Open Our Eyes
Acts 9:1-20[1]
Some say that the
hardest thing to do is to tell another person, “I’m sorry.” And I would agree
that it can be difficult to say those words. It takes humility to be able to
apologize to someone we’ve offended or wronged. But as hard as it is to utter
the words, “I’m sorry,” I think it is even harder to say the words, “I was
wrong.” Apologizing still leaves room for the possibility that you didn’t mean
any harm. Saying, “I was wrong” goes beyond that and accepts responsibility for
offending someone. That can really challenge us to the core of our identity.
Saying “I was wrong” can be humiliating, and painful.
In our Scripture
lesson from the book of Acts for today, we learn that Saul the Pharisee found
out that he was wrong in a dramatic way. Given our general impression of St.
Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles, we might find the description of Saul the
Pharisee a bit shocking. The Scripture reading says that he was “breathing
threats and murder” against the disciples of Jesus (Acts. 9:1)! It’s hard for
us I think to imagine the same Apostle who wrote “Love is patient; love is
kind” (1 Cor. 13:4) acting out such vicious hostility. Apparently, it was not
enough for Saul the Pharisee that the Christians had been driven out of
Jerusalem. He was on his way to Damascus to arrest them and drag them back for
punishment!
I think it may be
hard for us to understand what would inspire such intense violence. In the case
of Saul the Pharisee, it would appear that what he would later call “the
scandal of the cross” (Gal. 3:13) was the basis for his zeal to attack
believers. The fact that Jesus had been crucified constituted for Saul
conclusive proof that he could not have been the Messiah. According to the
Hebrew Bible, a crucified man stood under God’s curse (Deut. 21:23). So for
Saul, the gospel that the crucified Jesus was God’s Messiah constituted
blasphemy.[2]
In Saul’s mind, he was rounding up
blasphemers for the punishment they deserved.
But as he was on
his way to Damascus to carry out his violent intentions, he met the living
Christ along the way. It’s hard to tell exactly what happened because the book
of Acts recounts it three times in three slightly different ways. But the
dialogue makes it clear that Saul met Jesus. And Jesus was the one who had been
raised from the dead and was alive forevermore, not some messianic pretender
Saul thought was dead. Interestingly, when Christ confronts him, “Saul, Saul,
why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4), he replies, “Who are you, Lord?”
Despite his preconceived notions, he recognized that he was dealing with some
kind of divine encounter. I’m sure he was stunned to hear the answer: “I am
Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5)!
In that moment, I
can just imagine what must have been going through Saul’s mind. He had been
violently pursuing Jesus’ followers out of a conviction that they were the
worst kind of blasphemers.[3]
I would think that meeting Jesus on that road started his mind swirling in the
most intense kind of re-evaluation of his life we could imagine. I would say
that when he opened his eyes and could not see, it was symbolic of the
blindness from which he had been doing things he now regretted. After all, even
at the end of his life, St. Paul could still call himself the “chief of
sinners” because he formerly persecuted the church (1 Tim. 1:15).
When I think
about this story, I wonder what made such a dramatic change in the life of
Saul, a strict Pharisee who had been so zealous for God and God’s Torah that he had condemned the
followers of Jesus to death (Acts 26:10). I think surely the fact that he came
face-to-face with Jesus must have been a powerful experience. I would imagine
that he felt not the anger or rejection he may have thought he deserved, but grace,
mercy, and love. And above all, I think he experienced an acceptance that
transcended anything he had ever known. When Ananias came to him and called him
“brother Saul,” and baptized him, I think it must have affected Saul deeply.
More than that, when he learned he was “an instrument whom I have chosen to
bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel” (Acts
9:15), I think it must have been deeply humbling to him.
A lot of eyes
were opened in the course of these events. Saul’s eyes were opened. Jesus was
not an impostor, he was truly the Messiah and Son of God, as Saul began to
preach immediately after being baptized! The believers were not blasphemers for
proclaiming a Gospel he now knew to be true. The eyes of many in the early
church were opened to the power of God: their most violent opponent had been
transformed into a brother and a fellow believer, and he proclaimed the faith
he once tried to destroy. Although it took some time for the Apostles in
Jerusalem to trust him, even they ultimately received Saul the Pharisee as a
brother. A lot of eyes were opened indeed.
When our eyes are
opened, it often involves a recognition that we’ve been wrong. That can be a
hard experience. It involves admitting that we’ve been acting on assumptions
that were false. It involves recognizing that we may have been in the wrong in
the things we’ve done and said. All of that is humbling, and challenging. I
think what makes such an experience truly life-changing is when we admit we are
wrong, but find that we are accepted nevertheless. There are times when we come
face to face with our wrong thoughts, words, and deeds. Hopefully when that
happens, we will embrace the opportunity to have our eyes opened, and to take a
different direction with our lives as did Saul the Pharisee.
[1] ©
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 5/5/2019 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf.
F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart
Set Free, 71: “A crucified Messiah was worse than a contradiction in terms;
the very idea was an outrageous blasphemy.”
[3] Cf.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1:199,
where he says that Paul is “an opponent and persecutor of the community simply
because (cf. Rom. 9:4f.) he stands for Israel, for its election and calling,
for its mission to the world, for the course and development of its history as
the history of salvation, and therefore for the faithfulness which is to be
shown to God in the form of the faithfulness of Israel, its obedience to the
Law which He has given it and its trust in the promises which He has made to
it, … . He persecutes Christians because he sees that this economy of
reconciliation and revelation is questioned, transcended, relativised and
outmoded by them, i.e., by their proclamation of the person, work, lordship and
authority of the Jesus of Nazareth rejected by Israel and delivered up by it to
be crucified, by their declaration of His Messiahship, election, calling and
commission, of His history as salvation history, of the demand to obey Him, to
trust in the promise given in Him, to believe the Word spoken in His
existence.”
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