Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Acts 9: 10-19
10 Now
there was a disciple at Damascus named Anani'as. The Lord said to him
in a vision, "Anani'as." And he said, "Here I am, Lord." 11 And
the Lord said to him, "Rise and go to the street called Straight, and
inquire in the house of Judas for a man of Tarsus named Saul; for
behold, he is praying, 12 and he has seen a
man named Anani'as come in and lay his hands on him so that he might
regain his sight." 13 But Anani'as answered,
"Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has
done to thy saints at Jerusalem; 14 and here
he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call upon thy
name." 15 But the Lord said to him, "Go, for
he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles
and kings and the sons of Israel; 16 for I
will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name."
17 So Anani'as departed and entered the
house. And laying his hands on him he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord
Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me
that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit."
18 And immediately something like scales fell
from his eyes and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was
baptized, 19 and took food and was
strengthened. For several days he was with the disciples at Damascus.
It is usually hard for us to leave the familiar
and move to the unfamiliar and new even when we know it needs to be
done and when we know that the new direction is what we need to do. We
are seeing this in our national government as we are trying as a
nation to figure out how to be responsive to the recommendations of
the 9/11 Commission Report that was signed by all the members of the
bi partisan commission but is recommending major changes in how we
organize our intelligence structures so we can be safer as a country.
The challenge is that any kind of reorganization
will mean that some people will give up some power and influence and
status, and that is a threat to people’s egos. So we are in a national
debate not only what the best model is that will keep us the most safe
but also if we will really adopt that model because it will mean some
change and some loss of power for some people.
Change is difficult for most of us even on a
small scale. One of our relatives was an example of that a year or so
ago when we were visiting our families in Texas and we were going to
church with some family members and when we got into the sanctuary to
find a seat, this relative said, “Wait! Someone is sitting in MY pew!”
“My pew.” We all have picked out familiar places
in church, and perhaps we like to sit in about the same area when we
go to a movie and it makes us a little uncomfortable to change. And we
will all be in an unfamiliar spot in a few months when we move to a
new sanctuary. It will be new and different for us clergy also, though
we usually do have an assigned seat.
We have also said that we church folk have often
been the most stodgy and backward looking of any groups when it comes
to openness to change. One woman brought home a lovely plaque from a
gift shop that said “Prayer Changes Things”. She placed it in a
prominent place above the fireplace and a few days later when she came
home she noticed it was gone.
She asked her husband, “What happened to the
plaque?”
He said, “I took it down.”
She said, “Why? Don’t you believe in prayer?”
He said, “Of course I believe in prayer. It’s
change I can’t stand!!”
And in the early 1700’s in American churches
there was a new invention to help people sing hymns. It was called
printing the notes and music in a book-a hymnbook and teaching people
how to read music. Before this, hymns were sung by “lining” The song
leader would sing a line and the congregation would repeat it.
Believe it or not, there was a mighty uproar over
this new fangled way of singing hymns and one minister preached a
whole sermon about how evil this was. Some of the points he made
included, “This is a needless change since our fathers got to heaven
without it, and “The people who want this kind of music are young
upstarts and some of them are lewd and loose persons.”
We are focusing on change because this community
of faith called St Andrew church is dealing with change as we relocate
in the next few months and we have said that this will mean a
combination of feelings. Some people have already left the church a
few years ago because they have felt this change is too difficult. I
remember one woman who said four or five years in a church meeting to
vote on the concept of relocating ago, how angry she was because she
had just recently found the church and now we were about to make a
change like this and she and her family left and never have come back.
I remember a similar conversation I had over 20
years ago in Colorado Springs when, in that former congregation, we
were about to vote on expanding our space and building a larger
sanctuary, and one family Judy and I were dear friends with just could
not think about that change – they wanted us to remain just the way we
had always been. We were very close to this family-their sons were
regular babysitters for our children over several years. I remember
sitting on this woman’s patio with her and drinking tea together and
shedding tears together because she was saying that if we added this
additional worship space, she would just have to leave the church and
find a small one because it was just not right for a church to keep
growing the way we were growing.
