Dcn. Tom McClelland's Homily:
        Friday, April 27, 2007

Let's explore for a few minutes the notion of retaliation.  Did you ever want to retaliate against someone?       And then we'll think about God's grace.

Some of you, perhaps, can remember back to the movie, "Witness," with Harrison Ford.  Remember when he was hanging out in disguise as one of the Amish, who are peace-loving people?  There was a scene in town when some young hoodlums started to mock the Amish, and they rubbed an ice-cream cone on one of them.  He was a big, strapping guy.  But they were taking advantage of his pacifism.  We who watched the movie felt the indignity of it, and we probably felt a little bit of glee when Harrison Ford, who was a Philadelphia cop in disguise, got out and creamed the two kids, breaking the nose of one of them, saying that's what they deserved for harassing decent people.  Retaliation.

You see the same kind of thing in the scripture passage before us.  We have this man named Saul, and what he is doing is pretty much the same thing as what these other bullies and what other terrorists of today have done, and he is doing it legally. He has gotten letters from Damascus giving him permission to ferret out men, women, and children who belong to this new Christian way, and to throw them in prison, perhaps even to be killed.  This is the same Saul, by the way, whose hands are still red from the blood of the first martyr, Stephen.  Saul, too, deserves retaliation.

I think we can resonate and relate with this.  Uneasy as we might be, we feel that sooner or later someone has to deal with thieves, sex offenders, street hoodlums, and fanatical terrorists who harm innocent people.

But there is another part to this impulse to retaliate, and as you read further in today's Scripture, you discover a little man named Ananias.  Ananias has a vision in which the Lord tells him to go to Straight Street in Damascus to baptize Saul.  Ananias says very sensibly and very critically, "No way, God.  Do you know what you're asking me to do?  This is the man who's running around throwing people in jail, taking part in murder.  He is one bad hombre.  He is the al Quida of the day."

But the Lord comes back to Ananias and says, "Do what I tell you, because there has been a conversion here of this evil and wicked man, and he's going to be my disciple to the Gentile world."

So with fear and trepidation, Ananias sets off.  You can imagine how he felt before he knocked on the door — wondering whether he would get karated to death, or what.  Or wind up in jail, or dead himself.

I think there's a point to the story that we who believe in the gospel have to come to terms with, and that is this.  While we are rightly upset with terrorism, while all civilized people shudder for their own safety, there's a dimension that we're called to that has nothing to do with pacifism, but has everything to do with the gospel.  And that is that we are not allowed to cut off the Spirit.  And by that I mean that Ananias was not permitted to write off Saul as a murderous villain, because the possibility of the Spirit to change that man's heart was always there.  He was to open the door, even to murderous Saul.

So the point for us is this: to challenge our Christian conscience.  With all of the reaction that we understandably feel against terrorists, has any one of us prayed for them — for the salvation of their souls?  For their conversion?  Not easy to do, not comfortable to do, but that's beside the point.  The point for believers who gather around the eucharist and around Jesus who cried from the cross, "Father, forgive them," is at least to pray for terrorists so as not to confine God, who has the power to turn a heart of stone to a heart of flesh.

Suppose, for example, that Ananias had not prayed for Saul.  Would we have St. Paul today?  Think of Dorothy Day, in her early years, as an unwed mother and as a card-carrying communist.  Suppose no one had opened the door so she could begin to develop into the beautiful saint that she became.  Think of Thomas Merton.  Agnostic, atheist, living the high life in Greenwich Village, fathering a child out of wedlock.  Suppose no one had opened the door for him?  Think of St. Augustine, who certainly led a terrible, evil early life.  Suppose his mother, Monica, had never said a prayer for him because she supposed he was beyond reprieve, and beyond redemption.  Christianity would have been entirely different without him.

We Christians always have to come to terms with the hard parts of the gospel. 

May our focus be always on God and the presence of Christ among us.  The point is grace.  The point is gospel.  The point is Ananias.  The point is ourselves.