18 - Metamorphosis

The young man Saul plunges on through the world, marching day and night, alone. Heaven stretches above, and oceans of sand beneath. The fiery tongues of the sun have made him a bundle of bones and nerves. His body, half wrapped in a tattered sheet, is scorched, withered and shrunk, skin drawn tightly over ribs. Scraggly legs support thin hips and his belly is worn out by hunger and thirst. His neck is like a twist of cords.

Only his great, pear shaped head has grown bigger. Brown wisps of shaggy hair stick out from under a tattered head covering, and mix with a beard that covers narrow jaws. His face is covered with a layer of sand. It’s in his throat. His pores are thick with it. He is drunk with sand.

Three years have passed since the day of the vision, but his loneliness has aged him three decades. If not for his one good flaming eye, the youthful twitch of his tightened lips and the strange radiance of his wide forehead, his face would look like that of an old man. Long, pitifully thin hands, lean on a bamboo staff, while his feet sink into the pathless sands at every step. His stooping back inclines almost toward a hump, showing the full weight of what he has taken on himself.

And what’s he been doing these three years? When he left Damascus, he was wrapped up in his vision. His eyes could see again, but his mind was dazed. He had just one desire, to find himself. He had no plan; he just fled aimlessly, asking only to be free from thought and will.


It chanced that the road he took led to Petra in Arabia, the capital of king Artos. When he arrived, he decided that since he knew no one there, he would find a Jew for whom he could work. He told no one who he was. He was careful to follow all the Jewish laws, and on the Sabbaths he went to the synagogue.

Petra was an unclean city, like Sodom. There were a mixture of Moabites, Edomites, Midianites and Amalekites living there, and they all worshipped Dionysus, a god of fruitfulness and joy. There was a never-ending series of festivals going on, including the most abominable forms of sexual deviance. Oil lamps were made in the shape of sexual organs, and revolting perversions were engraved on all the sacred utensils. Every dish, seat, and wall was covered with representations of Sodomite rites.

In this city of unbridled, savage appetites, Saul lived alone in the little Jewish community, worked his trade, and kept to himself.

But when he recovered his strength, the full force of what had happened began to make him afraid. He felt empty and naked. There was no doubt about the reality of the vision, but he knew that if, or since, it was true, then the whole rest of his life was one big sin. So young, and yet he’d committed so much evil, shed so much blood, and brought so much anguish on the world.

So while the vision was the only thing he had to hold onto, it offered him no peace.

At one point, Saul was in danger of sinking into despair, as if the demons were making one last effort to win his soul. His guilty conscience almost caused him to lose what little sanity he held onto.

“If I’ve done so much evil up till now in the name of good,” he said over and over, “who’s to say that tomorrow I won’t find something else that’ll make what I do today seem just as evil? What man can ever think he knows the final truth? We’re all sinners, and everything about us, our thoughts, our deeds, and even our truths, are all foul and putrid. So why not just live like the heathen? Why not quench every lust we have? I’m just a stinking pot that’ll soon be broken.”


One evening Saul somehow got caught up in a procession of riotous men and women carrying palm branches and torches, dancing half-naked to the music of flutes and clashing cymbals, and singing loudly on their way to the temple. A lithe, dark-eyed, brown-skinned Arab girl darted toward Saul and pulled him into the line of dancers. That night he ate sheep and goat flesh from the altars of the idol, and gave himself to the dancing and the music and the drunkenness of the ceremony. In the morning he awoke on the temple steps with his head in the lap of the idolatress, and was immediately tormented with the question of whether he had defiled his body before the god.

He remembered the words of warning from his teacher Rabbi Gamaliel, “I fear for you, Saul. I will pray God for your soul. You’ve chosen a path that is narrow and perilous.”

Saul now understood how easily those words could come true.

But it wasn’t in Saul to yield to such temptation. What it did do was wake him up to the fact that he needed to restore order in his life. But order must be preceded by unification, and that wasn’t possible while his life was divided into before the vision and after the vision. He vowed to sacrifice the former, for he knew that his only salvation was his faith in the new life, the second life.

His old life was one mass of sin, but it had been done in ignorance. The idolaters of Petra were not really guilty of idol worship, for their innermost desire was to worship the true God and their sacrifices were offered in ignorance. Therefore they were sinless. And so it was also with Saul. By abandoning the old life and clinging to the new, it was as if the old life never existed.

The lord had told him to go into Damascus for instructions, and there he’d been told that he was God’s chosen instrument for great things. God had chosen him, the greatest of all sinners, as His instrument.

Thus the old life was gone. His sins were washed clean and he was now as a newborn child. He’d been born again in Damascus.

And so he continued to wait.

Weeks and months went by with no sign and no direction. Such is the tragedy that faith does not contain its own security. The road to Damascus had been illuminated. The road from Damascus he had to build for himself.

He thought about taking a wife and raising a family like all men do, but he realized that he only thought this because of his reluctance to take the yoke that was being prepared for him. For the second part of the message was that “Saul will suffer much for my name.” Once he accepted that, he left for the wilderness of Sinai, the mountain where God had revealed himself to Moses.


Sinai had always drawn the religious souls who hungered for the divine spirit. Tradition declared it to be the purest of all mountains, the center of divine inspiration. It was said that the divine spirit hovered over it because it had never been made unclean with idol worship like other mountains. It had been protected from false gods and reserved and sanctified for the God of Israel. The Essenes were drawn to its penchant for inspiring visions. The disciples of John were drawn to it as well.

And so Saul resolved to live in its divine shadow as a Nazarite, so that the spirit might visit him. He traveled with a caravan of a rich Arab merchant who was taking a cargo of spices from Arabia to a port on the Red Sea. He left the caravan when they reached the sandy plateau where the foothills of Sinai begin.

