3rd Sunday of Easter
April 10, 2016
Acts 9:1-20, John 21:1-19
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRlGzdMEwKA&feature=em-upload_owner )
One of my favorite movies that came out in 2003 was a
remake of a movie from 1969, “The Italian Job.” Anyone seen either of them? The
original one had Michael Caine and Noel Coward, and the remake had Donald
Sutherland, Mark Wahlberg, and Charlize Theron. Anyway, to pull of this heist,
each member of the team has a specialized role to play that no one else in the
group can do. One is the safecracker,
one is the demolitions expert, one is the computer hacker, and so on. Each person brings their own unique skillset
so that together they can do “the Italian job.” I was reminded of that when
reading our Acts passage this morning.
This is the story of how Saul, the head of the death squad persecuting
the early Christians, became Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament in the
Bible. Saul’s conversion story didn’t just involve Saul. He had to do his part, to be sure, and so did
someone else, Ananias. The first part of
the story is about Saul, how God blinds him with light on the road to Damascus, God calls out,
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” and Saul answers, “Who are you,
Lord?” God replies, “I am Jesus, whom are you persecuting.”[1] Then
Saul is left blind and his traveling companions have to help him the rest of
the way to Damascus. The story then shifts to someone already in Damascus, a believer
named Ananias, and God tells Ananias to go to Saul, lay hands on him, and
restore his sight again. Ananias is very
reluctant, he’s heard of Saul, he knows this guy’s the head of the death squad,
hunting out Christians to kill them. God
repeats his instruction to go to Saul, and Ananias goes. He lays hands on Saul
and Saul’s vision is restored. Saul is baptized, he eats something, and it says,
“right away, he began to preach about Jesus in the synagogues.”[2] Within the space of a few days, Saul, who
hates and persecutes Christians, becomes Paul, who preaches the good news of
Jesus Christ.
And yet, Saul and Ananias weren’t the only main
characters in this story. There’s a third person who affects Saul’s conversion
just as much. Any guesses who that is? (Anyone paying attention?) That’s right,
God. Just like God is the third person
that makes a marriage work, he’s also the third person in Saul’s conversion
story. Except, he’s not really the third person, he’s the first person. God’s the one who starts this whole chain of
events in the first place.
I’ve spent much of the past couple weeks finishing my
papers for provisional membership in the Conference. If I’ve seemed distracted or overwhelmed
lately, that’s why, and that’s why I missed Fun ‘n’ Fellowship [PG: Friendship Circle]
this past week. A piece of John Wesley’s
theology that I had forgotten was how much he stresses that grace,
unconditional love, is God’s initiative. I know we’ve talked about prevenient
grace, that grace that comes before we even recognize or know God. The reason it comes before is because of our
sin. John Wesley tied it back into our
total depravity, original sin, the fact that we have all sinned and fallen
short of God’s glory, and without God’s help, we can’t get out of sin. We are
stuck there and unable to get out by ourselves. In other words, we can’t save
ourselves. We can’t even reach out to God to ask him to save us, without God’s help.
And that’s where prevenient grace comes in.
When we’re unable to fix the situation ourselves, God takes the
initiative and offers us the strength and the ability to call on him for help.
That’s what we see here with Saul’s conversion.
Saul wasn’t looking to become a Christian. He was hunting Christians down to kill them!
God took the first step, then offered Saul a chance to respond, then called on
Ananias to come play his part, and again Saul got another opportunity to accept
to God’s grace. In the depths of human depravity, we can’t turn to God. God has
to seek us out, hunt us down, like in the English poet, Francis Thompson’s,
poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” first published in 1893. It’s a beautiful poem,
comparing God to a hound, who seeks you out and follows you, even while you
flee from him, for years. At the end of
the poem, you’re tired of running, worn out trying to escape the tail of this
hound, and God says, essentially, I love you. You’re not worthy of love, you
can’t earn love, you’re not going to find unconditional love anywhere else but
with me, and I love you. Come with me. As I said, it’s a beautiful poem, and if
you don’t mind feeling like you’re back in your high school English class, I
encourage you to look up “The Hound of Heaven” some time and read it.[3] God’s
unconditional love, prevenient grace, is there first, and it’s always there,
waiting for you to accept it. Saul accepts it.
