The Islamic Center of San Diego attack on May 18, 2026: Two Reflections

There is something especially heartbreaking about violence in a house of worship. A sanctuary is meant to be one of the few places where human beings can lay down fear. Whether it is a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or meetinghouse, sacred space exists because people long for refuge. 

A place is needed where grief can be spoken aloud, where hope can be rekindled, where children can learn peace, and where the soul can breathe in the presence of God.

That is why the attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego feels like more than another tragic headline. It feels like a wound to something shared and holy.

A statement from Mariann Edgar Budde and Susan Shankman (follow the link) refuses to let this violence remain isolated within one faith community. They insist on a deeper truth: when hatred enters any sanctuary, it diminishes us all. The bullets fired into one community’s sacred space echo through every community that gathers in prayer.

Their words also remind us how frighteningly familiar these stories have become. A Catholic church. A Latter-day Saint meetinghouse. A Jewish temple. Now a mosque. Different traditions, different liturgies, different names for God, and yet the same grief, the same shattered silence, the same candles lit afterward in mourning.

What makes the statement so powerful is that it does not stop at sorrow. It calls for presence.

“To show up at one another’s houses of worship.” That may sound simple, but it is profound in an age where suspicion and tribalism are easier than relationships. Fear thrives where people remain strangers. Hatred grows in distance. Friendship and a genuine relationship become a kind of resistance against violence.

There is sacred power in simply being present for one another. Sitting in the back row of a mosque open house. Attending a synagogue’s remembrance service. Standing beside grieving Christians after a church shooting. Listening instead of debating. Learning instead of caricaturing. Such acts may seem small against the scale of violence, yet they quietly undermine the logic of hatred itself.

The statement also carries a difficult moral challenge: to speak publicly whenever any community is targeted, “without waiting to see whether the attacker’s identity makes the cause convenient.” That line exposes how easily compassion can become conditional. We often mourn selectively, defending only those communities that fit our politics and our level of comfort. But moral integrity demands consistency. If every person bears the image of God, then every attack on human dignity deserves our grief and our outrage.

Perhaps most convicting is the call to examine language itself. Violence rarely begins with weapons. It begins with words that dehumanize, mock, scapegoat, or paint neighbors as threats. The seeds of hatred are often planted long before blood is spilled. Every sermon, every social media post, every casual joke about “those people” either contributes to peace or prepares the ground for cruelty.

And yet, this statement ends not in despair but in resolve.

“We keep writing this statement… knowing that each time we do, we are also building the relationships that will outlast the violence.”

That may be the deepest act of faith of all: believing that compassion can outlive hatred. Believing that friendship between religions is not naïve but necessary. Believing that even after sanctuaries are violated, human beings can still choose to protect one another rather than fear one another.

In many religious traditions, hospitality is sacred. To welcome the stranger is to welcome God. Perhaps in this moment, the holiest response is not merely to defend our own sanctuaries, but to become guardians of one another’s. What can we do?

Let us all seek peace in the presence of the divine.

 

May 24, 2026 Philippians 2:1-13 "Be Of The Same Mind"

The Narrative Lectionary reading once again is timed appropriately, coinciding with what our congregation's vote this weekend on a mission statement. In Philippians 2:1–13, Paul calls the church to “be of the same mind,”

 

On their face, those words may sound like a demand for conformity or the erasure of individuality. For those of us who have carved out identities that didn’t always fit cultural norms of past generations, our first reaction is to disagree with what Paul's words imply, 

Yes, they may seem to suggest an unsettling nod to conformity at first glance. Yet the deeper we enter the passage, the clearer it becomes that Paul is not asking people to become identical. He is asking them to become loving.

I loved my parents, and my wife, Mary, loves her family. Yet our generation lived different lives from theirs, following our own norms and values. We mapped a different script for marriage, family, and showing our love. We sought our own freedom and authenticity. We honored our Lutheran heritage and pursued God both passionately and differently from our parents. I imagine the same will be true for our son. 

