The Spreading Agent

The most basic thing that you learn when you first encounter the existence of fire as a young person is the reality that water is a really good way of putting a fire out. Whether your first experience with fire is a camp fire or in a fire place or some other space in which a fire is intentionally started by humans for the purpose of cooking or keeping warm, you learn just dumping a bucket of water on the fire is an effective way of putting it out when you are finished with it.

And that’s all well and good until you learn that not all fires can be safely extinguished with water. In fact, the number one thing that you are told NOT to do, if say, your house is on fire, is to put water on the fire. The reason for that is that most fires in your house are caused by either grease or electricity. These fires burn so hot that putting water on them can cause the water to instantly boil and cause you harm. But beyond that, the most danger from putting water on a grease, electrical, or other chemical fire is that water will actually become an agent that spreads the fire further.

And this is not something that we want when our goal is to quench a fire. The last thing that we want is for the flames to spread to new areas of our home and we certainly don’t want the fire to burn hotter and cause even more destruction.

The leaders of the effort to put an end to the movement of Jesus’s followers faced a similar situation. They had previous experience in dealing with rogue and even apostate teaching. The formula for putting an end to it was simple — find the offenders, discredit them, and jail them. Like throwing water on a standard wood burning fire.

But what they were soon going to experience was the fact that the fire that was burning within the community of Jesus’s followers was no ordinary campfire. This fire was unlike anything they had ever experienced before, and they were soon to learn that their methods wouldn’t work at all.

We are now in our 8th week of a sermon series called “How to Start a Fire” where we are looking at the elements that were present in the world of the early church, and how they enabled the message of Jesus to spread across the known world like a wildfire.

Today we are going to look at how the main element that the persecution was using to attempt to put the church out of business was actually going to become the driving force behind the greatest expansion of the Gospel message to date. Today’s text marks a major shift in the book of Acts, and in fact a major shift in human history.

The Damascus Road

You may recall that the early church was facing a lot of opposition in the city of Jerusalem. So many of Jesus’s followers were spread out into the surrounding areas to escape from the hand of a man named Saul of Tarsus.

Namely, last week we looked at the work of the Holy Spirit through a man named Phillip in the region of Samaria, and how he evangelized to a man from Ethiopia. So that’s kind of the backdrop. Saul is persecuting Christians in Jerusalem, but the work of Jesus’s followers is continuing outside of the city. It turns out however, that this work was not being done secretly. Word was coming back to those in charge of the inquisition against the Church. And therefore, the next part of our story begins.

Acts 9:1–2 NRSV

Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Saul, having likely heard that the message of Jesus was expanding beyond Jerusalem makes a petition to the high priests to give him the authority that he needs to arrest anyone belonging to “The Way” (that is the name of the early Jesus movement) and bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment. He specifically targets a town called Damascus which is quite a distance away from Jerusalem.

If you look at this map, Jerusalem is all the way at the bottom and Damascus is at the top. It’s about 140 miles to travel between the two. Samaria, where we were last week is about a quarter of that distance. So as you can tell, the gospel is moving quickly. Saul is trying to head it off by going to Damascus. But what happens is something he could not have expected.

Acts 9:3–9 NRSV

Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul 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. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Now here’s the deal. Saul, the persecutor in chief of Jesus’s followers — in Jesus’s words — the chief persecutor of Jesus himself — has a literal encounter with the Resurrected Christ. And what I want you to focus on here is Jesus’s tone. There is no condemnation here, even though this man has committed violent actions against God’s people. He just says, “get up and go. Await further instructions.” And I guess to make sure that Saul both waited and was thoroughly convinced that what just happened to him was real and not some symptom of heat exposure, he is stricken blind.

Those instructions it turns out would come to him from another unlikely source.

Acts 9:10–12 NRSV

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The 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, and 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.”

Here is where we find out that Saul’s fear that “The Way” had spread as far as Damascus was well founded. A disciple of Jesus named Ananias lives there, and so God comes to him in a vision and sends him to the place where Saul is staying. He is told that when he visits Saul, Saul’s sight would be restored. Ananias’s response?

Acts 9:13–14 NRSV

But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.”

