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20 August 2007
Saul the Roman. (A Gentile with a Tan.)
It is strange, really… sometimes your greatest strengths are hidden in the things that you hate most about yourself. We are taught to hate in ourselves the things that make us different, taught by everyone around us to hate the things that don’t belong. Yet, it may be that the Creator’s signature is in those very things, and in those very things He may have equipped us for the story He has prepared. Redemption works in funny ways sometimes.
We know much of the story of Paul the Apostle. We know less of the story of Saul of Tarsus. Please allow me a bit of artistic license with his story.
The accusation was born on the day he was, through no fault of his own. Half of it was born in his curly hair and brown eyes. The other half was inherited from his father’s citizenship, in the town of his birth and in the language he would grow up speaking. None of these things were meant with malice, of course. None of them were meant to threaten anyone. A child of Shem and a child of Abraham, Saul’s hair and eyes were just part of that birthright. Likewise, his father didn’t sell out the Maccabees, didn’t betray Israel, and didn’t make sacrifices to the Emperor. He simply wanted to provide security to his family, and Roman citizenship bought more security than gold, so he wisely bought Roman citizenship with some of his gold. Alexander, Xerxes and Nebuchadnezzar decided Saul’s birthplace, each of them scattering the Jewish community to the winds as they swept through. And that birthplace came with a language. Like anyone else, Saul’s parents just wanted to go to the market and buy grain and olive oil (and maybe a little wine,) and the merchants spoke Greek. So they spoke Greek too. Saul had no real choice about any of these things.
Nor did he have much in the way of choice in his early upbringing. Like any good father with the means to do so, Saul’s father sent his son to the best of schools. And those schools, most likely, were Greek. Logic, reason and Greek poetry was drummed into young Saul’s head. But just as he spent his school days with Plato and Aristotle, he spent his weekends with Moses and the Torah. His father, a devout Jew, would make sure that Saul understood his heritage. His father lived in a tension: he was of a successful businessman in a Gentile world, yet he was first a son of Israel, a follower of the Law of Moses. It is a tension that he managed for his household, as well. Inside the walls of his house, it was safe to be a Jew in a Gentile world. But Saul could not live forever inside those walls.
It is said that children are cruel. Perhaps they have not yet learned how to hide vicious intentions behind nice words. Perhaps they have not yet realized why it would be useful to do so. Regardless, they are brutally honest, and brutally ready to ostracize those who don’t belong. So young Saul spends his hellish school days hearing his classmates speak mock Hebrew to him, seeing curly-haired stick figures on camel back, watching other students make ‘snipping’ gestures at him in first-century locker rooms. He wasn’t a Greek, and they made sure that he knew it. ‘You aren’t one of us,’ they told him.
They weren’t the only ones to tell him that. Everybody knows that Jewish children don’t go to Greek schools: after all, are not the writings of Moses and David far superior to any pagan philosophers? Everybody knows that the son of a Roman citizen is Roman, not Jewish: after all, is not Rome is the evil oppressor of the Jewish people? And everybody knows that real Jews are born in Judea: after all, what kind of Jew would leave the promised land? So a child of a Roman citizen who goes to a Greek school in a Cilician town couldn’t possibly be a Jew. I’m sure that someone informed Saul of this fact. ‘We thought you were a gentile with a tan.’ ‘Whatever you are, you aren’t one of us,’ they told him.
Young Saul finds himself in the cross-fire of a war he never chose. Too Jewish for the Greeks, too Greek for the Jews, both groups gun him down as the most accessible representative of the other. So he chooses a side. His appearance bars him from the Greek side, perhaps, though he might pass for a Cypriot. Still, were he to choose the Greeks he will always face the question, ‘so, what are you? I mean, where are you from?’ It is easier to side with the outcasts. After all, that is what both sides keep telling him that he is. The Jews are the outcast group, the persecuted minority. So if the Greeks hate him for being Jewish, he will become everything that they hate. And he will prove to the Jews, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that he is more Jewish than any of them. If they speak Hebrew, he will speak Hebrew better. If they quote Moses, then he will quote Moses, Elisha and Ezekiel. If they keep the ten commandments, he will keep all three-hundred-some. By the sweat of his brow, he will earn entrance into the nation of Israel; by the fury of his works he will vindicate himself. And when he is done, nobody will ever, ever dare say that he is a ‘gentile with a tan.’ (That is, with the exception of the voice always whispering that exact thing in the darkest corner of his fears.)
