Saul and Ananias: The Hurt We Give: Acts 9:1-19
Ordinary Time; Pride Sunday
Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder
against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and
asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any
who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to
Jerusalem. 3 Now as he was going along and
approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He
fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you
persecute me?” 5 He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The
reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But
get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” 7 The
men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice
but saw no one. 8 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. 9 For three
days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank.
10 Now there was a
disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision,
“Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” 11 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, 12 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.” 13 But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have
heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in
Jerusalem, 14 and here he has authority from the
chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” 15 But
the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring
my name before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; 16 I
myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” 17 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.” 18 And
immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was
restored. Then he got up and was baptized, 19 and
after taking some food, he regained his strength. (NRSVue)
Everybody
take a deep breath in, then a deep breath out.
We’re going to talk about Paul, and there are few characters in the
Christian story who have quite as much ability to pull strong emotions from
people as Paul. People who have spent
really any amount of time in the New Testament beyond the gospels quickly
develop feelings about him, one way or another.
“Paul’s
mads were madder and his blues bluer, his pride prouder and his humbleness
humbler, his strengths stronger and his weaknesses weaker than almost anybody
else’s you’d be apt to think of; and the splash he made when he fell for Christ
is audible still. It is little wonder
that from the start he was a genius at making enemies.
“As
his own letter indicate, his contemporaries accused him of being insincere,
crooked, yellow, physically repulsive, unclean, bumbling, and off his
rocker. Since then the charges against
him have tended to narrow down to one, i.e., that he took the simple and
beautiful Gospel of Jesus and loused it up with obscure, divisive, and
unnecessary theological subtleties.
“Anybody
who thinks the Gospel of Jesus is simple should go back and take a look at it.”[1]
American
theologian Frederick Buechner had a great deal of admiration for Paul, divisive
figure that he is. Credited with nearly
half of what became the New Testament and likely the true author of at least a
quarter of it, Paul’s voice shaped Christianity irrevocably.[2] His call story, alongside the others we’ve
been examining in this summer series on those called whose answer cost them
every ounce of what they thought they knew, is one that many Christians have
heard over and over. It’s dramatic, high
theatre—a voice from the heavens, sudden blindness, a proud man struck down, a
miraculous healing, a changed heart. The
changing of Paul is God still at work on a deeply personal level.
Except
this story isn’t about Paul—not really.
It’s about Saul. Luke, credited
author of today’s Scripture reading in the Acts of the Apostles, doesn’t use
the name Paul until chapter 13—four chapters from now. There are plenty of memes around about those
who can call Saul Paul can surely adapt to a chosen name someone uses for
themselves, particularly gender-expansive people. But it’s not as much of a fluidity as those
might mean because we almost always talk about Paul; Paul the letter-writer,
Paul the traveler, Paul the converted.
We so rarely talk about Saul, who breathed “threats and murder
against the disciples of the Lord” because he felt he was absolutely correct to
do so.
Picture it:
Saul, trained and educated Pharisee who held Roman citizenship, making him not
only powerful in his community but recognized by the empire that held his
people under its boot. He leverages his
connections and gets formal authority to bind and bring in anyone who is
following this new religious offshoot, the Way.
Think of
the furtive conversations that must have been happening among the people; “make
sure your documentation is correct,” they’d tell each other, “so there’s no
doubt about who you really are, especially if you have right standing with the
government.” “Consider relocation now,
if your safety and security is a concern,” if you could afford to leave, if
there was somewhere else to go. “Find a
safety plan” for if and when you come under attack. “Remember that we are in a marathon, not a
sprint,” and that the threats of Saul and Rome are not forever.
Ah, sorry;
not Saul and Rome. All those things are
from an article published in November 2024 titled “How LGBTQ+ People Can
Protect Themselves Legally, Financially, and Medically in the Coming Months”
and published by the Modern Military Association of America.[3]
Let’s try
again; picture it. God comes to Ananias
and says, “Get up and go looking for a man of Tarsus named Saul.” “But Ananias answered, ‘Lord, I have heard
from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem’”.
Go anyway, he was
told; go because God called you, others around him said, and what is
your faith if you don’t follow God’s call.
It doesn’t matter if you’re comfortable; Christianity isn’t about being
comfortable, anyway. Of course it will
be difficult—being called to ministry is difficult, that’s how it is, if you
can’t handle that then you maybe shouldn’t be doing this. Of course it may cost you everything; Jesus
said to take up His cross, after all, we all have one, and if you turn away it’s
your job to make sure healing happens no matter how much it harms you or how
the vitriol against who you are could still roll casually off the tongue of the
one who had so recently thought of you as less than a person. You shouldn’t make him uncomfortable, he’s
trying, you might be scared but just think of how much he’s going
through, you aren’t faithful if you say no, Ananias.
Ah,
apologies; not Ananias. That was some of
the types of things people have said to me as a queer person and an ordained
elder in the ministries where I’ve served, including this one.
Do you hear,
Body of Christ? Do you hear how this
story that we have told each other a thousand times about how glorious it is to
have Paul transformed must also deal with how much damage Saul had done? Up to the very moment Saul was somewhat
literally knocked off his high horse, he was breathing threats and murder. He held cloaks while men were stoned to
death, dragged women to judgment with a clear and ferocious heart. “It’s important to remember that Saul sees
himself as the good guy trying to protect the faith,” writes Professor Amy G.