There is something holy in that passion that all of us have fully tried to explore. Human beings are not mass-produced souls. God delights in particularity. I always believed the body of Christ was never meant to be monochrome.

Paul points toward something even more radical than self-expression. He points toward self-emptying love with the astonishing center of this passage, which is the Christ: $\text{Though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.}$

Jesus does not cling to status. Christ moves downward into vulnerability, humility, suffering, and service. In a world obsessed with protecting the self, Jesus chooses surrender. Jesus makes this a truly counterintuitive act.

And maybe that is what Paul means by “the one mind.” Not identical personalities.
Not uniform opinions. Not flattened individuality, but a shared willingness to love beyond instinct.

"The mind of Christ” often appears in the smallest, quietest rebellions against the norms of our culture. The world teaches anger; Christ invites empathy. The world trains us to criticize; Christ teaches us to understand. The world nurtures resentment; Christ opens the possibility of gratitude even amid suffering.

Paul’s words become especially powerful when we realize that Christ’s humility was not weakness. It was courage. Jesus did not empty himself because he lacked worth. He emptied himself because love mattered more than protecting status. The cross was not conformity to the world; it was defiance of the world’s entire value system.

Defying norms may be more than a valued personality trait. Rather, it may be better labeled a calling. This is defiance of tradition on behalf of compassion. It is choosing connection over contempt and mercy over superiority. 

And perhaps that is where Philippians 2 meets us most personally. This means that following Christ may indeed require becoming “a fool for Christ.”

A fool who forgives when revenge would feel better. A fool who listens instead of winning arguments.A fool who risks tenderness in cynical times.  A fool who keeps creating beauty in a world addicted to despair. A fool who keeps loving when love seems inefficient, impractical, or naïve.

Most of us aren't called to dramatic acts of heroism today. We may, however, be called to small, counterintuitive acts: to soften instead of harden, to understand instead of dismiss, to encourage instead of compete, to notice the lonely person, to apologize first, to remain gentle in a harsh moment. Last Wednesday, Pastor Emillie encouraged us to notice and lean into these smaller moments, and she prayed that forcefully in her sermon last Sunday.

These small acts may seem foolish in a culture built on self-protection. Paul insists they are actually the shape of divine life itself.

The final words of the passage hold both challenge and promise: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you.” The burden does not rest entirely on us. God is already at work within us, loosening our grip on ego, certainty, resentment, and fear. God is quietly forming in us the mind of Christ.

And so perhaps the goal is not becoming less ourselves, but becoming more fully ourselves through love without losing individuality, but rather surrendering the need to place ourselves at the center.

Maybe that is just holy foolishness. Daring to believe that tenderness is stronger than power and that love stronger than fear. And maybe following that foolishness is a true paths to heaven.

May 17, 2026 Philippians 1:1-18 Embody the Gospel Message and the World Changes Forever; A Sermon on a Sermon

I was surprised this passage was written from prison. There is no elf-pity here. No plea for escape. Paul speaks only with startling clarity about what matters most to him at this moment. The importance of Christ being proclaimed.

That conviction feels almost impossible in a world where we learn to measure our lives by our success and ease. We instinctively interpret hardship as failure. We assume when things are difficult something has gone wrong. Yet Paul sits in chains and says the opposite: the gospel is advancing.

Once again, as it was with Silas and singing, his imprisonment has become a pulpit.

Roman guards hear about Christ because Paul is chained beside them. Other believers become bolder because his suffering has revealed courage. Even rivals who preach from envy and selfish ambition cannot extinguish Paul’s joy, because his life is not centered on protecting his own image. He has surrendered the exhausting need to “win.” The only question left is whether Christ is being made known.

“What does it matter?” Paul asks. “Just this, that Christ is proclaimed.”