He is successful beyond his wildest expectations. Saul, now a young man, has by now become a lion in the Sanhedrin, a Pharisee of Pharisees, the brightest rising star under the great Rabbi Gamaliel. Nobody would dare voice the accusation anymore, few would even think it. Saul’s identity is at long last secure. He has arrived. At least, he should have arrived. For some reason, his mad ambition still looks too much like rage. For some reason, it still looks like he’s trying to prove something. (Deep down, further than he cares to look, he still rages at the Jews for having once excluded him. He expresses this rage by beating them at their own game. He overthrew the leaders, superseding all the playground bullies in his meteoric rise. But he never really conquered them: their cruelty was reborn in him on a much bigger playground, covered by righteous and subtle words. I wonder if Saul ever really felt at peace with his identity as a Jew, with rage fueling his doubt and doubt fueling his rage.) If the young man stopped for a moment, he might realize that his efforts are the very thing that keep the accusation alive. The shadow of that realization keeps him running. But he runs into Someone he does not expect.
Something about the followers of the Nazarene got under Saul’s skin. (This something like saying that the Inquisition was impolite.) Saul’s rage and his driving ambition find themselves perfectly synchronized in his persecution of the followers of this new heresy. He gives some pretty good reasons. He may even believe them himself. ‘They divert worship away from the Holy Temple.’ ‘They are idolaters, worshiping this carpenter Y’Shua.’ ’They blaspheme Jehovah, saying that He has a son.’ These were enough for the Sanhedrin to send Saul with their sanction and a detachment of heavily armed Temple Guards.
If Saul had been honest with himself, he might have found his deeper reasons. The greatest crime of the Nazarene was his blasphemy against the laws. Not the Law. The laws. The hundreds of rules that Saul had so fastidiously kept, proving to any law-abiding Jew that he was surely a Jew. The Nazarene also spoke against the temple. The temple, that impregnable fortress of Saul’s identity, for his service there ensured him a place of honor with his people, a place where no one would ever question whether he truly was of his people. Most abominably, the Nazarene spoke against circumcision. The gift of Abraham, the gift that had caused him so much grief growing up, the one thing the world could never deny, the Nazarene called it worthless. For all of this, the Nazarene was put to death; for all of it, everything that remains of him must be burned to the ground. For Saul must protect all the bastions of his hard-earned Jewish identity at all costs.
Just as the original accusation had two halves, so did Saul’s rage: Jew and Greek. His rage for the Greeks was as overt as his rage toward the Jews was subtle. ‘Love your brother, but hate your enemy.’ They hated him, so he would hate them. If they hated him for being a Jew, then what a Jew he would be! He would be infinitely different from the filthy goyim who reveled in their lurid perversions and pagan idolatries. He would be as far above them as a man above a cockroach. And he would look upon them only with contempt, the same way they had looked upon him. But this Nazarene, this carpenter from nowhere, he looks upon the goyim with love. He goes to the Decapolis and wins their adoration with cheap magic tricks. He goes to the half-breed Samaritans and claims to be the Messiah. He compliments a Centurion while deriding the Scribes and Teachers of the Law… he is no Jew. For no Jew can love the goyim. Because the goyim hate Jews. Because the goyim hated Saul. To Saul, being Jewish meant not being a gentile, for his identity was forged in the war between the two groups. Anyone who sought to reconcile the two must then be an enemy. And thus, Paul’s civil war finds an outlet in his war against the Nazarenes.
Like any war, there are casualties. The first casualty is Saul’s integrity. It was nothing as simple as a bald-faced lie. The most dangerous lies never are: the deadliest falsehoods turn inwards. Self-deception always starts and ends in pride. And so it does with Saul. You see, he is in a bit of a quandary. The deepest and darkest parts of his heart all scream out with rage toward this sect. But he has amassed quite a bit of religious social capital, and certain things are expected of a ‘spiritual leader.’ Rage is not one of these things. So in obedience to his own pride, he finds the loftiest of words for the basest of emotions. He paints spiritual-sounding whitewash over his hatred, which brings with it the added benefit of inciting others to do his dirty work. So Saul stands watch over the cloaks of Stephen’s killers and looks on with approval, clad in white but red in tooth and claw. With every stone, he feeds both his rage and his pride. They are his stones, and this is his stoning. Thus the heretic Stephen dies at the hands of Saul, the next casualty of his civil war.