As he traveled up the roadless slopes, Saul saw here and there withered, half-dead, cave dwelling Nazarites, Essenes, disciples of John the Baptist, and members of a brotherhood of Damascus called the Sons of Moses, who also believed the Messiah had come and who were sanctifying and preparing themselves for his imminent return. They were all just shadows of men, hollowed out by the hot winds and cold storms that alternately raged there. The black tatters on their bodies barely covered their shame, and their hair and beards were wildly matted. They sometimes passed whole weeks without food, and when they did eat, it was either cactus roots, dried pressed dates, or parched wheat grains. They drank the dew, which they collected painfully, drop by drop, in cruses. They passed the days in prayer and meditation, and at night they stared up into the heavens, reading the stars for their destiny. Wailing and howling could often be heard from the black caves in which they lived.

Saul stayed there for several months, fasting and praying in a vain attempt to bring down the Holy Spirit by the strength of his will. But there was no sign, no hint, no revelation. As his body weakened, so did his spirit. He stopped thinking and analyzing, lost control of himself, and started babbling like the others. He hated that for he saw nothing useful in it. The center of his world was his conscious being, not mystical abstractions. If he couldn’t think it through, he wanted no part of it.

Paul’s emphasis on the rational mind was so strong that even in his vision, his first question had been, “Who are you, lord?” He insisted on knowing with whom he was dealing and to what authority he was asked to bow. He remembered a lesson taught by Rabbi Gamaliel that Hillel’s opponents had once argued with him saying that they had heard voices from heaven supporting their viewpoint. Hillel replied that the Torah had been given to men, not angels, and therefore it was he, Hillel, who would decide what was right or wrong, not the angels.

Saul realized that these people at Sinai were all visionaries, trying to hear heavenly voices and achieve a “higher self.” But the Holy Spirit was not here. For that he needed an alert mind, for the Holy Spirit worked through the instrumentality of his brain.

So he left.

Carrying a gourd of water, his staff, and a bundle of dried dates, he went down to the foot of the plateau and joined a caravan bound for Damascus. While traveling with them, he didn’t engage in conversation, but lost himself in thoughts of a long ago generation that had traveled through these same sands. Their skeletons were buried here, the first generation of the liberation from Egypt. Saul felt like he could hear their lamentations over having been left there by Moses and Aaron.

Eventually they came to a place that looked like God had thought about making it into an oasis, but never finished. Perhaps there had been water here at one time, but now there were just crippled shapes of cactus and dwarf palms. He said his evening Shema, drank his little remaining water, and ate the last of his pressed figs. He praised God, and then he slept.

When he awoke his thoughts were clear and fresh. He went through his experience once more. He’d had a vision and an unimaginable, incomprehensible Messiah had revealed himself to him. This Messiah had been with God before creation, and would come on the clouds, surrounded by heavenly hosts, to judge the world. Saul had seen his form and heard his voice, and he now belonged to him eternally.

Now what was he trying to say when he answered that he was Jesus, “whom you persecute,” rather than “Jesus, the Messiah?” This must mean that the persecuted Jesus must come before the Messiah Jesus. So the Jesus who will come on the clouds lived among us first, and we didn’t know him. He taught us, performed good deeds, and died on a cross. So this earthly Jesus was just as important a part of the faith as the Jesus who will come on the clouds of heaven.

So this much was clear. The unknowable and incomprehensible Messiah was also known and comprehensible. We saw him, we heard him, and he walked among us.

But beyond that, who is this one who is like us and yet is also Messiah? He can’t be merely created, as we are, or as the stars are. Creation is comprehensible; it’s bound by natural law. Everything is ordered in its motions according to a system. This system is the wisdom of God that directs the motion of all creation. It’s the nature of God, the radiation of God, and nothing can exist without it.

All is in order. Messiah is the redemption, the lifting of creation to its highest perfection, the ultimate purpose for which God conceived it. It is the fulfillment of the task that was in the mind of God in the act of creation. And for this alone creation took place. Messiah is this part of the divinity in creation. His purpose is perfection, redemption, the highest level of salvation.

Thus Messiah is the higher will of God. He is higher than wisdom, for wisdom is but the present condition of creation. Messiah is the supreme objective of creation, the striving for perfection, for liberation from the earthly nature. He’s not bound in wisdom, which can only be achieved by laws and commandments, by arrangement and system, but in the nature of God, which is possible only through redemption. Messiah is the supreme effort of the universe. Without him creation has neither sense nor purpose. He is the reward and the final achievement, the thread that binds all creation to divinity.

And thus if follows that Messiah is the Son of God, and not, like wisdom, only the daughter of heaven touched with God’s nature. He is the Son who liberates us from nature and unites us with God. Through him we become like the angels. Through him we arise to eternal life. Through him we are redeemed from our imperfection and we achieve highest perfection.

Therefore, Jesus, the persecuted one, he who came from the tiny little town of Nazareth and lived among us, who preached in the Temple court and was not recognized, who was struck and shamed and bore the anguish of the cross, he is Messiah. He is the highest radiation of divinity, God’s redemption for the universe. Only through him do man and the universe acquire the meaning of their existence.

This was the revelation for which Saul had been waiting. And it did not come to him from without, but from within, with the voice of the Holy Spirit.

In the starry night Saul imagined Jesus of Nazareth stretched out like the ladder in Jacob’s dream. It was on a night just like this that Jacob saw the ladder stretched from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. Jesus is the ladder and it is on him that we mount up to heaven.

Saul resolved to bring the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth to all men.

He looked down to see his own black, withered body, and a verse came to mind. “He gave his body to the smiters.”

Saul of Tarsus knew what his body would have to endure for the sake of the gospel.

“I will consecrate my body to Jesus of Nazareth, even as I have consecrated my soul to him.”