On the Road to Damascus
On the Road to Damascus
Acts 9:1-31
by William Klock
When I was a sophomore in University I took the first of several art history courses, where I discovered—I should say it was more like I was confronted by—Caravaggio’s famous painting of the conversion of St. Paul: Paul fallen from his horse, hands covering his face, his servants scrambling to figure out what’s going on and to help him, everything in darkness—except Paul, bathed in heavenly light. I’d read Act 9 who knows how many times before then. But seeing Caravaggio’s interpretation of that scene suddenly piqued my curiosity—made me wonder what really happened to Paul that day, what did he actually see, and why did it make such a powerful change in him. Paul, that day, became for me—I suppose after Jesus—the most intriguing character in the Bible and I wanted to figure him out, to understand him—I think, because I wanted a faith of my own like Paul’s, because I wanted to know the same kind of transformation, the same kind of passion, that Paul had after meeting the risen Messiah.
And one of the things I came to realise is that Paul’s passion, his zeal didn’t start when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Actually, let’s call him “Saul” for now, because that’s where he’s at in Acts 9. Saul’s zeal was already there: for the God of Israel, for righteousness and justice, for the world to be set to rights. He truly hoped in the God of Israel, whom he knew to be good, and just, and faithful to the promises he’d made to his people. That was what it meant to be a Pharisee. Paul knew that his people had sinned, they had been unfaithful, they had engaged in idolatry. They had ceased to be a holy people, so the Lord departed from them. His presence—the cloud of glory—departed from the temple and then the people were conquered and exiled to Babylon. “You want to worship pagan gods,” the Lord was basically saying, “Fine, you can spend a few decades in Babylon living with the pagans and their gods and see how it works out for you.” And the people of Judah learned the lesson. They set aside their idols, they embraced the torah, and they longed for an end to their exile—they longed for the return of God’s presence. And they became a people of hopeful longing. It’s funny how experiencing God’s discipline so often gives us more hope, because it just underscores all the more his faithfulness—to do what he said, even if it’s making good on his promise of judgement. They knew his promises of restoration if they repented were just as true.
And in the meantime, with no temple and with no visible manifestation of the presence of God, they did the best they could. They devoted themselves—the Pharisees more than others—but they devoted themselves to torah, to holiness. If they couldn’t go to the temple, they would become like the temple themselves—a holy people waiting for God to return to them. And when they returned to Judaea and rebuilt the temple and the Lord still did not return, the empty temple—all the more—became the symbol for their longing. And missing his presence, they would meditate on the very idea of the Lord’s presence. If they dared—and at least the later rabbis urged caution, based on the Lord’s warning to Moses that “no one may see my face and live”—but if they dared, some would meditate on Ezekiel’s weird and mysterious vision of the Lord in his heavenly chariot—not looking for some personal mystical experience, but out of a hope and a longing for the day when the Lord would return, when heaven earth, so long sundered by our sin, would be brought back together, for the day when the Lord’s people would once again live in his glorious presence. It was a longing borne of the absence of the temple and of God’s presence there.
It was this passionate longing for the Lord’s return that fuelled the zeal of men like Saul of Tarsus. This zealous young Pharisee, steeped in Israel’s scriptures and Israel’s story, with a passion for the Lord and a longing to see his return. And in his mind, if anything was going to hinder the Lord’s return to his people, it was the new Jesus movement, these people who blasphemously believed in a crucified Messiah. It had to be stamped out. And so Saul supervised the stoning of Stephen. And now, as we get into Acts 9 [page 1090 in the pew Bibles) we find that he’s one of the chief orchestrators of the persecution of the early church. Luke writes: “Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out threats and murder on the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and requested from him letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that he could find people who belonged to the Way, men and women alike, tie them up, and bring them back to Jerusalem.”
