06 - Saul Waits

Mount Taurus towers above the city of Tarsus looking like a young athlete frozen in motion, the lower part of his body wreathed in eternal cypress and splashed with the blood-red blossom of oleander. It’s time for the New Year festival of the chief god, Sandan, and the population is out on the streets in celebration. Linen draped wealthy merchants mingle with burlap-covered slaves. Gaily-attired daughters of respectable families are side-by-side with alluring dancing girls clashing cymbals. There are academy students in sober togas and naked youths in the stadium.

Rivers of color run in the streets, robes of brown, violet, and purple, heads crowned with wreaths of laurel and flowers. From the waves of color rise the sounds of flute, cymbal, and drum. Each participant in the vast procession carries the uprooted trunk of a young, blossoming tree. Following ancient ritual, the worshipers replant the trunks around the temple of their god to create a fresh-blooming garden.

When this ceremony is done, a host of young men pours out of the stadium, ready for the athletic contests. The New Year festival depicts Sandan renewing himself in young life, and he must be worshipped in competitive games and sports in the famous Stadium of Tarsus. The assembled athletes are on display, with their rolling chests, indrawn stomachs, hardened buttocks, and massive shoulders, and a joyous cry goes up from ten thousand throats. The air rings with a single cry, “Adonis! Adonis!”

Among those who’ve come out of the city to attend the festival and watch the games is Saul. Saul wants to see and hear everything, unlike most of the Jews of Tarsus, who’ve taken refuge in the closed courtyard of their homes or in the synagogue so as not to accidentally witness the abomination of idol worship. He wants to know everything that the people of his city delight in, and how they worship their local god.

It’s been seven years since he heard the voice of the lord promising to send him to the Gentiles. Seven years he’s waited for a vision that would fulfill those words. But there’s been no vision, no voice, no sign.

Through all this time he’s kept himself ready, prepared at a moment’s notice to begin his mission. He even enrolled in the famous academy of Tarsus, in defiance of the Rabbis, to perfect himself for the work. He made his living by day, weaving mantles and tent coverings of goat’s hair, and studied by night. His teachers at the academy were famous philosophers from Athens. He even joined the company of a number of young Stoics.


Saul had a peculiar gift that attracted the deep and indestructible devotion of younger men. In Jerusalem, of course, he’d had the devotion of Barnabas. Here in Tarsus he developed an eternal bond of devotion from a young Stoic of the academy named Titus.

Young Titus was a Greek by birth, a native of Antioch, who’d come to complete his education at the famous schools in Tarsus. When he first met Saul he was completely devoted to the doctrines of the Stoics. Like them he considered the moral and philosophical system of his teachers to be the privilege of the “chosen” intellectual, completely above the mass of humanity. But inevitably his association with Saul influenced his outlook. Saul talked to him freely about the God of the Jews and His Messiah, and Titus felt the strong pressure of Saul’s dedication to a life of purity, love and faith. He struggled against it, driven as he was by a pagan spirit and a youthful, passionate nature that refused to accept the bonds of the Jewish spirit.

At the moment, the two of them are standing with the crowd waiting the opening of the games. Titus’ dark eyes are aflame with enthusiasm. Saul’s beard has become thinner with the years, and a bald patch shows on his head. Looking at the athletes and hearing the excited shouting of the people, they’re acutely aware of their differences in sentiment, and they can’t help urging their views on each other.

“Look at the perfection of the human body, Saul, the instrument of Eros,” cries Titus. “Look at the beauty of its lines and the harmony of its motions. Why do you say it’s only for a moment and is doomed to fade and disappear? Can’t Eros bring eternal bliss? Eros is all you have, and no one can take him away from you. He’s the only hope of the slave, for even the slave is free in him. And when one body mingles with another in desire, it’s life’s utter perfection. Desire is the one master of life. It swells the flesh and makes it fruitful, washes over it like a storm, and encloses it in the intimacy of fulfillment. Who can put a boundary on that?”

Saul listens patiently to this pagan outburst, and a smile of affection plays about his eyes. Like an elder addressing himself to a wayward child he answers, “Eros is like a blind beggar, dear Titus. He holds a stone in his hand and takes it for bread. If it is bread, it’s only the bread of vile flesh. When the flesh fades, Eros fades. When it dies, he dies.

