April 18, 2010 - Easter 3

God Opens Our Eyes
Acts 9:1-20
Easter 3 – April 18, 2010

I've been known to become the victim to my own one-track mind. Maybe you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes I'll come up against a problem to solve or just have a situation to figure out. It doesn't have to be anything dramatic. It can be while I'm playing a game or working on a puzzle or trying to organize a room in my house. And I tend to get my mind set early on that there's one particular way to approach whatever I'm trying to do – and once that happens, that's the only thing I can see. There may be other better options or solutions, there may be better ways to accomplish my goal, but I am slow to figure that out. I am blinded by my own certainty that my way is the way. It's certainly not my best, most useful quality, but I'm glad to see that I'm not alone. Here in this story from the book of Acts, we see that both Saul, who will become known as Paul, and Ananias suffer from the same affliction.

Now, Saul, he's had this one-track mind from his youth. He talks about it in his letters to the early church – about his single-minded devotion to following God & God's laws, to learning the Hebrew Scriptures, to moving up in the ranks to become a leading Pharisee, to teaching others the ways of God and making sure they followed God in the same way he did. Saul's spent his whole life getting to know God, and when we meet him in Acts, he's pretty sure of himself. He's confident he knows who God is, how God acts, who God loves, and what God wants. He's convinced that these followers of the Way, these disciples of Jesus, have it all wrong – and not only that, they are leading other people down the same wrong path. Saul knows that God is not a part of this Jesus movement, so he dives right in to solve the problem, to make the situation right. He goes and gets permission from the high priest to go round up 'em up. He's like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, bound & determined to get these law breakers and bring them to justice by throwing them in jail or worse.

And then we come to Ananias. He's equally one-track-minded, but in a different way. You see, he's heard all the stories about Saul. He knows that Saul was there in Jerusalem when Stephen, the 1st martyr, the 1st man to be put to death for his faith in Jesus, was stoned to death. Not only did he watch it, he approved of it! And right after that, Saul started going through Jerusalem, dragging men and women to jail for talking about Jesus. The believers who weren't locked up ran away to other cities – and now, Ananias knows, Saul is on his way to Damascus to continue his persecution. Nobody needs to tell him anything about Saul. Ananias knows all he needs to know already. So when God shows up in a vision to Ananias, Ananias' initial response is to argue with God. “You want me to go to who?! Lord, it seems like there are a few things you don't know about this guy Saul, so let me fill you in. Don't you know what he's been up to? The man's your enemy! How can you want me to go to him?”

What it boils down to is that in their single-mindedness, both Saul and Ananias would rather trust in themselves and what they think they know that in God and what God is trying to show them. God is inviting both of them into a future that they aren't quite ready to see.

How often does God do that to us? How often are we convinced, like Saul, that we know what God wants already, and rush full-speed ahead, only to discover that we're going the wrong way? When have we heard God's voice telling us to “get up and go,” like Ananias did, but hesitate to go because we're pretty sure that we know more than God does, and if God only had all the facts, God wouldn't be telling us to do what God just told us to do?

And what strikes me about both of these men and their situations is that what they're really struggling with is the issue of who God can and cannot love, who God can or cannot use. That happens over and over again – we could point to a few hot-button issues in our society and in the bigger church even today, where people on both sides think that they know who God is and who God loves and who God wants us to exclude on God's behalf. But it always makes me nervous when people dare to speak in the place of God with words of fear and judgment and condemnation. Because that's not what we see here in this story. It's not what we see throughout the Bible. I don't mean to downplay the reality and existence of sin and sinful acts; I don't want to sound like I'm saying anyone can do anything they want at any time and God won't mind – but throughout the word of God, it is up to God, not humans, to judge – and what we are called to do is extend the invitation to come and experience God's love, to receive God's forgiveness, to be changed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And that's what we see in this story with both Saul and Ananias. They both go through a conversion of sorts. Saul's is more dramatic, of course. He's surrounded by a flashing light and struck blind in order that he might learn to see. He hears Jesus' voice speaking to him, calling him, guiding him – and he is brought into Damascus to wait for more directions about what he's supposed to do next. But Ananias has his own moment of change, when the Lord speaks to him too, calling him to open his mind to see that God can love anyone, can forgive anyone, can use anyone, and Ananias is set into motion, to go be the healing hands of God, laying hands on Saul so he might regain his sight. Jesus comes to both of them and tells them to get up in go in directions they never expected, to people they never thought God would want them to go to, calling both of them into the ever-widening community of God's love.

And their obedience changes the world! Saul becomes known to us as Paul – who was like the Johnny Appleseed of the early church – except instead of planting trees, he planted churches, instead of growing apples, he grew believers. We wouldn't have the Bible as we know it if Saul and Ananias had never met, since Paul went on to write much of the New Testament. But before any of this could happen, God had to open their eyes, help them to see the radically new way God was working in the world, through Jesus and those who would follow.

In this season of resurrection and new life, Christ comes to us still in the places of our blindness and too-sure certainty to open our eyes to the new things God is doing, to expand our vision of who God loves (everyone!) and how God works in our world, telling us to get up and go in directions we never expected, to people we never thought God would want us to go to. God's love is for everyone – and when we believe it and start living it, God will use us to change the world!

Amen.