Paul’s letter to the Philippians begins not with doctrine, but with relationship. Before he teaches or encourages, he gives thanks. He remembers these people with affection and joy because they have become partners in the gospel together. Even from prison, Paul speaks the language of love. That alone tells us something profound about the Good News in that the gospel is never merely personal. It reshapes living with one another. 

Though equal with God, Jesus does not cling to privilege or glory. Instead, he empties himself, taking the form of a servant, walking willingly toward suffering and death on a cross. This is the scandal and beauty of the gospel: salvation comes not through domination, but through self-giving love. The Son of God kneels to wash feet. The Lord of creation accepts rejection. The Savior enters fully into human pain to redeem humanity from within.

All our human systems dictate to climb higher. Jesus descends lower and somehow, in that humility - in that downward mobility, the world is changed forever. 

That truth presses deeply into Philippians because Paul himself is trying to live in Christ's pattern. Sitting in prison, deprived of comfort and freedom, Paul still rejoices because the gospel is advancing. His life has become less about self-preservation and more about participation in the love of Christ. The humility of Jesus has reshaped Paul’s understanding of success. It reorients suffering and purpose for him.

Pastor Emillie's sermon drew attention to Olivia Mabiala Andre, a 19-year-old asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of the Congo whose case drew national attention in the United States in 2026. Her case became controversial after U.S. immigration authorities detained her and her family in late 2025 when they attempted to seek asylum in Canada following the denial of their U.S. asylum claim. 

Because of the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, they were returned to U.S. custody. Andre was then transferred through multiple detention facilities before ending up at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas.

In May 2026, a federal judge ordered ICE to release Andre, ruling that her detention was unlawful because the government had not properly established that she posed a danger or flight risk. She was reunited with her family in Maine while her asylum case continues through the courts.

Understandably, Pastor Emillie drew comparisons between her and Andre's situations. She preached how it easy it is to become self-absorbed and yet we must heed the Good News for us today, and that God is still at work in us. 

Sermon 

May 10, 2026 Acts 17: 22-31 Babble or Inspiration?

In this week's scripture, Paul walks through Athens, listening to Epicurean and Stoic philosophers as they proclaim divinities. As I said last week, I have recently been immersed in Greek mythology, exploring a musical called Hadestown, based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It informs my reading this week, as well.

Oddly, each story meditates on a question that is top of my mind lately: What should we do when we inherit a world already formed by forces beyond us? We are dealing right now with extraordinary disagreements on politics, culture, the economy, and even religious assumptions.

Paul’s response offers a path in Athens that is neither withdrawal nor domination.

First, he pays attention. He walks the city. He observes. He listens in the marketplace and the synagogue. Before he speaks, he understands. This matters. It’s tempting to either reject the world outright or accept it uncritically, but Paul does neither. He refuses to be blind to either the beauty or the brokenness.

Next, he finds points of connection. Standing at the Areopagus, he doesn’t begin by condemning the Athenians’ beliefs. Instead, he names their longing: “I see how religious you are.” He even quotes their own poets. Most strikingly, he points to an altar “to an unknown god” and says: What you are already reaching for, I will name.

This is crucial. When living in a world shaped by powers we didn’t choose, the answer is not simply to tear everything down. There are fragments of truth, echoes of longing, signs of God for those who look. The task is to discern and call them out without confusion. We can also look for those fragments in Greek myths.

What Pastor Emillie preached so eloquently about the importance of music and spirituality the week before last finds a surprising resonance in Hadestown. In it, Orpheus sings of a world as it could be, a world of beauty, reciprocity, and trust. His song rises in defiance of Hades, whose realm is built on fear, scarcity, and control. The tragedy is not only that Eurydice is lost, but that the world itself has been structured so that such loss feels inevitable.

