We meet Saul at the end of Acts 7, where Luke introduces him, almost in passing. A group of people opposed to the teachings and witness of Jesus’ followers have dragged Stephen out of the city to stone him, and some of them, we’re told, “placed their coats in the care of a young man named Saul.”[1] And he wasn’t just watching coats. “Saul was in full agreement with Stephen’s murder,” Luke lets us know, and he adds, “Saul began to wreak havoc against the church. Entering one house after another, he would drag off both men and women and throw them into prison.”[2] And in ch. 9 we read how Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, wants to expand the persecution to the synagogues of Damascus. Followers of Jesus’ there were known as people of the Way, and Saul was looking for paperwork that would authorize him to take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. He was a man on a mission. His certainty was unshakable; his authority, unquestionable; his cause, righteous. And on the road, he suddenly found himself thrown to the ground, surrounded by blinding light, and questioned by a heavenly voice identifying itself not with him, the fervent defender of pure doctrine, but with the people he was harassing.
One moment, he was so certain, so self-assured, striding forward with great confidence, and now he was helpless and blind, had to be helped up and led by the hand like a toddler. For three days he was without sight. And then something like scales fell from his eyes—and it was after Ananias, one of the ones Saul had come to find and bind and take away, had laid his hands on him. Saul had his eyes opened, quite literally, by someone he was 100% certain belonged in prison for their distorted and dangerous views of Jesus.
This is the kind of thing that can happen when church happens: The living Christ may appear, disrupt, intrude, may cause us to fall from certainty, take away our former way of seeing things, open our eyes, and claim us for life in his name—no one knows when or where or how.
A week ago, the Tennessee legislature voted to make it illegal to camp on public property in Tennessee. It’s already illegal to camp on both state and private property at night. The bill, now on the Governor’s desk, would add serious criminal charges for camping on city and county property as well. It would be a Class E felony to camp on any public property between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. — that means up to six years in prison and a fine up to $3,000. If the measure becomes law, there would be nowhere left for homeless individuals and families to sleep without risking a criminal charge. And people convicted of felonies in Tennessee face more than the possibility of fines or prison time. They also lose the right to vote, and anyone with a felony on their record faces enormous barriers to securing employment or housing. Tennessee does not have enough shelter capacity to house all of the state’s homeless population, and nationwide, the homeless population is growing. And our legislation is doing nothing to improve mental health services, incentivize affordable housing stock in critical markets, or boost TennCare funding. What our legislature is saying, is, “We’re not willing to do much to help you get a roof over your head, but if we catch you camping in parks or under bridges, you go to prison.”
The Governor has not said publicly if he supports the bill, and I joined with faith leaders from across the state in signing a letter urging him to veto it. I have little confidence he will, but I’ve been wrong before.
A group of professional social workers and mental health advocates wrote in Tennessee Lookout,
We recognize homelessness is a complex issue. Leaders must work collaboratively to develop community-specific solutions that support but don’t punish our most vulnerable neighbors. … Criminalizing sleeping in public is a solution for no one in Tennessee.[3]
Remembering Saul, I pray for a fall from certainty for our legislators, that they may lose their reductive vision of felony and punishment, and come to see the hard and often frustrating complexity of our life together. Like Saul having his eyes opened by hanging out with Ananias, they may come to see in new ways by listening to the very people they’re seeking to lock up.
On Wednesday, our representatives were having a debate about books. A last-minute amendment had been introduced requiring school districts to submit lists of school library books to an expanded state textbook commission. This amendment was to make certain that obscene material wouldn’t end up in children’s hands. There had been an earlier version that required the commission to issue a list of “approved” materials Tennessee schools could provide to students, but it caused such an uproar among parent and librarian groups, that the sponsors withdrew it. So now it was school districts submitting their lists of library collections to a politically appointed commission for final approval.
The debate was quite heated. At one point, Rep. John Ray Clemmons asked what the state would do with the books deemed inappropriate, put them out in the street or set them on fire? To whch Rep. Jerry Sexton responded, “I don’t have a clue, but I would burn ‘em.”[4] Let’s make it simple. We don’t trust the teachers. We don’t trust the librarians. We don’t trust the local school boards. So let’s just make a list of approved titles, pull the rest and burn them.
