2025.05.04 | Freedom to Follow

“Freedom to Follow”
Acts 9:1-20

Preached by 
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser 
Eden United Church of Christ  
Hayward, CA 
04 May 2025

To you, beloved community, grace and peace, hmm.

Today’s scripture recounts one of the most famous turning points in the early Jesus movement—the story of Saul, breathing threats and violence, traveling to Damascus, determined to silence the disciples of Jesus. He is a man of conviction, power, and control. And it is precisely there—on the road of domination—that God meets him.

Let’s be clear: Saul is not an outsider to religion. Nor is he a stranger to zeal. He is, in fact, convinced he is doing God's work. But the God he has imagined is one that upholds his own limited understanding of the world, and operates much like how he does, peddling in fear, exclusion, and righteous violence. And so God interrupts that journey—not to destroy Saul—but to disarm him. Have you ever had a moment like that? Were you ever convinced that you were in the right and others in the wrong, and you were so blinded by your own biases and convictions that you simply could not see the harm you were causing others? 

Notice how Saul’s transformation begins with a loss of control. A bright light. A fall. Blindness. Silence. Now, what do you think crossed Saul’s mind during his three days of blindness and fasting? What did loss teach him? What did the humility of being without reveal to him? Did he turn inward and search his soul, like Jonah did when he was three days in the belly of the fish? It was through Jonah, after all, that God revealed God’s compassion for Jonah’s enemies, the Neo-Assyrians. In that vulnerability, God is doing similar holy work with Saul. Ultimately, Saul’s conversion is not from one religion to another, but it is a conversion from violence to love, from coercion to compassion, from domination to discipleship.

This passage reminds us: God is not glorified in reciprocal violence. God is revealed in radical nonviolence. The Jesus movement Saul once persecuted is not simply a gentler version of empire—it is a direct challenge to the logic of empire altogether. It rejects the belief that change can be forced at the point of a sword. It refuses the falsehood that control and domination is the same as justice.

La escritura de hoy relata uno de los puntos de inflexión más famosos del movimiento inicial de Jesús: la historia de Saulo, quien, respirando amenazas y violencia, viajó a Damasco decidido a silenciar a los discípulos de Jesús. Era un hombre de convicción, poder y control. Y es precisamente allí, en el camino de la dominación, donde Dios lo encuentra.

Seamos claros: Saulo no es ajeno a la religión. Tampoco es ajeno al celo. De hecho, está convencido de que está haciendo la obra de Dios. Pero el Dios que ha imaginado defiende su propia y limitada comprensión del mundo y opera de forma muy similar a él, infundiendo miedo, exclusión y violencia justa. Y entonces Dios interrumpe ese camino, no para destruir a Saulo, sino para desarmarlo. ¿Has tenido alguna vez un momento así? ¿Alguna vez te convenciste de que tenías razón y que los demás estaban equivocados, y estabas tan cegado por tus propios prejuicios y convicciones que simplemente no podías ver el daño que les causabas

Observa cómo la transformación de Saulo comienza con una pérdida de control. Una luz brillante. Una caída. Ceguera. Silencio. Ahora bien, ¿qué crees que cruzó por la mente de Saulo durante sus tres días de ceguera y ayuno? ¿Qué le enseñó la pérdida? ¿Qué le reveló la humildad de estar sin nada? ¿Se volvió hacia su interior y examinó su alma, como lo hizo Jonás cuando estuvo tres días en el vientre del pez? Después de todo, fue a través de Jonás que Dios reveló su compasión por sus enemigos, los neoasirios. En esa vulnerabilidad, Dios está haciendo una obra santa similar con Saulo. En última instancia, la conversión de Saulo no es de una religión a otra, sino una conversión de la violencia al amor, de la coerción a la compasión, de la dominación al discipulado.

When Ananias enters the story, afraid and skeptical, we understand why. Saul has a violent reputation. But the Spirit calls Ananias to see what is possible in even the hardest heart. Ananias does not meet Saul with vengeance. He does not give Saul what Saul had given others. Instead, he calls him “Brother.” An act of prophetic courage. A radical and risky attempt at peacemaking, that allows a new hope to rise. 

Friends, that is the cup of freedom to which we are called: not the freedom to dominate, but the freedom to follow—to walk in the way of Jesus, whose power was never coercive, but always invitational. Who disarmed hate with healing, met betrayal with forgiveness, and confronted empire not with armies but with a cross. It’s a most peculiar rebellion. 


German Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his famous 1937 Cost of Discipleship, about following Jesus, “When Christ calls a person, God bids them come and die.” While Bonhoeffer concedes that it may be a death like that of the early disciples, as it was ultimately for him at the hand of Nazi Germany, it can also be dying to the way of the world of reciprocal violence. Like Saul becoming Paul.

Cuando Ananías entra en la historia, temeroso y escéptico, entendemos por qué. Saulo tiene fama de violento. Pero el Espíritu lo llama a ver lo que es posible incluso en el corazón más duro. Ananías no se enfrenta a Saulo con venganza. No le da a Saulo lo que Saulo había dado a otros. En cambio, lo llama "hermano". Un acto de valentía profética. Un intento radical y arriesgado de pacificación.

Amigos, esa es la copa de la libertad a la que estamos llamados: no la libertad de dominar, sino la libertad de seguir, de andar en el camino de Jesús, cuyo poder nunca fue coercitivo, sino siempre invitante. Quien desarmó el odio con la sanación, respondió a la traición con el perdón y se enfrentó al imperio no con ejércitos, sino con una cruz. 

This is a word for us today, in a world that often believes violence solves violence, that domination secures peace. The story of Saul reminds us: transformation happens not through force, but through grace. God does not conquer Saul; God liberates him. And in that freedom, Saul becomes Paul—the one who writes, “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). 

On Freedom, Timothy Snyder reminds us that “Freedom is not just an absence of evil but a presence of good” (X), emphasizing that true freedom isn't merely the absence of oppression but the active presence of justice, compassion, and constructive engagement. He goes on to ask us, “But is the removal of something in the world really enough to liberate us? Is it not as important, perhaps even more important, to add things?” (XIII). If that were the case, simply ridding the world of Saul would have made things right. But there’s more at play in the Kin-dom of God, where justice is reparative and restorative and not punitive. The absence of tyranny then is not peace and freedom. Snyder advocates for the creation of positive structures and communities that uphold dignity, kinda like the very house churches that we read of later on in Acts that Paul, upon his conversion, sought so hard to organize. So then, following this, “Only people can be free. If we believe something else makes us free, we never learn what we must do. The moment you believe that freedom is given, it is gone” (XV). It is Christ who sets us free, and we realize and maintain this active freedom via collective action, mutual support, and our shared commitment to justice and equity, in other words, being church together along The Way. 

Until which time scales fall from all our eyes, may God open the eyes of our hearts, and may we still be able to recognize the sibling in all, just as Ananias did with Saul. And may we like Paul sin no more, and live into the freedom to follow Christ along the Way. Amen.

Blessing:

Beloved, may we be so brave as to follow.
Not the easy path, but the liberating one.
Not the way of domination, but the way of love.
Not the sword, but the table.
Not control, but compassion.
Not death, but resurrection. 

That is the radical invitation of the gospel: to live as though love is the only real power—and to find, with Saul and with Jesus, that it is. May you find that radical power of love this week and know that you have the freedom to share it. May the force be with you. Amen.