And along the way, I think that Paul was probably meditating. Luke doesn’t fill in these kinds of details, but between his telling of the story here and Paul’s telling it later in his epistles, there are parallels with the accounts we have of Jews engaging in this practise of meditating on Ezekiel’s vision. Paul was a man of faith, a man of hope, a man who knew that the Lord is faithful to his promises. And so he knew the Lord would return to his people and I think Paul lived out that hope in the present by just this sort of meditation on scripture. Up and down with the rhythmic movement of what was probably a donkey—there are some stunning parallels here with Balaam even if this donkey never says a word—the hot sun beating down on him. Breathe in. Breathe out. Recall Ezekiel. Eyes closed, Paul pictures as best he could the four bizarre living creates, all wings and eyes, and the chariot wheels, somehow wheels within wheel all going different directions. He concentrated and mentally looked upward from the wheels to the crystal chariot itself, and then to the throne where Ezekial wrote that he had seen a figure not unlike a human, but gleaming with holy fire. I expect Paul had meditated like this before. Maybe it had never come to much. Just try it yourself. Try to visualise what Ezekiel describes. Good luck making sense of it. Or maybe Paul had done this many times before and had really been met by the Lord, the God of Israel through this kind of meditation. But this time was different. Luke goes on: “While he was on the journey, and was getting near to Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. He fell on the ground and heard a voice speaking to him. “Saul, Saul!” said the voice. “Why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, Lord?” he asked. “I am Jesus,” he said, “and you are persecuting me. But get up and go into the city, and it will be told you what you have to do.”
Saul, in his mind’s eye looks up: angels, wheels, chariot, throne—and then the figure on the throne—to his shock—is Jesus, the crucified Messiah, now risen from the dead and here. And Paul tries to tear himself away. No! He tries to open his eyes to escape the vision and realises that his eyes are already open. This isn’t a vision. It’s not in his head. It’s real. It’s really Jesus. And the sight is too much to bear—in so many ways. He throws up his hands as Caravaggio imagined him doing, as—stunned—he loses his balance and topples off his donkey. And the vision of glory is still there. Where Paul expected to see the God of Israel, there was Jesus and Jesus was asking, “Why are you persecuting me?” And Paul’s thinking that this just can’t be. “Who are you?” he asks, even though he already knows. And the figure of glory confirms it, “I’m Jesus.” And he might as well have said at the same time, “I’m the God of Israel, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” And again, “Why are you persecuting me?” And Paul, stunned, his whole world being rearranged and reinterpreted faster than he can take it in, he says nothing as Jesus tells him simply to go to Damascus and to wait.
Luke says in verse 7: “The men who were traveling with Saul stood speechless. They heard the voice but couldn’t see anybody. And Saul, he been struck absolutely blind by the vision. So they led him by the hand and took him to Damascus. He went for three days, being unable to see, and he neither ate nor drank.”
I expect the gears in Saul’s mind were spinning away like never before during those three days. This man of prayer was suddenly praying like never before. If Jesus was alive, it meant he really was Israel’s Messiah. It meant that the Lord, in him, had fulfilled already the very promises that Saul so longed to see fulfilled. It meant that the Lord, in Jesus, had returned to his people. It meant that God’s new world had already begun. Paul, intelligent and deeply steeped in Israel’s scriptures, began the long, slow process of rethinking everything he knew in light of Jesus. Paul knew—really knew the story, the scriptures. I try to steep myself in those same scriptures and I’m like a watered down Americano compared to Saul. Saul was a dark, black, espresso—the kind your spoon will stand up in. That’s how steeped he was in God’s word. It wasn’t so much a “conversion” he experienced as it was a reorientation. The temple, the presence of the Lord, the place where heaven and earth meet, had finally come to Saul. And, too, those words of Jesus: “You’re persecuting me.” It meant that these people he’d been dragging off to prison, they were Jesus’ people, his covenant family, even in some way an extension of himself. God’s promises to Abraham and to Moses and to David, the words of the Prophets, it all spent three days spinning through Saul’s mind as he reevaluated everything in light of Jesus.
Now, verse 10: “In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a vision. “Ananias!” he said. “Here I am, Lord,” he replied. “Get up,” said the Lord to him, “and go to the street called Straight. Inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul. Look, he’s praying! And he has seen, in a vision, a man named Ananias coming and laying his hands on him so that he can see again.”
You can go to Straight Street today—even on Google Earth. It runs from the last remaining Roman gate, through the Christian Quarter of the old city. Imagine the shock of Ananias. He may have been in Damascus having fled from Saul already. And now he has a vision and the Lord tells him he needs to go to Saul. You can almost hear his “Ummmm…” Was this vision for real? Had he heard right? “Lord,” replied Ananias, “I’ve heard about this man from several people…all about how he’s done wicked things to your holy people in Jerusalem…and now he’s come here with authority from the chief priests to tie up everybody who calls on your name!” Ananias is worried.
“Just go,” replied the Lord. “He is a chosen vessel for me, to carry my name before nations and kings—and the children of Israel, too. I am going to show him how many things he is going to have to suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias set off, went into the house, and laid his hands on him. “Brother Saul,” he said, “the Lord has sent me—yes, Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—so that you may be able to see again, and receive the holy spirit.”