He does not stay dead. Stephen is reborn each night in Saul’s nightmares. Stephen’s face becomes the splinter in Saul’s mind, his words the hangnail in Saul’s memories. The more he pulls at it, the deeper a wound it becomes. This man received the greatest of rage with the greatest of peace. This man answered so much hate with so much love. How can such things be? Saul’s universe, boiling and frozen with rage, was safe in its own way. Stephen is the first crack in that ice, the first doubt that is not turned inward. And face with doubt, Saul does what he has always done: he runs. If he can silence these Nazarenes, then perhaps he can silence his doubts. So somewhere between Valjean’s Soliloquy and Javert’s Suicide, Saul sets out for Damascus.
He never gets there. In the sound of thunder, eyes without sight are blinded. In the sound of thunder, the crack Stephen began shatters Saul’s universe. In the sound of thunder, Saul of Tarsus is undone. The ancient Psalmist calls for God’s vengeance against his persecutors. Like Christ, Stephen called for God’s mercy upon on his enemies. He is avenged nonetheless. Saul of Tarsus does not survive much past Stephen‘s martyrdom. He is killed by a man named Paul of Tarsus. Like Javert, Saul drowns himself in the riverine springtime swells. Like Valjean, he is reborn rising from the waters of his baptism. Three entangled streams become one river: Saul dies, Paul is born and Stephen is vindicated.
Redemption happens in a moment. Sanctification takes a bit longer. For a surgery as deep as Paul’s, the incisions will take some time to heal. Mercifully, God gives him plenty of convalescent time in the desert. The man who once wove the scriptures into arguments is taught to weave hides into tents. Yet, in that weaving, he is rewoven. It begins with the humbling of his name. Sha’ul, a Jewish name for the first king of Israel, is replaced with Paulus, Latin for child. It ends with the breaking of his fears. Like the wayward lamb with broken legs, he no longer can run from his fears. Yet in this is the greatest miracle yet: the fears of the unbroken Saul break themselves upon the broken Paul. As the flotsam of the wreckage of Saul floats to the surface of Paul’s heart, he discovers that burdens become treasures in God‘s hands. In the course of two years in the desert, the very things he hated most about himself become his greatest strengths. The Pharisee of Pharisees becomes the Apostle to the Gentiles.
He is perfect for his role; he performs it magnificently. He wields logic and reason with the elegance of intimate familiarity, illuminating the Scriptures to a people who never knew Abraham or Moses. He meets the Athenians with their own poets, translating Christ into their culture. In the Aeropagus, he intuitively identifies where the ice is thinnest, preaching to them about their Unknown God. The Greek poets that caused him so much grief with the peers of his youth become his allies for the Gospel, Greek logic and culture become weapons in his arsenal. He may have been too Jewish for the Greeks of his youth, but he is Greek enough to get inside their heads. He may have been too Greek for the Jews of his youth, but he is Jewish enough to know the Scriptures like the back of his hand. The boy that was lost in the void between two worlds becomes the man that can bridge them both in the name of Jesus Christ.
Surely there were counter-attacks. The adversary reaches for his old accusations, his old weapons of identity. He hurls them at Paul, and they shatter upon him. He is undiminished. The accusations never surrendered, but Paul surrendered the accusations. Finding his identity in Christ, every other identity lost its power over him. He no longer has anything to prove; with nothing to defend he has robbed his adversary of things to attack. He is accused by the Jews as a traitor to the law of Moses. The accusation breaks upon his identity in Christ: ‘there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.’ The greatest hopes of Abraham, Moses, and Elijah are realized in the Messiah. The law, the promise and the covenant are all completed in the Christ. He is accused by the Greeks as a backward son of a superstitious people. The accusation breaks upon his identity in Christ: ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised pierced for our iniquities, the chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we have been healed.‘ The foresight of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah puts any Greek oracle to shame, the justice of his prophecy exceeds even the loftiest Aristotelian dreams. Beyond Jew or Greek, Paul is made whole in Christ.
In this wholeness, Paul becomes all things to all people. He puts on and takes off whatever robes will advance the Gospel; a Greek to the Greeks, a Jew to the Jews. A man who worked so hard to earn admission into his own culture lays it down freely, for he has found free admission to something beyond culture. He is free to lay one robe down and don another, knowing that God will safeguard each. He is free to lose himself in the security that he will never again be lost. In the light of that freedom, his hard-earned Hebrew resume amounts to little more than an accounting of wasted time. In Philippians, he accounts for each of his achievements, and then discounts them all in the light of knowing Christ. And so Paul is completed. The child Saul sets out to prove something to the world. The man Saul proves more than he had ever hoped. The broken Paul realizes that he has nothing to prove. The reborn Paul surrenders everything that he had proved. The most glorious chords of a symphony happen near the finale, so now the completed Paul must meet the completion of his story.
