“Saul and Ananias”

Acts 9:1-19a

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

April 26, 2026

Several years ago, I found myself in a conference room on the K-State campus, meeting with a handful of Housing and Dining staff. They were in the midst of some controversy as a department because of strife between some Christian RAs were upset because they were being asked to create inclusive and welcoming spaces for LGBTQ+ students. But they didn’t want to. And then some other LGBTQ+ RAs were, of course, upset about it. 

The way it was communicated, over and over, was so puzzling to me. Because they kept referring to these two groups as the “Christians” and the “LGBTQ+ community.” After doing a little digging, I discovered that there didn’t seem to be any Christians in the LGBTQ+ camp and vice-versa. This was puzzling to me because, of course, there’s nothing inherently “Christian” about being inhospitable to LGBTQ people. And some of the most faithful Christians I’ve known have been LGBTQ. 

I recognize that I have spent a lot of time in Christian communities that aren’t exactly “the norm.” And so it’s always a bit shocking to me when I find myself in spaces with Christians who seem like they’re practicing a totally different religion under the same name. It’s disorienting and confusing at best. It can also be deeply troubling and angering. 

I try not to spend most of my time in this pulpit calling out badly-behaved Christians. I could easily fill 10-15 minutes every single week with that, if I wanted to. There have, of course, always been people who claim to follow Christ but appear to have not read their Bibles too closely. Instead of doing justice and loving mercy, they bully others and preach hate. It’s horrifying to see the ways so many of these so-called-Christian voices have been elevated over the past decade or so. When a sitting president who claims to be Christian gets mad at a Bishop because she calls for mercy, you know we’ve strayed from the Gospel. When a member of the president’s Cabinet openly prays for the violent destruction of our enemies, claiming they deserve no mercy, Jesus weeps. 

In this period of time when a horrifying number of White Christian Nationalists have taken center stage, one of the tropes that always comes as a shock to me is the Christian persecution complex. Despite having an inordinate amount of power, these Christian Nationalists frequently complain about being persecuted. Their fear of irrelevancy leads them to complain that they are victims of abuse. And so they lash out by trying to regain control: making laws that enshrine their own particular worldview, all in the name of religious freedom. They never quite seem to understand that religious freedom means we all get to believe what we want. It doesn’t mean you get to impose your own beliefs on other people. 

Reading today’s passage from Acts, I was reminded that there are historic reasons some Christians claim to be persecuted. (There are also, of course, some real political reasons that powerful people want to make Christians feel persecuted and scared. Fear is the driving force for authoritarian regimes. If you can make people scared, you can get them to do almost anything you want.)

But back to the scripture-based imperative for this persecution complex. Early followers of Jesus were, in fact, persecuted. They were a tiny, odd religious sect following a man who had been killed by the state. They were outsiders. Disempowered and often afraid. The Book of Acts tells us all about the struggles of the early church. You don’t get very far in Acts before Stephen is killed for his faith. Jesus followers were at odds with the dominant culture of the Empire and they also were, more and more, in conflict with Jewish leaders. In the Book of Acts alone, we read about the imprisonment or death of so many followers of Jesus: Stephen, Peter, Paul, James, John, Barnabas, Silas. They really were persecuted. Like, “thrown-in-jail, stoned, run-out-of-town, executed” persecuted. Not “somebody told me I have to treat everyone with respect and I don’t want to” persecuted. 

And so, it’s in this context of real, true persecution that we find Saul, “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Saul at this point is a zealous Jew, not a Christian. And he is a persecutor of Christians. Again, actual persecution. He is so angry at followers of Jesus that he’s taken it upon himself to hunt them down, vigilante style and capture them. 

Can we pause for a moment to recognize how horrific this is? I feel like sometimes we kind of gloss over this bit: “Oh, yeah, Paul. He didn’t like Christians. But then he saw the light on the road to Damascus and started following Jesus.” We rush to the second part of the story without really sitting in the horror of the first part. 

This is a man who was actively hunting down people because he didn’t like their beliefs. To hear it told in this passage from Acts, it’s not like he had been drafted into some holy war army and was being forced to do this. He WANTED to go hunt down Christ-followers and arrest them. He took it upon himself to ask the authorities if he could go to Damascus so he could find them, abduct them, and bring them back to Jerusalem to be punished - maybe even killed. 