Oden. “Saul loves God and wants to stamp
out anything that, in his view, dishonors God…His one-track focus on
righteousness narrows rather than expands his vision of what God is up to. He
is so convinced of the error of others that he cannot see the new thing God is
doing in Jesus Christ and mis-reads it completely”.[4]
Last
weekend was Pride here in Ann Arbor, and a colorful and wild and massive Pride
it was. Two hundred vendors lined the
streets for the 30th year of celebrating queer identities and an
estimated 15,000 people came to dance, talk, see and be seen. For the first time, there was “a group
wedding ceremony, allowing multiple couples to tie the knot as the festivities
began. The celebration also introduced its first-ever drag king show, expanding
the festival's already diverse entertainment lineup.”[5] At least 11 of the vendors were faith-based,
including Jews, Buddhists, and a whole variety of Christians.
And yet the
Church—yes, even this church—is still such a dangerous place for queer
folk. There are plenty of people who are
breathing threats and murder, but there are also those who are simply, quietly
expecting queer folk to go into spaces that are unsafe with people who have
never taken the time to listen to or care for them. There are people who have said they don’t
have to do the work of reparation and healing because they’re not “those
people,” because they don’t breathe threats and murder, because people
shouldn’t be afraid of them.
Professor
Oden continues, “At both ends of the ideological spectrum, Christian
progressives as well as Christian conservatives look to purge their ranks of
any who step even slightly out of line. The story each side tells about
themselves is that they are holding firm to sacred values. No one thinks of
themselves as a persecutor in the stories we tell ourselves about our own
commitments. We would be shocked to hear Jesus say to us, ‘Why do you persecute
me?’”[6] It may not be threats and murder but it is
the history of our institution, our denomination that colors every interaction
we have no matter how many flags we fly or statement we write; it’s the
grapevine of “I have heard from many” about this man, this congregation, these
expectations, these baits-and-switches.
When Saul was awaiting Ananias, he was already being changed but
our intentions never override our impact.
Ananias had heard things, things that had been true, and he was afraid,
and he had every right to be fearful because he had not yet seen Saul do
anything other than breathe threats and murder, than seek the authority to
squash Ananias’ friends, than silence the voice Saul deemed wrong.
Dr. Raj
Nadella writes, “[W]hen Saul asked to know who confronted and addressed him by
name, the voice responded saying, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’ In
locating itself in and with the victims of Saul’s violence, the voice was not
just expressing solidarity with them, but was also asking Saul to see the
divine in those he was targeting. In identifying with the people, the voice was
suggesting to Saul that inasmuch as he was targeting them, he was targeting
Jesus himself. For Saul, the site of encounter with the divine transforms into
a site of encounter with the humans he was persecuting.
“…Saul
eventually joins the Jesus movement, but what stands out in this story is not
theological or doctrinal, but the profound ways in which people can be
transformed when they acknowledge the pain and damage of forcing others to see
the world as they do.”[7]
Everything
that Saul has done gives Ananias the right to run from this call—but he
doesn’t. “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.’”
This is a
call story of two men. It’s a call story
of an entire mindset. It’s a call story
about recognizing that becoming the hero doesn’t mean there isn’t work left
over from when you were the villain.
It’s a call story about trusting that God doesn’t call people to
suffering for its own sake, that God didn’t ignore Ananias’ fear because God
was already changing what made him afraid.
The gospel,
the Good News, may well be that Saul becomes Paul. But it’s also that Ananias trusted, and it’s
that God is meddlesome, and it’s that Saul was forced to see—or unsee—the world
differently, and it’s that pain was met with reparation instead of
recrimination. Saul spends the rest of
his life, even unto martyrdom, building a different path than the one he’d so
painstakingly laid. We don’t get
Ananias’ story beyond this, but he is forever in our holy text as the
courageous one who said “this hurts and I trust.”
This is a
call story for us, that we look with scale-less eyes at the places where we are
Saul who frightens the Ananiases around us even though we meant well, even
though we’re trying not to take up all the space, to breathe threats; that we discover
in ourselves an Ananias who steps forward in courage because God said so and
God’s is the voice to which we listen.
It’s a call story to do our own work of repentance for the ways we have
casually overlooked others’ pain; it’s a call story to realize that none of us
fully knows the impact we have on those we meet, no matter how we perceive what
we’ve done.
And it’s a
story where God works with it. God works
through it, God shakes it up, God invites, God demands, God changes, God protects,
God reveals, God remains. How, then, are
you a Paul who has a Saul past? How are
you an Ananias fighting to be heard? How
are you allowing God to work in you, through you, to be Good News in every
heartbeat pulsing through you?
May we do
the hard, hard work of listening; may we do the hard, hard work of changing;
may we open ourselves to the beautiful, beautiful work of being God’s
people. Amen.
[1]
Frederick Buechner, “Paul,” in Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (New
York: HarperCollins, 1993), 82.
[2]
Of the 27 Protestant canonical NT books, Paul is credited with 13 or 14; he
likely wrote at least 7.
[3]
Rachel Branaman and Adele Scheiber, “How LGBTQ+ People Can Protect Themselves
Legally, Financially, and Medically in the Coming Months,” Nov. 19, 2024,
accessed August 9, 2025. How LGBTQ+ People
Can Protect Themselves Legally, Financially, and Medically in the Coming Months
– Modern Military Association of America
[5]
https://pridesource.com/article/ann-arbor-pride-2025-photos
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