Ongoing Conversion

​In his sermon last week, Deacon Terry explained that we can think of resurrection as an ongoing process. He talked about the move from doubt—Thomas’ “I will not believe unless I touch his wounds”—to confession, Thomas’ “My Lord and my God.”
 
We see a similar process of resurrection in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles. It’s the story of Paul’s conversion.
 
Paul didn’t start out as a Christian. Quite the contrary! Paul actively opposed Christ. Breathing threats and murder against Christians, Paul set out for Damascus where he planned to arrest every Christian he could find and shut down the new Church.
 
But as we just heard, on the road to Damascus, Paul was knocked down, blinded by light, and confronted by Christ. Afterwards Paul had to be led by hand into Damascus where he went three days without sight, and didn’t eat or drink anything. It was as if Paul symbolically died and spent three days in a tomb.
 
Then a Christian named Ananias laid hands on Paul, healed his blindness, and blessed him with the Holy Spirit. Paul was baptized, and he immediately began proclaiming that Christ is the Son of God. Christians have celebrated Paul’s conversion ever since. We even have a holy day devoted to it—January 25.
 
But the conversion in our passage that is most relevant to me isn’t Paul’s; it’s Ananias’.
 
Unlike Paul, Ananias was already a Christian when our story begins. But like Paul, Ananias experiences a change of heart. For Ananias the change is in how he sees Paul.
 
When Jesus first appears to Ananias, Ananias doesn’t think much of Paul. “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done.” Ananias has NO interest in helping his would-be persecutor.
 
But Jesus insists, and Ananias does it.
 
That’s all we are told. But I am guessing the story kept going. Ananias was surely the one who introduced Paul to the other Christians in Damascus, who sponsored Paul for baptism, who convinced the others to let Paul preach.
 
Ananias was already a Christian, but he experienced a conversion, a change of heart, when he went from seeing Paul as evil to embracing Paul as his brother in Christ. That is no easy change.
 
I have been working on this.
 
Last summer, while I have having tea with a friend in Northampton, a man approached us asking for money. The man told us he was from Boston and, for reasons I can’t recall, couldn’t get back. He was, he said, embarrassed to ask, but could we help him out?
 
I had my suspicions. I have heard similar stories about stranded travelers many times. But I gave this man some money.
 
The very next week, while I was having breakfast with a different friend, the same man approached me with the same story. This time I refused to give him money, and told him that he had already used the Boston story on me. He claimed it must have been somebody else, but went away.
 
That was several months ago. But a few weeks ago, the man came back into my life. This time he didn’t give me a story. He just asked for money. I refused, and he got a little aggressive. I did too. This was not a proud moment for me. The only good thing is that I was wearing nothing that could identify me as a Christian, much less as a priest.
 
Carrie was with me this time, and we had driven, which meant we had to pay for parking. That formerly simple task has gotten more complicated, so she was trying to download the parking app while this man and I were getting into it.
 
As the man and I went back and forth, Carrie got more and more stressed until she finally ordered me back into the car, and we found a different parking place where she could pay in peace.
 
I was still a little heated, and I decided that the next time this man approached me, and I knew there would be a next time, I was going to tell him to remember my face and know that I was never going to give him money, that there was no point is wasting both our times.  
 
I told this story at one of our Lenten sessions on the seven deadly sins. At this point, I’m not sure which deadly sin I was illustrating. But as I heard myself rehearsing these events, but this time in Church, wearing priest clothes, talking to my brothers and sisters in Christ about how to live more faithfully, I realized I had to do better.
 
I was Ananias in the beginning of our passage. I was hostile to the man who had approached me, and I was holding onto my hostility, even though Jesus says that we help him whenever we help people in need. Like Ananias, I needed a change of heart. I realized, with some unhappiness, that I should give this man money the next time I saw him.
 
Lo and behold, last week he approached me again while I was having breakfast with a friend. He even told me the Boston story.
 
Feeling surprisingly warm inside, I gave him five dollars. He responded that he could really use twenty, but I wasn’t feeling that warm. Still, he left cheerfully, and I felt a lot better than I had after our last encounter.
 
I remain a work in progress. I’m not up to loving this man yet. But the next time he approaches me, I plan to ask him his name, which is my way of trying to make our relationship a bit more personal. We’ll see where that goes.
 
I take two lessons from my experience of a conversion like Ananias’.
 
The first is that it feels good to do, at least to try to do, what we are supposed to do as Christians. It feels good to let go of resentment and anger, to respond to others with compassion and generosity, to see and to treat other people as actual or potential brothers and sisters in Christ.
 
The second is that I don’t need to wait for other people to get their act together for me to work on getting my act together. This man lied to me, again, when he approached me last time. He was, again, a little aggressive. Probably, in his “relationship” with me, that will never change.
 
But his behavior doesn’t absolve me from my Christian responsibility to treat him with dignity. And that is a liberating fact. My actions, and my heart, don’t depend on the people around me. With God’s help, I can always love, and I can enjoy the good feelings that are part of loving, with anybody at anytime.
 
I come back to Ananias, that committed Christian who despised and feared Paul, with such good reason. What might have happened if Ananias had held onto his hostility, if he had refused to see Paul, to pray with and for Paul, to vouch for Paul to the other Christians in Damascus? Would Paul have still become the great Apostle that he did? We’ll never know because, thankfully, Ananias chose love.
 
How about the people around us, the people who may not seem to deserve our love, as Paul certainly didn’t deserve Ananias’? What role might our love for them play in their conversions?
 
My prayer for us is that we can follow the example of Ananias, that we can choose love even for people who don’t seem to deserve it, that we can love others as Christ first loved us. And I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.