Worried, hesitant at first, Ananias’ faith got the better of him. Maybe on the way. Maybe when he met Saul and there was so clearly something different about him. “Brother Saul,” he called him. As Jews, yes, they were brothers, but Ananias somehow recognised in Saul the same faith, the same Jesus, the same Spirit. I don’t think Ananias ever expected to be in a situation like this. What do you do? Jesus said that Saul had already had vision of Ananias laying hands on him, so that’s what Ananias does. He lays his hands on Saul and he prays, and Luke writes (verse 18): “At once something like scales fell off his eyes, and he was able to see. He got up and was baptized. He had something to eat and regained his strength. Ananias and Saul stayed with the disciples in Damascus for a few days.”
I wonder what happened when Ananias took Saul back to meet the other Christians in Damascus. I expect there were some skeptics. Was this just a fake-out by Saul to get in amongst them. And I bet, when Ananias showed up to say, “You’ll never guess what’s happened!” there was someone else there, older, wise, steeped in the scriptures who wasn’t surprised at all. “Brother Ananias, why would you have expected otherwise? This is how our God does things.” God dealt with the persecution of his people by making their persecutor one of them. And Saul? Well, he’s as zealous for God as ever; Jesus has just given him new direction. While the rest of the saints in Damascus were hiding, now that he can see again, Saul marches straight to the local synagogue to proclaim Jesus, risen and Lord. Luke goes on: “At once he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “This really is the son of God!” Everyone was astonished, and said, “Isn’t this the man who caused havoc to those in Jerusalem who call on this name? And here he is, coming to tie them up and take them off to the high priests!” But Saul grew all the stronger, and threw the Jews in Damascus into confusion by demonstrating that Jesus is indeed the Messiah.”
I bet. Saul was one of the best of them. He knew the scriptures and the promises of God inside out and upside down. He was brilliant. And he was passionately zealous for God. And I expect—you know how when you figure something out that you’ve been wrestling with for a long time and it lights a fire under you and you get really excited to tell other people?—well, meeting Jesus lit that kind of fire under Saul. It would take him a long time to really work it all through—he would go off to Arabia by himself to work it all through—but already he’s been rethinking what meeting Jesus means about the God of Israel and about what it means to be Israel. Even what it means that Jesus is the God of Israel. And so he went to his fellow Jews to proclaim this good news. To tell them that Jesus is the son of God. This is, by the way, the first time in Acts we hear Jesus called “son of God”. It was a big deal. And then Luke says that the other thing Saul was eager to do was to explain to his fellow Jews that Jesus was the Messiah—or maybe it would better to say that the Messiah was Jesus. Because given the context here in Acts and what we know of Paul later from his epistles and how he roots everything so deeply and richly in the Old Testament, I expect he was in the synagogue in Damascus reminding the people there of the scriptures and especially of these two ideas, these two characters: the son of God and the Messiah. “Son of God” isn’t used much in the Old Testament, but when it is, it refers to Israel. God said to Pharaoh, “Israel is my firstborn son”. But Jesus is also the son of David, the Messiah. And God had promised that David would have a son who would build the temple. God would raise him up and he would sit on David’s throne. “I will be a father to him,” God had declared in 2 Samuel 7, “and he will be my son.” All this is swirling madly in Saul’s mind and starting to take shape, to make sense. And then there was Psalm 2, invoked by the first Christians as they faced persecution. God confronts the wicked rulers of the world and declares that he has set up his King in Zion and that the nations will tremble before him. He’s the one to whom the Lord has made his firm decree, “You are my son, this day I have begotten you.” Luke doesn’t tell us exactly what Paul preached or even if he preached. Maybe he just hung out at the synagogue and proclaimed the good news to whomever would listen. But knowing Paul, I have to think he did some preaching. And he reminded his people of God and of his promises and he appealed to their hope: God’s promise to return to his people. God’s promise to set the world to rights. God’s promise to bring the nations under his sovereign rule. And how all this is now coming true, how it’s being fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. Through him God will reach out to the gentiles and bring them under his sovereign rule and make them his inheritance. How the Messiah will rule them with wisdom and justice just as God promised. This would be the heart of Paul’s preaching: The risen Messiah is God’s anointed King. He’s God’s son, he shed his blood to purify us from our sins that he might bring us back from our long exile. He’s God’s son who has built a new temple, a house for his Holy Spirit. In him God’s promises are being fulfilled. 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 2, Psalms 72 and 89 and 26 and 27. God’s promises. Psalm about Israel’s hope. Psalms about the Messiah. We know from the scrolls we’ve found at Qumran that how Paul was handling these scriptures was exactly the way other Jewish groups in his day were handling these scriptures and asking the same questions. And struggling to find an answer. Because no one ever dreamed that a man who was crucified could be the Messiah. But Paul had met him, risen from the dead. And the dots began to connect. The royal psalms began to connect with the psalms of lament. The great king who would rule Israel and the nations began to connect with the suffering servant who represented Israel. And then it gelled: The king represents his people so that he can stand in for them. So that what happens to him, happens to them—and what happens to them, happens to him. And so the king died. And then the king rose from the dead. And in that great act, God had declared: “See! This really is my son. And with him I am well-pleased!” Pleased with his beloved son—and through him, pleased with his beloved sons and daughters.
