7. Saul’s Vocation

Acts of the Apostles

 

“Now Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, that, if he should find any men or women who belonged to the Way, he might bring them back to Jerusalem in chains.” In chapter 9 of the Acts of the Apostles, attention returns and concentrates on the person of Saul. The narrator Luke had already presented him in chapter 8, saying that, on the occasion of Stephen’s stoning, Saul was among those who approved it. He is one of the architects of the persecution against the Christian group which explodes in the year 36 when Pilate is absent from Jerusalem and the synedrion has full power.

In the Acts of the Apostles, the figure of Saul appears at the end of chapter 7, verse 58, where it is simply said that “the witnesses—to the stoning of Stephen—had left their cloak at his feet of a young man named Saul.” Saul agreed with those who had killed Stephen and then he was never spoken of again. The narrator mentioned the mission of Philip in Samaria, the evangelization of the Ethiopian, and now returns to this person who will be important and central in the second part of the book of Acts. Saul of Tarsus actually lived in Jerusalem and as we heard at the time of Stephen’s stoning in 36, he was considered a young man. We don’t have the possibility to say the year he was born. Historians range from 5 to 10 A.D. So, in the year 36 he could have been 25 to 30 years old. This is the turning point in his life. Saul was in Jerusalem, but he came from Tarsus.

Tarsus was the capital of Cilicia, a city that is now in Turkey. He was a Hellenistic Jew, that is, Greek-speaking, and was one of Stephen’s strongest opponents. One can advance the hypothesis that Saul was a disciple of Stephen. Saul is a traditionalist, a conservative man, fanatic, is a young man attached to the traditions of his ancestors and probably felt the choice of Esteban as a betrayal. If he had appreciated him as a teacher, then he hated him as a traitor. It is understood that such a fanatical character of religion hate people because they have a different mentality or make different decisions than he does.

Saul, although religious, is an exaggerated man; he says it himself in his letters: “I surpassed all my companions in this passionate and fanatical attitude.” He was exaggerated in his strong opposition to the group they called ‘the Nazarenes,’ the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. The name Christian was not yet in use; we will find it later in Acts the history of the origin of this name. In Jerusalem, they are simply called ‘the Nazarenes,’ the disciples of the Nazarene; and it is a term that carries a note of contempt. Nazareth was an insignificant place in Galilee, and to give this group the name of that people means to disqualify them, presenting them as villains, rude.

Saul came to Jerusalem to study and made a career in the school of the synagogue; he is a wild young man, is a young man eager for a career and passionate about defending traditions and takes advantage of this opportunity of Pilate’s absence as the right time to give a coup de grâce to that group of heretics. He considers them heretics; he starts from the conviction that Jesus was wrong, that he was a cheat, a fool, and that those poor ignorant people have been fooled by him. They become dangerous because they are increasing in number and, therefore, must be stopped. He is the young man who takes initiatives; he asks for letters from the high priest so that he can arrest the believers in Jesus living in Damascus. This is a secret police job in its own right, not a normal legally enforceable action.

The high priest of Jerusalem has no authority over the city of Damascus; it is in Syria, and at that time it depended on the king of Petra, Arethas IV, king of the Nabataeans. It was a connected city with the desert of Transjordan; evidently they had news in Jerusalem that in that far northern city there were Jews who believed in Jesus and recognized him as Christ. If we use a medical metaphor, we could say that Saul of Tarsus considered the preaching of Jesus and his disciples a cancer and realized that it had to be eradicated. There were already metastases in scattered groups of believers and it was necessary, according to their mentality, to intervene and eliminate, cut, remove them by all possible means, lawful and unlawful.

These letters to the synagogue of Damascus, are clearly licenses to recommend a person whom we could compare to a secret agent, sent for a confidential operation in which, with the connivance of some authorities, they must make disappear some characters that they somehow consider dangerous. Therefore, Saul, with a group of soldiers part for this punitive mission in Damascus; it is a secret mission that must remain secret; his intention is to cleanse the city; he must find which Jews adhere to Jesus by recognizing him as Christ and, against the law, arrest them and take them to Jerusalem to have the possibility of condemning them, to purify the synagogue of Damascus.

But the unexpected happens; on the way to Damascus takes place the decisive encounter in Saul’s life. This fanatical young rabbi meets the Lord Jesus, the Risen One. In a moment he realizes that he has made a mistake. He understands that Jesus is right. Luke narrates this event with much sobriety, without giving us curious details, but dramatizing the event with a short dialogue: “On his journey, as he was nearing Damascus, a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ He said, ‘Who are you, sir?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.’ The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, for they heard the voice but could see no one. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing.”

Suddenly this man falls to the ground. The horse has been inserted by the painters. The narrator does not name it and therefore one must be careful not to say that Saul fell off his horse. He fell to the ground, wrapped in a light and personally challenged. ‘Saulos’ is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Saul and in this case, in the original Greek, the vocative has precisely the Hebrew form: he feels called by the Hebrew name “Shaul… Shaul… why are you chasing me?

