – to demand our soul, our life, our all on occasion. What are your hard callings and how have you wrestled with them? How are you wrestling with them in this moment? We see some of Ananias wrestling here, like Jacob with the angel. My guess is that Luke simplifies and sanitises the conversation. Perhaps there would be a sleepless night and anxious conversations. Imagine Ananias conversation with his wife or his daughter. Jesus has asked you to do what? Where do these impossible commissions resonate with your experiences and mine? Ananias reminds us we are called to dream impossible dreams; to hope and dare and imagine extraordinary things for the kingdom of God.

But Ananias answered: Lord I have heard much 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 evoke your name. Brackets – by the way that includes me.

Jesus listens to our questions, our resistance, our anxiety, our refusal. And then Jesus repeats the commission:

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.

We need to pause for a moment on the word instrument which is a poor translation of the original Greek word and can imply an impersonal relationship between the minister and the Lord we serve. The Greek word means literally vessel. The same word recurs in 2 Corinthians 4 (“we have this treasure in clay jars”) and also in 2 Timothy. The term is expresses a much more dynamic, personal relationship than “instrument”.

Jesus calls individual people to particular tasks. Jesus choosing, call and commission is not a call to glory, or fame or status. Jesus choosing, call and commission to Saul is a call to suffering. When Christ calls someone, says Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred eighty years ago last week, when Christ calls someone he bids him come and die.

There follows one of the most courageous acts of ministry in the whole of the New Testament.

So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid hands on Saul and said, Brother Saul. Brother Saul. The most complete and shocking reconciliation and welcome and embrace. Enemies become sisters and brothers in the risen Christ. Persecutors are turned into witnesses. Grace abounds.

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.

There is a new Pentecost moment, a healing, an ability to see where he could not see before. And the culmination – like the Ethiopian:

Then he got up and was baptised and after taking his food, he regained his strength.

Just suppose for a moment that all of the signs and rumours we are hearing about young people seeking faith are true: that Aslan is on the move again; that we are on the verge of a spring time in the Church. Just suppose the culture is at last changing, that the tide is turning. My heart says it is.

What are we called then to be and to do? Those of us who have endured through the long winter of ministry and grown used to fishing all night and catching nothing. What are we to do.

How does it feel to hear those words of Jesus to Ananias: Get up and go…to that group you find so threatening and difficult; to those who have been so rude and worse; to those who have hated and despised you.

How does it feel to lean in to this movement of the Holy Spirit to teach and baptise new believers in the faith; to draw them into the Body of Christ; to call each one sister, brother.

We need to pay attention to what God is doing, what God is saying to us. We may need to relearn our habits, skills and practices of ministry lest our vision for the church is limited and constrained by our own blindness and conformed and shaped by the scripts of the past rather than the new chapter of the present.

Together we hold the story of the healing, crucified and risen Lord. We are chosen, called and commissioned to love this world God has created. This is a holy and demanding calling. We need the scales to fall from our eyes, to see afresh what God is doing; to listen to what Jesus is saying to us, to get up and to go.

Amen

Questions for reflection:

Where are you seeing God at work in your own context? What is encouraging you? What is surprising you?

What new lessons for ministry are you learning?

What do you draw from the stories of the Ethiopian and Philip and from Saul and Ananias?

What are you discovering as you engage with the call to rebuild ministry with children, young people and families?

Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

Today the Church celebrates new life: the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. This is an event of global, of cosmic significance. Because Christ has been raised, those who belong to Christ will share his resurrection. Because Christ has been raised, life triumphs over death. Because Christ has been raised our lives are lived today in the horizon of eternity and love.

Amid all the turmoil in the world at in recent weeks, two news stories stand out as we proclaim this resurrection. The first story is about outer space. The second is about inner space.

The outer space story is not the one about Katy Perry and four other women who made an eleven-minute journey in the Blue Origin rocket to the very edge of space. It is the story of the discovery made by a team of scientists in another place about the possibility of some kind of life on Planet K218 1B.

K218 1B is 700 trillion miles from Earth, 124 light years away. Professor Madhusudhan and his team have analysed the light signature of the planet. They have detected signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms such as algae. This light signature has been detected by the James Webb Space Telescope, itself a miracle of engineering, sent a million miles out into space way beyond the moon.

