Acts 9: 1-22

Illustrated Resources from the Archives

  • Easter 3C (2016)

    by Doug Bratt
    C.S. Lewis was among the most famous Christian authors of the twentieth century. He, however, initially paid virtually no attention to the Lord. Lewis was, in fact, a virulent opponent of Christianity until God graciously got his attention in 1931. He later called his conversion the result of “the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.”
  • Ananias and the Great Reversal

    by Doug Donley
    There’s a story from the early days of the Nicaraguan Revolution. In 1979, former members of the National Guard, trained in the US, were imprisoned for their brutal treatment of their countrymen and women under the dictator Samoza. Sandinista general Tomas Borge met his former tormentor on the other side of the bars. It is said that he looked his former captor in the eyes and said, “For all of the evil you have done, I sentence you to a life of forgiveness.” And he set his former captor free. In the process, he set himself free too...
  • Look Wayyy Out!

    by Richard Donovan
    We tend to think of Paul rather like we think of Colonel Sanders. When we think of Colonel Sanders, we think, “He was an old man when he finally got rich. Maybe there's hope for me!” But when Colonel Sanders was interviewed on television, he didn't talk about all the money he had made or how many chickens he had cooked. • He talked about driving on two-lane blacktop roads without a line down the middle. • He talked about driving from town to town begging people to try his recipe and to sell his chicken. • He talked about running his whole business from the trunk of his car. Colonel Sanders lived a tough life—at least it was a tough life until he got rich...
  • Conversion of St. Paul (B)(2006)

    by Elizabeth Gentil
    In the middle of Malta is a church topped a large dome. There are a lot of domes on Malta. This one is the largest on the island, and indeed outside the USA it is the third largest in existence. The only two larger are St Peter's in Rome and St Paul's in London. Both built by renowned architects and armies of master masons and craftsmen... The dome at the church in Mosta was built by the townspeople of Mosta. Ordinary local families, who after their day’s work would go to the church and put in some precious time on the building project. Everyone helped, men, women, children. Everyone did what they could to help to create a beautiful place of worship. Together, in this small town, they built themselves a church that is visited and honoured and used for worship by thousands of people every year. You can’t go to Malta without being taken to see this miraculous building. And why did they do it? Not to create a tourist attraction, not to show off to their neighbours, they built the church to honour and worship Jesus Christ, because of the love they had learned from Paul, the only missionary Malta has ever needed...
  • The Conversion of Saul

    by Joanna Harader
    Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor, known for her multiple tattoos, her use of profanity, and her sarcastic humor. Once upon a time she had a Saul-like conversion, was saved from a rough and destructive life. She found herself drawn to the church, yet never quite at home. And when she eventually came to be a pastor, she wanted to lead a church where people from backgrounds like hers would feel comfortable, would feel welcome. So this cursing, tattooed pastor starts a church and sure enough, the people you think might show up did, in fact, show up. Recovered and not-quite-recovered drug addicts, misfits and artistic types, gay and transgendered people. Lots of young people. Lots of tattoos and piercings in the crowd.
  • Easter 3C (2010)

    by Scott Hoezee
    ("The mystery of grace. In later years Paul could not talk enough about what he often referred to as "the mystery of grace". It is the gospel truth that when it is all said and done, God saves people not according to their merits, not because of their background, piety, skin color, ethnicity, or high moral standards but just by grace alone and against all odds...")
  • The Reluctant Witness

    by Randy Hyde
    Sean Swarner is the first cancer survivor to reach the summit of Mount Everest. At the age of 15, having first contracted Hodgkin's Disease and then Askin's Disease, he was told he had two weeks to live. From that point on, he has devoted his life to telling people his story. That story is what drove him to climb Mount Everest. And now, everywhere he goes, he asks this question: "What would you do if you were told you had only two weeks to live?"...
  • I Am Jesus

    by James Kegel
    Who are we to think that somehow we are unworthy of God's love. Henri Nouwen once wrote, "We all have our secrets, thoughts, memories, feelings that we keep to ourselves. Very often we think, 'If people knew what I feel or think, they would not love me'. These carefully kept secrets can do us much harm. They can make us feel guilty or ashamed and may lead us to self-rejection, depression, and even suicidal thoughts and actions... One of the greatest dangers to our spiritual life is self-rejection. When we say, 'If people really knew me they wouldn't love me,' we choose the path toward darkness. But we are precious in God's eyes and all we are his pure gift. To grow beyond self-rejection we must have the courage to listen to the voice calling us God's beloved sons and daughters." If God can call Saul who hated Jesus and Christ's followers, we can be certain that we are not outside God's love. You are precious in God's sight. God forgives you in Jesus Christ, forgive yourself...
  • Two of the Sweetest Words Ever Spoken

