Who are you, Lord?

May 01, 2022

Who are you, Lord?

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed. Happy Easter. Still.

It is church tradition to revisit the work of the disciples as they launched the earliest faith communities during the season of Easter, and son here at Faith this year as we do that, we’re focusing on the stories throughout Acts that give us glimpses of the work of being a witness.

In our membership vows, we commit to participate fully in life in the body of Christ with our prayers, presence, gifts, service and WITNESS. Did you know that word was just added to the baptismal covenant in 2008?

How often do we THINK about what it means to actually do this work of being a WITNESS in the context of our lives? How often do we think about living our faith out in the world?

This is the lens we are bringing to the scriptures in this season of Easter, asking “what might I need to learn about being a witness from this story in scripture?”

It is with that lens that we arrive today at this story that is familiar to many – often headlined “the conversion of Saul.” But really, it is so much more.

Saul was a devout Jewish man, associated with the Pharisees, and after Jesus’ resurrection, he actively sought out and persecuted the followers of Jesus. He saw their movement as a threat to established practices of Judaism…so the text tells us that he was “breathing threats and murder” as he sought permission to purge the synagogue at Damascus of any who follow in The Way of Jesus.

As he traveled, he was struck to the ground and heard a voice asking why he was determined to persecute Jesus’ followers.

Saul responded to the voice, asking “Who are you, Lord?”

Saul was unaware of who spoke to him at this point. He was not using “LORD” in the way we refer to the Lordship of Christ – at this point in the story, struck down on the road and unclear about what happened, he was being respectful, deferential.

The reply came – I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. Get up and go to the city and wait for someone to tell you what is next.

And when Saul got up, he could’t see anything. He was blind. The man who had been seething murderous rage was suddenly rendered completely dependent on others.

We don’t get much material in the text at this point – but I wonder how Saul felt, having such a strange experience, a physical change (the inability to see) along with Jesus speaking directly to him. The men who were with him also heard the voice, and even though they still had their sight, they saw no one belonging to that voice. Now, quite suddenly, Saul’s traveling companions are his safety – his seeing guides who lead him on to Damascus.

The scene cuts to Jesus (referred to here as the Lord) speaking to Ananias. I assume this voice was also disembodied – there is no reference to “seeing” the Lord, only hearing. (I am just geeky enough to think that is interesting here – Saul was blinded and Jesus also wasn’t “appearing” to Ananias. And the voice told Ananias that Saul had “seen a vision” (again – isn’t that interesting for a guy struck blind) that Ananias would come to Saul to restore his sight.

Ananias KNEW this name, Saul of Tarsus. He knew that Saul had been persecuting followers of the Way. Saul was dangerous!

Ananias protests – this man is out to get us! But the Lord told Ananias, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name."

Now let’s put ourselves in Ananias’ sandals for a bit here – I’ll bet that was one of the last things he expected to hear – that somehow Saul was going to be used to share the Jesus story in the world.

So…Ananias, go lay hands on him.

Let’s pause here a bit.

This is a call story. Saul was called and Ananias was called.

In order for Saul to hear and receive his call, he had to be BLINDED – he had to lose his sight. He had to stop seeing for a while.

…Or he had to “un-see” all that he had seen up to that point.

…he had to un-know what he had understood as truth.

…he had to have something of a reset.

At the same time, Ananias was called to go lay hands on someone he only knew as a threat. He was asked to let go of his understanding of Saul’s power as a threat and go minister to Saul. He had to let go of his feelings toward Saul’s actions up to that point. Ananias was called to approach someone who, until that moment, had seemed unapproachable to him.

Both Saul and Ananias had to let go of something that they thought they knew or understood in order to follow the path they were called to.

Sit with that a moment.

They both had to let go of something that they thought they knew or understood in order to follow the path they were called to.

That idea gave me pause.

How about you?

It’s not easy to give up something we know, something we value, or something we understand, in order to do something unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unknown or unexpected.

And yet, I think it happens all the time.

I think that as a church, we have experienced a tough season of being called away from what we thought we knew or understood.

For example, we thought that worship was something that happened at a specific time and in a specific place. Worship happened when we walked through doors of a specific building, and we expected others to do the same in order for us to worship together.

But during the time of COVID, we’ve been called to see worship quite differently – we’ve been called to see church quite differently.

And beginning in 2019, we wrestled with what scripture said or didn’t say about homosexuality. We wrestled with perspectives and rules and expectations that some of us learned long ago. We had to ask questions about how we read scripture and perhaps most vitally – why our reading of scripture matters. And that led us to a vote to become a reconciling congregation.

We had to stop seeing in one particular way and learn to see in different ways. And we’re still disoriented and figuring it out at times.

For two years now, a group of folks here at Faith have been gathering to understand systemic racism and the role white people have played, often without knowing it, in upholding those systems of racism. We are learning the difference between NOT being racist and being antiracist… We are seeing history differently, especially the history of the church, in order to see a new thing God is calling to our attention. It has been hard and disorienting work at times.

I wonder….have you had the experience of having to change your way of thinking because Jesus has shown up to point you in a completely different direction? A direction that doesn’t resemble what you thought you knew about how the world worked?

….what is it that we might have to un-see or un-know in order to respond to God’s call on our lives?

When Ananias protests the call to go to Saul, Jesus says plainly, he (Saul) is an instrument whom I have chosen.

The choosing was not Saul’s. The choosing was not Ananias’. It was the very voice of Jesus…I chose him.

What choice did Ananias and Saul have? Both had to change course in their minds and from that point, their lives were rerouted.

These men were called to be witnesses for Jesus. Not a Jesus they saw with their eyes at this moment. In fact, for Saul, a Jesus he didn’t quite recognize. There is power in his question – who are you Lord? Isn’t that the question you’d ask when asked to do something completely unbelievably different from what you have been doing, what you thought you knew, what you believed was vital?