“But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake” (Acts of the Apostles 9:15-16).
The Epistle appointed for this Holy Day, commemorating the conversion of St. Paul, provides us with an excellent opportunity to meditate on the Apostle chosen to carry the light of the gospel to the Gentiles. Firstly, it is important to recognize the momentous nature of this continuation of Christ’s revelation from the Jews to the Gentiles. Two thousand years of Christian history can easily blind us to the deafening silence experienced by those Gentiles who fell outside of God’s covenant people during the world’s infancy. Generations upon generations of souls whose everyday lives were dominated by superstition and immorality as they looked out into the darkness and longed for deliverance; for, our ancestors were not left without shadows and signs that pricked the conscience. Human sin had mortally wounded the intimate connection to God enjoyed by primitive man in the Garden of Eden, but the vastness and glory of the creation still pointed toward a transcendent Creator. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul himself gives us a picture of that world:
“For [God’s] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 1:20-23)
The Almighty God of the Universe created mankind to enjoy a personal and loving relationship with Him for all time, but sin has perverted that relation, not in that it is no longer personal—as all people, saved or condemned, have a personal relationship with God—rather, our sinful nature makes us prejudiced against God and his justice. The tragedy of the fall is not that we no longer know that there is a God; the tragedy of the fall resides in our cultivated spiritual blindness, our proudly hardened hearts, and our seemingly infinite capacity for self-deception.
This image of unregenerate man from Romans drips with anger and sorrow and shame because St. Paul, one of the greatest minds of his generation, knows what it means to claim to be wise and become a fool. He knows what it feels like to exchange the glory of the Immortal God for temporal praise and self-satisfying comfort. We can only imagine those three lonely and painful nights of blindness and sadness as the apostle was confronted by the signs he had ignored and the truth he tried to destroy.
Three days into this agony, St. Paul is visited by a disciple personally sent by Christ to minister to the broken man. The drafting of Ananias, who appears less than thrilled to be chosen to visit an acclaimed Christian murderer, can seem a bit perplexing given the relative proximity of Damascus to Jerusalem—only around 135 miles. In fact, due to the excellent Roman roads and the current conflicts in the region, it actually took less time to get from Jerusalem to Damascus in the 1st century than it does now. The route Google Maps recommends is around 1,862.8 miles, requires a ferry ride across the Red Sea (surely something Moses would have appreciated), a quick jaunt through Saudi Arabia, and finishes by just skirting around some rather undesirable areas in Iraq. So the question remains, why did our Lord choose Ananias rather than the nearby big guns like Peter, John, or James who could have given some much needed comfort to the Christians of Syria, many of whom were logically wary of Paul’s sudden conversion. An answer can be found in the special mission our Lord has in store for this newly minted apostle. The Lord tells Ananias, “…Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15-16).
We should take a moment to pause and think about this often overlooked description of what it means to be a “chosen instrument” or “vessel” of the Lord. In the popular imagination, God, when discussed at all, is described as something of an unholy union between Zeus, our favorite waiter, and a genie. This god of our imagination has a big white beard, sits and thinks about how great we are, and occasionally pops in to give us presents or help us out of a jam. This fake god is very easy to follow, but since we have erected him out of our own fallen preconceived notions of who god should be, he is as much help in a crisis as Mickey Mouse or Daffy Duck. I very much sympathize with the atheist who refuses to believe in that god, in fact I agree with him.
Our God, however, the God that called Abraham away from his idols and made a world saving covenant with him, the God who built a nation and shepherded a people, the God of the Cross and the Empty Tomb is a living, breathing, and working being who gives and animates all of the life in the world. He animates the world, but he is not the world. We should take no comfort in our culture’s ongoing fascination with the “spirit of nature” or the “life force” or whatever ephemeral and mindless agent is given credit for creation. Only the true, transcendent God, who exists over and above the material universe, can save the material universe He created. The world that God created was good, but the fallen world we inhabit is not. In this present reality, to be God’s chosen vessel is to suffer because to serve Him is to serve something greater than the disfigured world we have inherited. St. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians reveals why God would use such seemingly fragile means for the proclamation of His glory:
“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body” (2 Cor. 6-10).
The weakness and unworthiness of Christ’s servants only magnifies the glory rendered to God through our assured victory.
Which brings us back to poor Ananias and the conspicuous absence of the Twelve Apostles. Imagine for a moment what would have happened if Peter had journeyed to Damascus, laid hands on Paul, and instructed him in the faith. We certainly would have a less-clear concept of the root of Paul’s authority, we might—for instance—be inclined to think of Paul as an disciple of Peter like Mark the Evangelist, but more importantly the glory of the Lord would be slightly darkened, and the particular calling of Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles would be undermined.
Jesus Christ calls apostles to be his special ambassadors of the Word. They are his chosen representatives, and the foundation upon which the Chief Cornerstone will build His church. These men were not perfect, but a power greater than any one of them kept the nascent Christian community together despite vicious persecution by the Roman Empire and the challenges that face any group of redeemed sinners. St. Paul is called in this peculiar way because he must be independent of the direct personal authority of the Jerusalem Christians. For Paul’s special calling is to jealously guard a remarkable truth made explicit in the New Covenant, for example, in his Epistle to the Churches in Galatia he writes: “…a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Christ Jesus, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law” (Gal. 2:16). He continues: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20). St. Paul recounts in the same book that he even needed to correct the Apostle Peter’s understanding of the relationship between justification and the law, and through this story of conflict in the early church—judiciously handled by the providence of God—we have a momentary glimpse into the handiwork of the Almighty and an idea of how the Good Shepherd watches over His flock. As St. Paul says in the introduction of his letter to the Galatians, “Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father…” (Gal. 1:1). The Apostle Paul’s apostolic authority was bestowed by God, and the revelation he received, and how he received it, were instrumental in safe-guarding the early church from error and spreading the gospel into the Gentile world.
Finally, let us return to St. Paul himself sitting in that darkened room, three days after the appearance of our Lord, as he awaited the damnation he must have felt he deserved. Enter faithful Ananias, who does not walk into that terrifying scene alone. In this season of Epiphany, we rightly celebrate the appearance of Christ to the Magi, but we also should not lose sight of the post-resurrection appearances of Christ we observe during this period after Christmas. St. Stephen sees Christ welcoming him home as he is murdered by Paul and his associates, shortly afterwards, Paul sees Christ as he is blinded on the road to Damascus. What kind of force could open the heavens for Stephen as he became the first martyr for Christ and would also open the eyes of a man who helped slay him? In fact, it is not a force at all. Ananias does not go alone into that room because he is accompanied by the third person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Ghost, the Comforter—and as he lays his hands upon Paul—the apostle is filled with that same Holy Ghost and baptized, and like a key going into a lock, all of Paul’s knowledge and years of study become tools for the expansion of the Kingdom of God. Paul’s entire life becomes truly meaningful as the Lord will use him to bring the truth to countless millions, and illuminate the world with a torch brighter than a thousand suns—lit by an all powerful God who works all things for His good purposes. That same mighty God rules the church in our age, and we should constantly pray that we honorably carry His flame.