Anglican Diocese of Perth

Northern Region

Bishop Farran's Sermons 2004

A sermon preached at S. Paul’s Church,
Woodlands-Wembley Downs
for their celebration of the Church’s consecration,
August 15th 2004.
(Based on Acts 22:3-16)

The headline on the Sports page said it all. “Coaches bear brunt of inconsistencies by players”. John Worsfield and Chris Connolly know that only too well. Already this season there has been a parade of sacked AFL coaches as some AFL football teams have struggled to win matches. Coaching seems a precarious life, given the public and media scrutiny coaches face and endure.

And now come the Olympics when again another band of coaches will either be lauded or mauled depending upon the performances of the elite athletes. I wonder whether Ian Thorpe’s controversial change of coach will enhance his performances at these Olympics. If not, what will such an outcome do to his coach? You may recall that recently there was a weekend magazine spread on Thorpe’s new coach, and her own surprise at being selected by the international icon as his coach.

Ananias shared similar sentiments when instructed in a vision to coach the newly converted Saul of Tarsus. Ananias was completely taken by surprise. More than surprise, fear pumped through Ananias as he rehearsed Saul’s reputation as a church terrorist of the Gestapo kind. That version is in chapter nine of Acts, the first of the three accounts of Saul’s conversion detailed in the Acts of the Apostles. This pleading did not deter the vision-giver (the Lord) from persisting in making Ananias Saul’s coach.

We readily think of coaching in sporting and academic contexts. We appreciate the effectiveness of coaches who are able to enhance performances, instill winning attitudes and draw out the best from their charges. Indeed, some coaches have become house-hold names simply because of their feats or their philosophy. For instance, even though Mick Malthouse went to Collingwood, I still read his comments for Mick seems more than a coach - Mick seems a philosopher, a commentator on life!

I am suggesting that coaching is as appropriate in the formation of Christians as it is in the formation of athletes or students. Indeed, Paul’s experience at the hands (literally) of Ananias and later with the elders of the Jerusalem Church verifies this role of coaching in Christian formation. Coaching is certainly a role for priests in the continuing formation of congregations in God’s mission. Indeed, priests need to be as tough sometimes as coaches in order to ensure that we are not couch-potato Christians, just sitting in church as we do before television sets rather than acting as church in the surrounding community.

The great temptation of our time is for the church to collapse into being a worship club rather than realising its call to be a missionary movement. The coach (the priest) keeps the focus on the full behaviour of the church, just as we see in telecasts that AFL coaches sustain a bird’s eye view of play from their coaching boxes. The coaches see more of the game in progress than the individual players do, hence, the coaches’ capacity to be strategic in planning the game tactics for the next quarter.

Now I am associating one major role of the priest with this analogy of coaching, and to an even greater degree, coaching is the role of the bishop in a wider context. So this Tuesday, for example, I am gathering the clergy of the Northern Region together to think strategically about our direction as a church.

However, in order to substantiate the integrity of this image of coaching in Christian formation, let us think about the experience of Saul of Tarsus who upon conversion becomes Paul, your patron saint. What were the tasks that confronted Ananias as he coached this fire-breathing Gestapo type persecutor of the church in Christian faith and belief?


First of all, Ananias had to overcome his fear of being a coach, specifically his fear of the one he was to coach, Saul of Tarsus. When Ananias meets Saul, Saul is broken by his experience of the Raised Christ. This must have perplexed Ananias for Saul had within the early church a devilish reputation. Yet Ananias is the one responsible for caring for Saul and enunciating God’s mission to Saul. This may not have been easy for Ananias, but Ananias was faithful to the vision and to his task of coach.

Ananias (and now I am reading between the lines of the brief accounts) catechized Saul, and perhaps was the one who baptised Saul. The text in chapter nine of the Acts of the Apostles reads,
Ananias went and, on entering the house, laid his hands on Saul and said, ‘Saul, my brother, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me to you so that you may recover your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ Immediately it was as if scales had fallen from Saul’s eyes, and he regained his sight. Saul got up and was baptised, and when he had eaten his strength returned.

He stayed some time with the disciples in Damascus. Without delay he proclaimed Jesus publicly in the synagogues, declaring him to be the Son of God. All who heard were astounded. ‘Is not this the man’, they said, ‘who was in Jerusalem hunting down those who invoke this name?’

What more did Ananias do?

We will learn aspects of our own roles as potential coaches of others by inspecting Ananias’ coaching of Saul. I want to affirm strongly that each of us as an established Christian is a potential coach/mentor of a new Christian or of an inquirer.

Ananias gave Saul a security about his extraordinary experience. Ananias named the Lord Jesus as the source of the experience and confirmed the authenticity of that source by carrying out the instructions already given to Saul at the time of his vision. This gift of safety is important for anyone who has an experience that turns their life upside down.