“But we’re more than flesh and worms. In the body, we’re only here for a moment. We wither away like grass. But in the spirit we’re eternal. That’s why we live according to the spirit, and not according to the flesh. It’s in the spirit that we’re born to eternal life. And the only way to be born of the spirit is faith in the only living God and in His Messiah who brought us salvation. In faith we live eternally, for we live in the spirit.”

Titus looks at Saul puzzled.

“But isn’t my flesh also life? Isn’t my flesh subject to unchangeable laws, and isn’t there an eternal logic in the structure of my body?”

“Your body,” answers Saul, “is subject to the laws of human life, which have the nature of death and destruction in them. And it’s the same with the logic that regulates your life. It’s the logic of death and destruction. But the laws that regulate eternal life are of the logic of the spirit and come only from God. Only Messiah, who triumphed over death and destruction, reveals them. Only through faith and higher logic does our body find communion with the spirit and our life have worth and meaning. Without this spirit there’s nothing but a great emptiness.”

Still Titus looks at his friend without comprehension.

“What proof do you have that this higher logic exists? Can you prove to the senses that such logic is real?”

“I can’t prove it to your sense, for your sense is earthly and part of our base and vile physical being. The higher logic is revealed to a higher sense, and that responds to the voice of God speaking in your heart.”

“I’ve never heard that voice.”

“You will hear it when God has compassion on you.”

“Till then, Saul, let me live by the light of my lower sense, for everytime I hear you speak I begin to lose faith in it.”


Later that day the two friends stopped at one of the food booths erected for the festival along the banks of the river. Much was available, like sheep, lobsters, and young boar’s heads, and Titus ordered his favorite dish, roast pork liver, and a jar of sweet wine.

The people lay at ease under the trees and bushes, and there was laughter, singing, and music all around. Saul and Titus found a quiet eating-place a little apart from the main crowd. Saul still adhered strictly to the Pharisaic laws, so he wouldn’t eat the forbidden meat, but he’d relaxed his orthodoxy enough so that he could sit with his Gentile friends without feeling revulsion at the sight of unclean food. Titus, of course, knew of his friend’s belief, and so tactfully did not offer to share his meal. There was a group of Stoic students nearby under a bamboo shelter, who seemed to be devotees of the wine god Bacchus rather than the stoic Zeno.

One of the many beggars who hovered thick as flies around the eating-places approached the young revelers. Different beggars used different tactics to get food or coin, and this beggar posed as an interpreter of dreams.

Standing near the drunken students he began to whine, “Oh free son of a free father. By the wrinkles on your forehead I think you had a dream last night that you can’t interpret. Tell me your dream, and I swear by Sandan that in exchange for a slice of roast pork mixed with lobster dipped in oil, and a bit of wine, I will so interpret your dream that your wrinkles will disappear and the daughters of Tarsus, who are ripe with love, will fall into your manly lap. Just yesterday I interpreted a dream for a slave, and today I saw him with the tablet of manumission on his chest.”

The tattered interpreter wasn’t talking to any one particular student, for he was blind and could only guess who was seated before him.

“Don’t you know,” called back one of the young revelers, “that the course of a man’s life is not in the hands of the gods, but is predestined according to the doctrine of the great Epicurus?”

“By your wise speech I can see you’re one of the philosophers of mighty Athenadorus,” replied the beggar. “I’m a colleague, a philosopher of Plato. Brother philosopher, fill my empty stomach which only understands food.”

“Brother beggar, if you’re a philosopher, than surely you know that you can’t find happiness in any condition,” said another student as he sucked lustily at the claw of a lobster. “The pain of hunger is just a condition. You’re in the condition of hunger, and I’m in a satisfied condition. Don’t disturb the harmony of my condition by dragging me into the sphere of your condition.”

A third called out, “What’s in it for me if I give you a dish of succulent pork seasoned with frog-sauce fried in oil, and a cup of wine mixed with honey? Even if I added half of this lobster, whose white flesh still retains the fresh tang of the sea, so that it delights my tongue and freshens my virility as only the fat meat of lobsters can, what do I get out of it? Wouldn’t you still be suffering, and wouldn’t I be guilty of prolonging your suffering?

“If you were a philosopher, you would know I couldn’t very well give you this pheasant the cook just placed before me on a soft bed of egg-cakes and now squats there waiting for me to go throw up so I can make room for it. If I placed this fat, tender bird in your trembling hands, I’d be doing injury to myself. Surely you don’t want to be the cause of my suffering.”

