Keeping It Reel--Despicable Me

Scripture: Acts 9

Theme: New beginnings

Main points: no matter who we are, or what we have done, or how hated we might be, God offers us second chances and new beginnings. 

Who was Saul?  Saul was a Jewish leader, head strong in what he knew and determined to hold the course for the beliefs and traditions he cherished.

What was the problem?  Even in trying to serve God, he was persecuting others who were trying to serve God. As a Jewish leader he couldn’t see any truth in the Jesus-followers. He wanted to stop them.  He wanted to follow God and others to follow God, but only in the ways he had known before.

How did God speak to him?

God spoke to Saul through Jesus, challenging the persecution, not just of Christ-followers but of Jesus himself.  God caused the blindness. Then Saul had to be dependent on someone from “the way” for relief

Why does Ananias matter?

Ananias is someone who was also obedient to God, listening and heeding God’s leading to go and pray with Saul, even though Saul was hated and Ananias was at risk being with him. 

Why did we pick this scripture?

A huge part of the Christian journey is the first part, the part where we decide to choose Christ, to invite him to live in our hearts and to follow him.  Our defining moment, or at least one of them, is when we stop going only with what we know in our heads and start listening to God and doing as God directs us.  Being a Christian isn’t about knowing all the right things, not in terms of head knowledge, it’s about being a faithful follower. That means we have to go where God takes us, trusting God enough to let our own convictions go so that we can follow.  Saul’s story captures that truth and shows us what that looks like in very concrete terms. 

Saul certainly believed in God. And as a Jewish leader, he would have been well versed in the laws of the Bible. He sought to be faithful in who he was and what he did, but he wasn’t prone to listening to God, not from what we see here in the scriptures anyway.  He knew that he knew what to do. And he went with it full force.  He was not about to be stopped.  So, the only one who could stop him was God.  And God did just that—stopped Saul in his tracks.  Bright lights and temporary blindness were pretty convicting.

So Saul stopped, out of necessity, and he heard from God. We don’t know what his prayers were in those days, or even what the conversations were with those around him.  But what we do know is that those moments changed him.  And he chose Jesus, he chose with his heart, even when all of his head knowledge from before told him “no”, he chose Christ. 

                For very different reasons, Gru was known as a very bad guy and most folks didn’t want anything to do with him. He was mean spirited and only about his own agenda.  He wanted to be the world’s worst villain and he didn’t care who he hurt in the process.  And then these little orphan girls interrupted his life.  And at first, he didn’t see any use for them and then he saw them only as a means to an end--to his ends, he could use them as a trap against his enemy. So he went to adopt them… not for their sake but for his—so he could have the power he desired.  It was purely selfish.  But slowly they started to chip away at his hardness of heart. 

                In this next scene, Gru has to tell his minions that they are broke, and there is no way to afford the dream of taking over the world and then the girls do something that speaks to Gru….

CLIP #4 We have no money…girls’ piggy bank

                This simple gesture starts to change Gru’s heart.  Luckily for Gru subtlety worked a lot better for him than it did for Saul.  Love and kindness started to shift his perspective, and his love for the girls grew. 

Saul needed the 2x4 to the head approach, so God struck him blind…there was no denying something happened there! For both of these men, a powerful moment, one of love and one of divine intervention stopped them in their tracks, it forced them to reexamine what they knew they knew and listen for what the better direction might be.  For Gru, it meant choosing love over destruction, for Saul, it meant choosing Christ over the rules he held so high.

For each of us, our journey begins with a choice…maybe our first choices are to listen, or to ask questions, or to be willing to go to church with a friend, or a spouse, or a parent.  But then at some point, we have to choose for ourselves.  Will we follow Christ?  Will we allow him to live in our hearts so that our lives may be transformed?  When we choose him, love breaks through in ways we can’t expect or explain and when it does it changes us. 

Now, some of us have had Saul like moments. We can look at the pieces of our lives and it’s like one side is here…in a place of darkness, or hard heartedness, or selfishness, and the other side is waaaaay over here laced with love, grace, and peace. 

Others of us have simpler nuances that define the changes in our hearts.  We don’t have one of “those” stories of conversion or change…God has just been part of our story and part of our lives. 

A Methodist professor once said that our conversion is kind of like an old roll up shade.  You know, the ones that were a solid sheet of some kind of plastic, and you would pull on the bottom to make it roll up…you could just pull and let go and it would race to the top and hit the window sill as it did.  Or, you could pull and hold on and help it gradually roll up.  This professor said our conversion is often like one of those options.  Some of us are like Saul…it’s quick and instantly noticeable. One quick flip of the wrist and then we release and watch it fly. Others of us have a more gradual change, one like Gru that requires a collection of moments that finally build to a place where we can see and distinguish the change for ourselves. The light is revealed, but only bit by bit, inch by inch. 

We didn’t read it this morning, but Saul’s story is a powerful one…we could preach the rest of the year learning about who he was and what he did.  But most of us know him as Paul…the one who was changed by God who went on to be one of the greatest evangelists and church planters that ever lived. Gru’s story is a bit different, he’s not an evangelist, but he is changed by the love he shares with the girls.  This scene captures his change:

CLIP #5 time for bed, unicorn story, transformation, kissing the minions

There is no ONE way to get there. God uses lots of paths and lots of people to help us see and experience the love of Christ.