It’s awful, isn’t it? To be so filled with hate and fear of people who are different from you, that you’d hunt them down, capture them, and ruin or end their lives? 

When Saul has that blinded by the light moment on the road to Damascus, the voice of Jesus doesn’t say to him, “Saul, believe in me. Follow the Way.” At least not at first. Instead the voice of Jesus says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 

Jesus calls Saul away from this violent, vigilante life of persecution. This isn’t the Way, he says. Lay down your sword. Stop the violence. Turn away from the hate. Breathing threats and murder isn’t the way of Christ. 

This feels like an important bit of information about what it means to follow Jesus. Following Jesus doesn’t mean forcing your beliefs on others through violence. It doesn’t mean ruining other people’s lives just because they’re different from you. It turns out that bombing abortion clinics isn’t life-giving. Bullying transgender people doesn’t make you more like Christ. And kidnapping brown people while they’re running errands or driving to work or picking their kids up at school doesn’t make anything safer for anyone. 

Following Jesus isn’t about hunting people down, threatening them, or being violent. Never has been. Never will be. 

This is probably not news to any of you. You probably wouldn’t be here today if you were confused on that point. And yet - it never hurts to say it out loud. Just so we’re clear. 

Lest you think today’s passage from Acts is all about confirming things you already knew to be true, let’s continue to the end of the passage, shall we? 

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul.

Ananias is not thrilled. Saul’s reputation precedes him and Ananias knows that he’s in town to persecute and detain all followers of Jesus. You can see why Ananias was skeptical about the instructions given. 

But the voice of Jesus clarifies, “He’ll be expecting you. He is praying right now and waiting for you to come. I have big plans for him. He’s going to spread the gospel far and wide.” 

Of all the confounding things about this story, there is perhaps nothing more surprising than this: Ananias goes to find Saul. He lays his hands upon him and says that he’s come to bestow the gift of the Holy Spirit upon him. Saul’s sight is restored. He gets up and is immediately baptized as a follower of Jesus. 

It is, of course, surprising that someone like Saul could make such an abrupt 180. But that’s not the only shocking thing happening here. What about Ananias? How many of us here, if told that someone who is known to be a violent persecutor, would go to them and welcome them into the fold? How many of us would be able to make space for someone so different from us - someone who had previously been a Christian Nationalist, for example? To affirm them, welcome them, believe they have the capacity to not only change but make meaningful contributions?

Much has been made of the miraculous change of Saul’s heart. And it is truly incredible. 

Not enough has been said about this quiet fact: it is much easier to do a 180 if you not only have something to turn away from but something to turn towards. It is easier to leave one life behind if you have another waiting for you. People are more likely to make concrete, positive, lasting changes when they are embraced by a community of support that cheers them on, holds them accountable, and believes in their capacity for growth. 

At times in our life, we, like Saul, will be called upon to radically reorient our lives. At other times, we’ll find ourselves more like Ananias, called upon to welcome and affirm those who are seeking transformation. 

None of it is easy. No one ever said following Jesus would be. 

May God bless us with the strength of the Spirit as we seek to walk in Christ’s ways of love. 

“Easter Dreams”

John 20:19-31

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

April 19, 2026

Whenever I start to wonder, “What REALLY happened at Easter?” I think about how the early church was described in the Book of Acts: Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. (Acts 4)

Sounds like a hippie commune, right? Something really unusual, surprising, and incredible must have happened after Jesus’s death…because only something life-altering and earth-shattering would convince a bunch of rational, everyday people to pool all of their possessions and live in a commune together. 

You don’t give up everything you own and join a commune if you’re a reasonable person. You don’t join a religious sect that is counter-cultural and frowned-upon if you’re a reasonable person. 

This is a fascinating thing about Christianity. Because you might look around this room today and think, “Well, this looks like a pretty reasonable group of folks.” 

But if you’re here, there has to be at least one small part of you that isn’t reasonable at all. Because there’s nothing reasonable about the Resurrection; nothing reasonable about following a guy who tells us that we have to lose our own lives to find them; nothing reasonable about continuing to read a book that’s thousands of years old and claim that our lives have been utterly transformed by a person we’ve never heard or seen. There’s nothing reasonable about that at all. 

