Three Days of Blindness

This morning we continue our series on Doubts by studying the story of the man responsible for much of the spreading of the Gospel to the Gentile world and the writer of most of the letters in the New Testament. His Jewish name was Saul, but we know him best by the name he used after meeting Jesus, his Roman name, Paul.

Flannery O’Connor once said of Paul’s conversion, “I reckon the Lord knew that the only way to make a Christian out of that one was to knock him off his horse.” Saul was one of the most zealous of the Jews who were persecuting Jesus’ followers in the generation after his death and resurrection. Ananias knew how evil Saul was, so evil that when God called him in a vision to go to Saul, he reminded God whom they were talking about here. “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.”

Saul was a man of faith and conviction. He had grown up in Tarsus, outside of Palestine, the descendent of Jews who had been exiled and not returned.

As Saul grew, he was bright and a good student. He was sent to Jerusalem to study and became a disciple of Gamaliel the Elder, a Pharisee and “one of the most respected and influential scholars of his day.” (Walaskay) Of that time, Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.” (Gal. 1:14)

Saul was one of the chosen people of the chosen people. When Stephen, the first Christian martyred, was stoned, Saul was there. He didn’t pick up a stone. No, he stood back and watched the stoning; it was illegal for the church to execute, that was a punishment only able to be carried out by the Roman government. So Saul isn’t going to be caught with a stone in HIS hand…his work is much too important to get his hands dirty, but he also isn’t satisfied to hear the verdict and miss the execution…he goes with them to the outskirts of the city, stands back and watches the stoning. And then he goes to the high priest and asks for letters to the synagogues of Damascus so that he can go and arrest any Jesus followers there and bring them back to Jerusalem for the same fate.

Our translation of Luke says that when he goes to the high priest, Saul is still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. The literal translation is that Saul is breathing in and breathing in threats and murder. He isn’t exhaling. He is just taking them in and taking them in, filled up with them.

William Barclay says he “intended to enter Damascus like an avenging fury.” And suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. The writer of Luke and Acts uses the same word that we translate “suddenly” in the 2nd chapter of Luke when the shepherds are told of Jesus’ birth. In the same way that the shepherds in the fields abiding their flocks by night had seen the sky suddenly filled with a multitude of the heavenly host praising God at the announcement of Jesus’ birth, Saul suddenly sees a light from heaven periastrapto. We don’t really know how to translate periastrapto. It is a verb, it is only used here. We translate it flash or lightning. It is light and it is bright and it is sudden. When Paul describes the experience, he calls it a “great light,” “brighter than the sun.”

The voice from the light calls him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” The repetition of his name tells us that this is more than a conversion, this is a call. When Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac, a voice calls out from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham,” when Israel sets off for Egypt, God speaks to him in a vision at night, “Jacob, Jacob,” when Moses is called, God says from the burning bush, “Moses, Moses,” God calls in the night “Samuel, Samuel,” and now, Saul is brought to his knees by a flash of blinding light and asked “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

Saul doesn’t know who this is, he doesn’t know it is Jesus, but he does know that he is experiencing God. “Who are you, Lord?” he asks. “Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Even as you do it to the least of these, you do it to me. “But, you get up.” This is not about Saul being converted to Christianity. It is not about him coming to know Jesus. It is about him getting up. It is about what he is going to do now.

Because he’s been knocked off his high horse. Saul was travelling with men of the Sanhedrin, the police force of the Jewish leadership. Because he was a Pharisee, he couldn’t associate with them. So, for the 140 miles from Jerusalem to Damascus, they walked together, but Saul walked alone. And then they heard a voice and saw him fall to the ground. They realized he couldn’t get up. He couldn’t see. They reached out and took his hand, blindly led like a child, Saul entered Damascus.

For three days, he couldn’t eat or drink or see. And then God sent Ananias to lay hands on him, “Brother Saul,” he says. He calls him “Brother” – this man who has been rounding up believers to kill them, he calls “Brother” because God has sent him. “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.”

And after three days of physical blindness, the light that had blinded him physically cured his spiritual blindness. Paul was transformed.

The important question for us as disciples and doubters is “How did that happen?”

It didn’t happen alone. Saul was led to Damascus by the hand and touched in Damascus by Ananias’s hands. Our transformation requires others.

It doesn’t happen because of what he did. Saul was as helpless as a little child being led around by the hand. Our transformation requires God acting.

But, it doesn’t happen without him. Paul becomes weak; he fasts, he doesn’t eat or drink, for the three days of blindness. Dr. Ruth Haley Barton says that “The journey of transformation requires some measure of willingness to relinquish control and give ourselves over to a process that we cannot fully understand nor can we predict the outcome. We know we will be more like Christ but we cannot predict exactly what the person of Christ lived in and through us will look like or where it will take us.
While we cannot transform ourselves into the image of Christ, we can create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place.”

It doesn’t happen alone. We need the community of believers. It doesn’t happen because of what we do. We need the power of God. But, it doesn’t happen without us. We must open ourselves to be transformed.

As Richard Foster describes it, offering ourselves “doing what we can do with our bodies, our minds, our hearts. God then takes this simple offering of ourselves and does with it what we cannot do, producing within us deeply ingrained habits of love and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Renovare Perspective, April 1999)

Here is the good news: God is able to transform us completely. Saul breathed in and breathed in murder and threats, persecuting and executing Jesus followers. Then, he gets knocked off his horse. On the road to Damascus, he meets Jesus and he is transformed. Not just a little transformed, not just tolerant, he became as zealous for Jesus as he had been against Jesus. He began preaching that Jesus is the Son of God. He became a wholly new person, the Apostle Paul. Our God is a God of complete transformation. Thanks be to God. Amen.