Acts 9:1–20
Saint John 21:1–19
Amare is a teenager who had a problem.
To the rest of the world he looks like he has it made. He was living a “bachelor pad with three other teenage males.” Meals and snacks were served up daily by a devoted staff who took care of his every need. But, with all this time on his hands and everything taken care of Amare developed an addition to cell phones.
They weren’t his cell phones because he is a 400-pound gorilla who lives at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The cell phones belong to the visitors.
“Guests at the zoo’s Regenstein Center for African Apes have delighted in Amare’s keen interest in seeing their photos and videos.” an article in The Chicago Tribune reported. So they shared them with him by holding up their phones so that he could have a look. Gradually he was spending his days “sitting in one corner of the habitat glued to guests’ phones ... increasingly distracted to the point that he disengaged from his frat mates.” This withdrawal along with his “increasingly sedentary behavior”1 became a cause for concern.
Amare was becoming increasingly more isolated and wisely the humans who were charged with his well-being took action. They knew the dangers social isolation can bring and so do we.
I’m thinking of that person who used to call, or text, or stop over regularly who hasn’t been heard from for days, or even weeks. When we reach out there is only their voicemail to leave a message on and when we work up the nerve to text and ask, “Is everything alright?” their response is only a “sure, fine, why?” Short of camping out in front of their house or banging on their front door, if you’re like me, you don’t know what else there is to do.
More dangerous still is the isolation of some leaders. Not just the ones who keep their own council but those who have surrounded themselves with Sycophants, “toadies”, who tell them only what they want to hear. Evidence to the contrary they may become more and more entrenched in their beliefs that the war they started is going well or that they won the election because there is no one around them who is willing, or courageous, enough to tell them the truth. So, they sink deeper and deeper into their isolationist delusions.
Small scale or large-scale isolation is dangerous and can cause us to do awful things like walking down a road “threatening with every breath and eager to destroy every Christian.”2
This has been Saul modus operandi since we first caught a glimpse of him, standing off to the side, holding the coats of those who were in the process of stoning the first martyr for Jesus’ cause, Stephen. “He not only approved of Stephen’s death but also led a violent persecution of the community. ‘But Saul was ravaging the church, entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”3
In his wonderful new commentary on the book of Acts, Willie James Jennings said of Saul: “He killed in the name of righteousness. No one is more dangerous than one with the power to take life... Such a person is a closed circle relying on the inner coherence of their logic.”4
Saul was listening to his own inner voice and that voice was leading him astray causing him to become more and more isolated as a man on a mission. This Jesus guy and his followers are a threat to the old order, he kept telling himself. In his isolation he comes to believe that he, and he alone, can fix this.
Fortunately, he doesn’t get very far before he gets knocked off his high horse.
I love the way the 17th century painter Caravaggio depicted this. Saul is flat on his back with his arms reaching for the sky. His horse is almost stepping on him and his companions, who only shared the road and not his convictions, are staring down as if to say, “What in the world just happened to you?”
Saul’s world is being turned upside down but that does not happen in isolation. He may have to spend a few more days alone, thinking about what he has done and doing some real soul searching, but then Saul must become a part of a community.
While Saul is being confronted by Jesus’ voice another man is really being challenged.
Ananias is already living in that community. He too gets a word from the Lord, but this word is not given in isolation. There are other followers around and, even the job was his and his alone to do, there can be little doubt that their presence gave him courage.
That is why communities like the church exist. The temptations we face to become isolated may be even stronger than those faced in Jesus’ time. We can become isolated from each other, like poor Amare, by our phones. We can become isolated from each other, like Saul, blinded to the other person’s position or by the party to which we belong to or the news sources we listen to.
Saul might have had theological differences with members of the Way, but it was his inability to see past those differences and relate to their humanity that engendered his hatred for them. In confronting Saul, the voice from heaven challenges him to see them through new eyes as people worthy of respect.5
It is hard to be isolated from someone who wants the best for you.
Ananias’ comes and addresses Saul as “brother.” He is inviting him to break out of his isolation and become part of the new family that God is creating.
