Tale of Two Conversions (Maybe More)

Third Sunday of Easter (Year C)

Acts 9.1-20; John 21.1-19

St. Thomas of Canterbury, Long Beach

As we journey through the 50 days of Easter, moving farther and farther from the Day of Resurrection, we notice a shift in the nature of our Scripture readings. On Easter Sunday and the first couple of Sundays after, our Gospel readings focus on various of Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearances to his disciples. But fairly quickly, we run out of these appearances. After all, the resurrected Jesus was only around for 40 days before his Ascension into heaven.

During this same time, our first reading for each Sunday is from the Acts of the Apostles—the story of the early Church as it came to grips with the reality of life and ministry, not only post-Resurrection, but post-Ascension. The adventures, the joys, the challenges, the struggles, as Jesus’ followers navigate the religious landscape of their day to forge a new religious path based on the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, as we move forward through Eastertide, the stories of post-Resurrection appearances gradually give way to the stories of the early Church and its formation.

 

At least in Year C of our liturgical calendar, today is sort of a transition point in this journey. Today, we have the last of the post-Resurrection appearances as recorded in the Gospel According to John, and a critical turning point in the development of the early Church as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. And in both stories, the Resurrected Jesus features prominently, providing this transition from focus on Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearances to the disciples living into the new reality of the resurrected life. Not just Jesus’ resurrected life, but their resurrected life. For, as the Body of Christ, Jesus’ resurrected life becomes their resurrected life. Setting the foundation for our own resurrected life. For as the Body of Christ here and now, Jesus’ resurrected life becomes OUR resurrected life.

First a look at our Gospel reading. What we have here is Jesus’ third and final post-Resurrection appearance, at least as recorded by John. The disciples have just returned home to Galilee and are starting to settle into the lives they had before Jesus upended them three years before. Seven of the disciples have gone fishing. Presumably not for fun, but getting back to the profession they previously had. Jesus appears to them after a night of fishing, in which they caught absolutely nothing. Only, the disciples do not initially recognize him. Based on the advice of a seemingly unknown stranger, the disciples give it another go, this time casting their nets on the right side of the boat as opposed to the left. This time they catch a veritable boatload of fish. Based on the miraculous catch, John is able to intuit that the stranger is not a stranger at all, but is the Risen Lord. This miraculous catch could be seen as a sign that their lives will be fruitful, filled with abundance, if they continue in the ways of the Lord.

After a breakfast of fish and bread, prepared by Jesus himself, he tells the disciples what the life of faith needs to look like. Addressing Peter as the new leader of the disciples, Jesus asks him three times, “do you love me?” (Jn 21.15-17). Each time, as Peter responds in the affirmative, Jesus responds with “feed my lambs,” “tend by sheep,” and “feed my sheep.” This event, commemorated as the “Primacy of Peter” along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, is Jesus commissioning of Peter to continue the ministry he began before his death and Resurrection. But it is not just Peter’s personal commissioning. He is being commissioned as the leader, but the mission that is given to him is actually being given to the whole Church. To all who follow Jesus. That all who follow Jesus are being commissioned to live into his ministry to care for those who are particularly dear to him – the widowed, the orphaned, the poor, the marginalized. To share the Good News of the love of God and how that love has been manifest through the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. To share that Good News in word and action.

One way in which this commission is played out for the post-Resurrection followers of Jesus is illustrated in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Commonly referred to as the “Conversion of Paul (or Saul),” this is really the story of two conversions. Maybe more.

On his way to Damascus, Paul, a devout Jew who is under license by the Temple authorities to seek out and persecute any and all who profess to follow Jesus, has an encounter with the Risen and ascended Jesus, who says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9.4). Indicating that persecuting Jesus’ followers, who are the Body of Christ in the post-Resurrection world, is persecution of Jesus himself. Is persecution of God himself. In the process, Saul is struck blind, symbolic of his inability to fully perceive who Jesus truly is. Those traveling with Saul take him on to Damascus, where he waits for three days in the darkness of being without sight. Just as Jesus himself was in the darkness of the tomb for three days before his Resurrection to new life.

Meanwhile, another conversion is taking place. Jesus appears in a vision to a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. In this vision, Jesus tells Ananias that he is to help Saul by laying hands on him and healing him of his blindness. Ananias objects on the grounds that Saul has been authorized by the high priest to persecute the followers of Jesus. But Jesus responds, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel” (Acts 9.15). Ananias is experiencing his own blindness. Not a physical blindness, but blindness to the possibilities that someone like Saul might be of use to the Lord.

With these words from Jesus, Ananias’ own blindness is lifted. Despite his misgivings about Saul, Ananias is obedient and does as Jesus asks. He goes to Saul, lays hands on him, and his sight is restored. So moved is he by this experience of being liberated from darkness after three days that Saul is baptized as a follower of Jesus. Saul’s conversion is so complete that within a few days he begins proclaiming in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. And, of course, we know that Paul goes on to become one of the greatest of the apostles, serving as the premier apostle to the Gentiles, opening their eyes, as well. Spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ to those who previously had not known God, let alone Jesus.

Of Paul’s conversion, Susanna Metz, an Episcopal priest and theologian at Sewanee writes, “I often think calling this passage the ‘conversion’ of Paul is using the wrong word. He was already a learned and God-fearing Jew. I'd rather call it Paul's transformation, the opening of his heart and mind to the Spirit of God, who offered him a new look at what it meant to be faithful” (Susanna Metz, Synthesis email, 4/29/19). Just as the Spirit of God transformed Ananias, opening his heart and mind to the Spirit of God, allowing him to serve as an instrument for Paul’s transformation. Both men, able through the moving of the Spirit, to put aside their own desires and preconceptions and to follow the Risen Lord into the resurrected life.

Remember that I said that the Conversion of Paul was really the story of two conversions, maybe more? Well, we are those who are potentially converted through the experience of Paul and Ananias. Just as they were converted, or transformed, to live into the resurrected life of following Christ to proclaim the Good News of the Resurrection, so too are we called to be open to conversion, to transformation. Their story is an example to all of us of what is possible if we open our eyes, if we open our hearts and our minds. Of being open to seeing people the way God sees them. As beloved children in need of love and mercy and compassion. Of being open to seeing this broken and hurting world the way God sees it. As being in need of comfort and healing. Of being open to being God’s instruments of love, mercy, and compassion. Of being God’s hands of comfort and healing.

The Easter season is not just about hearing the story of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. Sure, that is the main event of our faith. But as those who follow the Risen Lord, we, too, are called into the resurrected life. Our Scripture readings for this season are selected specifically to give us an example of how the disciples lived into the new reality of life post-Resurrection. How Peter, and even the likes of Saul and Ananias, are moved by the example of our Lord to die to self and to rise to a new life as followers of the Risen One. Men who made a profound difference in the furthering of the Gospel and the development of the Church.

The Easter season is not just about the transformation of a handful of early Christians. It is also about how we ourselves, 2,000 years later, continue to seek to live into the resurrected life. To have whatever blinds us from God’s purposes be removed, as scales falling from our eyes. To hear the voice of our Lord declare that we, too, are instruments chosen to bring Christ’s name to others through our words and our actions. To fully live into Jesus’ command: “Follow me.”

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!