Change is hard for all of us, and some of the
hardest change is when we have to look inside ourselves and be honest
with ourselves about some things and decide that perhaps we need to
change, that perhaps we have been wrong and have been going the
wrong direction and that we would be happier in the long run if we
changed our opinion or our ideas or our habits or our behavior or
changed some of the things that we used to value.
This is exactly what is happening in the story we
heard from the book of Acts. This book is one of my favorites in the
New Testament. It is about the happenings and doings of the friends of
Jesus after Easter and Pentecost. It tells, ironically for us as we
celebrate in this church, all sorts of growing edges and new
adventures, it celebrates the EXPLOSIVE growth and expansion of the
Jesus movement in the first weeks and months and years of Christian
history. And we read in the first few chapters about the additional
numbers of people who were influenced by Peter and other leaders. It
tells about the organizational changes that had to be made as more and
more people were joining and meeting together for worship and study
and fellowship and prayer and potlucks-joining the movement. It tells
about the death of the first Christian martyr whose name was
Stephen-there is a gate named after Stephen now in the wall around the
city of Jerusalem at the spot where Stephen is said to have been
stoned to death. This is in chapter 7 of Acts in those new Bibles we
hand out to third graders today. At the very end of chapter 7 the
verse says there was a man in the crowd around the dying Stephen that
day who was holding the coats of those who were throwing the stones
that finally killed Stephen and this man was a leader among the
Pharisee party, the religious leaders who opposed these new
Christians, and this man approved of the killing of Stephen the
Christian, and this leading Pharisee’s name was Saul.
Saul/Paul became one of the most vociferous
opponents of this new Jesus group. He would go house to house,
dragging out these Christians and putting them in jail for their
horrible heretical beliefs that called Jesus the messiah. He
threatened with murder. He determined that he would not only expose
their treasonous behavior in Jerusalem, he would do it in other places
as well, so he set out for Syria for the city of Damascus where there
was another strong cell of these followers of the way.
But something happened to him on the way. He had
an experience that just knocked him off his horse and caused him to go
blind. And he heard the voice of the risen Christ asking him why Paul
was persecuting Jesus.
The blinded Paul was led on into Damascus where
for three days he could neither eat or drink and his blindness
continued-until one of the Christian leaders also in Damascus had a
vision as well. In this vision Christ asked this leader to go and see
Paul and place his hands on him.
How did Ananias respond? It was something like
this: you bet I’ll go lay my hands on Paul-right around his throat!
And I’ll squeeze it until he stops breathing because, you remember
Lord, he has been threatening all the Christians he can find and
torturing them for their faith in you!”
Jesus does persuade Ananias to go and sit with
Paul and to say that Christ has sent him to Paul so that Paul can see
again and can be filled with the spirit of God. Something happens then
and Paul’s blindness is healed and he stays with some other Christians
there for a few days and then he goes out to become the most effective
salesman and spokesperson for Jesus that the early world had ever
seen.
Was he welcomed in this new role? NO! People were
very suspicious! The Christians were suspicious. He was the person who
had been jailing and torturing Christians and now he was one? The
Jewish leaders were suspicious because Paul was very effective in
persuading people about Jesus being the messiah because, while he had
never known the earthly Jesus before, his life had been turned around
by the risen Christ. His mind and heart had been changed and
transformed. He had totally changed his mind. He had to say those
three words that are so difficult for most of us that they stick in
our throat: I was wrong.
He changed his mind. The scales fell from his
eyes. But he was not the only one who changed his mind. Ananias, the
one God sent to Paul, had to change his mind as well. Dr Zan Holmes,
whom many of you know from the Disciple Bible study videos, was our
conference preacher at our annual conference session in Denver three
months ago and he said rightly, in the room in Damascus, scales fell
from two person’s eyes, from Paul’s eyes and Ananias’ eyes because
Ananias had to change his opinion of Paul, his ideas about Paul and
maybe even about God because if God could change could change this
fervent opponent of Christians into being the most zealous and
effective advocate for Christ, then what could a person count on in
life? It would be like God changing Ralph Nader into a Republican!
