The Bad News Bearers
Acts 9:1-20
Every time I drive on Route 303 in Congers my eye is drawn to a Little League Baseball field that 11-year-old me would have loved to play on (I believe it’s called Hemlock Park). Unlike the fields that I played on way back when, Hemlock Park has lights, infield grass, and an outfield fence, so that young sluggers can literally swing for the fences.
Any time I think about Little League my mind goes straight to the movie The Bad News Bears, the fictional story of a true-to-life Little League team of misfits and miscreants. Released in 1976, The Bad News Bears stars Walter Matthau as a down-and-out former ballplayer who is brought in to manage a Little League team comprised of players that none of the other teams want.
They are an unruly lot. The shortstop has a foul mouth and a Napoleon complex. The catcher resents having to field bunts and keeps a chocolate bar tucked into the webbing of his mitt. The right fielder is a fragile reed who wilts whenever the ball is hit his way. The star player is a juvenile delinquent who rides a mini Harley Davidson, hits on high-school girls, and wears a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his shirt sleeve.
They’re coached by a cynical, self-loathing alcoholic who cleans pools for a living and agrees to manage only because one of the players’ fathers secretly pays him. His best pitcher, a girl, is the daughter of his ex-girlfriend, and is so desperate for a father figure that she’ll take whatever he can give her, even if it’s only resentment.
Although the words “God” and “Jesus” are never mentioned—unless it’s the Lord’s name being taken in vain—The Bad News Bears is a movie that preaches grace through and through. Players who were rejected by all the other teams as unfit and undeserving find acceptance on the Bears. On a team comprised entirely of outcasts, everyone becomes an insider.
What was true for the Bad News Bears is true for all disciples of Jesus Christ because Jesus welcomes the unfit and the undeserving. That’s the whole point of the grace that is the heart of the gospel. Whatever sins and failures litter your past, they do not disqualify you from receiving the grace of Jesus Christ nor from being used as an instrument of that grace, because God does not call the qualified, God qualifies those whom God calls. And as we’ll soon see, God calls some exceptionally unqualified people.
The Lectionary this week makes it hard for preachers like me who like to preach on just one passage. Both the reading from Acts and the Gospel reading from John speak of a wondrous grace that keeps no record of wrongs, no matter how serious. It would be a joy to preach from either text. I was at first going to preach on the reading from John, which includes the story of Peter’s restoration—a favorite of mine. The disciple who famously three times denied knowing Jesus is given three opportunities to affirm him by answering Jesus’ question, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
While I am going to allude to that story, I want to focus on the passage from Acts, which tells of Saul’s conversion. Before he was the Apostle Paul, he was first the Pharisee Saul. As he is introduced to us at the beginning of chapter 9, Saul is “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” That’s not hyperbole. The first appearance of Saul in the Book of Acts is as a witness to the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Paul did not participate in the stoning, but he looked on approvingly.
Saul soon moves from bystander to perpetrator. Acts 8:3 describes Saul as “ravaging the church,” going house to house rooting out followers of Christ like a Gestapo officer searching for Jews in occupied France. When he finds them—men and women—he drags them off to prison.
As we encounter Saul here in chapter 9, he requests from the high priest in Jerusalem letters of introduction to synagogues in Damascus, way up north in Syria, so that he can search for followers of Christ there as well. What this tells us is that already the gospel has spread beyond Jerusalem, beyond Galilee, where most of the disciples are from, all the way to Syria. Saul wants to stop it there before it can spread even further.
As he is making his way to Damascus, Saul is suddenly blinded by an overpowering light from heaven. You know how when you’re driving at night and the LED high-beam headlights of oncoming traffic can blind you? It’s like that, only I imagine that the light of heaven is of an even higher wattage. Saul loses control and has a head-on collision with the grace of God. The impact is such that he is thrown to the ground.
Saul, who has never met a follower of Christ he wouldn’t persecute, is now confronted by the voice of Christ himself, a voice that says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Jesus, it seems, takes the persecution of his followers personally. It’s not only his followers who suffer, but he does as well. It brings to mind the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats from Matthew 25, in which how people respond to those in need—with compassion or indifference—is felt by Jesus himself. “When was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?” “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”
Now, at this point, Saul, given how merciless he’s been to the followers of Christ, is probably thinking that he’s about to be on the receiving end of a lightning bolt right between the eyes. But rather than facing destruction, Saul is given instruction. He is to get up and continue on to the city, where he will be told what to do. There’s just one problem…he can’t see. He has been blinded by God’s high beams. And so, this man who had gleefully shackled the hands of Christians must now be led by the hand like a helpless child.
In Damascus Saul is to meet with a follower of Christ named Ananias. Ananias experiences a vision from the Lord in which he is told where to meet Saul and that he is to lay hands on him and restore his sight.
God does not call the qualified, God qualifies those whom God calls.
Ananias doesn’t like this idea. He’s heard of Saul, whose reputation precedes him. Ananias knows that Saul is bad news. He’s trouble. “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.”
In other words, Ananias is saying, “You do realize who this man Saul is, don’t you? You know that he arrests and imprisons those who follow Christ. Do you really think sending me to him is a good idea?”
Ananias is concerned, and justifiably so. He thinks he’s being sent into the lion’s den in which the lion is waiting for him. He knows that Saul has been empowered to seek out followers of Christ in Damascus. How can God ask Ananias to meet with this monster? What would the Prince of Peace have to do with a violent thug like Saul?
Or a weak-kneed coward like Peter? At the Last Supper, Peter declared to Jesus that even if all the other disciples abandoned him, he never would. Even if he had to die with Jesus, he would gladly do so. “You can count on me, Lord!” And yet, before the sun rose the next morning, Peter three times denied having any association with Jesus. “I tell you I do not know the man!”
How could Jesus ever again trust Peter after he failed so spectacularly?
Or what about you? Didn’t you ever make a promise to God that you didn’t keep? Of course, you made the promise in good faith. You didn’t expect not to keep your word. It…just…happened. Trust me, you are not alone.
Or think of the way that you struggle with the same sin over and over again—two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, two steps back—only to find yourself right back where you started. I have walked that path. We all have.
As I said earlier, God does not call the qualified, God qualifies those whom God calls. And as sure as Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, God calls Saul, the notorious persecutor of Christ’s followers, to be his witness. Despite the entirely reasonable protests of Ananias against visiting Saul, the Lord commands him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.”
He is an instrument. He is a tool that God will use to accomplish what God wills. Saul is not even the subject of his own conversion! He is an instrument that God will use to proclaim forgiveness and reconciliation in Jesus’ name. This man whose reputation among Christians was nothing but bad news, will bear the good news of God’s forgiveness to Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.
Peter, as well, despite his notorious failure, is an instrument of that same grace. He too is commissioned in service to the Savior he denied. In the Gospel of John, the risen Jesus appears to the disciples three times. In the house in which they’ve locked themselves, he appears to all the disciples minus Thomas. He then returns to the house, this time in the presence of Thomas. He returns once more to all the disciples along the seashore. There beside a charcoal fire, much like the one by which Peter warmed himself the night that he denied his Lord, Jesus says to him:
“Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
16 A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.”
17 He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
Even denying Christ is not a dealbreaker as far as Christ is concerned! Christ will call into his service cowards like Peter, zealots like Saul, and sinners of all shapes and sizes…even sinners like you and me.