15th Day of Easter, Sunday April 26: Acts 9:20-31

After Saul’s individual conversion, and his first contact with Ananias and a small group of disciples in Damascus, he goes public. He shows up in the synagogues in Damascus, and starts doing exactly what he came to arrest people for doing, stirring up Christian dissent in those synagogues. Imagine the resistance in the crowd – his former allies and his former victims each reassessing their responses. His former allies plan to kill him, and guard the city gates, but he escapes in a basket over the city wall at night.

Acts says that back in Jerusalem, nobody trusted him or would talk with him. Just as Ananias had to take a chance, so Barnabas (son of encouragement) goes to him, brings him to the disciples, and vouches for him. Paul’s autobiography won’t match this bio. In Galatians, Paul says he only met Peter and James, and not to learn from them or defer to their approval, just as a courtesy. Who gets to say who gets to play, in the early church or in ours?

Saul doesn’t preach for long without getting into a new fight, this time with Hellenists. That may mean Greek-speaking Jews or Greek-speaking Gentiles. They adopt the language and culture of the market, not a dialect from a religious or ethnic subculture. God knows what the fight was about, and hasn’t told me. Acts just says that’s why Saul was shipped out to Caesarea by his friends, and in turn to Tarsus, past Antioch. Conversion hardly leads to ‘happily ever after’, eh?