Scales
Acts 9:1-20
Click here to view the full sermon video for May 1, 2022 entitled, “Scales”.
Megan Phelps-Roper grew up at the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas; a church founded by her grandfather, Fred Phelps, and attended almost entirely by the Elder Phelps’ children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The church is internationally infamous for its particular brand of protest against the LGBTQ community by staging demonstrations at high profile funerals. Phelps and the members of his family, this church, would celebrate the tragic deaths of soldiers, children, and those suffering from natural disasters as God’s judgment against a sinful nation in which homosexuality was not just tolerated, but protected and even embraced. At the age of 5, Megan was given a sign to hold at just such a funeral demonstration that read, “God hates…” and an epithet for gay men. Other signs often read, “pray for more dead soldiers,” or, “pray for more dead kids.” To her, this was her reality, her family standing up for righteousness against a godless nation. As a young woman she grew into a role at the church as the voice of Westboro Baptist to spread its message on the social media platform Twitter. To show she and her family would be unmoved by the inevitable death threats and rape threats made against them, she adopted a jocular tone on Twitter, laughing about some of these things. There was the expected vitriolic backlash to her posts. But others, seeing the humanity in her, would inquire after her well-being. “So many people hate you,” they might write, “that must be so hard.” They showed interest in who she was as a human being, and not just what her church and family believed. When that happened, when people reached out not to call her out and accuse her of being horrible but with compassion, she started to reflect back that same kindness. It made her notice that when tragedy struck and her family would celebrate God’s judgment, there were others who were deeply grieved at the terrible thing that happened. She began to feel the disconnect between the people surrounding her who showed utter disdain for the real experiences of others and the people she was getting to know through Twitter who showed genuine compassion and curiosity about someone who was a representative of all that disdain. “My mind was not changed by people who tried to shame me,” she observed talking about her experience. “In fact,” she went on, “it made me even more certain I was doing the right thing. Because if those people think that I’m doing wrong, I think those people are wrong, so I’m happy they’re saying terrible things about me cause they’re not my team.” What changed her mind was friendship. What changed her mind were not the people who stood at a distance and hurled insults back at her as Westboro breathed threats and murder, but the ones who took a step forward in compassion and curiosity to hear about her life.
It raises a question about our reading this morning, a story so iconic the phrase “Damascus road experience,” gets used to describe any radical change that someone goes through. Because what happens on that road isn’t really the moment when things change for Saul. What happens on that road is that God stops him dead in his tracks, he falls to the ground, and is plunged into darkness after encountering the blinding light of Jesus present to him. What happens on that road is that God effectively puts an end to his life as he’s known it up to that point. And he’ll remain in that dark place three days before he’s brought to new life. Brought to life on the third day, something about that rings a bell.
Megan Phelps Roper had been stopped in her tracks and had decided to leave Westboro behind. She found herself at a conference when she saw a woman speaking about her experience as one of the parents of the children gunned down at Sandy hook Elementary School in Connecticut. At that point she felt like she needed to make amends for the pain her family had caused so many people. Westboro had threatened to take their traveling side show to the funerals of those children in Newtown. Megan was sitting in the back of the room with her own 1-year-old baby asleep on her chest as the mother took the stage and began speaking. At that moment it wasn’t scales that fell from her eyes, but a cascade of tears listening to this woman’s story of loss while holding her own baby, knowing that her family had declared that horrible violence against children to be God’s will and judgment. She was overcome and sought the woman out after she had finished speaking. That mother had every reason to hate Megan for the way her family had compounded the pain of losing her child. Instead, she showed a generosity and understanding Megan never could have expected. And it made all the difference.
Derek Black was once a rising star in the world of White Nationalism. His father Don had been the architect of the Stormfront website, an online haven for the racist white nationalist movement. His godfather was none other than David Duke himself, a leading political figure in the movement and a former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. Growing up, Derek was taught that America was intended as a place for white Europeans, and eventually everyone else would have to go. One of only a few white children in a class of mostly Haitians and Hispanics, his parents pulled him out of the public school in West Palm Beach after the third grade to homeschool him instead. At 10 he created a children’s version of Stormfront for the internet. He eventually launched a daily radio show that his father paid to have broadcast on a local AM radio station, talking about a white genocide and raising the alarm about being replaced by nonwhite immigration. By the time he was 19, Derek was speaking in front of a ballroom full of people gathered to strategize the fight to restore white America. He wanted to study medieval European history and ended up enrolling at New College of Florida. On campus he very deliberately kept his more unpopular viewpoints to himself. He made friends, and found a place for himself forging armor for medieval reenactments and watching zombie movies in the dorm with other students, including a Peruvian immigrant and an Orthodox Jew. But then while he was away for a semester abroad, word got out that a white supremacist radio host was also a New College student. His picture went up on an online message board at his school. He was shunned when he returned. Friends told him they felt betrayed. Some responses were far more heated. One student wrote on the message board, “I just want this guy to die a painful death along with his entire family. Is that too much to ask?” His response was to let it fuel him, planning a conference for white nationalists in Tennessee. But one of Derek’s friends from the first year had a different idea. He sent him a text, “what are you doing Friday night?” Matthew was an Orthodox Jew who in the absence of any Jewish infrastructure at New College began hosting his own Friday Shabbat dinners for friends, most of whom were not Jewish. Matthew had read some of what Derek had written on Stormfront about how Jews weren’t white and had to go. He decided that the best thing to do with Derek was not to ignore him, or confront him, but to include him. They were cautious with each other at first, but over time found that they enjoyed each other’s company and became friends. Eventually, the other guests at the shabbat dinners would begin to question Derek, much as the users on Twitter had with Megan Phelps. By the time he finished college he made an apology and public renunciation of his racist beliefs. Not because someone yelled at him, or made obscene finger gestures at him from across campus, but because they had welcomed him and showed the same generosity as that mother from Newtown showed Megan Phelps-Roper.
Ananias already knew that he didn’t like Saul of Taursus. And for good reason. He even recounted that reason to God when he was called upon to find him, lay hands on him, and heal him of his blindness. He tells God about all the evil that this man has done, and his plans to do more. But none of that mattered because God had other plans for Saul.
It’s no secret that we live in a nation that is divided along so many lines. All of us, I suspect, have our own ideas about who is evil, who it is we think must go, who it is we consider a danger to our way of life as individuals and as a nation. You can fill in those blanks for yourself. No doubt they include some people doing some fairly horrible things, like carrying signs with epithets at funerals and celebrating the unthinkable. Or saying horrible things about people because of who they love, where they come from, or how they got here. Saul of Taursus had done and said truly awful and evil things. He was breathing threats and murder on that road to Damascus. Notice that it was God who stopped him in his tracks. Jesus who got his attention. Jesus is good at that. But notice also what it took for the scales to fall from his eyes. It took someone who was willing to answer what is always the call of God, to step toward him in generosity and love, in spite of all the evil he had done and was planning to do. Friends, in this season of Easter this story shows us that the power of resurrection isn’t confined to early morning trips to empty tombs. Sometimes it involves an invitation, and a table, and our willingness to put aside what we think in order to do what God has called us to do in Christ. To call one another brother and sister as part of God’s messy family, take some food, and regain our strength together.