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10:30 am Worship

Monday, July 7, 2025

Acts 3: 3-15

³Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. ⁴He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ⁵He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. ⁶But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’ ⁷The men who were travelling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. ⁸Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so, they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. ⁹For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

10 Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, ‘Ananias.’ He answered, ‘Here I am, Lord.’ ¹¹The Lord said to him, ‘Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, ¹²and he has seen in a vision^* a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.’ ¹³But Ananias answered, ‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; ¹⁴and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.’ ¹⁵But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel…

“If you set out to seek freedom, you must learn before all things

Mastery over sense and soul, lest your wayward desirings,

Lest your undisciplined members lead you now this way, now that way.”

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Stations on the Way to Freedom,” Ethics, 19.)

Who is good and who bad? What is good? What is bad? Do we think we know good from evil? Can we discern, truly, which person God chooses to lead us to wholeness?

This, Bonhoeffer declared, is the immediate first problem facing any person who might wish to act in a Christian manner. How many times in our lives and in our immediate history have we seen well-intentioned actions lead to indescribable evil and horror? Remember Nagasaki! Recall Abu Ghraib! Revisit My Lai!

Soren Kierkegaard, the Christian philosopher saw through to the truth even before Bonhoeffer, who in his haste to do good had embraced an evil action, assisting those who would murder another man. Kierkegaard prayed finally that he might end his life seeking only one thing, to know God. He recognized the many times he had failed to do that, allowing first one thing, then another, to come between him and God.

“‘To everything there is a season,’ says Solomon (Ecclesiastes 3: 1) And in these words he voices the experience of the past and of that which lies behind us. For when an old man relives his life, he lives it only by dwelling upon his memories; and when wisdom in an old man has outgrown the immediate impressions of life, the past viewed from the quiet of memory is something different from the present in all its bustle.” (Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (Kindle edition), Introduction, page 3.)

Isn’t this the truth?

Every moment of every day, we allow a thousand details of living to intrude, to block us from an awareness of God. Worst of all, perhaps, are those details of good and evil which somehow separate us. In our determination that someone or something is evil, we go forth and do evil by seeking to do that which we perceive to be good.

Remember the father with two sons? One squandered his inheritance in depravity. The other served faithfully?

Which received the gift of the fatted calf? Which son stood alone, consumed by his knowledge of good and evil, far from the celebration?

Good and evil are, indeed, real, and Christians are called to oppose evil. But they are called first to restraint, self-discipline, patience, faithfulness, mercy, hope, and love. Like Martin Luther King, languishing in a Birmingham jail cell and Bonhoeffer walking to the gallows, we are called to speak truth while refusing to do evil. The price for such faithfulness?

Suffering.

Saul the murderer and Paul the saint. The same man. How was he changed? How did he cast off his blindness? He became a witness for love instead of a wreaker of havoc. He listened to Jesus instead of human voices bearing messages concerning good and evil.

Hymn of the day: Via Dolorosa. Online at Rossford UMC - Media.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler