Saul to Paul:
When was the last time some insight blew your mind apart and rocked
your world? Was it when you were a kid and realized your parents weren’t gods?
Maybe it was as a teen-ager when that special someone sat down across from you
at a party, your heart skipped a beat and you knew you were lost in some
wonderfully exiting world. Or, maybe it was in college when you took a class
just to fill in credits and were grabbed by the frontal lobes and snapped into
a totally new career choice.
And
when was the last time you absolutely knew you were right, your opinion was
inviolate, and the other view was just plain wrong? And then something somehow
shifted your viewpoint drastically. You became disillusioned and did a complete
and scandalous one eighty, shocking yourself and everyone else.
Take
a few moments to ponder these examples in your own life. Now, expand what that would
feel like to warp speed. That’s what happened to Saul when he ‘saw the light’.
Let’s grab our cameras and slip back into the past to catch this self
described zealot of a Temple policeman who hunts down and brutally punishes
Jesus following heretics who he sees as assaulting the sanctity of Jewish tradition.
Knowing exactly where Saul will be is tricky since his own letters don’t
actually say he is on the road to Damascus. That was added by Luke when he
wrote Acts way after Paul’s death. But, not to worry, we have found him on a
dusty road carrying with him all he needs to make tents at his next stop.
Quietly take some photos as we watch him trudge along lost in thought.
We can see him arguing with himself, fist occasionally raised, head nodding and
shaking from side to side. He seems to be righteously indignant and ready for
battle.
But wait. He stops, stumbles slightly. He looks down, then up, then
side to side. He shakes his head as if to clear it of something shocking. He
raises a fist, looks at it and then drops it heavily at his side. He stands for
a long time just staring ahead at, …what?
We will never actually know what is happening. But, he later states
that he was so affected by this inner revelation that instead of immediately
returning to Jerusalem he went off to ‘Arabia’, probably just north of
Damascus, and stayed there for quite awhile. He needed to absorb and digest
what he felt was a visit by Jesus. His passionate zealotry was now doing a
brilliantly lit one eighty. He uses the Greek
word skandalon which is the origin of the English word, scandal. All has changed
and he must change his name to represent this. He is now Paul.
Let’s go ahead in time just a little so we can find him when he returns
to Jerusalem. Snap a few shots. He is presenting himself to Peter and the
Elders of the Jewish sect of Jesus followers. This is priceless. The Elders
stand around Paul agog as he begs to be taught by them. Some frown and shake
their heads in disbelief. Others smile and glow with their newest convert. But,
when Paul says Jesus chose to appear to him while he was traveling between jobs,
they all inwardly groan, share a massive eye roll and a silent, ‘Yea, right’.
But, unperturbed by their attitudes Paul stands steadfast and eventually
does study diligently with Peter for two weeks before disappearing once more.
This is when he digests what he has learned, contemplates it deeply and then
brings forth some amazing conclusions. These will add to and change forever the
Jesus movement in ways not foreseen by the original disciples.
Paul is creating a whole new religion, Christianity.
When he reemerges much later in Antioch, to begin his tens of thousands
of miles of travel, we will catch up with him once again.
But first we must take time for the ladies.
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