HUMANITY OF SAUL: THE POSSIBILITY OF PAUL
Acts 9: 1-9; 18-22; 26-28
9 Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. 9 For three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank.
10 Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” 11 The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, 12 and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” 13 But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, 14 and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” 15 But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; 16 I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” 17 So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”18 And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength. For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, 20 and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.”…..
26 Upon his arrival in Jerusalem, he sought to join the fellowship of the disciples, but he was met with profound fear; they simply could not reconcile his past with the possibility of his discipleship. 27 It was Barnabas who stepped forward, serving as his advocate before the apostles by recounting the transformative encounter on the road where the Lord had spoken to him, and witnessing to how he had since championed the name of Jesus with great boldness in Damascus.
Saul of Tarsas (modern day Turkey) was exceptionally well educated. As Paul describes himself in Acts 22: “I am a Jew born in Tarsus in Cilicia but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today. 4 I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison, 5 as the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify about me. From them I also received letters to the brothers in Damascus, and I went there in order to bind those who were there and to bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment.”
This urbane, educated, idealist championed the cause of the Pharisees who viewed the Christian movement as a contagion that needed to be eliminated. He was present and abetted the stoning of Stephen. We learn on that day “a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria. … .3 But Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison. (Acts 8:1-3) ICE tactics are much older than our century.
These persecutions led to a scattering of Christians to neighboring towns, including Damascus. Paul wanted to run these people down so he requested authority from the High Priest to do exactly that. This is where our story begins. Saul was feared. He was the leader of the cause to purify Judaism. He was willing to travel over 130 miles to accomplish his mission. It is on this journey that Saul’s life dramatically changed. His conversion on the road to Damascus transformed him from chief prosecutor to chief advocate of the Christian church.
The irony is his persecutions led to a Christian diaspora. But as he reached out to those same people in cities all over the Mediterranean, he became an agent of the Great Commission. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” His ministry expanded Christianity into the Gentile world. The church would not be the same without Saul/Paul.
Here are some observations you might want to consider—each of them could be their own sermon or blog.
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God has a long history of using very unlikely people to work his purposes out. He has used killers before. Both Moses and David were killers and they each became icons of the church.
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Saul’s conversion included three days of blindness. All he knew about justice was being questioned. He had to tolerate a time of violent upheaval to his certainty. He had supposed that he knew what the Lord wanted of him but he was told he was wrong. “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”) Faith requires humility.
Saul was confronted with a question that changed him. Much of Saul’s religious education would have included mindfulness of others. “Why are you persecuting me?” would have questioned his tactics.
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Saul is a living example of “anything that can be done, can be overdone.” It is too easy to demonize Saul. He made an error common to us all. He could not think — or even imagine possibilities outside of his own convictions. He was devoted to God. He studied and he worked hard. He did everything in the name of the Lord but he could not imagine the Lord worked differently than he had been taught.
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Blinded, helpless, and confronted, the people he meant to harm cared for Paul. These same people were afraid of him and doubted him—but they cared for him. The words of Leviticus 19:18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” — which Jesus quoted as part of the Great Commandment would have reverberated in his soul. Jesus lived the life that he had studied and which he failed to live.
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When Paul sought to be viewed as one of the Apostles, they disbelieved his story. Their distrust ended up pushing him out of Jerusalem to a ministry to the Gentiles. We may not be able to see it, but God is at work—even when we go unrecognized.
Paul was and is the Christian church’s greatest evangelist. I don’t think we can appreciate how unlikely this outcome was. If God can use a man like Saul, he can use any of us.
Don’t stereotype Saul into a caricature. The minute we separate Saul from Paul, we dichotomize the world. In our efforts to understand, we simplify and use the tactics of oppression. There is a “bad” guy (Saul) who turns into the “good” (Paul) guy. From our perspective, it certainly happened. But the good guy and the bad guy were the same guy. Saul was always Paul. God did not change his name. Saul simply began to refer to himself by his Roman name, Paul after he was redirected. He used the same education, skills and zeal to speak boldly for Jesus that he had used to persecute the fledgling Christian movement.
In my Hospice days, I learned very early that every profession used their skills beyond their efficacy. Doctors would order tests and labs because that is what they were supposed to do. Rarely was the question asked: “What will we do with this information?” Patients would be doctored to death. Nurses would wake patients to monitor them. The protocols demanded vitals be taken every four hours. The patient would be nursed to death. Social Workers would be working on placements the patient would never visit. The patient would be Social Worked to death. Chaplains (that would be me) would earnestly try to walk the patients through the stages of dying. We talked patients to death.
We all wanted to help. We all did what we knew how to do—as best we could—but we failed to question if our help was actually helpful. We could not bear to be helpless. We were zealous but we were misdirected.
In far more ordinary circumstances, any of us who are hard wired to respond to others treat the discomfort of others as a call to action. These responses emerge out of good intentions but, again, are often misdirected. My wife told me early in our marriage, “Vernon, I don’t want your opinion or your advice. I just need you to grunt in the appropriate places.” It was the beginning of learning how difficult it actually is to ‘just listen.’
Saul was doing what he knew best—parse the law, decide what is right, do what was required for right to prevail. He was so busy doing that, he neglected to love his neighbor as himself. He was so busy doing what was right, he took vengeance upon those he deemed wrong.
The people caring for Paul had every reason to fear him. For Ananias, going to Saul was akin to an undocumented immigrant being told to go to the head of ICE. Ananais resisted but he obeyed. Ananias lived the Spirit of the Law while Saul was insisting upon the letter of the law. Ananias made the Word flesh. Paul was to spend his life following that example.
Paul’s thinking was challenged. The Lord he worshiped and so zealously defended wanted him to meet and care for others the same way he was cared for. This was a blinding insight that turned into flesh. The humanity of Saul became the possibility of Paul. It is the miracle of resurrection. Let it be so.
