“Short Stories, Lasting Calls” Part 1: Ananias of Damascus
June 25, 2023 — Ordinary Time
Acts 9:1-19
Pastor Mike
Well, friends, it’s officially summertime. In my typical preaching rhythm, I like to take summers and go deep into a long storyline from the Bible. Give a section of scripture some sustained attention. Something off the beaten path, maybe, something fun. In summers past, I’ve preached through the book of Acts, the life of Abraham, the early chapters of Mark’s Gospel. Last year, some of you may remember, we camped out in the story of Noah, which, let’s be honest, ended up pretty far afield from most of our ideas of fun.
When I travelled to Annual Conference two weeks ago, I still wasn’t sure what I’d start preaching when I got home, so I asked God to stir something up in me while I was away. On the final morning of Conference, there’s always a service of commissioning and ordination. During that service, the bishop anoints people who’ve made their way through the long process toward membership in the Conference as either elders or deacons. Those services always move me. It’s powerful to see folks who’ve been following God’s call for years finally reach that threshold moment, surrounded by their family, friends, colleagues, and bishop, and have hands laid upon them as they are ordained for service in the Church. The broader liturgy of the service is also inspiring. It reminds the whole gathered community that every Christian is called by God to be a witness to the way of Christ in the world – loving, forgiving, making peace, resisting evil, and offering people hope.
Some are called to be clergy in the Church, but most of us – most of you – are called to be laity. And that is a calling. Or it’s a condition – fertile ground, receptive space – for many different kinds of callings to manifest. A theological term for this is “the priesthood of all believers,” which means every one of us has a part to play in the great unfolding drama of God’s relationship with the world.
After this year’s ordination service, an idea came to me. How about a series of sermons which explore some of the many ways that people in the Bible experience and respond to the call of God on their lives.
As I sat with that idea, it seemed to hold a lot of promise for where we are as a congregation. Even as we are maturing in our public congregational witness through becoming a Reconciling Church, each of us is still called to stand before God personally, listening for God to call us out onto our own unique paths of discipleship. Discipleship is central to the story of the New Testament – Jesus calls and gathers many disciples to follow him and learn from him – and it is central to our own United Methodist mission: “making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” Being a disciple means committing to follow the prompting or luring of God wherever it leads us, and going with an open mind and a tender heart, committed to lifelong learning. Discipleship is a journey. We’re never done maturing in the ways of the Spirit.
So, I decided, let’s do it. Let’s go and meet many different kinds of people in the scriptures this summer: midwives, craftsmen, prostitutes, PR experts, exiled intellectuals, soldiers, wealthy businesswomen, teachers… None of them got a lot of playtime compared to the Noah’s of the Bible, but that doesn’t seem to bother them, and it shouldn’t bother us. I doubt if any of us is called to singlehandedly save the world from universal destruction, but all of us are called to partner with Christ in loving the world alive. I am excited for us to enter the eclectic, dramatic, hilarious, bizarre, sometimes cringe-worthy world of the Bible to encounter people not all that different from us. I think it’ll be satisfying for both Bible nerds and those of us coming to the Bible with intention for the first time. More than anything, I am praying that these stories will shine light on your own. For you are, as the Bible says, “fearfully and wonderfully made,” “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ps. 139:14; Eph. 2:10).
What has God prepared in advance for you – in your wonderfully unique personhood – to do?
We begin today with the story of Ananias of Damascus. His story comes from the book of Acts, which is in the New Testament following the four Gospel stories of Jesus, and was written by the same person who wrote Luke’s Gospel. Its opening chapters report Jesus’ ascension into heaven and his sending of the Holy Spirit to the disciples on Pentecost. From there, the book branches out and chronicles the missionary activities of the first Christians, especially those of Peter and Paul, also known as Saul. We will pick up this story in chapter 9, verses 1-19. Even though Saul seems to take center stage, I challenge you to hear this as the story of Ananias.
[Read Acts 9:1-19]
To me, this is one of the most profound stories in the whole New Testament. We tend to remember this story one-dimensionally as the story of Saul’s conversion, which it certainly is. But within that story – actually, the reasons that story exists at all – is the story of Ananias’s faithfulness.
How many of you have ever envied the clarity, the passion, the certainty of people who have dramatic conversion stories, who can point to a clear moment in their life when God changed everything, when all was revealed, and their life took a radical, irrevocable turn toward something new? Those are Saul stories. Stories of being knocked down on the road – stories with bright lights and heavenly voices. Some of us are blessed with that kind of story. But not all of us. Many of us come into our power and our purpose along the way, after we’ve been living with Jesus for a while. We grow as disciples gradually – perhaps without much outward drama but certainly with lots of inner drama – until God’s invitation to a specific purpose becomes clear. These are Ananias stories. All Luke tells us about Ananias is that he was “a disciple in Damascus” (9:10) who had grown familiar with the voice of God: “Here I am, Lord.” Nothing about his backstory. Nothing about his conversion. We meet Ananias in the middle. The drama’s not back there somewhere, still unfolding. It’s up ahead, about to be revealed.
