It was, as I have said, an uncomfortable moment, but not because my neighbor of the past 52 summers was asking me to take a full day out of my vacation to drive him to Pennsylvania and back – he didn’t ask. He would have thought that it would be too much too ask, and so he wouldn’t think of it. But it was quite clear to me that this was the only solution to the situation; and it was equally clear to me that I did not want to give up a day of vacation with my family to do this. And it was just as clear that I know that I, by nature, am not one to step forward in a situation like this. Hey, I wish my nature were otherwise, and I know that there a lot of folk, many of you sitting right here today, who by nature would have jumped all over this. I am just way too self-centered, and so of course I tried to figure a way out of this dilemma.

Ananias had his own dilemma on his hands. We don’t know anything about Ananias’ background, beyond that he is living in Damascus, Syria, and is a member of a small group of followers of the risen Christ, part of a group known as “The Way” – a group that is being persecuted by their fellow Jews, a persecution that has just included the death, by stoning, of Stephen in Jerusalem. Their chief persecutor was a man named Saul, who has just received special permission from the high priest to extend his persecution up into Damascus. Ananias and his fellow disciples are squarely in Saul’s cross-hairs.

And then Ananias has his own encounter with Christ, and everything changes. He is a given a commission, a mission of reconciliation – he is to go to Saul and bring healing to this enemy. He is to cure Saul of his blindness – a blindness of vision, yes, but also blindness to God’s purpose for him and his life.

Ananias is not pleased. He resists. He tries to talk Christ out of this lunacy. He knows of Saul’s past; he fears that Saul will continue in Damascus what he had started in Jerusalem; in his heart, he knows how unfair it is that this persecutor be spared from what he has coming to him. But Christ insists: Saul has been chosen to be an instrument for spreading the gospel, and the first step towards this entails the commissioning of Ananias – insignificant, a mere footnote in history, never to be mentioned again in the entire Bible, Ananias – for this task of healing.

Back to that porch on the Jersey Shore, and to my comparatively trivial dilemma. Friends, when push came to shove, when the question could no longer be avoided and I had to decide whether I was not just going to talk the talk, but also walk the walk, I have to confess that it was not Jesus, per se, that tipped the scales for me – I was not asking myself, “What would Jesus do?” Frankly, I have little illusion that Jesus is a role model that I could ever live up, I know myself too well; I know that I find Jesus to be a bit too remote for me, at least as a historical figure. No, what tipped the scales for me, sitting there on that porch next to the cottage where I had grown up and matured and learned how to be in the world, was not Jesus, but Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob was my mother’s only brother, and my only uncle. A life-long bachelor, everyone knew Uncle Bob as kind, generous, giving, always willing to do the right thing, but always wanting to do so out of the spotlight. Faith was important to him, and if his worship attendance was irregular (which it was), he embodied in his living what used to be referred to as “Christian virtues” – humility, gratitude, sharing, compassion, service, joy. Uncle Bob had summered in that cottage as a boy, and as a grown-up he would come down on many weekends and stay in the back bedroom; after his sister, my mother, died, he came down even more.

And so sitting there on that porch, with Uncle Bob, now some 12 years dead and buried, still a real presence for me, I didn’t even have to ask, “What would Uncle Bob do?” I knew what he would do, just as you there in those pews know, so of course I told my neighbor that I would drive him back home to Pennsylvania, so that he could take care of all those things that had been weighing on his mind those summer weeks.

Uncle Bob, like Ananias, was an amateur Christian. Like Ananias, no formal theological education, no degree from a prestigious seminary, no awards from General Synod, no credentials. But what he did have was a willingness, when Jesus says, “Follow me”, to get up and go, to do as best as one can, and leave the history books to be written by the historians. Just as Ananias did, who in response to Christ’s call sought out Saul, and laid his hands on him, and healed him, and then vanished forever from recorded history.

This has always been the truth of the matter – we are all amateur Christians. Jesus has always been about calling ordinary people to discipleship, people’s whose only qualification for the job was that Jesus called them to it in the first place. Think not just of anonymous Ananias, but of those fishermen by the sea, the tax collector in his booth, the women of Galilee called to provide for Jesus throughout his wandering ministry. We are all amateur Christians, and always have been. This congregation is full of people without any theological training, folk who have their own personality quirks, who may not be Harvard material or poster children for Athelete of the Year or paragons of charisma, but whom Jesus is using for the good of the world. And your only qualification is that Jesus has called on you, and you have responded.

And so of course we all in over our heads, of course the task is too big for us to handle on our own, and so of course we are utterly dependent upon God to work in us and in our lives, empowering us with God’s gifts and powers for the tasks set before us.

And so of course it is all that more important that we have those who have come before us, and those who walk beside us, who incarnate God’s love and who model, always imperfectly, the lives Jesus would have us live – the Uncle Bobs and Ananias and the grandmothers and mothers like Timothy had and all those folk, the church school teachers and confirmation class leaders and deacons and on and on that you were gifted with in your lives. I think this is one of the reasons it is so hard to be a Christian on the golf course – you know what I am talking about, those folk who say they can worship God just as well on the golf course as at church, so they don’t need to come to church. But we have something here we don’t have out on the links -- a community of disciples who strive to live out their call to discipleships; men and women and children who, however imperfectly, seek to model their living on the pattern laid down by the One who laid down his life for us. Amateur Christians, Ananias, Uncle Bob, those saints of God which we sang about earlier – the ones we can meet in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops or at tea. And God helping, we can be ones, too.

Amen.