The Conversion of Saul [Easter 3C - Acts 9:1-20]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Acts 9:1-20

 

The Conversion of Saul

 

Saul was not the kind of guy you want to know.  I’m not saying he didn’t have friends; he did.  You didn’t want to know them either.  Saul and his friends were the bad guys; the kind of guys who are fueled by hatred and the cruelest brand of prejudice; the kind of guys who believe the worst conspiracy theories and spread the vilest rumors.  Saul and his friends, on the road to Damascus, were a first century lynch mob, breathing threats and murder, gleefully terrorizing the early Church, men on the forefront of an attempted religious cleansing.  Hatred was their business, maybe even their chosen hobby.

 

Saul, the ringleader of this violent band, had a reputation – and it was not a good one.  Ananias, in today’s passage from Acts, shares with God what he has heard about Saul.  Saul, from Ananias’ lips to God’s ears, had done much evil to the saints in Jerusalem.  But all of that evil did not satisfy Saul’s appetite; he is now expanding his territory, looking to do evil things to the saints well-beyond the Jerusalem city limits.

 

Damascus, the city to which Saul was traveling, is a long way from Jerusalem.  It was about 150 miles as the horse trots.  In the first century that was no small undertaking.  Saul and his boys were clearly committed, dedicated to their mission of terror.

 

In our electrified world, we would find alternative explanations for that explosive burst of light that they encountered on the road to Damascus, the light that forever altered history.  Maybe a power surge through a street lamp or swamp gases or a rogue satellite or a top secret military exercise.  Saul and his friends did not have those convenient possibilities.  They just saw a blinding light, one intense enough to literally floor Saul. 

 

The terrorist has now become the terrorified.  Saul could have felt nothing less than terror when he suddenly was struck blind, unable to see anything or anyone.  Remember, he was on a road far from home, likely one that was to him unfamiliar.  After days of carefully surveying his surroundings for roadside bandits and Tuscan raiders, Saul was suddenly in the dark in a strange land.

 

Helpless.  This man who had spent his entire adult life striking fear into the hearts of others, was suddenly quite feeble.  And afraid.  His companions had to literally take him by the hands and slowly lead him the rest of the way to Damascus. 

 

Those who set out with Saul on this malicious journey also saw that light, but it did not strike them blind.  They saw the light, but they did not hear the voice that Saul heard in that flash of a moment.  And so while Saul continued to journey with his friends, it is clear that, after that most significant moment, they were no longer on the same journey at all.  They continued to walk together but, at some existential level, their paths had diverged. 

 

All because of the unseen voice.  It wasn’t the message that was so shocking.  The message was pretty simple, actually.  It was basically: go into the city, which Saul was already doing, and wait.  What was so shocking to Saul was the identity of the owner of that disembodied voice: the voice belonged to Jesus.

 

Now that was very strange because Jesus was dead.  And Saul knew that.  And yet, Saul very clearly heard the voice say, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”  There is not a lot of room for interpretation there.  There could have been a number of Jesuses in that ancient time and place, but Saul was only persecuting the followers of one Jesus: Jesus of Nazareth, who was known to be crucified and rumored to be alive.  And that was a big problem because Saul’s life was completely committed to his hatred of Jesus and his followers.  That was his mission in life, his purpose, the reason he got out of bed in the morning.

 

Conversion is perhaps hardest when it requires a change in our routines.  Saul routinely rounded up and terrorized Christians.  And now, blinded by a light and confronted by a voice, he was faced with a truly monumental lifestyle change.

 

I’m not sure what was most terrifying for Saul: the sudden loss of his sight – which in the moment was frighteningly indefinite – or the prospect of extinguishing his most precious hatreds or when Ananias walks into the room.  You see, Ananias knew about Saul – about all of the evil Saul had done to his siblings in Christ, all of the evil he had committed against the people Ananias loved.  Under normal circumstances, Ananias would have probably been afraid to be in the same room with such a murderous man.  But Saul was blinded and weakened by his three day fast; he was vulnerable.  In the midst of, what I trust, was a muddled mix of emotions, Ananias no doubt felt righteous anger bubbling to the surface.  In the back of his mind, he knew, and Saul did too, that Ananias could have easily ended Saul’s reign of terror in a moment of violence – and it would have been easy to justify.   

 

Ananias walked toward his enemy, heart beating too fast and too loud, and reached out his hands and laid them on that helpless villain.  And he forgave him.  Ananias embraced Saul as a brother.  He earnestly prayed the scales off of Saul’s eyes.  Ananias walked into that dreaded space, a space saturated with a history of hatred, armed with nothing more than love.  And found love was enough. 

 

And I think that was the moment of Saul’s conversion.  What happening on the road got Saul’s attention, no doubt.  What happened in the house changed Saul’s life.  He could have eventually explained away the voice on the road, as the memory started to fade.  But in the house, love touched him with trembling human hands and he was healed – not only his eyes but his heart.

 

Saul did not deserve the love Ananias showed him.  In that moment, Ananias embodied the shockingly subversive love of his Savior.  In that moment, he was Jesus on the cross forgiving his killers; he was Stephen blessing the ones who pummeled him with stones.  He was a living, breathing example of how difficult and demanding it is to be a follower of Jesus.  And it is.  It is difficult to forgive the unforgivable.  It is frustratingly demanding that love is always expected of us even though not often warranted. 

 

But like Ananias that is our calling: to love, to love like Jesus loves us.  So to love an unreasonable amount.  And as demanding and difficult as the Christian vocation can be, it is a beautiful thing to watch the scales fall to the floor, to see love change a life. 

 

The conversion of Saul is a reminder of what love can do in this Easter world.  Love can roll away the stone.  Love can find a Saul on the road to Damascus and turn him into a St. Paul.  Love can stop us on the road to no good and draw us a new map.  Love can heal us and free us.  Love can even possess us.  Love can conquer the forces of violence and hatred.  Love can overcome those things that terrorize our world.  Love can turn the nightmares of this world into the sweetest of God’s dreams.  Love can take what is meant for evil and transform it into something good.  In fact, our story tells us that love can show up in an Easter Sunday cemetery and do something so astounding that we start calling a bad Friday Good. 

 

Love can do the impossible.  And not just in old stories.  Not just on dusty roads.  Not just in musty tombs.  But in this world.  In our time.  In your life.