    by Peter Marty
    Larry Trapp was the Grand Dragon of the Nebraska Ku Klux Klan. In the late 1980s and early '90s, Larry Trapp took great joy in harassing Jewish people, immigrants, and people of color. He made threatening phone calls, sent out hate mail, and encouraged his followers to commit acts of violence against non-white and Jewish people. But Larry Trapp made a mistake when he picked on Michael and Julie Weissner in his home town of Lincoln, NE. Michael was the cantor of the local synagogue, and Trapp let loose on Michael with a string of nasty words over the phone. "You'll be sorry you ever moved into that house, Jew boy. The KKK is watching you, scum."
  • Sermon Starters (Easter 4C)(2019)

    by Stan Mast
    There are two ways to make a U turn. You can do it the way the street racers do in the “Fast and Furious” movie franchise—at top speed with smoking tires in an instant in the middle of a busy street. Or you can do it the way the country singer described it in a classis old trucking song—“give me forty acres and I’ll turn this rig around.” Saul’s turn was fast and furious as he did a dramatic 180 from persecutor to preacher. Timothy’s was more gradual; from infancy he knew the “holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (II Timothy 3:15).” Both are legit. What’s crucial is that we make The Turn. And the turn depends on Christ...
  • The God of Second Chances

    by Jim McCrea
    ("one of our favorite bands was Mylon LeFevre and Broken Heart. They performed at that concert and their leader, Mylon LeFevre, told a lurid story of his life in rock and roll. He has been raised in a Christian family, but quit having anything to do with Christianity from the time he was 17 until some 19 years later, when he ultimately dedicated his life to Christ...")
  • Seeing with New Eyes

    by Jim McCrea
    One theologian describes that point of view in terms of an incident that appeared on a TV show about the travels of Michael Palin in the region of eastern Europe. Palin took a train from Hungary to Ukraine, but was required to stop at the border. ​ The delay had nothing to do with passports or customs. Instead, it was due to a security system installed long ago when the Soviet Union ruled the whole of Ukraine. They intentionally required the Ukrainian railway to be built using a different gauge from the rest of Europe as a means of helping to deter potential invaders. ​ That system meant that when a train came to the border of Ukraine, each car had to be lifted into the air by a crane so that the existing wheels could be unbolted and a new set of wheels could replace them. It was a cumbersome process which worked exactly as it was designed to slow down travel from neighboring countries. ​ Using that image, that theologian said, “Talking about the conversion of Paul can create the same sort of all or nothing picture, as if this experience on the road to Damascus is the point when the wheels come off his Jewish faith, to be replaced by a complete new set of Christian wheels so he can run on a Christian train track. ​​ “Telling the story that way makes it into a triumphalist tale of one faith defeating another. […] To our shame, this is often how the story of Paul has been told, fuelling the anti-Semitism that has repeatedly infected the Church over the centuries.”...
  • So Ananias Went (Acts 9)

    Art and Faith by Lynn Miller
    In this mosaic, Ananias completes his assigned task by baptizing Paul. The text is "Praecepto Christi baptizator Paulus ab Anania" ("At Christ's command, Paul is baptized by Ananias."). In this version, Paul is baptized in a water-filled chalice-shaped font, a shape popular in Romanesque churches, as the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descends from the hand of God. To Ananias' right a liturgical assistant holds a lit candle.
  • Blindsided

    by Larry Patten
    Back* in 2009, The Blind Side made wheelbarrows of money and garnered Sandra Bullock an Oscar. I recently watched it again. The film’s title refers to a football team’s need to protect a quarterback’s blind side. Nasty things can happen when a quarterback focuses on a receiver while an unseen opponent approaches to thwart the play. But it’s more than a football phrase.
  • Disney and the Gospels: Beauty and the Beast

    by Beth Quick
    At one point, Belle realizes using the Beast’s magic mirror that her father is stranded in the woods, trying to rescue her, and the Beast, who has fallen in love, lets her go to try to save him. Belle takes her father home. In the meantime, the townsfolk, scared of the Beast and riled up by the vain villain Gaston make their way to his castle to attack him. The Beast doesn’t defend himself, too sad that Belle has gone until he sees that she, too, has returned to the castle to try to protect him. He fights off Gaston, but Gaston stabs him in the back. The Beast seems to die, and Belle, distraught confesses her love for him, just as the last petal is falling from the rose. But she’s in time. The curse is broken, the prince and his servants return to their human forms, and of course, they all live happily ever after. I’ve been thinking about the Beast this week, and how he changes...
  • Easter 3C (2022)

