Our blind side

 

Acts 9: 1-20
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
May 1, 2022

Photo of a person with brown hair and dark eyes holding a golden coil of tiny LED lights in front of one eye and holding their over their other eye.

The fifty days after Easter called Eastertide are filled with resurrection stories, experiences of the risen Christ, Jesus raised from the dead, and the story of Saul is one of them. Even though this story takes place after Jesus ascends into heaven, after the disciples gather at Pentecost, it is a resurrection story nonetheless. Resurrection doesn’t obey a timetable or follow a calendar, much as we wish it would. Sometimes resurrection can knock us to the ground and reveal things we’d rather not think about.



Saul’s vision or experience of Jesus beyond the crucifixion, beyond death, has elements common to whenever God shows up in the Bible: flashing light, falling to the ground, the repetitive calling of one’s name, and a directive of what to do next. Resurrection finds us where we are, as we are, but does not leave us that way. Saul hears a voice, “Why are you persecuting me?” According to New Testament scholar Pamela Eisenbaum, who is Jewish, a more accurate translation would be “Why are you hurting me?” While persecution can be claimed by one oppressed group or another, hurt is a universal experience, something that claims our empathy rather than our allegiance. “Why are you hurting me?” also reminds us of Jesus’ instruction that our actions toward anyone who is marginalized is the same as serving or hurting Jesus himself, as serving or hurting God enfleshed. When we hurt people who are already oppressed, we hurt God and we hurt ourselves.

Black and white photo of a middle aged man with a pensive look on his face, his left hand placed thoughtfully next to the left side of his mouth and face, with this quote "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting."  ~ e.e. cummings

Though it is not done nearly enough, it doesn’t take much to call out those who are hurting people who are already oppressed and marginalized. Laws and lawmakers that criminalize trans kids and their parents, people seeking an abortion, people dependent or addicted to drug use, people who smoke marijuana, people who are unhoused. Laws and lawmakers that criminalize teaching about our nation’s racist history, about LGBTQ history and identity. Media that dispenses misinformation and foments violence towards those who are not of the dominant culture.



And yet scripture is at its most powerful when it serves as a mirror, when it flashes a light on us, knocks us down, speaks to us in a way we haven’t experienced before, and gives us a job to do, a direction to go. What are the ways that we unwittingly or unconsciously hurt those who are already suffering? Saul thought he was doing right, that he was an upstanding Jew, a good person, and yet he was causing pain and suffering.



It is not enough to call out those who do evil. Activist and author Gillian Branstetter reminds us that when we are two months away from millions of people possibly losing the right to an abortion and only 15 months out from an attempted coup while a nationwide reactionary movement bans books and calls queer people a threat to children, we haven’t moved as far to the left as some might think. Many conflate the word “Christian” with “hate” because not enough of us are so bold and loud for love. Jesus might just as well be asking us and the Church “why are you hurting me?”. We have our own blind side, the unconscious and implicit bias that we all live with, that requires us to reflect on our own behavior and to disrupt bias when we encounter it.

Black and white photo of a middle aged man turned slightly to the left, leaning his right elbow on a flat surface, his face at an angle, looking directly at the camera, with this quote: "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." 
~ Aldous Huxley

Jesus sends Ananias to Saul and at first Ananias doesn’t want to go, and neither does the misgendered trans person want to explain again why it hurts or a Black or Asian person explain why it hurts when someone asks where they are really from.

When Saul says that Jesus is the Son of God, it’s more like he understands he needs to practice his friend’s pronouns. When Saul says that Jesus is the Son of God, it’s more like he understands that oppressed people are God’s people and when he oppresses others in any way, he oppresses himself. When Saul says that Jesus is the Son of God, he understands that he must disrupt his life and disrupt the system that dehumanizes and does evil in God’s name.



This is the Table that says, “I am willing to disrupt my life for you.” I am willing to confront my bias. I am willing to de-center my experience and listen to experiences entirely different from my own. I am willing to do my struggling in community, in conversation with others. I am willing to practice resurrection so when it knocks me on my butt, as God and life and love so often do, I will wait for direction to be given. What if the resurrection we need to practice is for someone else, someone else’s resurrection, someone else’s wholeness? May we be willing to practice resurrection, so we may be changed, transformed–a conduit of resurrection power in this world. Amen.

White poster with black letters in vintage typewriter font, one word per line, that reads "Hearts that beat to the tune of kindness can change the rhythm of the world." ~ C.J. Peterson

Benediction – Vincent Harding

(to the tune of "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder")


We are building up a new world (3x)
Builders must be strong!


We seek justice for all people
We seek justice for all creatures
We seek justice for all beings
Even through the trials.


Rise, shine & give God glory (3x)
Children of the Light.