Like Scales from Our Eyes--June 14, 2023

Like Scales from Our Eyes--June 14, 2023

"So Ananias went and entered the house [where Saul was]. 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.' And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored.  Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, 'He is the Son of God.'" [Acts 9:17-20]

Sometimes the truth hits like a ton of bricks or a sucker punch. Sometimes it slowly dawns on you like the first rays of the sun peaking through the curtains onto your face in the morning.  And sometimes it feels like scales falling from your eyes.  But no matter how it comes, the truth that comes from God has a way of making new creations out of us, because God's truth is never separate from God's love.

This is one of those moments in the story of the early Christian community that reminds us God's truth always works in tandem with God's love, like they are two sides of the same coin.  In case the scene isn't familiar to you, this is part of the story of how Saul--the one-time enemy of the church, persecutor of Christians, and coat-holder at the stoning of Stephen--has an encounter with the risen Jesus who tells him the truth about who he is, as well as the truth of who Saul will become.  Saul had gotten permission to go to Damascus with arrest warrants from the Respectable Religious Authorities to bring back any followers of Jesus, men or women, bound and handcuffed, to stand trial for being a part of this subversive sect.  (Can you imagine?  We Christians used to be seen as revolutionary and subversive, rather than the Guardians of the Status Quo we so often cast ourselves to be these days!)  As the narrator of Acts describes him, Saul was "still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord," and he was dead-set against Jesus and anyone who had anything to do with the crucified Nazarene.  Saul was convinced that Jesus couldn't be the long-awaited Messiah--for starters, because Jesus had died an accursed death getting hung up on a tree at the hands of his enemies in the Roman Empire, and that didn't sound like something a Respectable Messiah would do.

Well, it turns out that Jesus has never been interested in fitting the mold of anybody's expectations of what a "respectable messiah" should be or do.  And neither has Jesus ever been held back from reaching out to the people who rejected him.

So the living and risen Jesus appears to Saul while he is on his way to the city of Damascus, seeking to arrest and prosecute the followers of Jesus there. And Jesus knocks him off his high horse (literally--the guy is knocked to the ground) and hits him with the truth that the One whose followers he has been hunting down is very much alive and well and is indeed the Chosen One of God for whom Saul had been waiting.  The truth lands like a gut punch, but not because Jesus is trying to make him suffer.  Rather, we have a way of building our lives around our preferred illusions of "how things are," and when something comes along to shake those foundational assumptions, we get knocked off of our feet.  In that moment, Saul is struck blind by the flash of light that shined when Jesus appeared, and Jesus gives him directions to go into the city and wait for help... whom Jesus is going to send.

And that's where Ananias enters the story.  Ananias is a Christian who lives in Damascus, and he's heard about all the terrible things Saul has done.  He probably has lost friends to Saul's zealous cruelty, who got arrested, jailed, or worse, already.  And at first, Ananias doesn't want anything to do with getting anywhere near Saul of Tarsus, the Chief Persecutor of the Church.  But the same living Jesus who confronted Saul like a ton of bricks got through to Ananias as well, and off he went to go find, heal, and baptize his mortal enemy.  Saul will need to hear more truth about Jesus, and that truth will wrap him in love and open his eyes. And Ananias will need to learn in action that the community of Jesus really does practice love of enemies--and that such love really is capable of transforming them into members of the family.

This is what it means to take the truth of Christ seriously--that the likes of Saul will have their worlds turned upside down when they realize that God really has chosen to save the world through a crucified homeless rabbi after all... and the likes of Ananias will be called to live out the love that embraces even our worst enemies.

As we keep looking through the Scriptures, I hope it is becoming clearer still that whatever we mean by "truth" is always bound up with whatever "love" really means, too.  Saul's story is about both truth that knocks the wind out of him and love that heals his sightless eyes.  Ananias' story is about being certain that "love" is never empty talk but lived out in truth and action, even to show mercy to the one who had sworn to destroy you, in the leap of faith that God's powerful love is able to turn stony hearts into good soil.

Today, if you are reading this, chances are you are already somehow connected to Jesus and his community. So we are dared, like Ananias, to be people who risk living out the truth we've come to believe.  Today we are called to offer love, with our lives on the line, because we believe Jesus' way is the truth--even when that love is directed toward people who count themselves as our enemies.  And of course, as we dare to take that calling seriously, who knows what amazing things God might do through such love?  Maybe scales will be falling from eyes all over the place.

May it be so.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to take your truth seriously enough to love the people around us, and to let your love transform even the most hardened hearts.