    from Sacra Conversazione
    The church is a community of those ordained to witness and convey the love of God as the ones who have first-hand experience of that love for themselves. Kathryn Tanner calls those who understand themselves this way as “the ministers of divine benefit.” In Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, she writes: “…the ministers of divine benefit should therefore be as wide as God’s gift-giving purview. In this universal community, humans should try to distribute the gifts of God as God does without concern for whether they are especially deserved by their recipients...
  • The Raising of Tabitha-Dorcas

    by Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson
    Thomas Heafey, an undertaker, doesn’t know who was more surprised—himself or the young boy he caught. Heafey, owner of Heafey and Heafey Mortuaries, returned from a hospital call to what should have been a darkened storage building behind the funeral home. Deciding to find out why a light was coming from the building where racks of coffins are stored, he opened the front door and two boys bolted out the back. Heafey gave chase but the nimble boys cleared a brick wall and made their escape. Heafey returned to the building and noticed a coffin sitting in the middle of the floor. Its lid was closed. “All of a sudden the lid popped open and a kid popped out. I think I was more surprised than he was,” Heafey said. “I’d never had one open on me like that.” He held the startled 12-year-old youth until police arrived. “He just said one of his friends said they could come in there,” Heafey said. “They must have been playing dead, just having a lot of fun.”...

Other Resources from 2022

  • Unexpected Courage

    Video with Eric Anderson
  • Easter 3C (2022)

    by Kiki Barnes
  • In a New Light

    by Michael Chan
  • Exegesis (Acts 9:1-20)

    by Richard Donovan
  • The Unsaid and the Unseen

    by Nikki Finkelstein-Blair
  • Reaching the Unreasonable

    by Owen Griffiths
  • Easter 3C (2022)

    by Barb Hedges-Goettl
  • Paul's Conversion

    Podcast with Rolf Jacobson, Craig Koester and Kathryn Schifferdecker
  • Empty Tomb

    Art and Theology by Victoria Jones
    Jesus meets people where they’re at: Mary Magdalene in her grief (John 20:11–18), Thomas in his doubt (John 20:24–29), Saul in his murderous zealotry (Acts 9:1–19). And he transforms them. After their encounters with the risen Christ, Mary’s tears give way to joy; Thomas’s doubt transposes into belief; and Saul goes from persecutor of Christians to key apostle, with a ministry of preaching the gospel, planting churches, and writing letters of teaching and encouragement that have become sacred scripture...
  • Easter 3C

    by Bill Loader
    always good insights!
  • Paul's Conversion

    Podcast with Robb McCoy and Eric Fistler
  • The Way

    by Bruce Modahl
  • Easter 3C (2022)

    by Raj Nadella
  • Unexpected Ministry

    by Gregory Rawn
  • Easter 3C (2022)

    by Beth Schlegel
  • Easter 3C (2022)

    by Jay Sunberg
  • Ananias: Second-Fiddle and Ordinary Disciple

    by Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson
    •Viktor Frankl treated his patients who were paralyzed by fear by telling them, “Go out and do what you are afraid of. Expect the worst to happen.” He would tell the agoraphobics, people who have a fear of being in public places, to get out of the house and go to the most crowded market they could find. He would tell patients with a fear of heights to climb a ladder. When they did it and the worst did not happen, he would say to them, “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” That is what the Lord told Ananias to do too, when he told him to go and minister to Saul. That is what he tells us to do too, when we face difficult people and circumstances, and are tempted to give in to our fears rather than be Jesus’s witnesses and minister to others...
  • In Praise of Ananias

    by Todd Weir
    This text asks us to do two tough things. Sometimes we must confront injustice, and other times we go to our enemy and heal them and call them Brother or Sister. Can’t we just stay in our camps and only talk to people who agree with us? This week, how does this text speak to us? I can’t help but think of our polarization and the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade. I come to this moral dilemma with a pastor’s heart as I remember all the situations I have been asked to offer support and counsel. I had prayed with a family when pregnancy threatened the mother’s life, and the parents tearfully decided on abortion rather than risk their other two children not having a mother. I sat with a family after their daughter was raped, and they went to the nearest hospital, which was Roman Catholic. They could not get a morning-after pill. The experience was humiliating for the daughter as she sat alone, answered police questions, and was lectured on the sanctity of life and the evil of abortion...

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