It is important for us to see that today’s Gospel reminds us that this family almost never got off the ground. The disciples by the sea were isolated by their own thinking.
As Dr. William H. Willimon reminds us. For them it was back “to business as usual, doing what they were doing before they met Jesus. ‘Well, it was a good trip while it lasted,’ perhaps they said. ‘But we didn’t get him elected Messiah. It’s over. Back to fishing as usual. At least they will have better luck mending their fishing nets than they had changing the world with Jesus.”6
Their mission looks like it's over until a figure appears to them on the beach.
Way back in the recesses of their memory they might have been thinking. Something like this happened with Jesus, didn’t it? When they first met him, after a long night of fishing with nothing to show for it, didn’t Jesus climb into their boat, uninvited and unannounced, and tell them to do the very same thing? Didn’t Jesus once tell them that a better catch could be had on the other side of the boat and there was? Now this shadowy figure was telling them about the very same thing with the exact same results!
Their conclusion: “It is the Lord.”
Suddenly pandemonium is breaking out and community is being restored. There is splashing of bodies wading through the waves. There is hauling of boats and bewilderment over an enormous catch where once there was none. No longer were they isolated from each other by sadness and despair, but a post-Easter brunch is being served with Jesus as the host!
Jesus came to them just as he came to Saul and gave them exactly what they needed – a resurrection restoration – where they broke out of their isolation and reentered the world seeing it in a vastly different way than they did before Jesus came to them.
Amare’s caregivers at the Lincoln Park Zoo installed a temporary barrier creating a buffer zone between him and his human visitors where he could no longer see their phones and they noticed positive changes in him almost immediately.
Stephen Ross, director of the Fisher Centre for the Study and Conservation of Apes, noticed the change in his teenage charge right away.
“Amare is realizing that it’s not really worth it for him to sit there in that corner, waiting for someone to come up and show him their phone,” Ross said, noting Amare’s increased enthusiasm for “being a gorilla” by going outside more and interacting with his group mates.
What’s the difference between a 400-pound gorilla and the first followers of Jesus? Amare went back to his tribe, to his fellow gorillas whom he had been with for a long time. Saul and the disciples’ barriers were broken down they were sent out, into the world, to people outside of the tribe.
The followers of Jesus were to do what he did and reach across religious boundaries and cultural barriers. They were to talk to people, and eat with people, who they might never have thought of socializing with before. They were to proclaim the message of a Resurrection Restoration to all people knowing that no matter where they went – fishing, to the beach, or down the road – Jesus would be with them and, if they strayed, he would bring them back.
No matter where we are, no matter where we go, Jesus is always restoring us. From the isolated life of cell phones, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and tweets he is restoring us.
From the factions that divide he is restoring us.
From the anger and hate that separates class, color, identity, orientation, or faction he is restoring us.
From all the keeps us from following God’s will and way and he is restoring us.
But first he is inviting us: “Come and have breakfast.”
So come, have breakfast with Jesus so that, refreshed by him you, can go and participate in his Resurrection Restoration that is taking place even as we speak.
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1. Lauren Warnecke, “Screen Time? Gorilla Fixated,” The Chicago Tribune March 14, 2022, https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/museums/ct-ent-gorilla-screen-time-lincoln-park-zoo-20220414-upsef6scabhztevvwtdgwf6yrq-story.html.
2. Acts 9:1. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. {Carol Stream, IL,: Tyndale House Publishers Inc., 1977}]
3. William H. Willimon, Acts: Interpretation Bible Commentary for Preaching and Teaching. (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1988), 74.
4. Willie James Jennings, in Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017).
5. Raj Nadella, “Commentary on Acts 9:1-6 [7-20],” Working Preacher from Luther Seminary (Luther Theological Seminary, April 13, 2022), https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-acts-91-6-7-20-5.
6. William H. Willimon, “Resurrection Vocation,” Ministry Matters™ | Christian Resources for Church Leaders, accessed April 29, 2022, https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/11186/may-1-2022-resurrection-vocation.
Sermon preached at Irving Park Lutheran Church
May 1, 2022
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