God can lay a purpose upon us anytime – at the beginning, middle, or end of our journeys. But no matter where we are on the journey, following Jesus means developing an openness and receptivity to his Spirit. When we are present to God in prayer, we are able to be moved by God. Jesus knew he could reach Ananias for this urgent work because Ananias was a person of prayer and of faith. You and I must always be tilling our inner ground, maintaining the space and the silence through which God can reach us.
Now, it’s one thing to receive some direction. It’s another thing to do what’s being asked. What if what we hear seems crazy? Like, try this on: “Get up, and go find the man who has been actively trying to imprison and kill you, whose got all the authority of the religious and political systems vested in him, and when you find him in a very vulnerable condition, put your hands on him and heal him.”
Right? It’s crazy. And Ananias knew it was crazy.
Ananias wasn’t some machine following its programming. He was a person who felt some things about what God asked him to do. He had some very reasonable reservations: Go – by myself, unprotected – to my enemy? Go into a stranger’s house without asking and lay healing hands on my persecutor? You’re telling me, Lord, that the enemy of Jesus is right now, at this very moment, praying to Jesus? Hold up. Let’s get on the same page about Saul and make sure we are working from the same pieces of information. Haven’t you heard what I’ve heard about him?
God seems to know that it’s crazy, too. So God levels with Ananias and tells him that Saul has been divinely chosen as an evangelist, and, importantly, that Saul will suffer plenty, but to leave his suffering up to God. God responds to Ananias’ honest with gentleness, kindness, and candor. Honest communication always leads to deeper relationships.
When we begin to lean into our call, it’s good to get our reservations out into the open early. There’s nothing worse than keeping secrets and harboring discontents or what-ifs, because it ends up souring our journey with bitterness and anxiety. We might think that the proper religious thing to do is stuff those things down and soldier one, but actually the humble, human thing to do is put our cards on the table.
The Bible is full of people who initially balk at God’s call. Abraham – I’m too old. Sarah – I’m too old. Jacob – I’m not appreciated enough. Moses – I’m not eloquent enough. Naomi – I’ve suffered too much. Isaiah – I’m a sinner. Jeremiah – I’m too young. Zechariah – I’m too old. Mary – I’m too young. Nathaniel – Nothing good comes out of Nazareth. Ananias – This guy’s been trying to kill me! Each of them told God how things seemed from their perspective. Part of why this is healthy is because it places the onus on God to prove to us that he is with us as he has promised to be, that he will give us the power to make the impossible possible so that we can live our callings
The final thing I want to say about Ananias is that he actively participates in shaping his story. Compare what God says to him with what he says to Saul.
God tells Ananias the street to walk on, the house to go to, the person to find; God tells Ananias that he’ll be expected, and that he’s to heal Saul through the laying on of hands; God tells Ananias that Saul is a divinely chosen instrument, and that he will suffer because of it.
Now here’s what Ananias says to Saul, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to your on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
I’m not sure how far Ananias had to walk to get from his house to Saul’s house, but he certainly did some thinking on the way: Hmmm. If God has chosen Saul to be his messenger, and I’m God’s messenger too, then there’s no other way around it: Saul must be my brother. And if he is going to do this job and endure all the sufferings it will bring him, then he’s going to need more than just physical healing; he’s going to need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, just as I have been filled with the Holy Spirit!
You see it, don’t you? Ananias gave Saul a greater blessing than the one God asked him to give.
In his going, Ananias prayed, pondered, and connected some dots. He let God’s love expand in his heart. He added his own creativity and thoughtfulness to his calling, and because of it Saul was given a proper welcome into the family of God. Ananias could’ve run in, done the healing (the only thing God really told him to do), and gotten out fast for fear of this former enemy. Instead, he went above and beyond, calling Saul by name, calling him his brother, and calling down the Holy Spirit to fill him for ministry. Ananias and God collaborated, and their synergy birthed something bigger than what was asked or expected. Ananias, we might say, was converted in his going – transformed, sanctified.
If what we’re doing this summer is creating a kind of mosaic of discipleship, placing diversely colored and shaped pieces into a picture of how God can work in our lives, then let’s think of Ananias’ story as the foundation, the surface on which that mosaic will be laid, because it gets to the heart of the journey.
God can lay a purpose upon us at any time in our lives, so our task is to be receptive. God’s purposes can be crazy and risky, pushing us beyond our comfort zones, so our task it to be honest about what we’re experiencing, to speak our reservations out into the open. And when we’re called, we become coworkers, cocreators, collaborators with God. Only we can live our callings because it is through our individuality that they take on their fullest and most beautiful expressions. We get to come alive, too, as we go.
In closing, receive these words from the Apostle Paul and consider from whom he might’ve learned them:
“Now to God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever” (Eph. 3:20-21). Amen.