In Acts 17, Paul walks into a different kind of underworld. Not beneath the earth, but embedded in culture itself. He sees a city “full of idols,” a landscape of competing loyalties, partial truths, and spiritual confusion. Yet instead of condemning it outright, Paul listens. He observes. He honors their longing: “I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” Then he points to that altar inscribed “To an unknown god” and says, in essence: You are reaching for something real, even if you don’t yet know its name.

Both stories recognize something unsettling: humans build systems to manage our fears. And once we build them, those systems shape us.

In Hadestown, the workers forget the sky. They sing, but not in hope. Their labor becomes identity; their captivity becomes normal. Orpheus sings a different song that he sees as true. His song resists a world that insists, “This is just how things are.”

Paul does something similar in Athens. He does not simply tear down their worldview; he reorients it. He speaks of a God who is not confined to temples made by human hands, who is not served as though in need, and who gives life and breath to all. This God is not another idol to add to the shelf, but the One in whom “we live and move and have our being.” Do we believe this is babble or inspiration?

And here, both stories reach their turning point: a reliance on trust.

For Orpheus, trust is tested in the long ascent out of the underworld. He walks ahead of Eurydice, forbidden to look back. Trust becomes the fragile thread stretched between love and fear. And we know how it ends. He turns. Not because he is uniquely flawed, but because he is profoundly human. The world Hades built trains him to doubt. In one moment, that doubt undoes everything.

Paul, too, calls for a turning and calls it repentance. No shame, but reorientation. A willingness to rethink everything we assumed about God and reality. He points to resurrection and to a God who has already stepped into death and undone its finality.

And yet, like the whispering Fates in Hadestown, the world continues to teach us doubt.

We discussed last week the truth about how the world often feels: systems of fear are powerful, trust is fragile and love may falter under pressure.

But Acts 17 dares to proclaim a deeper truth: the God who made the world is not trapped within it. These "underworlds" we build are not ultimate. There is a reality beyond them, alive and active, calling us toward something new.

We may ask if hope is an act of resistance or of human wishfulness? Maybe it is both. Or maybe it is something stronger: a response to a voice that is calling us.

Because even as humans doubt, like Orpheus, we are still called to sing the song. To imagine a better world even when the evidence is thin. To resist is a kind of defiant, creative hope that always carries the echo of something holy.

Paul’s message pushes us further still. Not just to hope, but to root that hope in something beyond ourselves. The “unknown God” is not distant or hidden, but near, closer than breath to holding the whole story, even when we can barely name it.

So in the end, the question lingers: will we fearfully live in some unchangeable underworld? Or will we dare to trust that another reality is already breaking in, calling us to turn, to hope, and to live as if resurrection is not just possible, but already underway?

 

May 3, 2026 Matthew 6:24–34 Serving Mammon / Hadestown

In Matthew 6:24–34, Jesus names a tension that feels both ancient and immediate: you cannot serve two masters. You cannot give your heart to both God and the anxious pursuit of security. This is what he calls “mammon.” He turns, almost tenderly, to the human condition: Do not worry about your life… Look at the birds. Consider the lilies. Your life is more than what you can secure.

What will make this tension alive for me today? I have recently been immersed in reading Greek mythology, to explore a musical I was introduced to several weeks ago called Hadestown, based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (follow the underlined link to see a plot synopsis and performances).

Pastor Emillie preached eloquently last Sunday about the importance of music in relation to our spirituality. Oddly, this "mammon", "two-masters tension" hums beneath the story of Anaïs Mitchell's folk opera.

At its core, Hadestown is a world shaped by fear of scarcity. As king of the underworld, Hades builds a kingdom on the promise of safety. The underworld, with its walls, the work routine, and Hades' order, provides protection from the chaos above. However, the cost is high. Workers trade their freedom for the illusion of security. They sing in rhythm, not because they are free, but because they are bound. It is a world where anxiety has become the organizing principle.

This is precisely the world Jesus warns against. “Do not worry about your life…” is not just naïve optimism. It is a refusal to let fear become lord. Worry, in Jesus’ telling, is not just an emotion; it is a kind of allegiance. 