Thomas – dear old Thomas. John tells us he’s known as “the Twin” which is what the name Thomas means. But we know him better as what? Doubting Thomas, that’s right. 

Thomas has been held up as a cautionary tale (“Don’t be like this guy!”) or lauded as a hero (“Thank God there was at least ONE reasonable person there to ask the sensible questions!)…but, as usual, I think it’s more complicated, right?

First of all, let’s give Thomas the benefit of a little bit of context. This is the third time in John’s gospel that Thomas speaks. He first comes on the scene in chapter 11. Jesus has just learned that his dear friend Lazarus has died. He wants to leave immediately for Judea so he can help his friend. The other disciples urge him to use caution – they worry that if they go back to Judea he will get hurt or killed. When it becomes apparent that Jesus is going, whether or not his friends decide to tag along, Thomas speaks up and says to the others, “Let’s go, too, so that we can die with Jesus.”

Wow. “Let’s go, too, so that we can die with Jesus.” Kinda makes you feel bad for thinking Thomas didn’t have enough faith, right? 

And then in chapter 14 Jesus says, “In my father’s house there are many rooms and I am going there to prepare a place for you.” This is a beautiful text – I read it at almost every funeral. Jesus is trying to comfort his friends, telling them “do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.” Thomas speaks up, saying, “Jesus, we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

Thomas. Faithful, strong, passionate, struggling, beloved Thomas. He is always following Jesus. He’s willing to follow him to death in Judea. He’s willing to follow him to this big house with many rooms, wherever-the-heck-it-is. He loves his friend and he’s willing to follow him wherever he leads. 

So it’s actually somewhat surprising that Thomas reacts the way he does when the others come to tell him that they’ve seen the Risen Christ. He scoffs, “Yeah, right. You saw Jesus. I’ll believe that when I see it with my own eyes.”

I wonder if Thomas felt a little hurt and left out. Here he is, the one who has been willing to follow Jesus wherever he leads and he missed the big show. Why did Jesus come to the others when Thomas wasn’t there? It hardly seems fair. 

And then there is, of course, the elephant in the room: these are perfectly reasonable questions to ask, right? I mean, dead people don’t get up and walk around. It’s a perfectly reasonable response. 

Bible scholar David Lose says that Thomas wasn’t a doubter as much as he was a realist. When Thomas demands to see Christ’s wounds, he’s not so much making a request as he is mocking his friends. He doesn’t actually expect these things to ever HAPPEN, mind, he’s just trying to point out how ridiculous their story is. [1] 

So when Christ shows up and turns his own words back on him and actually invites him to do the impossible….well, it’s one of those moments where the whole world just kind of falls away. Here we see it: two dear friends reunited in this strange and unbelievable way. Jesus could have scolded Thomas, but he doesn’t do that. Instead, he simply invites Thomas to experience the incredible – to see the wounds, to step into a new world where the impossible is the new normal. 

And Thomas, upon seeing Christ with his own eyes, says, quite simply, “My Lord and my God.”

Of all of the statements of faith that various people say when confronted with Jesus, there’s none more faithful than these astonished words breathed from Thomas’s lips. Thomas, the one we’ve labeled as a doubter, confesses that Christ is his Lord and his God.

Lose writes that what really happens in this moment is that Thomas’s very understanding of reality is shifted. His world expands and what he believes might be possible grows. Lose says, “This issue of having too small a vision of reality is what I find interesting. Because I also fall into a worldview governed by limitations and am tempted to call that ‘realism.’ Which is when I need to have the community remind me of a grander vision. A vision not defined by failure but possibility, not governed by scarcity but by abundance, not ruled by remembered offenses but set free by forgiveness and reconciliation.” [1] 

Like Thomas, we are often confronted by the reality that our vision is too small. Limited. Finite. 

Many of us look at the news and wonder, “How do things ever get any better? We seem to take one step forward and then forty five steps back.” Movement towards God’s vision of a Beloved Community certainly isn’t linear. And when we’re in the hard parts of the journey, it can feel downright impossible to imagine anything beyond what’s right in front of our faces. Like Thomas, we need to see it with our own eyes. Unlike Thomas, we aren’t typically visited by Jesus in the flesh walking among us. 