Increasingly in our secular society those who have such dramatic experiences of conversion (already a third of all Christians but likely to increase significantly, given the rampant secularism in society) require a frame of reference to make sense of what has happened to them. If you have no prior religious or Christian reference, the sudden experience of God or awareness of Christ can be totally perplexing. People do wonder with these experiences whether they are losing their grip on reality.

These experiences can break people, as Saul was broken. We naively think that all religious experience is joyful. Some religious experience is painful for it shatters firmly held irreligious positions. So providing a sense of security by offering a frame of reference (the Christian Tradition) is vital and a first task of the coach.

Ananias then affirms Saul. Hear those tender words, “brother Saul”. That greeting must have deeply affected Saul who knew more than any other what a terrorist he had been to the early church. Affirmation and endorsement are chronically in short supply generally in life, and even within the church. Affirmation such as Ananias gives enables the new convert to appreciate his new relationship and his own value.


Ananias accepts and integrates Saul into the church by his ministry to Saul and especially by the celebration of baptism. This was a further confirmation that Saul was incorporated into the mystery of the dying and rising of the Lord Jesus, an aspect of this Saul had experienced as a consequence of his vision.

My ministry as a bishop brings me into contact with increasing numbers of adults who are responding to unexpected spiritual prods and who seek baptism and confirmation, complete Christian initiation in the Anglican understanding. When such folk are baptised after (hopefully) effective coaching in Christian belief and practice, they hear these profound words,
God has called you into his Church.
We therefore receive and welcome you
as a member with us of the body of Christ
as a child of the one heavenly Father,
and as an inheritor of the kingdom of God.

The church by its very nature is to be a welcoming and accepting community, an including community. Our task is to live up to our role.

A further piece of Ananias’ coaching would have been to hand on to Saul the emerging Christian Tradition, the full story of the Lord Jesus that Saul would not have yet digested. This process probably took place immediately in those first days in Damascus, continued when Saul went up to Jerusalem, and formed the substance of his three-year retreat in Arabia. The task of handing on the tradition and developing the tradition is vital.

This task of traditioning requires us to be theologically informed. Without commitment to study at various levels the church will believe what the newspapers report as Christian belief, rather than what our own documents (the Scriptures) say. Each parish is to be a learning community that itself reflects upon, explores, argues with the Tradition, just as the earliest Christians did. Saul becomes Paul
who himself expands the understanding of the Christian Tradition to include non-Jews, people like us.

A vision I have for our Church is that in every parish we will have a local theological academy studying away at the Christian Tradition so that we will actually have something substantial to say to others about Christian Faith rather than timid referrals to the parish priest. And each of us from our experience of living in Christ can offer insights to the developing Christian Tradition that assists new converts as they plunge into Christian belief and behaviour.

Hopefully, I have indicated that potentially all of us are coaches for others in Christian life and faith. Ananias was surprised that he was chosen to be Saul’s coach. Yet without Ananias’ obedience and coaching, we would not have the Paul who is so dominant a figure in the Christian Tradition.

Paul was obviously conscious of this coaching and the athletic culture that permeated the Roman Empire, especially through the filtration of Greek culture. So Paul uses references to athletics as illustrations of Christian practice. Hear Paul coaching the Corinthian Church,
At the games, as you know, all the runners take part, though only one wins the prize.

You also must run to win. Every athlete goes into strict training. They do it to win a fading garland; we, to win a garland that never fades. For my part, I am no aimless runner; I am not a boxer who beats the air. I do not spare my body, but bring it under strict control, for fear that after preaching to others I should find myself disqualified.


The Sports page heralded that “coaches bear the brunt of inconsistencies by players”. Paul might have used that by-line in his letters to the Corinthian Church, a church that was racked by inconsistent behaviour. Well, how is it here in this church? How is the play (the mission) going?

I will borrow finishing words from two coaches. First, Ricky Stuart the coach of the Sydney Roosters (Rugby League),
One of the easier roles I’ve found as a coach is to improve performances both by individuals and collectively as a team. One of the harder roles is to be consistent.

The second coach is a theological coach who asks that the church be consistent with its primary calling,
The proclamation that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, the vision of a transformed society - the Kingdom of God - and the commitment to work with the incarnate, crucified and risen Christ to achieve it, through the power of the Spirit and nourished by word and Eucharist, is the gospel. There is no other.

To that must be added that haunting, quarter-time pep-talk of Saint Paul,
For my part, I am no aimless runner; I am not a boxer who beats the air. I do not spare my body, but bring it under strict control, for fear that after preaching to others I should find myself disqualified.

The coaches live the game more reflectively than do the actual players. Long term faithful Anglicans are coaches or witnesses, even if accidentally so. One lesson for us from the coaching of Saul by Ananias is that the coaching be intentional and informed, and that we live deliberately as models of Christian faith.
 

[1]  Acts of the apostles 9: 17-21a.
[2] 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27.
[3] Ricky Stuart in Sport in The Australian, Friday, August 13th 2004, p.36.
[4] Kenneth Leech. 1997. The Sky is Red. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, p. 139.
[5] 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27.