When anxiety rules, it dictates our choices. Our relationships are affected, and our vision of what is possible narrows. We begin to believe there is never enough; never enough love, never enough time, never enough provision. Through grasping and hoarding, we build our own little Hadestowns, stone by stone. 

Eurydice embodies this tension. She is not foolish or faithless. She acts from hunger. She is cold and afraid. When she chooses to go to Hadestown, it is not because she desires wealth or power, but because she fears not having enough to survive. Her decision is deeply human. It is the logic of worry made visible: I must secure my life, even if it costs me my soul. The two Greek myths on which the story is based provide the drama that sears whenever we take Jesus's words to heart. It is hard not to be anxious.  

And then there is Orpheus. Orpheus lives by the logic Jesus gestures toward. He trusts in a song not yet finished, a provision not yet visible. He seeks first something beyond survival: beauty, love, harmony. “Seek first the kingdom…” Jesus says, “and all these things will be added to you.” Orpheus embodies that seeking, even when it looks impractical. For Eurydice, who is focused on survival in the moment, Orpheus's quest looks superfluous and foolish.

The tragedy of Hadestown is that even Orpheus is not immune to anxiety. In the final moments, as he leads Eurydice out of the underworld, he is given one command: do not look back. Trust. Keep walking.

And he cannot. He turns.

That turn is small, understandable, and devastating. It is the moment worry reclaims him. The question creeps in: What if she’s not there? What if this promise fails? What if I lose everything? And in that moment, anxiety becomes master again. The very thing Jesus warns about, this inability to trust in what cannot yet be seen, undoes the redemption and Eurydice being brought back from death

Matthew 6 does not promise that life will be free of hunger or hardship. Eurydice’s fear is real. The world is harsh. Jesus insists that worry cannot save us from that reality; it only binds us more tightly to it. It turns us inward. It narrows our vision. It makes us build kingdoms like Hades’, where control masquerades as peace.

“Consider the lilies…” There is a song called "Flowers" that Eurydice sings, where "lily white" is mentioned and remembered.

In Hadestown, Persephone carries the memory of another world. She remembers a world of seasons, abundance, wine, and sunlight. She is a living reminder that the earth was not meant to be ruled by scarcity. Her presence is like the lilies Jesus points to: signs that there is a deeper order, a generosity woven into creation itself.

The invitation of Matthew 6, then, is not to deny reality but to reorient within it. To live as if God, not fear, is the truest master. To trust that life is more than what we can secure. To walk forward without looking back, not because we are certain, but because we refuse to let anxiety dictate the story... if not constantly at least for a time.

Hadestown ends with a question: Is it a sad song? The answer is yes, and no. Because they sing it again. They try again. They hope again.

And maybe that is where the Gospel meets the myth.

Each day, we stand at the crossroads between trust and worry, between God and mammon, between the open fields of the lilies and the walled city of fear. And each day, we are invited to choose, not perfectly, not without trembling, but faithfully.

Are we fated to live out our tragedies or do we try again to keep walking and not look back? 

Sermon 

 

April 24, 2026 Acts 16:16-34 Learning To Trust Your Faith Beyond Your Predictive Fears

This reading exists in the uneasy tension between the machinery of power and the quiet, subversive life of the kingdom. This is a tension that refuses to settle into either despair or naïveté. Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man's lyric comes to mind. "Something is happening, but you don't know what it is."

A reader cannot stand comfortably “against the empire,” nor does the passage let us hide safely within it.

This odd story opens with a fortune-telling, spiritually and economically exploited slave girl. When Paul finally casts out the spirit, he frees her from a system of profit built on her bondage.

We discussed on Wednesday, Paul's timing in casting out of the spirit and his motivation for doing so, since the story details only his annoyance at her.  Was this everyday exploitation so prevalent that Paul saw no need to cast out the spirit before? Someone in our group asked what happened to the slave now that she no longer had value as a fortune-teller? Neither Paul nor her owners expresses any concern about her future.  

