Ananias

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Episcopal Church

May 5, 2019

3 Easter C

As many of you know, I spent one week each summer for 15 years serving as the chaplain to 4^th and 5^th graders at Procter Camp, the Episcopal Church camp in the Diocese of Southern Ohio.  Every year I looked forward to spending a week with the children, hearing their stories and their questions, leading worship, doing a little teaching, hanging out with the great camp staff and rejoicing that they were in charge and I was not.

But the real reason I served for so many years is this.  We send our children to all kinds of camps in the summer-from sports camps, to music camps, to foreign language camps and everything in between. The point of these camps is to spend some intensive time learning the skills they need to be better soccer players or violinists or German language speakers or whatever.  When they come home, they come back to weekly or daily practices, rehearsals, and lessons.  Church camp serves exactly the same purpose.  With the guidance of the camp staff, kids spend a week practicing their ability to live as Christians in the world all day every day.  How do we deal with bullies, as Christians?  How do we share limited resources, as Christians?  How do we settle disagreements as Christians?  At the end of the week, the kids go home to continue to practice, just as they do soccer or tennis or their other activities and skills.

Our scripture readings this morning are all about dramatic experiences of the risen Christ.  Saul encounters the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus and will become the person who takes the gospel to all of the known world.  The writer of Revelation has a tremendous vision in which the elders sing a new song, and they sing together with all the angels in a choir thousands of voices strong.  And the disciples experience the risen Christ through a miraculous haul of fish and breakfast with Jesus on the beach.

Dramatic experiences of the Risen Christ do happen, but they do not happen to all of us.  So, for those of us who have not had such an experience, where do we fit in these stories?  As I puzzled over these stories this week, one thing became abundantly clear to me.  In each story, the main character is God.  The stories are about God’s work in the lives of Saul, the writer of Revelation, and Peter and the disciples.  If we have not had that sort of dramatic conversion experience, the reason is not because we are inferior Christians who don’t deserve that sort of experience, or superior Christians because we don’t need that kind of experience.  The reason is simply because God has chosen to work a different way in our lives.

There is another human character, however, in the story from Acts who deserves our attention.  Ananias was minding his own business when the Lord calls his name in a vision: “Ananias!”  To which Ananias replies “Here I am, Lord.”  “Here I am, Lord.”  Where have we heard that before?  Where would any first century Christian familiar with the Hebrew Bible have heard that before?  In the book of Genesis, God calls “Abraham” and when Abraham replies “Here I am” God sends Abraham off to offer his  son as a burnt offering in a horrifying story that tests Abraham’s faith but in the end does not actually require the life of Isaac.  In the book of Exodus, God calls out to Moses “Moses!” and Moses replies “Here I am.”  God tells Moses that he is being sent to deliver the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt.  In I Samuel, God calls out to Samuel in the night “Samuel!” and Samuel replied “Here I am.”  God tells Samuel of God’s plan to punish the house of Eli for their iniquity because Eli’s sons were blaspheming God.  And finally, in the call of Isaiah, the prophet does not hear his name called, but when God asks “Whom shall I send and who shall go for us” and Isaiah replies “Here I am.”  God sends Isaiah to proclaim God’s judgement on the people. 

So when those early Christians, familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, heard Ananias say “Here I am,” they probably feared the worst.  God was not calling Ananias to tell him he won the lottery.  Whenever God called someone’s name and they responded “Here I am” that person was going to be asked to do something very difficult.  And indeed, God asks something difficult of Ananias.  God tells Ananias to go and lay hands on Saul of Tarsus so that he might regain his sight.  Ananias knew all about Saul, and from Ananias’ perspective, a Saul without sight who was neither eating nor drinking was to be preferred.  But God is insistent.  So, through the ministry of Ananias, Saul’s sight is restored, and much to Ananias’ great surprise, Saul is baptized, and he begins to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues saying “This is the Son of God.”

Without the ministry of Ananias, Saul’s threats and murder against the disciples might have been stopped, but his conversion would not have happened.  Saul needed someone, some person, to be the hands and voice that made the experience of risen Christ life changing and real.  God chose, once again, to work through an ordinary person, just like God worked through Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and Isaiah to make the word of God known to a broken world.

I believe that is where we fit into the story.  God may or may not have chosen to work in our lives through a dramatic conversion.  But God does choose to work through ordinary people like Ananias and you and me to be the hands and voices that make the presence of the Risen Christ known in the world.  We are called to be the ones who notice the light, who see the stranger feeding the hungry, who recognize the longing and the experience of something beyond ourselves and name the Risen Christ in our midst for those around us. I believe that church camp in the summer helps our children and youth develop and practice the skills to do just that, and when they return, the job of each one of us is to provide them with an environment in which they see such actions modeled and have a place to practice themselves.  This is why Anna Sutterisch, the diocesan intern for formation, will talk with all of us about Bellwether Camp at the end of the service and not just the children, youth, and their parents.  Anna will talk with all of us because we are all called to be a community of faith that where Christian formation is nurtured so that each of us is able to hear God call our name, respond “Here I am, Lord,” and be the voice and hands of Jesus in the world.

Amen.