The year was 1990. The Berlin Wall had fallen. The formerly powerful East German leader Erich Honecker and his wife Margot, the powerful and ruthless East German Education Minister, were ousted from power and their gated community. They were homeless. Despite his wife’s initial misgivings, Pastor Uve Holmer and his wife and their family of 10 children, took the Honeckers into their home. They were not supporters of the Honeckers or the East German state. In fact, the state’s anti-religious policies that the Honeckers had enacted harmed their family and barred their children – all 10 of them – from going to college. And yet, Pastor Holmer felt called, by God, to practice what he preached.1
Ananias faced a similar dilemma. When God called him in a vision, Ananias, like Isaiah, immediately said, “Here I am!” But when he found out that the Lord was asking him to go and lay hands on Saul and bring him into his home, Ananias questioned the assignment. “Really? This guy? But he has done evil things and plans to stop us from proclaiming your name. Surely, you don’t want me to heal him?” But the Lord said, “Go.” And Ananias went.
Ananias is not remembered as a great evangelist, preacher and teacher like Paul and Peter. His name is only mentioned one other time in the Bible, when Paul retells the story later in Acts. But because Ananias, listened to God and did the will of God, despite the potential risk to himself and against his own judgment, Saul was healed and baptized and became Paul, an apostle to the Gentiles and the Jewish people.
Ananias was devout and faithful and an example of how God uses ordinary faithful people to do God’s work in the world and to share God’s love and God’s story. And that is still true today.
Sometimes, like with Saul, the call story is dramatic. He is blinded and scales fall from his eyes when Ananias prays for him. Or like Peter, who is “re-called” by Jesus, and reassured that despite his denying Jesus, Jesus has not denied him.
But for many of us, our call to living as a Christian, as a baptized child of God is not as dramatic as Peter’s or Paul’s. And yet, your call to be a follower is no less a call from God. For all who are baptized in Christ are called to follow Jesus all the days of our lives. And, all of you who have brought your children for baptism, and all of you who have been sponsors or Godparents and all those who have been present in the congregation for a baptism, have vowed before God, to nurture, to support, and pray for the baptized children of God. It is our calling to teach and to share God’s word and God’s love with others. This is what God calls us to do.
Can you recall people in your life who have supported you in your faith? Can you recall times in which you have supported others in their faith? My grandmother was my babysitter when I was young and she loved to read Bible stories to me. Mrs. Olson, my Kindergarten Sunday School teacher, always encouraged me. Don, my Confirmation mentor, challenged me to read the prophets with an ear for the truth and the Good News. When a huge storm flattened his wheat crop, my father taught me the importance of trusting in God despite the evidence. My mother was an inspiration. And that is just the beginning of the people who have nurtured me. I’m guessing and hoping that you too have had people in your life who have encouraged you to listen to God’s word, to trust in the Holy Spirit and not to be afraid.
I also know that many of you have been encouragers of my faith – and I hope and pray that I have been an encourager of yours. For that is what we do in Christian community – we encourage one another to listen for the Word of God and will of God in our lives and then strive to follow where God leads.
This week when I visited with David Bjorkquist in the hospital, he told me stories of people who had encouraged him in his faith over the last couple of years. He told about having coffee with his Catholic neighbor and puzzling together about issues of faith. And then he mentioned the scores of people who wrote on his caring bridge site and the cards he received and the encouragement – especially from a person from our congregation who visited him faithfully when he was in a care center– until the pandemic hit and he no longer could do so. David was also thankful for your prayers now as he is back in the hospital – and he is praying for you.
Another person who I visited recently told me of the encouragement she received from the phone calls and cards and worship materials that she received during the pandemic. Another told me of the strength that she felt, knowing that she was being lifted up by prayer.
These may seem like little actions. But each action, each prayer, makes a difference. Each action, each prayer knits together the community of faith that we share. Each telling of God’s story spreads and deepens the faith of another. It is our job to plant the seeds of faith, to nurture and to pray for one another.
We are called to share God’s Good News in a variety of ways and, like Ananias, we are called to follow where God’s Holy spirit leads us. However, not every action that we take in the name of Christ, and not every prayer we pray or every word we share brings about a transformation in another like the one that occurred with Saul. For while it is our calling to follow Jesus and to plant seeds of faith, God is the one who makes them grow.
After taking in the formerly powerful Erich and Margot Honecker, Pastor Holmer and his wife did their best to help their lodgers reflect critically on their situation, hoping to help them see the harm that they had caused and the alternative of living a life of faith. But after ten long weeks of caring for an ailing Erich, while protests were going on outside their doors from neighbors who wanted revenge and justice, the Honeckers were exiled to Chili because Erich was too sick to stand trial. Neither of the Honeckers were repentant and they never became Christians. Scales never fell from their eyes. So was Pastor Holmer’s act of courage a failure?
Looking back, retired pastor Holmer has no regrets. He remembers Erich Honecker as a sick man and quotes Martin Luther who said, “When my enemy is ill, he is no longer my enemy.”2 And then Holmer said, “On Sundays we pray to ‘forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us…’ Did we really want to pray that and not live it?”3
The Holy Spirit was still working – just not in the way that he had first hoped. The Holy Spirit did not magically transform the Honeckers but instead, it helped a pastor to forgive the harm that Erich and Margot Honecker had done – not to all of East Germany – but the harm that was done to him and to his family.
Brothers and sisters, friends in Christ, we cannot know how the Holy Spirit is working – but are called to trust that God is at work, in us and through us. And that by God’s grace – and not our power – Christ will redeem the whole world. Thanks be to God. Amen.