Paul had his mind changed and Ananias had his
mind changed-or he was forced to change his mind because of the facts
he saw right in front of his eyes.
We are in a national discussion about changing
one’s mind-or the current jargon is flip flopping. I want to see if we
can get beyond political sound bites and sniping attacks and talk
about whether changing your mind is OK or not. What have you changed
your mind about-particularly on spiritual issues? Do you have the same
ideas about Jesus that you did as a child or even ten years ago? The
faith I grew up with de emphasized the humanity of Jesus. Jesus is
both human and divine, the church has said for hundreds of years but
so often his humanity got lost. Now it the humanity of Jesus that has
become so much more important to me. I have changed my thinking over
the years.
We said last week that if you don’t have some
spiritual used to thinks, you are going to have trouble really
following the great commandment to love God with all your heart soul,
mind and strength. Many people grew up with the notion that whatever
happens is God’s will and that God has predestined your life right
down to who you will marry and when and how many children you will
have. And others of us think that God has given us more freedom than
that and that God knows the possibilities for us and our inclinations
in the way we know our children well but that sometimes we will change
our minds and perhaps even surprise God-and this is really radical but
this is in the Bible in several places-sometimes, God even changes his
mind. Do you remember any of those times in the Bible? I’ll tell you
next week if you can’t find it yourself.
Changing one’s mind-or flip flopping is something
that is necessary at times and both major candidates have done this
and it is a part of being open to new information.
Paul changed his mind. Ananias changed his mind.
And, more, Paul changed his life direction-or had it changed for him.
Sometimes the change that we are being called to
deal with needs to start right inside us. This can really, really be
hard and we are usually reluctant to do it. And our tendency is to
resist it and refuse to admit that anything is wrong. People say, I
don’t really have a drinking problem. I don’t really have a shopping
problem. I don’t really have a problem with pornography. I don’t
really have a weight problem. I don’t really have a gossip problem. I
don’t really need to look more closely at how I mistreat the people I
am closest to.
Have we stepped on any toes yet? Making some
interior changes is some of the hardest change we can face. A single
fellow saw his doctor for his constant tiredness and his chronic
headaches. The doc knew him pretty well and knew how he had some very
unhealthy and destructive habits. The doc said, “Look Here is the best
thing you can do. Every day, after work, go home, eat well, get a good
night’s rest. Stop drinking, stop carousing and running around all
night. That’s the best thing you can do.”
The man was silent for a moment and then said,
“What’s the next best thing I can do?”
Or there is a modern version of the Bible story
where a woman who was demon possessed (old way of talking about mental
illness or even epilepsy) came to Jesus to be healed. In the modern
paraphrase of this story, the woman talks with Jesus and he says,
“Look, I can help you. I can cast out those seven demons. Would you
like that?” The woman says, “Would you mind just casting out six?”
Making the changes we know we need to make,
taking the new directions we need to take, choosing the healthier path
for our lives is scary and hard and really tough to do. We want to
commit our selves to Christ up to a point but we hold something back.
We are glad that God accepts us right where we are but it makes us a
little nervous that God loves us too much to just leave us this way
from now on because that means we might have to take a new path. But
today we celebrate that 18 more people are making this public
affirmation as new members that they want to follow the life and
teaching of Jesus Christ and that they are willing to go now where
this loyalty to Christ will take them.
Where do you need to take an honest look inside
and make some internal change of direction or opinion or idea or take
a slightly new path? Do you have some nudges about that? Will you take
just a moment of silence with me to think and pray about that?
Sometimes this kind of internal change means
saying what Sarah McLachlan says in the opening cut from her latest
album. “Heaven bend to take my hand and lead me through the fire to
the long awaited answer because (trying just to do all this on my
own), I’ve fallen, I’ve sunk so low, I’ve messed up and the burdens
are just too much for me-so please God/heaven bend to take my hand.”
And God does that. God does help us through those changes. Because God
accepts us right where we are and God loves us too much to just leave
us where we are. Thanks be to God. Amen