As many of you know, this church was founded by abolitionists who traveled west seeking liberation for enslaved Americans. Our church constitution was signed in 1856 - the ink barely dried before the Sacking of Lawrence and the Battle of Osawatomie. That same year, the popular anthem Ho for the Kansas Plains idealized the fight for freedom (and ignored the impact on the Native people who had already lived here for centuries):

Huzza for the prairies wide and free;

Ho! for the Kansas plains;

Where men shall live in liberty,

Free from a tyrant's chains. [2] 

This isn’t a song sung by reasonable people. Deeply faithful perhaps, but not reasonable. 

It can be easy to forget just how futile abolition seemed when our ancestors began dreaming of it. Case in point: when abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison began to publish The Liberator in 1831, he wasn’t even part of a movement. He was just a 25 year old with a printing press who insisted on being heard – hoping against hope that if he continued to shout his dream of a nation without slavery someone might listen to him.[3]  It was 32 long years before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. 32 years. That is a long time to stay the course. But people like Garrison, and Angelina and Sarah Grimke, and Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth dedicated their entire lives to this dream. They believed it was possible and they were undeterred by the voices of reason. They were governed by a vision “not defined by failure but possibility, not governed by scarcity but by abundance.” [1] 

And if they were able to dream those unreasonable dreams, then so are we. 

Because Easter is a time for dreaming. It is a time for putting away reason and flow-charts and models and statistical analysis and projections and data….not forever, but just for a time. 

Easter is a time to say to those reasonable voices inside our head, “Shhh. Quiet down for just a minute.” Easter is a time for dreaming. 

Easter is a time for opening ourselves to the possibility that things may go better than we had hoped, love may finally triumph over evil, rights may be made wrong, justice may finally roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. 

And Easter is a time for each of us to hear Christ’s invitation to be a part of the impossible. To reach out and touch his hands, his side. To know that the Spirit of the Living Christ is alive among us – even here – even now – and that we are still called to dream along with God. 

NOTES:

[1]  http://www.davidlose.net/2015/04/easter-2-b/

[2] http://www.calonsong.org/KansasSongs/HoForKansas.htm

[3] https://ffrf.org/publications/day/william-lloyd-garrison/ 

Practice Resurrection

 “Practice Resurrection”

Matthew 28:1-10

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

April 5, 2026

Two or three weeks before Easter each year, I start praying regularly and in earnest that God will deliver a sermon. I’m not picky about how it arrives: lightning bolt in the sky, a dream, uploaded directly into my brain. Doesn’t matter. Just, “Dear God, please show up with something you want the people to hear on Easter morning.”

This year, I prayed as usual. I prayed while driving, while loading the dishwasher, before falling asleep. And the same message was delivered again and again. Unfortunately, it is not a sermon. It’s a poem by Wendell Berry. Over and over again, for weeks now, this poem has been on my mind, day and night. Wouldn’t leave me alone. 

Wendell Berry is a poet/novelist/farmer/eco-activist/prophet from Kentucky. This particular poem is one of his “mad farmer” poems - written under the name of Berry’s alter ego. “Mad” because he’s angry about the state of the world. And “mad,” too, because some have dismissed him as a little unhinged. 

Berry wrote this particular poem in 1973. A year, not unlike our own in apocalyptic flavor. War was raging in the middle east and ending in Vietnam. There was an oil embargo. Chile’s President Allende was killed in a coup. The Supreme Court was debating women’s rights. The American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee and Marlon Brando boycotted the Academy Awards. Gay liberation was making strides as the first PFLAG meeting was held in Greenwich Village and psychologists removed homosexuality from the list of mental illness. Oh, and the Watergate hearings happened. 

In the midst of these seismic shifts, the Mad Farmer speaks, unleashing a manifesto. 

Only, it’s a strange manifesto. Doesn’t quite fit the form.[1]  There are no carefully-crafted statements of belief or step-by-step solutions. It’s not linear or cohesive. It sounds more like the Book of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes. It’s puzzling. Like a parable, you can pick it up again and again and turn it over in your mind, finding something new each time. 

