Just a week ago I walked down to the river. for me it’s a short trip, but it was amazing to see that there was still a lot of ice. It was just starting to show water in places here and there. And now a week later, it’s all thawed with nary a speck of ice or snow.
And we can
see how fast it runs now that the ice is gone.
It is moving swift and silently once again. The geese are nesting, the fish are biting,
the flies are hatching, the bulbs are sprouting, and the grass is
greening. The season is changing before
our eyes and another winter is behind us.
When we
still had snow and ice, it seemed like nothing would change and spring would
never come. Saul was frozen into such an attitude. He had built an ice jam of cold fury towards
people he saw as a threat. He would not
be moved from that position that these new-fangled ideas were an abominable
twisting of the Torah. The more he heard them, the more he listened to them,
the more of a threat they seemed, and the more icy he became to their ideas.
He became so
obsessed with the followers of ‘The Way” that he asked for special authority to
deal with them. He wanted that ‘double
0’ designation that gave him licence to arrest and kill. And he was willing to walk all the way to
Damascus in Syria! That’s 275 km
away. At the average speed of most humans,
Saul was willing to go on a two week journey to round up and arrest malcontents
so they could be punished.
All he could
see was the threat. All he could think
of was preserving the status quo. All he
wanted to do was hurt. He was frozen in
his attitude towards people he hadn’t even met in person, condemning them
without a fair trial. Even helping with
their execution. He was the one who held
the coats of others while they executed Stephen, he was the one described as
‘ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both women and
men to put them in jail’.
But he
wasn’t the only one frozen into a particular opinion and attitude. The real hero in this story, I think, is
Ananias. He also was stuck in the attitude that Saul was a threat to his family,
friends and his new faith. He didn’t
want to deal with this dangerous man. He
only saw the danger and not the opportunity that lay before him. No way he wanted to go and be nice to Saul!
But Ananias
was a follower of the Way and knew that Jesus taught them to pray for their
enemies. He knew that the resurrection
had turned all their assumptions about the way the world worked upside down. He
knew that he might not be the greatest at preaching the gospel to cynical
people, but he was the ‘johnny on the spot’, the one God could connect with and
send. He was the one who healed Saul’s
deep, frozen soul. He was the one that
started the river flowing, and what a river it was!
Saul who was
so frozen in his ways and his attitudes and his hate, broke down in front of
humble Ananias. He realized his stubbornness
and anger had been not only so unhealthy it impacted him physically, it also
pushed him into behaving in ways counter to the faith he honored. His extremist mindset pulled him into what
today’s psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance’. Instead of honoring God and studying the
Torah, he was persecuting people he didn’t know, breaking the Torah’s command
to love God and love neighbor.
Who do we
connect with? Are we a Saul, stubbornly frozen
in sure we know what is right and best for our neighbors, and willing to do
whatever it takes to prove that we are right, and certain they deserve
punishment? Are we an Ananias, wondering
how on earth we can talk to someone as angry and hurting as Saul? Are we Saul’s companions, helping guide him to
the support he needs? Are we the
followers of the Way, wondering what we can do to keep ourselves safe during
the threat Saul is bringing?
If we are honest
with ourselves, there are times when we are frozen in resistance to God’s
message of compassion. There are times
when we are called to help someone in pain, and we feel like we don’t know
where to start. There are times when we
can speak a word of comfort, not realizing how thawing simple words can
be. Ananias was not one of the twelve, and
we don’t have letters in the bible from him to the other teachers. This is the only sermon he preached. This is the only story we have of him. A simple man, following a simple message,
speaking in faith and hope and courage to someone he never dreamed he could
influence.
On this Christian Family Sunday, when we honor the many people in our lives who have been sources of love and healing, may we find the courage to speak out to the Sauls in our families who are frozen in cognitive dissonance and hurting enough to recognize their need to change. May we find the honesty to face our own stubborn blindness and know it persecutes not just family and friends, but even and especially our Holy God. May we help guide those who are in pain to safe places where they can thaw and find healing. And may we find God’s healing presence taking the scales from our eyes and bringing us back our sight and energy to flow like a mighty river in God’s plan to end conflict and hate for all. May we continue the story of ‘The Way’, one step at a time, one story at a time, one thawing river at a time. Amen.
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