Commentary on Acts 9:1-6 [7-20]

Jerusha Matsen Neal

It is strange how little airtime the conversion of Saul (also called Paul) receives in the Sunday lectionary. For a story that Luke returns to twice more (22:3–21; 26:2–23) and that echoes across the Pauline epistles (1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:8–10; Galatians 1:11–17; Philippians 3:2–11), this text’s Eastertide Year C appearance is the only occasion when lectionary preachers engage the Damascus Road episode on a Sunday morning. It’s enough to make an Acts-loving preacher put the feast day of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle on the church calendar. The date is January 25, for those unfamiliar with such traditions—an excellent text for the Epiphany season.

Given the compelling nature of Saul’s transformation (a conversion from “persecutor to proclaimer”¹), preachers may be tempted to center his experience in their sermons. The inversions between physical and spiritual sight and the dramatic hinge the encounter creates in Acts’ plot make for compelling rhetoric. Other preachers may find the transformation of the reluctant Ananias into Saul’s evangelist a more challenging exhortation. Acts 9:1–20 is not only a text about the conversion of an enemy. It also describes the challenge of embracing an enemy converted.² There is so much good material here. May preachers find numerous opportunities to recount Saul and Ananias’s stories in robust detail—lectionary or no!

But perhaps, not this week.

This week, after all, is only three weeks after Easter—and there is a third character in Acts 9:1–6 who deserves attention. Indeed, the lectionary’s prioritization of the chapter’s first six verses suggests that this third character is where an Eastertide preacher’s eyes should focus. As in the story of Stephen (Acts 7:56), the risen Jesus makes an appearance in Acts 9, allowing for no contemporary domestications of resurrection hope. Jesus’ voice, spoken into a world “still” (verse 1) filled with violence and disaster, makes clear the audacity of the church’s claim. The Lord, who died, rose, and ascended into heaven, is not planning to remain quarantined within an archetype or a narrative arc. He has not been collapsed into the church’s ecclesial structure—even as he feels the church’s wounds and incarcerations in his very flesh. This Jesus speaks, breaking into the present. When Acts’ narration flits into present tense as Paul “draws near” Damascus (verse 3), a reader feels that even Luke himself is caught up in the moment.

Willie James Jennings gets at what is at stake. The risen Jesus asks for concrete obedience, growing out of a living, relational encounter. Saul moves from “the Lord he aims to please to the One who will direct him according to divine pleasure.”³ More to the point, this Lord has enfleshed particularity, binding his name and his person in vulnerable solidarity to those harmed by abstract reductions of righteousness. “Why do you persecute me?” Jesus asks (verse 4.).

When Paul recounts his conversion story in Acts 26, he adds a line to Jesus’ question. “It is hard,” Jesus tells Paul, “for you to kick against the goads” (26:14). A goad is a sharp stick used to prod recalcitrant animals, meant to stop one sort of behavior and provoke another. Another translation for the word is “sting”—a word often used to translate Paul’s defiant joy in 1 Corinthians’ discussion of resurrection. “Where, O Death, is your sting?” the apostle asks in triumph (1 Corinthians 15:55).

But in Acts 9, the sting Saul feels is not from death—but from the presence of a risen Jesus who reveals that Saul has been causing harm to the One he professes to serve. It is the sting of Life, held in the pierced hands of the crucified, risen Lord, redirecting Saul into repentant, accountable commitment to God’s world and work. It is the sting of revelation that throws Saul to the ground and bids him rise.

The Jesus of Acts 9 does not speak of “goads.” But Paul clearly feels their provocation—and it changes him. May the sting of the resurrection mark the present tense of our pulpits this week. And may the presence of Jesus speak.