Paul
Unlike Mary Magdalene, the apostle Paul never knew Jesus in the flesh; he only
and forever knew the Risen Christ. Earlier we recounted his experience of being
struck down and blinded, and we moved from there to consider how his
transcendent experience—captured in his favorite phrase “en Cristo”—moved
him away from narrow religion and into a universal vision. Here I want to focus
on how Paul, in effect, started with Christ and rather quickly made a full
identification with Jesus, whose voice he heard on the Damascus road (Acts 9:4).
Rather than reading Paul’s thought primarily as arguments about sin and
salvation, as Christians have long tended to do, I want to read Paul as a witness
to both personal and cultural transformation, which he himself went through.
Jesus represents the personal and Christ the cultural, historical, and social levels.
Paul really teaches both, although the second has been largely underemphasized
until the last fifty years.
You remember that while traveling the road to Damascus, Paul (then known
by his Hebrew name, Saul) heard a voice asking him, “Why do you persecute
me?” He responded: “Who are you, Lord?” And the Lord said, “ ‘I am Jesus
whom you persecute” (Acts 9:4–5). He was struck blind for three days (which
often symbolizes a time of necessary transitioning to a new knowledge), and he
had to be led into Damascus by the hand. During these three days Paul lived in
what I call “liminal space,” betwixt and between worlds; he took no food or
water from the “old world” he was accustomed to, and began his transition to a
“new world” in Christ. His is a classic description of conversion, and it follows
the typical progression from self-love, to group love, to universal love. But Paul
did it rather quickly, whereas most of us take a lifetime. Very soon Paul’s “sight
was restored” and the hater was baptized into a rather universal love. He
became the foremost teacher and proclaimer of the Gospel (Acts 9:17), even
more than the original Twelve, and for the rest of his life, he worked to build a
solid bridge between his beloved Judaism and this new “sect” of Judaism, as he
clearly first saw it (read Romans 11).
The fact that Paul didn’t know Jesus in person makes him the perfect voice to
name the Christ experience for all of us who come after him. Did you know that
Paul uses the single word “Jesus,” without adding “Christ” or “Lord,” only five