Acts 9:1–20
If you know me, you know that the Acts of the Apostles is my favorite book in the Bible. I know it has a complicated history, I know that its stories can trouble and disturb us, but what piece of our Scripture is that not true for? I love Acts precisely because it is the story of people stumbling but continuing to move forward, continuing to grow and change by the power of God’s spirit. And no story better encapsulates how people change than this famous story of Saul’s transformation on the Road to Damascus.
Saul starts this story as a contract bounty hunter, an eager participant in state violence. A few chapters earlier, the story goes out of its way to tell us that he holds the coats for those who lynched Stephen. In the NRSV, Saul is described in this story as “still breathing threats and murder against the disiples of the Lord.”
The writer isn’t interested in Saul’s childhood traumas, how structures of colonialism limit his agency, or anything we might seek out in a story of transformation. He enjoys this work. He volunteers to serve a no-knock warrant in another jurisdiction. Many of us know a cop or a prison CO like this: The one who takes joy in smashing up the encampment, the one quick to write someone up and throw them in the hole. That person who makes us go, “Maybe some people are actually evil?”
But don’t underestimate Jesus. He knocks Paul down and tells him straight: “I’m the one you’re looking for.” And it is in the blinding light of confrontation that Saul begins his transformation.
The struggle for freedom requires conflict (it’s a struggle, after all). I’m a tender-hearted, white middle-class Midwesterner, and I really wish we could all grow and heal without conflict and confrontation. And alas, this story is not the last time Paul will be pushed to grow. The rest of Acts is full of fights, many of them physical. But here, in this dramatic showdown in the street, he begins to change.
The poet Cecilia Llompart writes, “all growth is an argument for more light.” Paul isn’t done growing here, but the fact that he can change is the Spirit’s argument for the disciples of the Lord to not give up on him.
It’s easy to give up on our enemies. But don’t underestimate Jesus. All growth is an argument for more light.
Rev. Jay Bergen is a pastor at Germantown Mennonite Church in Philadelphia, and a volunteer organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), a campaign fighting to end life sentences and heal communities across Pennsylvania.