Open to Wonder

“Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’” — Acts 9:3–5

Our reading from the Book of Acts tells the story of a conversion, but not the kind we generally talk about. In modern parlance, when we speak of conversion, we usually mean that someone is newly adopting a fresh set of beliefs, while leaving behind old ones. We talk about a person “becoming a Christian,” in terms that reflect a conscious decision, a deliberate change made by someone who has considered all the angles and made a public commitment to a new community or religious identity.

But the story of Saul’s conversion doesn’t quite fit this mold. On the road to Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus, Saul does not travel with an open mind. He is not on a search for God. He does not hear a sermon that suddenly speaks to him, nor is he suddenly touched by someone else’s testimony.

Saul is instead zealous for the God he has always believed in. Confronted with “followers of the Way” — those folks who have embraced Jesus as the long-awaited, and resurrected, Messiah — Saul is eager to set the record straight. He considers their proclamation about Jesus to be false, and he actively facilitates their incarceration.

In his fervor and passionate insistence on the “correct” path, Saul is not on some spiritual quest of his own. He is not interested in an intellectual debate about the reality of God by seeking the truth wherever it leads him. He’s on a mission with a destination in mind.

So, what happens? Saul — known to us as the Apostle Paul — does not change his mind about Jesus by thinking things through. Rather, he is confronted with the risen Christ in a most unexpected and dramatic way.

As if from left field, he encounters a “light from heaven flash[ing] around him.” Falling to the ground, he hears Jesus speak to him directly: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” When Saul asks, "Who are you, Lord?” Jesus reveals that he is God’s very self. Saul, who had taken it upon himself to defend God’s honor, comes face-to-face with a new and stunning reality. His conception of who God is and what God might do in the world is broken open.

Following his divine encounter, Saul is blinded for three days — a duration loaded with spiritual significance. Like Jonah, in the cavernous belly of the big fish, and like Jesus, who was resurrected after three days in a dark tomb, Saul is coughed up into second sight, a new way of seeing. He is destabilized by a meeting with the God who is wild, freed from his conception of how the divine might act.

Saul’s awakening is given, and received, as both gift and terror, for Jesus does not wait for Saul to be correct or good. Instead, he shows up in Saul’s life without warning, conveying a promise of transformation and new purpose. Resurrected from the darkness of his own past and the feeble understandings that have bound him, the future Apostle Paul can now see how little he actually knows — indeed, how little is possible to know. For only God can reveal God’s self in this way.

Paul’s new purpose comes with a price. Right away, he is told that he will “suffer for the sake of [Jesus’s] name.” The reason for this is clear. Paul is not converting to another religion; his Jewish faith continues to be the center of his life. He is not assenting to a fresh set of doctrines. Rather, reborn in the light of God’s revelation about Jesus, Paul becomes a new person. The birth pangs of this burgeoning life will mean the surrendering of himself to God’s will and to God’s freedom.

And so it is with us. While we may never have a personal Damascus Road encounter, we, too, sometimes grasp tightly to what we think we know. The story of Paul’s conversion begs us to trade our certainty for a posture of humility and wonder. Who knows what facets of divine light might be available to us, if we await God’s revealing with openness ­— and then prepare to be surprised.

— Summerlee Staten

Summerlee is executive director, Faith Formation and Education.

Read all of Sunday’s Scriptures

Step Into the Story

Here are some ways to think awaiting God with openness.

Visual Art

Renaissance painter Caravaggio depicts the arresting drama of Paul’s conversion.

Poetry

Zach Czaia captures the feeling of being awestruck on the Damascus Road: “Take it in. You know you must answer but you don't know how to.”

Architecture

The Chapel of Saint Ananias in Damascus, Syria, is an unusual underground church, believed to be the home of the disciple who prayed for Paul, despite him being an enemy of the early Church.

Theology

What if Paul’s conversion is not between religions, but from violence to nonviolence?

Music

Smokey Robinson’s “Road to Damascus” asks us whether we are also walking the road of hate, locked in a “jail of prejudice and hate,” from which Jesus can help us escape.