It ends as it began. The Saul was born in Tarsus to Roman Citizens. Paul dies in Rome as a Roman Citizen. Saul hid his Roman Citizenship, afraid of any association with the oppressors of his people. Paul claims his Roman Citizenship, convinced that the oppressors need the Gospel just as badly as the oppressed. So Paul becomes the freest man to wear chains, weathering storms and shipwrecks on his way into the heart of the people who hated him. Thus, Paul the Roman, Pharisee of Pharisees, proclaims the Gospel of Christ to the Emperor of Rome. And on a chopping block outside of the capital, the martyr Paul rejoins the martyr Stephen in the stream of Christ. Like Stephen, Paul is vindicated. Like Stephen, Paul is reborn in his once-enemies. Three decades later, the unthinkable happens: Christ rises in Rome from the seed of Paul‘s blood. Jove lies shattered on the ground as the Chi-Rho is lifted high. Paul triumphs over his childhood tormentors by loving them. In his weakness, Paul found his true strength. The gentile with a tan became the second most influential Jew of the last two millennia.
Ecclesiastes teaches that there is nothing new under the sun. Culture and identity, community and belonging are issues in 21st century America as much as they were in 1st century Judea. I do not think that Paul’s story is entirely unique. I have seen it happen, in bigger and smaller versions, in versions more and less complete. But as Aslan reminds Shasta, ’I am not telling you their story. I am telling you your story.’ So I will tell you mine.
‘Loser.’ That was what they called me. So I learned to succeed. And I succeeded with a vengeance. I disproved them time and again, until one day I had racked up so many successes that no one would ever dare make the accusation again. No one except myself. So I fought on with mad rage, proving something to the universe. I think they called it ambition. I think they were wrong. I think it’s called fear.
I expected to find a home at Grad School. I think I expected too much. I thought that in the self-proclaimed intellectual Mecca of the country, I would find people who understood what it was to be hated for being different. I was half right. They understood what it was to be hated. And they decided I looked a lot like the people doing the hating. Ironically, I learned to blend in so well that I became indifferentiable from my once-persecutors. ‘Oppressor’ completed the accusation. Caught in the void between cultures, I sided with the outcasts. If they hated me for being a warrior, then what a warrior I would be. So upon leaving, I set myself to winning the respect of my people while defying my interlocutors. I succeeded.
But I didn’t find an answer. Perhaps we are afflicted with Midas’ curse. We seek success, and we find it. But we never find what we’re looking for. Our need for success steals the life from our blessings. So I continued to amass joyless victories. And then I received a blessing I would never have asked for. I received failure.
I don’t think I would have opened the blessing, had I known what it was. Knowing this, God wrapped the blessing in everything I had ever wanted. Time and again, I would seek success. I fought with all my heart for a victory. But time and again I would find only defeat. And I would fight all the harder and lose all the harder. The last defeat is the only one I am proud of. In that defeat, I lost honestly, I lost before God, and I lost in the center of His will. And in that defeat, I found something I did not expect. I found brokenness.
It is amazing how much God can heal in the course of a year. Broken of success, I find that I now actually enjoy success. Now that I don’t have to succeed, I find that I want to succeed. Now that I have nothing to prove, I find that I actually value the many blessings I have been given. And I find that I have been blessed in ways that I would never have been able to understand.
Jesus calls the poor and the persecuted blessed. I would never have understood how before. It makes perfect sense, though. Christ was God in the flesh. Yet He chose to be a carpenter. The apostles were not much to speak of. Yet they unintentionally conquered the greatest empire this world has known. God has used the foolish things of this world time and again to humble the wise. He does not use pretensions of wisdom.
I hated being an outcast. I hated being a loser. But I do not anymore. I embrace the accusation. In my weakness, He makes me strong. And how many times have the outcasts won? How many times have the weak overthrown the strong? So for all the Frodos, the Skywalkers, and the Galileans, this is now my prayer. ‘For my inheritance, give me the poor, the sick and the weak.’
Perhaps weakness is such a great gift that it needs to be unlocked first. Perhaps it is a gift so beautiful that you must be taught to use it lest you hurt yourself. The most beautiful gifts are this way. And so before we can wield it, God must teach us His accounting of things. Blessed are the poor, the sick and the weak. The world hates us for our differences, but God loves us for them. This is redemption‘s deep magic. Yield your insecurities to Him and let Him astonish you. Perhaps His most precious artistry is hidden in the very things you are trying to hide. Perhaps you are a Paul.
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