In any case, the casting out triggers the accusation, the beatings of Paul and Silas, and the imprisonment under state authority that follows. Life in the kingdom does not remain hidden and harmless from the empire. When it touches real life, it collides with systems that benefit from things staying as they are.

Faithfulness often creates conflict precisely because it touches what is real. The prison emphasizes that following Jesus is not an escape from empire, but exposure within it. Paul and Silas, as they are beaten and jailed, are not outside the system; they are caught inside it at its most brutal.

And yet they choose to sing  This is not denial. passivity or retreat. It is a refusal to let the logic of the system define their inner life. This is one answer to Sarah's question posed in "The Hidden Roots of a Different Kind of Kingdom" blog post. Her question wax, “Which battles do I wage?”

Not every battle is fought by outward resistance. Some are fought by refusing to become what the system expects you to become. They are not bitter. They do not despair. They don't resort to violence. They refuse to be dehumanized. Midnight singing is not an escape. It is resistance of a different kind.

The earthquake opens doors and loosens chains. It looks like divine intervention, like power breaking in. But the story refuses to turn this into a triumphant escape. The defining moment is not the shaking, but that none of the prisoners runs away.

This is unsettling. If this were simply a story about liberation from oppressive structures, escape would be the obvious, even moral, outcome. Instead, freedom for many is held back for the sake of the jailer.

This is where the kingdom diverges sharply from the empire. Empire uses power to secure itself. The kingdom receives power and gives it away. The kingdom movement is contagious as well. Not only Paul and Silas, but collectively no prisoner escapes. 

The jailer is not like Pilate, referenced in the other blog post Sarah commented on, but he stands in that same space. He is a functionary of the Roman system and bound by duty, even unto death. When the doors open, he prepares to kill himself. That is empire logic turned inward: failure deserves death.

Paul stops him. “Do not harm yourself.”

Now all the details of the story converge: the abused slave, the unjust system, the imprisoned apostle, together with all the prisoners, and the Roman jailer. Instead of reversal or revenge, there is preservation of life. 

This is not an empire overthrown. It is a story of transformation at multiple points of contact.

This teaches how disruptive faith could operate in the kingdom. Paul does not ignore the slave girl’s condition to keep peace within the system. He shows the willingness to act where suffering is real, even when it triggers consequences.

This reminds me that inner freedom can trigger unpredictable resistance to corruption. It is breathtaking. Silas' and Paul's singing in prison is defiant, embodying a freedom that the system does not control. This is what Sarah described when she spoke of  “roots.” She was right, and here the root is strong enough to survive pressure, not avoid it.

Paul's saving the jailer is crucial. In a world that often divides into “empire” and “victim,” the kingdom introduces a third possibility: the transformation of the one caught in the system. This is a defense against self-righteous fighting. The goal is not to defeat enemies, but to recover people who, like the jailer, may then ask What must I do to be saved?” This is a question springing from what he has experienced

At times, we may romanticize suffering or martyrdom and feel that to truly follow Christ is either to suffer heroically or withdraw quietly. In this story, Paul does not seek suffering. The suffering comes as a consequence of action. And when he can later appeal to his Roman citizenship, he does.

Suffering is not a goal. Faithfulness is.

In her comment, Sarah imagines the Passion in reverse, a world where everything stops and is healed. Hers is a beautiful, compelling vision. Acts offers something quieter, and in many, many ways harder to accept. Not the stopping of the world, but the emergence of a different way of being within it.

A prison becomes a place to sing. A jailer becomes a brother. A night of violence ends at a shared table of mutual respect. In this tale the empire does not disappear, but for a moment, in household by household, it no longer has the final word.

Pastor Emillie stressed the importance of music in political movements, citing the real life example that inspired the film Safina! and other civil rights movements using songs like "This Little Light of Mine".  

