April 25, 2005 Third Sunday of Easter

See also: [2007] [2001]

Contributed by Paul S. Nancarrow

Acts 9:1-6 (7-12)
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

A common theme running through the scripture readings today is reversal: the creative power of God to enter into a situation of “wreckage” and open up from it aims and possibilities that lead to new life.

Acts 9:1-6 (7-12)

The core of this story is of course the conversion of Paul, with its primary example of reversal being Paul’s change from a persecutor to a supporter of the Jesus Way. The creative power of Christ, represented as a vision of the Risen and Ascended Jesus, enters Paul’s life and turns him to a new course. Paul’s new course in life, however, utilizes many of the same talents and skills that marked Paul’s life as a Pharisee: the same ardor and zeal for his cause, the same organizational ability, the same ability to persuade people, the same devotion to God’s purposes as he perceives them—the same qualities that characterized Paul’s campaign against the Way will come to characterize his mission for the Way. Paul is in many respects the same person after his conversion as before; what has changed is the context and purpose to which Paul devotes his abilities and energies. The creative power of Christ has entered Paul’s situation, and has provided new aims and possibilities that take up the actualities of Paul’s life and character and convert them by directing them to new ends.

The story of Ananias in the extended reading (verses 7-12) provides another example of reversal, as a kind of counterpoint to Paul’s. Ananias at first does not want to go to Paul and heal him. Ananias of course has good reason for his reluctance: in the context of everything Ananias has heard and experienced, Paul is a dangerous person who does not deserve God’s healing. But Ananias’s vision provides a new context for his response to Paul: when the Risen and Ascended Jesus explains to Ananias that Paul is a “chosen instrument” for mission, Ananias can see Paul’s zeal in a new (and less destructive) light, and he becomes willing to meet with Paul. Here too the creative power of Christ enters a situation of “wreckage”—Ananias’s fear and apprehension of Paul—and creates the possibility that leads to new life.

Together, these two stories of reversal offer insight into the power of relational context to heal blindness and fear, and to redirect energies and passions to new, life-giving purposes.

Psalm 30

The psalm gives praise to God for a kind of double reversal. The main reversal is the healing of the psalmist: “O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.” God’s healing power has entered a situation of illness and enmity, and has provided new possibilities for healing and restoration. But this rests on an earlier reversal, the psalmist’s first change from prosperity to disaster: “I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’ By your favor, O LORD, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed.” The psalmist does not give a reason for God’s “anger,” but clearly sees this downfall as God’s doing. The double reversal of downfall and restoration, both attributed to God, leads the psalmist to a deeper recognition of dependence on God and reliance on God’s goodness. From personal experience of double reversal, the psalmist preaches to the faithful: “For God’s anger is but for a moment; God’s favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

Revelation 5:11-14

In this brief passage, John hears two hymns of heaven. Those hymns extol the reversal that the “Lamb who was slaughtered” is in fact alive and enthroned and worthy “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” The Resurrection is the quintessential revelation of God’s power entering a situation of wreckage and creating the possibility of new life. There is an interesting subtext of reversal in this passage as well: John is having his vision while in exile on Patmos, in a situation where the powers of this world presumably have the upper hand over the powers of the faith; yet John hears the entire creation, “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing” praise to God and Jesus. The powers hostile to God, which have exiled John, are not in fact in control of the world, but are already going against the flow of a creation that proclaims new life in God. The powers that have imprisoned John are not aware of it yet, but they are headed toward a reversal that will bring them to ruin and vindicate the faithful before God.

John 21:1-19

The main example of reversal in the Gospel story is Peter’s conversation with the Risen Jesus after their breakfast by the Sea of Tiberias. For each of the three times Peter denied Jesus during the Passion, Jesus now asks “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” For each of the three times Peter declares his love, Jesus commissions him to feed and tend the flock. The episode is well known and much commentary has been devoted to it. In a process-relational view, what is most striking here is the way Peter’s renewed, post-resurrection relationship with Jesus opens up new possibilities for Peter’s own faith to move beyond the “wreckage” of his denials. In this rediscovery of love in Christ, Peter is empowered for a new life of mission and ministry—not just returning to the fishing he has always known, but being led forth into places he had not expected to go. Even the ominous note at the end of the lesson—that Jesus spoke “to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God”—is part of the reversal pattern: rather than deny Jesus, Peter will witness to hope in the resurrection by dying like Jesus.

Peter’s reversal from denial to mission is mirrored in a general way by the story of the miraculous catch of fish in the first part of the lesson. The disciples work all night but catch nothing; yet when the Risen Jesus stands on the beach, the emptiness of the disciples’ work is reversed and transformed into abundant accomplishment. The creative power of Christ enters their situation of failure and opens up from it new possibilities that lead to greater life. It is that promise of reversal from emptiness to abundance, from failure to fulfillment, from death to life, that animates all disciples’ hope in the Resurrection.

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