It is interesting how typical of Luke to use the double vocative in some particular situations; for example, we remember when Jesus reproaches Martha because she is anxious and agitated by too many things, he calls her by repeating her name ‘Martha… Martha’; also during the Last Supper, when he answers the disciple who boasted of following him in any situation, he says ‘Simon… Simon.’ Now he calls another important character repeating his name: ‘’Shaul… Shaul’ why are you angry with me? Why are you making war on me?’ This man was convinced that he knew God; he was religious since he was a child, he read the Scriptures all the time, he was defending God’s interests, according to him; he was fighting against Jesus’ disciples because he considered them to be enemies of God.

Now he hears a divine voice: ‘You are chasing me.’ He calls him (‘Sir’) Lord, which is the proper title of Adonai, it is the proper name of the God of Israel. That voice is divine; Saul realizes that it is God who is calling him, and asks him the decisive question: “Who are you, Lord?” He who boasted of knowing everything humbly asks, “Who are you?” He accepts of not knowing, is a desire for greater knowledge. And the answer is a kind of theophany: “I am Jesus.” ‘I am’ is the proper name of God.

It is what the Lord had revealed to Moses at the burning bush. Now there is a vocation of Saul to make him a new Moses, a man able to bring something new, a great announcement for the revelation of Jesus. “I am Jesus.” God’s own name joined to the name of Jesus. At that moment Saul realizes that Jesus is God, that he has really risen, that everything he said, the claim he made of being the Son of God is true, is really true.

It is a moment of shock, it is an enlightenment, he realizes that Jesus is right and at the same time he realizes that Saul is wrong, that he has been wrong, that all his fanatical and violent behavior is wrong. It is a collapse; he falls to the ground because his life collapses; his world, his mentality, everything he thought, planned, wanted, all his religiosity collapses. It is a paper castle that breaks and crumbles. He stands up and is blind; he sees nothing.

That light has blinded him. He who thought he could see, becomes blind and has to be taken by the hand to Damascus, and remains three days without seeing, without eating, almost in a coma. It is likely that this fall is linked to a pathological event; we could speak of a ‘stroke,’ A stroke, in Latin means ‘blow.’ There was a blow in that man’s life, and he suddenly collapsed to the ground; he lost consciousness; they had to carry him to the city. And he remained almost in a coma for three days. After which he gets up.

These numbers may have been cleverly chosen; three days Saul spends in the night, in the dark, and these are the three days of his descent to hell, of his death. The old man is dying so that the new one can be born. Jesus simply touched him, not electrocuted him to incinerate him, touched him deeply to awaken him, so that he could act with that man as an instrument chosen to carry the announcement of salvation to all peoples. But on that extraordinary occasion nothing is revealed to him.

Saul needs human intervention and the Lord Jesus appears in a dream to a Christian in Damascus called Ananias; he is one of the leaders of that group who believes in Jesus; he was one on the list that Saul had to kidnap and take out. Jesus invites him to go to the house of Judas where this character is staying. Ananias knows who Saul is. If Saul was part of the secret services in Jerusalem, there was counterintelligence in Damascus and Ananias had been warned of this secret expedition and so the Christians of Damascus were on the defensive, they were expecting a dangerous arrival from Jerusalem. Jesus sends Ananias to the house of this dangerous character. It’s like going to the lion’s den and putting yourself in their hands. With extraordinary communication the Risen Christ encourages Ananias to risk and face him not as an enemy but as a brother. And the dialogue between the two is splendid. Ananias says to Saul: “Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me, Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came.”

This fact is not known only to Saul; it is known to Ananias. The same One who acted in Saul sent Ananias. And Ananias calls him brother and announces who Jesus is, what he has done, lays his hands on him, baptizes him, and gives him back his sight. At the time of Saul’s baptism, the scales fall from his eyes and Saul recovers his sight. It is an extraordinary fact; it is the rebirth; it is the Passover of death and resurrection with which Saul begins a new life as a Christian. He eats, gets his strength back and immediately starts preaching. Paul himself, in the letter to the Galatians, will say that he was three years outside Damascus, that he retired to the desert to rethink everything; then he returned to the city of the Damascenes and began to preach in the synagogues; and the news reaches Jerusalem and caused a great stir.

This fanatical man has changed sides, went to Damascus to destroy the Christian group and became a Christian instead. When he returns to Jerusalem he finds himself in a painful situation because he is hated by all. The Jews consider him a traitor, one who has changed his position; Christians do not trust him. They are afraid, they fear a trick, a fiction in order to contact them better, get to know them better, and therefore accuse them.

He is not accepted by the Christian group, although Barnabas introduced him and supported him. He is hated by the Sanhedrin because he is considered a dangerous traitor, they even try to kill him. Someone wants to kill him and then the Christian group advised him to change places. They take him to Caesarea where the port was, they ship him and send him back home to Tarsus.

And Paul, upon becoming a Christian, suddenly lost everything. That young man who wanted to make a career in the Sanhedrin suddenly found himself without any prospects. He joined Jesus, believed in him and lost everything else. He has not entered the Christian community; he has been definitively expelled from the synagogue, he returns home and goes back to his private life. He knows how to weave, he is a weaver or makes mats and then he set up a craft store and for years he was at home in Tarsus at work.

He will return to the scene thanks to Barnabas’ work, but we will find him later in the story of the Acts. Now, in chapter 10, after narrating Saul’s conversion, Luke narrates Peter’s conversion.