Sermon. 

April 17, 2026 Acts 9:1-19 Paul's Conversion, His Call, or Both?

Was Saul of Tarsus’  encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. a conversion, a call, or both? 

While most call this Paul’s conversion, there are good reasons to question that term. Typically, Christians use “conversion” when someone moves from unbelief to belief or from one religion to another.

Saul passionately believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as did the early Christians. Saul was initially convinced Jesus’ followers were heretical Jews who perverted God’s word and will in the world.

It is appropriate to speak of Saul converting from one form of Judaism to another. Paul refers to himself as a Pharisee in Philippians 3:5–6. Likewise, Luke depicts Saul as a zealous and devout Jew who violently disagreed with the early Christians because of their teaching that Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, whom God raised from the dead. This did not follow the traditional Jewish narrative Saul had learned from scripture.

This lies at the heart of Saul’s "conversion". Instead of seeing Jesus as a deceased leader of unfaithful and heretical Jews, Saul begins to recognize Jesus as the resurrected and living Lord.

Luke initially depicts Saul as perpetually growing more violent. In 7:58, Saul stands by as others stone Stephen. In 8:1, Saul approves of the murderers’ actions. By 9:1, Saul is literally “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Saul pursues his victims. He instigates violent Christian persecutions in Damascus (9:2). Beginning in 9:3, however, Luke’s depiction of Saul changes.

Saul experiences a true theophany, (or a manifestation of God among humans), much like we see at other points in the Scriptures (like, for example, in Exodus 19:16–19; 1 Kings 19:11; Isaiah 66:15; or Acts 2:2). Saul sees a bright light, falls to the ground, and hears a voice calling his name (9:3–4).

Saul even recognizes he is encountering God directly by referring to the speaker of the voice as “Lord” (9:5). Saul is profoundly confused when he asks, “Who are you, Lord?” He recognizes both that God is speaking and that something does not add up. The voice asks, “Saul, Saul, Why do you persecute me?” (9:4). Previously, Saul was sure he was performing the Lord’s work, not thwarting it. After hearing this, that certainty vanishes. Compare this to Jesus breathing last week's message “Peace be with you.” 

Last week's "Peace be with you" was given within the disciple's fear. God's voice disrupts differently here. The pivotal revelation occurs in 9:5. The voice of God identifies directly as Jesus, when Saul is persecuting Christians. Jesus’ statements to Saul are multifaceted. If Jesus is speaking personally with Saul, it means Jesus is not dead nor far off, as some might envision in light of his ascension (1:9–11). 

Instead, Luke depicts Jesus as alive, speaking as God's voice, and intimately connected to his followers. Thereafter, Luke associates Saul with images of death (blindness, no food, and no drink (9:9). Yet, those images soon give way to images of life, such as sight, baptism, food, and strength (9:18–19a). This experience is related in Acts three times, another number associated with Jesus' death. 

Luke weds Saul’s “conversion” with his “call.” To speak of one without the other skews the biblical witness and can lead to theological imbalance. Ananias, a disciple in Damascus, likewise experiences a divine summons (like Exodus 3:1–4:17; or Isaiah 6:1–13). 

He initially responds like Isaiah, making himself available to the Lord (9:10), but then responds as humans typically do by making excuses (9:13–14; see Luke 1:18–20). 

Interestingly, the Lord commissions Ananias to relay the Lord’s commission to Saul (9:15–16). Importantly, Saul does not receive his calling directly from God (or Jesus). Instead, God works with and through a fellow believer to reveal God’s will to Saul. This speaks imperatively to essential witnessing to one another, as Pastor Steve preached last Sunday. Ananias’ obedience is pivotal for Saul’s understanding and subsequent faithfulness. One wonders whether Saul would have fulfilled his divine commission if Ananias had not been faithful in his. 

