UNIFORM LESSON FOR OCTOBER 11, 2015
Scripture passage and lesson focus: Acts 9:19b-31
In the verses preceding our passage, Luke records the dramatic story of how God used Ananias to cure Saul’s blindness after his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. As a result of his encounter with the resurrected Jesus, Saul the persecutor of Christians became a believer himself and was baptized in Damascus. In Galatians 1 Paul’s own words corroborate Luke’s account of his early persecution of Christians and his abrupt and surprising call to be a follower of Jesus. It is not difficult to imagine how shocked and at the same time how relieved the Christians in Damascus must have been.
Acts 9:19b-22 – Saul’s new faith
Restored to health and totally redirected by his new faith in Jesus, Saul joined the community of Christians in Damascus. Luke reports that Saul immediately began to preach in the synagogues there. Convinced by his encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus, Saul proclaimed Jesus as God’s Son. The persecutor had become a very vocal follower of Jesus. In this sense it is appropriate to call Paul’s Damascus road experience a conversion. He now had a new identity and a new vocation. As Beverly Gaventa insightfully comments, “This story is not a story of salvation by conversion but of conversion to a particular mission.”
Believing in Jesus did not diminish Saul’s sense of being a Jew or his desire to be in the synagogue with God’s people. From this perspective, Saul did not experience a conversion. He was still a Jew who could boast that he was “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews” (Philippians 3:5). His fellow Jews in Damascus, believers as well as non-believers, were flabbergasted and perplexed.
As time went on, Saul became increasingly able to argue convincingly that Jesus was God’s Messiah. Luke reports that Saul “confounded” his Jewish listeners in the synagogues by “proving” that Jesus was the Messiah. The Greek words Luke uses here suggest that Saul both perplexed and persuasively instructed his audience. They did not know what to make of his radical change. However, his preaching soon aroused the wrath of the Jewish leaders in Damascus. Here, for the first time in his account, Luke refers to Jews as a separate group from Christians.
Acts 9:23-25 – Saul escapes
A significant but unknown amount of time passed during which Saul continued his preaching and attracted his own followers. Saul’s enemies in Damascus had had enough. They planned to get rid of their problem by killing Saul. Somehow Saul was made aware of their murderous plans. Saul’s friends, here somewhat surprisingly and perhaps anachronistically called his disciples, secretly enabled him to sneak out of town by lowering him over the city wall in a basket. Paul also reports this in 2 Corinthians 11:32-33, although there it is a city official rather than Jewish leaders who tried to arrest him.
Acts 9:26-31 – Barnabas opens the door for Saul
Saul made his way to Jerusalem in hopes of connecting with the Christian community there. Unfortunately the disciples there were fearful and refused to accept Saul. Luke tells us that Barnabas became Saul’s advocate. He described Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus and how Saul had been transformed into a powerful evangelist for Jesus. According to Luke, this opened the door for Saul to be accepted by the disciples in Jerusalem.
It is difficult to reconcile Luke’s account of Saul’s acceptance by the disciples in Jerusalem with what Paul wrote in Galatians 1:17-19. There, Paul vehemently denies that he had extensive interaction with the disciples in Jerusalem and what little contact he did have was three years after his Damascus road experience. This is only a minor discrepancy, however, perhaps exacerbated by Paul’s immediate concern in Galatians to establish his claim to be an apostle. For the most part, Luke’s account of Saul’s call to be a follower of Jesus is confirmed by Paul’s own later description of his life-changing encounter with Jesus and his new identity as Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ.
For discussion: This chapter in Luke’s narrative about the early church has been characterized as a narrative of reversal, Saul’s radical change from persecutor to proclaimer being the primary example. What other reversals do you see in this passage? Do you know of any other dramatic calls to a new vocation like Saul’s in Scripture, in church history or in your own experience?