Ananias is probably glad to hear that Saul is blind. Like dude, our greatest threat is no longer able to see. This is a blessing. Why on your name God, would I go an change that? This man is doing evil! He is infamous, he is dangerous. I’m not going there to do anything of the sort.

I don’t know about you, but I track with Ananias. Why would I go help this man. He’s been murdering and arresting my friends. He’s getting what he deserves.

But God’s ways are, well they are different than ours. Which is just such a very good thing. So this is the Lord’s response to Ananias --

Acts 9:15–19a (NRSV)

But 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;

I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized,

and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

God’s got plans for old Saul, Plans that Ananias is called to be a part of.

Restorative Justice

In the winter of 1995 Sharletta Evans took her two sons with her in the car as she went to pickup her grand-niece. She left her boys in the car while she went inside, and while in there she heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. Bullets rained down on the house and Sharletta’s car which was waiting outside. When the drive by shooting was over she rushed to her car to find that her three year old son, Casson, had been shot in the head. Casson died at the scene.

What happened next, Sharletta describes as an act of God. She heard a voice asking her if she would forgive the people who did this. She said “yes.”

Raymond Johnson was one of three teenagers in the drive-by car, and it was determined that he was the one who fired the bullet that killed Casson. At the time in Colorado, juveniles could be sentenced to life without an opportunity for parole, as Johnson was.

Seventeen years later, Sharletta and Raymond would be the first people to participate in a pilot program with the Colorado Department of Justice called “The High Risk/Impact Victim Offender Dialogue Program.” This restorative justice program allows victims to meet with their offenders. After a long process of counseling on both sides — Sharletta and Raymond met.

3 years before they met, Sharletta received a Mothers Day Card from Raymond, asking her if she would be his mother. She didn’t answer.

After preparing for their meeting, Sharletta and Raymond spent 8 hours asking questions and recalling the night that changed both of their lives. At the end, she said to him “Yes, Raymond I will be your momma.”

In the years since, Sharletta has navigated the Colorado judicial system with Raymond. She was instrumental in a Supreme Court Decision that banned mandatory life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders, and was eventually successful in making Raymond Parole eligible. In November 2021, after 26 years behind bars, Raymond was released from prison into the arms of his new family that was waiting for him on the outside.

Ananias and Sharletta faced similar decisions, though on very different timelines. The catalyst was a call from God and a decision to forgive and trust God’s calling to go and bear witness to these people who had committed atrocities against them and the ones they loved.

In both cases we see that the arm of the Lord, a heart filled with repentance, and the willingness to reconcile changed lives and circumstances. For Raymond it meant a new lease on life and a new family. For Saul it meant that he had a new mission. This is what happens next:

Acts 9:19b–22 (NRSV)

For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus,

and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.”

All who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?”

Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah.

Saul, the water that was sent to douse the flames of the Jesus movement becomes a spreading agent, like water thrown on a grease or an electrical fire. He was sent to put out the flame, but he ends up becoming the thing that is going to move the message of God beyond the boundaries of predominantly Jewish communities. Saul, who will later go by the name Paul, becomes the chief church planter and author of most of our New Testament. Saul becomes everything he thought he could never be -- Everything that he fought against. And the thing that happened to him was and encounter with Christ and the obedient love and forgiveness of one of Jesus’s followers.

I think that the message here for us is two fold. We are all a little bit of Saul and a little bit of Ananias right?

We all battle with the reality that we are deeply in need of a savior. We all have a past or maybe even a present that is fundamentally at odds with the Gospel and the person of Jesus Christ. But at some point, we have an encounter that changes everything, and most of the time that encounter is followed up by the love of the community of God. People like Ananias come to us to nurture us and strengthen us in the faith.

But as time goes on it gets harder and harder for us to remember that we are now also called to be like Ananias. We are the ones who are called to go and be the agents of God’s forgiveness and love. And here’s the thing — we never know how the people that we are called to go and pull out of their blindness will impact the world. Ananias could not have known that Saul would be the man who spread the gospel to the ends of the earth, and neither can we. All that we can know is that God has asked us, no called us, to go and reach those whom he is calling to himself. And I think you know what our response is meant to be.

Brother Saul, The Lord Jesus has sent me. Yes, Raymond, I will be your momma.