There are many questions still about the results. But potentially they give the clearest answer yet as to whether life on earth is the only biological life in this vast, possibly infinite universe. All kinds of claims are being made about the implications for humanity and for faith.

But here’s the thing. The discovery is remarkable. But it reminds us this morning of how vanishingly, impossibly rare life is in the vastness of the universe. At the very most, it looks as though our nearest living neighbours may be 700 trillion miles from Earth and are likely to be at best, plankton. Far from the rich variety of alien life imagined by Star Trek, we inhabit a largely barren universe.

Only on Earth are the full wonders of life: skies full of insects and birds; oceans and rivers teeming with fish; forests with trees which live for hundreds of years; mangos and bananas; fruits of every kind. Farms and gardens bursting with life from the seas of Antarctica to the jungles of Borneo. The further we reach out into space, the more remarkable the Earth is revealed to be. Katy Perry chose her song well in space: I think to myself what a wonderful world.

In a few minutes time we will proclaim our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed, first crafted 1700 years ago. These same words will be said or sung all across our world on this Easter Day. We will dare to proclaim that we are not here by accident or chance. That Almighty God is maker of the heavens and the earth. That the Son of God took flesh and became a single human person. That he was crucified. That on the third day he rose again. That he will return to judge the living and the dead. That his kingdom will have no end. We will declare together our faith in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life and our hope of resurrection.

The life of our world is infinitely precious, held in love by Almighty God who fills all things with his grace and who sends his Son to this world full of life so that even death might be defeated and reversed and conquered.

According to the gospels, the resurrection of Jesus happens in a garden, a new Eden project. Mary Magdalene comes to grieve, bringing spices to anoint the body of Jesus. In the first light of dawn, she sees first the stone rolled away. She runs to tell Simon Peter. Simon Peter and the beloved disciple run to the tomb. They see the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth which covered Jesus headed rolled up in a place by itself. Signs of an orderly departure.

Simon Peter and the beloved disciple leave Mary alone in the garden. There is a gentleness then to the discovery which will transform Mary’s life. She looks first into the tomb and sees and hears two angels who ask here “Woman why are you weeping?” She turns and sees Jesus but her mind will not admit the truth that it can be him. “Woman why are you weeping?” Jesus the gardener asks, tenderly.

Mary’s love is evident in her answer. But then Jesus speaks her name: Mary. Life and light break through the grief and tears. She turned and said to him in Hebrew: Rabbouni, which means teacher. Jesus gives her a commission – to be the first apostle, to bear witness to the disciples: I have seen the Lord.

There is such a deep humanity in the story, such a complex understanding of grief and its reversal which enables Mary to speak to us directly and invite us into the same experience of faith and trust in which sorrow is turned to joy; despair to hope and life to death. In just this one encounter we witness the depth of what it means to be human.

The message of resurrection will go out from this garden through Mary’s witness and will transform the entire world, Easter by Easter, and today this message comes afresh to all of us.

In all of this vast and ancient and barren universe, or the fraction we can see, there is one planet where Almighty God has made a garden full of life for just a few thousand years of history, a moment in the long story of creation. In this garden of life, God has made humanity in God’s own image to wonder and to love and to know God’s grace. When we fall and wander from that grace, God sends his Son for the sake of the whole cosmos, to share this planet for a lifetime, to reveal the best of what humanity can be, to give his life for the sins of the whole world. In one moment in time, in one place, a garden within a garden, death has been conquered and new life is offered to the world, perhaps in time to all worlds.

And so we come finally to my second news story not about outer space but inner space. The healing and mending of human hearts. The research which was published just last week by the Bible Society which tells of the Quiet Revival. An unseen turning of the tide of faith in our land. The unexpected 50% increase over six years of those who claim to attend Christian worship at least one each month, an increase led by the young and most evident among younger men. A profound search for meaning in the growing outward and inner deserts of the world. Life in all its fulness.

Last night in this Cathedral we witnessed the confirmation of four young adults, signs of this new thirst for faith and meaning and this turning back to Christ.

Hear the testimony of the Church today in creeds and songs and lives transformed. Hear the gentle call of Jesus to come to him, the Way, the Truth and the Life and follow.

The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.