Okay, enough talking ABOUT it. Let me share it with you. And if you’re the type of person who does better reading along, you can find it as an insert in your bulletin.  Click to read:

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front 

by Wendell Berry, 1973

I think the reason the poem wouldn’t let me go this year is because it speaks to the choices that are ours to make in the midst of chaos. Berry wrote in a time of unbridled capitalist consumption, seemingly-endless war, government corruption, and ongoing struggles for liberation. The first stanza lends itself to despair. We read it and can feel a bit like pawns on the global stage. Cogs in a machine. 

But then the Mad Farmer speaks about the choices that are ours to make: 

…friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world.

And a little further on:

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

Today’s story from the Gospel of Matthew begins with a pair of women making choices like these. Doing something that doesn’t compute. Expecting the end of the world and being joyful anyway. Practicing resurrection. 

Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (most likely Jesus’s mother) went to the tomb early that morning. Just a few days earlier, they had been present at Jesus’s crucifixion, “looking on from a distance.” That, too, was a choice, of course. A choice to do something that doesn’t compute: willingly witness pain and suffering. 

The Greek word used for the women’s activity in both passages is the same one: theoreo. They “looked on” from afar at the crucifixion. And when they came to the tomb early in the morning, the text says they “went to see.” Theoreo means seeing. But not just any kind of seeing. It’s perhaps better translated into English as beholding, contemplating, considering. It’s watching with intention because you expect something important will happen. [2] 

I think that Mary and Mary were there that morning because they were expecting resurrection. Practicing it. Looking for it. Theoreo. Prepared to consider and behold it. 

I can’t help but notice that they didn’t bring spices to the tomb as the women did in the gospels of Mark and Luke. They weren’t showing up to anoint his body. They don’t seem to anticipate finding his body. In John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene is astonished when the messengers ask her, “why do you look for the living among the dead?” But in Matthew’s version of the story, Mary and Mary seem to be doing just that. They have come to look, see, behold, consider the reality of resurrection. 

They are choosing to 

Listen to carrion – [to put their ears]

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Unlike some of the laughably clueless disciples, Mary and Mary get it. They’ve been told to expect resurrection. To look for new life. To believe in second chances. To hold onto hope, even when it makes no sense. And so they do. They are practicing resurrection. And they find it. 

Notably, this does not solve all their problems. The good news comes hand-in-hand with an earthquake. The women receive the gospel from the angel and leave quickly with fear and joy to tell the others. The fear doesn’t go away. The chaos doesn’t stop swirling. But they are joyful despite considering all the facts. The women are listening to the carrion and practicing resurrection. Resurrection is not just something they observe - they join in.

I can’t help but think that the same must be true for us today. The same chaos that swirled in the first century is still here, now. The facts that we are left to consider in 2026 feel very much in line with the facts the Mad Farmer beheld in 1973. 

And so the invitation is the same: practice resurrection. 

Get up every day and expect it. Expect glimmers of new life even in the midst of disaster. Be unsurprised when you bend your ear low to the carrion and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Place yourself in spaces where you’re likely to find it - watch the ranchers practice resurrection as they burn the fields in Spring. Go down to Be Able to see what faith in second chances looks like when it takes on flesh and dwells among us. Talk to a parent who has come out of an IEP meeting or a hospital room feeling like hope might finally be on the horizon. Sit with an elder who tells you with confidence they’re not afraid to die because they know death is not the end of the story. 

In a 1973 interview, Wendell Berry said, “[If] you come from farming stock you know…when you plant a row in the garden each spring that thousands upon thousands of your own people have done it every spring, and that you’re participating in an act that has had to take place every year since agriculture began.”

And so it is for us. The Easter story is our inheritance - passed down by faithful ancestors, year after year in an unbroken chain. And the invitation is still there:

every day, do something that won’t compute;  

expect the end of the world, laugh; 

listen to the carrion; 

go forth in fear and joy; 

love the Lord, love the world; 

practice resurrection. 

NOTES

[1] With gratitude to Matt Wheeler who notes that the “manifesto” isn’t very manifesto-like in this lovely post: https://rabbitroompoetry.substack.com/p/manifesto-the-mad-farmer-liberation 

[2] Commentary about theoreo found in Preaching the Gospel of Matthew: Proclaiming God’s Presence, by Stanley P. Saunders, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010). 294.

[3] Berry interview: https://www.motherearthnews.com/sustainable-living/nature-and-environment/wendell-berry/