Saul receives a double commission. Saul will proclaim the good news of God’s work in and through Jesus to a wide swath of people (9:15). Yet, Saul is also called to suffer for the sake of Jesus’s name (9:16). Saul doesn't receive a peaceful commission. Saul’s suffering will serve God’s purposes as much as Saul’s proclamations.

In Acts 9:1–19, Luke introduces us to two distinct, yet interlocking, relationships. On the one hand, Luke wants us to recognize the importance of what will become a fundamental understanding of the Trinity. The voice of Jesus and the voice of God cannot be separated in Acts 9:5, and God’s commission does not take place apart from the Holy Spirit’s empowerment (9:17). 

At the same time, Luke wants us to recognize the intimate connection between Jesus and the church. When Saul persecutes the church, Saul persecutes Jesus. Jesus is not far off. Even in his ascended state, he is present and advocating for his people. Some think, “Christians are the only Jesus people will ever see.” Luke would disagree with them here.

When adequately understood, authentic encounters with Jesus change human lives. Those changes involve both conversion and commission. A genuine encounter with Jesus alters both our actions and our faith. 

God’s call to Ananias involved the potential for suffering. God’s call to Saul involved the certainty of suffering. Obedience to God’s call does not guarantee Christians (nor ministers) a life free from suffering.

Something is unsettling about how the Acts of the Apostles tells the story of Saul on the road to Damascus. We want clarity: was it a conversion or a calling? Luke insists on both, and in that “both” is where the Spirit does its most unsettling work.

Saul doesn't move from unbelief to belief. He is not empty of faith. He is full of zealous, disciplined faith. He loves the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet, in that very devotion, he is violently wrong. It is possible to be passionately religious and profoundly misaligned with God.

So Saul’s “conversion” is not a rejection of God but a reorientation toward God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. The shock is not that God exists, but that God looks like Jesus. Crucified. Risen. Identified not with power, but with the persecuted. 

“Why do you persecute me?” Jesus asks. Not “my followers,” but me. In that moment, Saul’s entire world is fundamentally shattered and remade. God is not where Saul thought God was. God is in the very people Saul was trying to destroy.

This is treated like death for Saul. Blindness. Silence. Fasting. Saul is undone before he is remade, and the imagery is unmistakable. Before there is resurrection, there is burial. Before sight, there is darkness. Whatever else "conversion" means, it is a dying and rising. 

Paul is even renamed when he is born again. The story refuses to remain inward. It immediately turns outward, toward calling.

Saul does not simply gain new insight. Rather, he is given a new direction, and strikingly, that calling comes through Ananias of Damascus, as a reluctant, ordinary disciple who must overcome fear to participate in God’s work. The risen Christ chooses to work through the fragile obedience of another human being.

This should give us pause if we imagine that God’s purposes prevail regardless of our participation. Here, Saul’s future is mysteriously bound up with Ananias’s courage. The great apostle’s mission begins with someone else’s trembling “yes.” The church is not incidental to God’s work; it is the means by which God reveals, confirms, and sustains his call.

The calling itself is not romantic. In Acts 9, obedience leads directly into pain and misunderstanding. God reveals a deep presence, especially in the places where the world resists love.

There is an inseparability of God, Christ, and the community. The voice that speaks is the voice of God through Jesus, heals, and is filled with the Holy Spirit. To touch one is to touch all. To harm one is to harm Christ himself. Encounters with Jesus are never private spiritual experiences. They are always relational and consequential.

So perhaps the question is not whether Saul was converted or called. Perhaps the question is whether we allow it to be both. To be converted, again and again, from our certainties and inherited assumptions.

Pastor Emillie's sermon focused on Ananias of Damascus and his faith in following what God revealed to him. Her prayer was for us to emulate that kind of faith. 

Sernon

We bear Christ into the world. That path may include suffering because the risen Christ interrupts our lives, blinds us, and finally sends us through all those unexpected voices that continue to question, with such unsettling intimacy:

“Why do you persecute me?”