Titus had stopped eating and was staring at them. Suddenly he stood up, went over to the blind beggar and led him away from the mocking group.

“Come,” he said, “sit at my table. You can have your fill of the tender pork and sweet wine you long for.”

The beggar, fearing that this was just a continuation of the game, held back. But when he smelled the good food, he threw himself at it with the fury of a starved beast.

The Stoics were amused by the little comedy and loudly agreed among themselves that this young man must be infected with the queer faith of the Jews, if he’s willing to share his food with the hungry and needy.

“Too many people are defecting from our home gods. An alien faith corrupts our city, and the fathers should do something about it.”


Saul and Titus said nothing, but on the way home Saul asked his friend, “Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Give your supper to the blind beggar.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Weren’t the Stoics at the other table correct in their logic?”

“Yes, logically, they were correct.”

“But you didn’t act logically. Why?”

“I tell you I don’t know. A passing mood, maybe, or a touch of contrariness.”

“No, brother Titus, it was neither. Your action was true to the higher logic of the spirit I mentioned earlier. Up until now only the Jews have lived this way. But now that Messiah has come the whole world will live in the spirit that says all of us are brothers.”

“Tell me more, Saul. I think I’m beginning to understand,” said Titus.

“No, not to understand, brother, but to live it in your feelings, like in a new birth – a new-born child in the spirit of Jesus.”

* * * * *

No father could have watched over the footsteps of a little son with more tenderness than Saul watched over those of Titus. From that day on he accompanied his friend everywhere. He waited outside the temple door when he went to do service before the idol. He waited outside the door of the gymnasium rubbing chamber where the young men went after their baths. Saul didn’t go into any of these places, of course, but he made no effort to dissuade his friend from doing so. He used no pressure. He just waited, knowing that his young friend was moving step by step toward the new life and the new doctrine.

Saul also gave up many of his own practices for his friend’s sake and put his position in the Jewish community at risk. He was sitting at table with Gentiles, and some even accused him of going into their temples. Saul’s father had passed away, but his mother was heartbroken by the strange turn in her son’s life. She wept for the disaster that had come over Saul. She wept because he hadn’t taken a wife or founded a house in Israel, like all other Jews. She wept because he acted like a sick man, claiming to have seen Messiah in a vision. Meanwhile the years were passing and his life was coming to nothing. The other members of the household considered him a lost cause, and if not for the trade he used to support himself, he would’ve been forced to leave his mother’s home and to hunger among strangers.

But Saul was willing to endure everything because he felt that this young pagan Gentile, Titus, was a test of his belief that Gentiles could accept the faith of Messiah. He figured that if he could win this one, he could win others. No, it was more than that. To Saul, Titus was his child of the spirit, the soul he was bringing into the fold of Messiah.

So Saul spent every moment he could with Titus, even taking time from work. Gently, by degrees, he fed him with the truth as a little child is fed with milk. He nourished the purer instincts in his young friend, playing especially on Titus’ instinct of compassion. Titus hadn’t really been aware of this instinct in himself and then he was puzzled to learn that not everyone had it. Saul developed this in him, teaching him not only to give to charity, but to love his brother, to understand the heart of the stranger, and to be patient and loving even with his enemies. So Titus ripened in the spirit until he was ready to accept Messiah.

Saul taught him about the Jewish patriarchs, and of the covenant God made with Abraham. He told him of the exile in Egypt, and the exodus. He told him of the giving of the law at Sinai, and the promise revealed to the prophets. Finally he came to the fulfillment of the promise in Jesus.

Late one evening, on a green field under the white shadows of birches by the quiet waters of the river, Saul spoke to his young friend of that memorable Friday in Jerusalem. He drew the picture of the Roman soldiers driving Jesus on the road to Golgotha, bent under the weight of the cross, his white robe stained with blood and the sweat of his anguish. Slowly he described the last agonies, the death, and resurrection, and the appearance to the disciples. Then he reached his own part in the story, his persecution of the faithful, and the vision on the road to Damascus.

“He seized me,” said Saul, “as one seizes a pot and shatters it. He shattered me and put me back together again. Now I’m his instrument waiting for his word of command to send me out on my mission, as he promised me in Jerusalem.

“And I’m your servant, Saul. Take me and command me as you will.”

“No, not my servant, but my brother, whom I have won in Jesus the Messiah.”