Then we have another story of teamwork in our Gospel
reading this morning. We’ve got the disciples out fishing, since they were
fishermen, after all, and after all night on the water, they haven’t caught a
single fish. Jesus sees them, and he says, “Try the other side of the boat.”[4]
Essentially, try fishing a different way than you usually do, a different way
than you’ve always done it. And they accept Jesus’ advice, and then they have
so many fish they can’t even haul in the nets. Again, God initiates, the
disciples respond, and then they have a successful haul, that they all sit down
to eat breakfast there on the lakeshore.
The second part of this story is Jesus reinstating Peter
as his number one man. If you remember, Peter is the one whom Jesus said was
going to be the rock of his church and who was given the keys to the kingdom.[5] And
Peter is the one who denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed that
evening in the courtyard, when Jesus was hauled away and crucified. Again, Jesus takes the initiative. You’ll notice Peter doesn’t begin by
apologizing; it begins with Jesus and he asks three times, “Simon, son of John,
do you love me?” one time for each denial. Peter gives the same answer all
three times, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you,” although he’s hurt that
Jesus asks him three times. Jesus offers
his unconditional love, and Peter accepts it, humbly. And then each time Jesus
says some variation of “Feed my sheep.”[6] So,
Jesus takes the first step in repairing the relationship, Peter responds
appropriately, and the end result is not just a healed relationship but a
healed world, because it means the sheep get fed.
In both of these stories the outcome is more than just
the individuals involved. When Saul becomes Paul, he becomes one of the
greatest evangelists of all time. Paul plants dozens of churches, spends large
chunks of time with each one, writes letters to them to build them up, checks
in on them, and those letters form most of the New Testament. Because Saul and
Ananias responded to God’s initiative, billions of lives have been changed, if
you think of everyone over almost two thousand years who has been influenced by
Paul’s letters that were so important they were canonized into Holy Scripture.
People were spiritually fed by Paul’s writing. The disciples who were fishing
overnight were physically fed by the fish they caught because of Jesus’
unsolicited advice on where to fish. And Peter is told three times to “feed my
sheep,” and Peter heads up the original church, the one we all claim succession
from, regardless of our denomination. Consider how many people have been fed
through the Church over the millennia. God begins by offering the work to be
done, if we accept, then sheep get fed, people get physically and spiritually
fed.
Now, there is one more note to make here about those of
us who respond to God’s prevenient grace, which is this line where Jesus tells
Peter about how he will be taken where he does not want to go.[7] If you’ll
notice, Saul was taken where he did not want to go, a place where he was blind.
Ananias was taken to a place where he did not want to go, to Saul, who was
known for making good on his violent threats against
Christians. And Peter will be taken where he does not want to go; he becomes a
martyr of the early church, arrested and killed for spreading the Gospel,
crucified upside down, because he did not consider himself worthy to be
crucified in the same way as his Lord. That’s what happens to those of us who
accept God’s unconditional grace. We can’t get out of the state of sin by
ourselves, we need God’s help. And when we accept it, and bind our life to
Christ’s, well, Jesus himself said, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the
gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many
who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life,
and there are few who find it.”[8] All
y’all here are among those who have found it, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.
You’ve heard God nudging or calling or shouting, and you know that Jesus alone
has the words that lead to life.[9] The Good
News in all this is that following Jesus will be a life you never imagined, a
life you never dreamed of in your wildest dreams. And the other Good News is
that the sheep get fed, because we are not here for ourselves. We are here for
the sake of the world, to quote the mission of The United Methodist Church,
“making disciples for the transformation of the world.” We’re not here to
commiserate and have pity parties about how hard the Christian life is; we’re
here to build each other up, to encourage each other, to cheer each other on,
to be there for each other on this journey, and to send each other out to feed
God’s sheep, because the path that God offers is the only one that leads to
life.
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