Seeing a Future Drenched in God’s Desire

Image Credit: The Great Catch, John August Swanson

Third Sunday of Easter, Year C
4 May 2025

Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

I have had some anxiety this past week. Maybe you did, too.
On Saturday night Jackie and I attended a public conversations at the Chan Centre. We learned about the tragedy at the Lapu Lapu Festival on our way home that night, and it did not sink in until early in the week. When it sank in we just felt numb.
And then there was the election. What concerned me there was that we are more polarized than we have ever been, and I fear to lose voices outside of the two big parties, because community and politics need and thrive on dialogue and ideas.
And although I don’t usually lie awake at night, I did. And as I lay there, hoping to go back to sleep as the morning – and thus another work day – would surely come, I prayed the Jesus Prayer from the Orthodox tradition, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.”
I must have laid there a long time. Eventually I went back to sleep. Against my expectation, I had had a restful night and awoke with lots of energy.

At Thursday’s evening prayer with friends we often begin with a question to reflect on the week, and in particular where God has been present. The question asked this week was based on Mary Magdalene’s experience at the empty tomb when Jesus called her by name, when in hearing Jesus speak her name, she had recognized Jesus.
And so the question we were asked was, “What would it be like if you heard Jesus speak your name?” And that night, when I had laid awake and then gone back to sleep, I may not have heard Jesus speak my name, but Jesus was present to me and stilled the storm that was in my heart. That was why I woke up rested and ready for the new day. The world was still the same. I still had reason to be concerned, but I knew that I was not alone and that fixing the world was a task too big for me, which enabled me to look at the things I can effect.

In our reading from Acts we meet two people to whom Jesus appears. There is Saul who is breathing threats and murder against the disciples, and there is Ananias. For both of them meeting Jesus is profoundly disruptive to their lives.
Saul is a righteous man who kills for a righteous cause. Not long ago he had approved the stoning of Stephen. Now he is on a new mission and no one is more dangerous than one who kills for a righteous cause. Saul has great confidence that he is right and that others are wrong and that the way to deal with the others is to arrest, deport, and kill them. It is here that Jesus appears to him, and this experience unseats his certainty, for Jesus says to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” When Saul replies, “Who are you, Lord?” The Lord replies, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” But Saul had not known that God identified with the persecuted and he had not known that God was found in Jesus. And so, the encounter not only leaves Saul prostrate on the ground and unable to see, but with his certainties shattered. And because Saul had believed to be acting in the name of righteousness and in the name of God, and had believed that God and his convictions about God justified his threats and murder, we can say that the presence of God leaves no rationale for killing.¹
Moreover, since the question Jesus had asked Saul is in the voice of the victim, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”, Saul recognizes that the Lord who had become our victim stands on the side of the victims of this world. The place for the church then is to stand with victims. This is difficult to accept for a church that not so long ago was among the power brokers of society and that lives in a society defined by the desire to succeed on worldly terms.

And so it is not only Saul’s life Jesus disrupts, but ours, too.
For Saul the disruption is profound. Saul becomes Paul, evangelist, founder of many churches, and the first interpreter of the Gospel.

Ananias is the other person whose life Jesus disrupts. Jesus appeared to Ananias as well, though in a vision. Jesus commands Ananias to go to Saul. Yet Ananias knows that this mission carries much danger. He reminds Jesus that Saul is not a good person, that going to see Saul comes at great personal risk, and therefore Saul is a person to avoid. But Ananias answers in obedience. The theologian Willie James Jennings writes,
“… the question always for disciples is, Can we see with God? Can we see those who are in rumour or truth dangerous as God sees them – with a future drenched in God’s desire?”²
‘Can we see others – including those we deem dangerous – with a future drenched in God’s desire? Jennings tells us that Ananias then goes to Saul armed with Saul’s future and not his own and that the followers of Jesus often have a better sense of another’s future in God than of their own.

It is perhaps not entirely surprising that the followers of the one who in his death prayed, “Father forgive them,” (Luke 23:34) are people who can see the future of others drenched in God’s desire.
It is, however, not how the world works. In the world things are much more static, no matter how often we are told that the sky is the limit.

Seeing the future of our enemies drenched in God’s desire is disruptive to the way the world is ordered. It has murderers like Saul become followers and evangelists willing to suffer for the sake of the Gospel.

Like most of us, I was attentive to the reporting that followed the tragedy at the Lapu Lapu festival. I was not interested in technical aspects of the tragedy, or who may be at fault. That is for others to sort out, and finding fault has never brought anyone back from death.
I saw people find comfort with each other and people compelled to reach out in a variety of ways. And like you, there are people I messaged, if for no other reason than for them to know that they are an important part of our social fabric.

The Globe and Mail told the story Dudley Green, a bus driver and a former security guard, out on a stroll the night of the SUV attack. Mr Green saw many of the victims but chose to protect the perpetrator from people seeking to act in their rage. The Globe quotes Mr Green saying, “I just knew inside who I am, and that’s the right thing to do. I figured once the police came, he would be arrested, and then that will at least lead to some kind of understanding.”
He said he knew if the crowd became violent, there would be video of that, too, and those who attacked the driver would be arrested and charged.
He told a man who’d asked him to move, “If I move out of the way and you do what you’re intending to do, who’s going to look after your family?”³

In the midst of tragedy, Mr Green disrupted the normal course of things because he saw a future drenched in God’s desire.

Then there was an interview. The CBC Spoke to two Filipino priests, Fr Francis Galvan from Sacred Heart Parish in Ladner, and Fr Expedito Farinas of St. Mary The Virgin Anglican Church just a couple of blocks from where the tragedy occurred.
In their voices you could hear that even though they did not see the tragedy, they were deeply affected by the suffering that had unfolded.

One of them spoke of how he visited the site to pray and how what we can do is pray, for prayer directs our attention not only to God but to others and away from ourselves. And he spoke of the need seek community in the face of such suffering, so that no one is alone and we would find strength in being together.
The other spoke of the impossibility to find words for the unspeakable but told how people from the neighbourhood, from all over the city, and from different communities had gathered at St Mary the Virgin on Monday from morning into night, praying and supporting one another.
And he spoke of the Gospel for the Sunday on which the tragedy had occurred, how Thomas had been unable to believe that Jesus had risen and visited the disciples. And then he said that Jesus had come offering peace to those who had none, and that consequently our task is to bring peace, even though “it is hard to think about that peace when the world is in trouble.” We are all sent to spread the love of Jesus, he said. In the midst of pain and suffering they saw a future drenched in God’s desire.

The tragedy that occurred at the Lapu Lapu Festival is sign of a fallen world. But within the tragedy we see signs of violence disrupted, of peace being offered, of personal needs set aside for others, of people coming together, and of people acting with a sense of being called to one another, as if sent – as Ananias was sent to Saul, seeing a future drenched in God’s desire.

We may use more or less the same liturgy week after week but we do so because we pray with those who have gone before us. We are not the first ones aware of our sin and vulnerability and we are not the first ones to pray. But the God who comes to us in Word and Sacrament, who meets us in scripture, story, proclamation, and meal is the one who is our future, a future that is disruptive to our lives.
May we draw close to one another, may be bear Christ’s peace, may we imagine a future not preordained by tragedy, illness, loss, or sin, but drenched in God’s desire. May we, like Ananias or like Mr Green go where God calls us, regardless of the risk to our lives or to our certitudes.

Amen.