"Openness To God" Easter 3 April 22, 2007

(First, read the text for this sermon: Acts 9:1-20)

In our culture, if you’re not sure of yourself, it’s considered to be a weakness! For instance, can you imagine one of those running for president, when asked, say, about the best way to stabilize Social Security, to reply, “You know, I’m not sure about that. It’s a big problem, and there are so many good ideas of how to approach it, from across the political spectrum. I need to get together with some people who will help me understand the complexity of it.” How long do you think that person’s presidential candidacy would last?

But there is great danger in being sure of yourself! Someone who’s sure of himself can easily close himself off from others’ opinions and feelings when they don’t fit his set picture of reality. Someone who’s sure of herself can easily become judgmental towards others who think and feel differently. Someone who’s sure of himself can tend to look at the world in black and white terms, good and evil, those on our side and those who are our enemies.

To me, some of the scariest people of this sort are religious people who are sure about God, and about what God is doing in the world. At the extreme, such a person will equate God’s purposes with his own, and will even justify violence in the name of God.

In contrast to all of that is the witness of spiritual ancestors, and many spiritual guides today, who model a certain kind of prayer: a prayer, simply, for God to open me to what God is doing.

There is a humility in that, you see. There is a recognition that God is mystery. The Bible and the church’s tradition of teaching lead us to have ideas about God, and certain understandings about how God acts in love and judgment. That, of course, is necessary and good. But God is mystery, beyond any intellectual construct we can have of God. And so, our prayer is for openness to God, who may just be about bursting all of our assumptions!

That is the God who is presented in this morning’s story from Acts. It’s a story that’s familiar to many ( which is often a problem because it’s easy not to pay attention to a story that you’ve heard before). So read it with new eyes. Look at what’s happening here. We read quite a shocking story about the conversion of an enemy of God, because God has chosen that enemy to bring God’s name to those who haven’t heard it!

At the time of this story, of course, all followers of Jesus were Jews. But there were other Jews who thought the Jesus movement to be a destructive sect in Judaism, and that it would be God-pleasing to stamp it out. This has become the purpose in life for Saul (later to be re-named Paul). And so, as this morning’s story begins, Paul is on a search and destroy mission, entirely sure of himself, believing that he is pleasing God in his actions!

Look at what happens. Some kind of bright-light vision causes Saul to fall to the ground. He hears a voice: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Remember Jesus’ teaching: what we do to each other we do to him! )

Conversion is always something God does to us. Surely, conversion from self-centered surety to an openness to God’s purposes is a life-long journey of being led by the Holy Spirit. For some, the journey includes an encounter that is sudden and dramatic. That’s what happens with Saul, and notice how it confuses and frightens him and everyone around. What used to make sense doesn’t anymore. He is blind. What he used to be sure of is now in a shambles. He is helpless. Blind and helpless: that’s how Saul is about to enter the kingdom of God! It is all grace.

Here’s what we read: 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. (“For three days”: do you get the reference?!)

Then we read this: 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."

Wait. Hold on! This is Saul! This is the enemy! How would you have felt, if you had been in Ananias’ position? Well, that’s the same way Ananias feels! [He] 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 that is when God drops this bombshell on Ananias: "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."

Imagine the courage, the foolish faithfulness that it took for Ananias to do what he does next. We read this: 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. For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus.

Look at what’s going on here. Saul has lost all self-assurance. That’s an infallible sign that God is doing something in Saul’s suffering. But there is healing. There is receiving sight. There is receiving of the Holy Spirit. It is all openness, receiving. It is all grace. And this isn’t something that’s happening to Saul as a private matter, just “him and God.” Instead, Saul is immediately incorporated into the community of the Jesus movement. He is baptized. Saul’s conversion is happening within the faith community, which receives and supports Saul. That’s incredibly important to remember, counter to our culture’s teaching that religion should be individualized and privatized.

Even more important to notice is how shocking God’s actions are! This is the baptism of the enemy! Incomprehensibly, unfathomably, God has in fact chosen this enemy! Through baptism, Saul is made to be brother Saul!

Who could be open to a God who acted, and who continues to act, in this startling way? Only someone who approaches God with humble openness, rather than a self-centered, closed-off, judgmental surety.

This is where I’ve found myself, while working with this passage in the context of the mournful events of this past Monday morning at Virginia Tech. The more we have learned about the shooter, the more we have learned about his illness, his pain, his suffering. What he did was evil – horrific, unspeakable, unimaginable evil. But could it be that God loved him in his own suffering, this one who is the enemy, this one who is so vilified and despised? If only he would have been open to conversion, as God was working through teachers and mental health healers who were dealing with frightening warning signs of violence.

Perhaps you read the self-assured theological understanding of a local mother, reported by the Daily Press this past Wednesday. As the killer advanced, her son rolled himself up in a ball and covered his head with his arms. The killer fired. The bullet “only” wounded the boy in one of his arms. And his mother proclaimed to the newspaper reporter: “I want everyone to know” that God had protected her son.

But, good God! What are the implications of that self-assured theology? That God chose not to protect those who were killed? Or that God chose which ones would die? What a monstrous God that would be.

I have found myself praying this week, simply, for the openness to see what God has been doing, and is doing still. The prayer has led me into the sufferings of all involved: the killer; those who were killed and wounded and their families and friends; those who are campus pastors at Virginia Tech, and medical people and counselors, and the college administrators, and our Governor, and their suffering, as God uses them to bring compassion and healing.

There is God, in the suffering.

And where there are acts of compassion, there is Easter – because life overcomes death.

You and I are baptized into the community of people, of all times and all places, who are open to the promise that, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, life overcomes death; and that conversion, turning to God, is possible; and that God loves everyone who suffers, including even the one we define to be the enemy.

Pray for such humble openness in faith.

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.


Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia