Acts 9:1-20 "Get Up And Go"

For some of us, the story of Paul’s conversion stands out among all the Biblical narratives. If we attended Sunday School as children, the beginning of today’s Scripture passage includes some of the oft times remembered verses. They are right up there with the story of the birth of Jesus, the empty tomb, the 23rd Psalm, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan.


For those who might be new to this story or who might be a bit rusty on the details, Saul (which was Paul’s name before he was baptized) experienced a vision while en route to Damascus. His name change was an important symbol and signified that he was a new man, transformed, a different person.

At the time, Saul was carrying arrest warrants, a list of those people - all followers of Jesus – that he was bent on eliminating. Before his dramatic encounter with God when sacred light literally blinded him, Saul was at the forefront of the Christian persecution movement.

He was a rising star in formative Judaism and a multilingual scholarly rabbi. Saul was born a Hellenistic Jew in Tarsus and was a Roman citizen. He considered himself to be a strict Pharisee and so was part of the majority party or sect operant in first century Judaism.

Saul was passionate about his religion and devastated to see it being tainted by what Pharisaic Jews considered to be the unorthodox theology of Jesus’ followers. Saul was on a personal vendetta to stamp out the heresy he saw springing up around him.

He went to Damascus with one purpose in mind - to nip this heretical teaching in the bud. Saul did not see Jesus’ teachings as a new religion but rather as a wedge being driven into his Jewish heritage.

Saul spared no effort to stifle the spread of the Gospel. It was he who had initiated and carried out the grisly instances of religious persecution in Jerusalem and who intended to stop this perturbation of Judaism in the Holy City.

From overseeing the stoning of the apostle Stephen to, as the Gospel writer of Luke/Acts narrates, “just (going) wild, devastating the church, entering house after house after house, dragging men and women off to jail” with fire in his eyes, Saul went above and beyond the plain language of his Pharisaic job description.

And yet, even as Saul persecuted the believers, as the author of Luke/Acts calls the followers of Jesus, those believers scattered to far off lands – and, horror of horrors to someone like Saul, continued to preach and heal with even more vigor and vitality.

Saul was loath to see heretics bastardize his blessed religion, and so he pursued them. It was then that the incident on the road to Damascus happened. Out for the kill, Saul “got to the outskirts of Damascus. He was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice: "Saul, Saul, why are you out to get me?"

He said, "Who are you, Master?"

"I am Jesus, the One you're hunting down. I want you to get up and enter the city. In the city you'll be told what to do next." (The Message)

And the rest, of course, is history. Paul was struck blind and was led by the hand into Damascus where he did not eat or drink anything for three days. However, before the week was out, he was no longer Saul but Paul, and he was preaching the Good News of Jesus the Christ.

Paul would go on, of course, to become Christianity’s first missionary, traveling throughout Asia Minor, first beginning and then visiting churches in Corinth, Philippi, Thessolonika, Ephesus, and elsewhere.

We remember him best however for the letters he wrote to those churches – letters of encouragement, letters discussing polity and procedural issues, letters expressing his version of the meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Many of Paul’s letters are the earliest written material we have about the Christian church and are dated even before the Gospels themselves. Writings by Paul and his associates make up more than half of the canon of our New Testament.

However, our view of Saul/Paul is one of 20/20 hindsight. From our perspective 2000 years later, we can understand his radical transformation and its impact on our own religious heritage. We can see that of all the people God could have chosen to spread the Good News of Jesus, Paul was an excellent pick. He was intelligent, educated and literate, and above all passionate beyond measure.

Paul loved God and God’s work in the world more than anything else. He was willing to travel – and ultimately would suffer and face imprisonment for his convictions. We know that God chose Paul for his passion and simply gave him an opportunity to focus that passion in a positive way.

But Paul is not the only character in this story. The other one, Ananias (already a Christian), does not get much press. Paul is the big cheese, and Ananias is a side light. However, he, like Paul, also had a vision – but unlike us did not have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight – and that is important in understanding Ananias’ significance.

"Get up and go over to Straight Avenue (as we read in The Message translation of this story). Ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus. His name is Saul. He's there praying. He has just had a dream in which he saw a man named Ananias enter the house and lay hands on him so he could see again."

Ananias protested, "Master, you can't be serious. Everybody's talking about this man and the terrible things he's been doing, his reign of terror against your people in Jerusalem! And now he's shown up here with papers from the Chief Priest that give him license to do the same to us."

But the Master said, "Don't argue. Go! I have picked him as my personal representative to non-Jews and kings and Jews.”

And you have got to hand it to Ananias. He had probably lost family members and friends already to this murderous man, Saul. This was highly irregular from his perspective, and it is easy to understand his reluctance.

However, he did as God told him and laid his hands upon Saul’s eyes. The author tells us that something like fish scales fell to the floor (what a marvelous detail!), and Saul regained his sight. Ananias baptized him, and as we have said, the rest is history.

Ananias intrigues me much more than Paul does in this story because Ananias forces us to ask that difficult question: What would I have done in his shoes?

When God said, “Get ready and go” - would I have trusted my rational intellect that was screaming no, no, no – this man is dangerous, and I would be foolish to get within a mile of him? And besides, he deserves to be blinded for all the evil he has done.

Or when God said, “Get ready and go” - would I have trusted that little voice in me that was pleading that I put my faith in the Almighty and trust that good could somehow come from even this evil?

Oh, you and I will probably never have anything quite as dramatic as a vision like Ananias did. We will probably never be put into his difficult position of having to trust that God was indeed speaking to him in a circumstance that held the lives of hundreds of people in the balance.

However, surely each one of us will be – or has been - called to put aside our rational selves and to trust in a power greater than our own – as, in the end, Ananias was called to do. Let go, and let God, so to speak.

Maybe the world will hurl insults at our idealism, but we will hear that little voice inside of us whispering “Get ready and go” – make a difference, one school kit, one health kit, one heifer animal at a time. Trust that change can come out of the world’s irresolute cynicism.

Maybe the world will turn its back on us and we will feel so very much alone and ready to pack it all in, but we will hear that little voice inside of us whispering “Get ready and go” – go back into the world and you will find people to care for and people to care for you. Trust that community can come out of the world’s worst loneliness.

Maybe the world will flatten us with a loss so devastating that we will feel we have been stripped of everything we ever loved, but we will hear that little voice inside of us whispering “Get ready and go” – for you are not alone, for I am with you always, in all your struggles, in all your losses. Trust that life – new life – can come out of death, any death.

And above all, trust – as Ananias did - that in the end good will emerge out of what we can see now as only evil – for in the hands of God, all things are possible. In the hands of God, we are meant for change, for love, for life.

Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine


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