The simplicity is tempting. We don’t like all these tents and shopping carts on the side of the road and in our parks—let’s just threaten the campers with prison time; that’ll teach them.
We don’t like certain books that present a perspective on life quite different from our own—let’s just put them on an index, pull them from our school libraries and burn them.
Saul was on the way to Damascus when Jesus found him. Peter was fishing with his friends when Jesus found him. What these stories invite us to consider is that Jesus is neither safely buried in the grave, nor safely gone to heaven never to be heard of again. They present to us a world perpetually disrupted by the presence of the risen Christ, and not a far-away world, but ours. They tell us that Jesus used to be somewhere: somewhere in Nazareth or Capernaum, Bethany or Jericho, somewhere on the lake, on a mountain, in somebody’s house. You could have traced his movements on a map. But now his astounding intrusions may occur anywhere and anytime. The resurrection is the world in which Jesus has been raised, the reality of the continuing, disruptive presence of Jesus.
Chapter 20 of John wraps things up nicely:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.[5]
That’s a lovely ending, isn’t it? But there’s another chapter; it opens with a wide view across the lake: we’re in Galilee, where it all began. Peter is here and Thomas, the sons of Zebedee and two others of Jesus’ disciples, and Nathanael—Nathanael who hasn’t been mentioned again since Jesus promised him in chapter 1 that he would see greater things. And now he sees them, along with the other disciples, after a long night of hard work with nothing to show for it.
“Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some,” the stranger said, and they did, and they couldn’t haul it in because of the abundance of fish they had caught.[6]
One of them said, “It is the Lord!” What about Peter? We haven’t heard much from Peter since he rushed off to the tomb, entered it, and then returned home without saying a word.[7]
Peter put on his clothes and jumped into the lake, so very eager to get to shore quickly. There was a charcoal fire with fish on it, and bread. I can almost smell it, delicious.
“Come and have breakfast,” Jesus said. Bread and fish in abundance—did any of them remember that day by the lake when Jesus fed five thousand with a boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fish?
For Peter, the charcoal fire brought back memories of the fire in the courtyard where he had come to warm himself, and three times he denied that he was a disciple of Jesus. Three times he denied having anything to do with the love by which people know that we are Jesus’ disciples.[8] But in the world where Jesus is raised from the dead, this love will continue to be fundamental to Peter’s identity.
Three times Jesus asked him, “Do you love me?”— not to shame him or burden him with guilt, but to give him a new way to make his love manifest: Feed my sheep. When you make a pledge today, when you add your name to one of our ministry teams, you say yes to making the love of Jesus manifest. Jesus, risen from the dead, finds us and feeds us, and he sends us to feed others in his name. Sends us as he has been sent, to be people of the way. His life our life. His love the heartbeat of all things, especially in a time of war and deep division.
Sometimes you wonder what all we affirm and declare when we confess our faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead. We affirm the faithfulness of God. We affirm the power of love to drive out fear and guilt and shame. We affirm the newness of life the first witnesses embraced and proclaimed. We affirm that this newness will erupt wherever and whenever the love of Jesus disrupts our loveless ways. We affirm our hope that Jesus, raised from the dead, will find us again and again to open our eyes and draw us into fullness of life.
[1] Acts 7:58 (CEB)
[2] Acts 8:1, 3 (CEB)
[3] https://tennesseelookout.com/2022/04/12/commentary-criminalizing-sleeping-in-public-will-make-problems-for-homelessness-worse/ See also https://wpln.org/post/tennessee-lawmakers-pass-a-bill-that-could-target-people-experiencing-homelessness/
[4] See https://tennesseelookout.com/2022/04/27/representative-says-he-would-burn-books-deemed-inappropriate-by-state/ and https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2022/04/27/jerry-sexton-burn-books-tennessee-school-library-bill-debate/9554117002/
[5] See John 20:26-31
[6] Funny sidenote from a great scholar, “It is notable that never in the Gospels do the disciples catch a fish without Jesus’ help.” Raymond E. Brown, John, 1071.
[7] John 20:3-10
[8] John 13:34-35