And surely some believed. But others were angry. Verse 23: “After some days, the Jews made a plot to kill him, but Saul got wind of their plan. They were watching the city gates day and night so that they could do away with him. But the disciples took him by night and let him down through the wall, lowering him in a basket.
When he got back to Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, and explained to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that he had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus. He was with them in Jerusalem, coming and going and speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. He spoke, as well, to the Hellenists, who tried to kill him. But the brothers heard of it and took him down to Caesarea. There they sent him off to Tarsus. So the church in all Judaea, Galilee, and Samaria found itself at peace. It was built up and gained in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.”
And Paul knew, this too is how God works. He saved the brothers and sisters in Damascus from their persecutor. But Saul, well, God humbles him. He has to be lowered over the wall in a basket so he can run. Sometimes that’s also how God works. He was preparing Saul for his missionary task and the struggles and dangers and humiliations that would come with it. Even returning to Jerusalem, he is initially rejected by the apostles. God bless Barnabas—the “son of comfort”—he vouched for Saul and told him that he really had met Jesus on the road to Damascus and that all the rest was, in fact, true, no matter how impossible it seemed. And Saul then proved himself in Jerusalem, preaching to the Hellenists who promptly set about to kill him.
And so Peter and the others packed him off. Luke doesn’t say exactly why. Maybe the trouble his zeal for Jesus stirred up in Jerusalem was just too much right then. Maybe they knew that Saul needed to go home to Tarsus, to begin his preaching with the people who knew him. So—and not for the last time—Saul boarded a ship and set sail. This would be the pattern for the rest of his life.
Brothers and Sisters, Saul of Tarsus—Paul—knew better than anyone that Jesus changes everything. That Jesus is the embodiment of God’s goodness, his mercy, his love, and maybe most importantly his faithfulness. Remember that last week we looked at that bit of Paul’s writing in 2 Corinthians where he talks about the glory of God that was on display in the Exodus: at the burning bush, in the plagues, at the Red Sea, at Mount Sinai, in the cloud of glory that descended on the tabernacle. And he wrote that Jesus upstaged it all. The Messiah he met on the road to Damascus revealed the glory of God in a way Paul had never imagined possible. Brothers and Sisters, may we encounter that same glory ourselves.
I think for most—probably all of us—our experience of God’s glory is far more hum-drum and ordinary and unsensational. Maybe that’s because, as far as being steeped in scripture and knowing the glory of God revealed there, we’re a watered down Americano. We’re like those can of LaCroix that say they’re orange flavoured, but the flavour is so weak—well—you wonder if it’s just carbonated water that was bottled in a plant where there was a solitary orange sitting in the corner to imparts the tiniest hint of its essence. Paul was the opposite. And we need to aspire to be like him. Pray that God will give us a hunger for his word and a desire to know him and to know the story. My observation has always been that the better people know the story, the more saintly and the more passionate they are, the more zealous they are for the Lord and for his good news. Steep yourselves in the scripture. And meditate on your baptism and how Jesus has brought you through the water into life with him. How he’s plunged us into God’s Spirit and given us new life. And come to his Table. Eat the bread, drink the wine, and recall what God has done for us in Jesus, in his incarnation, in his death, and in his resurrection. Experience here the fulfilment of all God’s promises that you might see his glory. Then be the people who—like Saul who just couldn’t stay quiet—make that glory known in the world.
Let’s pray: Almighty and merciful God, by whose gift alone your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; that we might truly see and know your glory along the way; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.