Open the Word

Adult & All Age

Bible Study on Acts 9.1-20

For Adults and Young People

Beforehand, read Acts 9.1-20. Read and print out a copy of the Bible study sheet for each group member. Click here for additional Bible notes.
Read the story of Stephen (Acts 7 into Acts 8): although this is our first encounter with Paul, his back story is important. In the session, read the Bible passage together, look at the Bible notes and Make connections sections. Use this conversation spark to provoke first reactions from the group: People who claim to have ‘life-changing conversions’ are just attention seeking. Do you agree?
For the Explore section blindfold a person and have them stand at one end of the room. Have other young people sit or stand in their way as ’obstacles‘ (who ’baa‘ constantly!). Then have one group member trying to lead the blindfolded person through the maze of bodies to reach the other side.
End with the Live in faith and Send out prayer items for the week.

Young people

Encourage the group to respond to their discussion using one of the respond activities in the CYP Respond to the Word section. There is a specific activity for Young People which you may like to look at first.

Present the reading

A drama to create a setting for reading Acts 9.1-20

Use this imaginary conversation to set the scene for the reading.

No one ever knows what each day will hold that might turn their life around. When our life gets between us and God, sometimes God interrupts us to turn us onto a new and completely unknown path. How do our lives get interrupted? Use the conversation below to help people to think about this.

Pillar of the church: I was zealous in my devotion to my church: on the property committee, leader of a group, organiser of the rotas. I attended every service and helped with transport and coffee making. My life was full of the Lord’s work. Maybe I was doing a bit too much but I did intend to give up a few things.

Pause.

God knew better. Now I spend far more time in prayer, and have the opportunity to talk in depth to those who need support. Of course, they have to come to me, since the accident that put me in this wheelchair.

Woman: I walked into the room and saw him, and he looked at me, and my life has never been the same since.

Driver: I’m sure I only took my eyes from the road for a few seconds. But then there was this bump and blood on the bonnet...

New dad: I was the tough guy, letting the other men know I’d rather be out with them than at home with the missus. When she was about to have the baby I didn’t really want to be there, all that mess and emotion and pain and stuff. But I was there and I saw it all and I felt it all and now I know there is nothing more special than the care I can give to this new and precious life.

Office worker: It was just another ordinary working day. I was filing and chatting away, and then the whole tower block shuddered and the world changed.

Saul: I was on my way to arrest the dissidents who followed him when suddenly he was there himself, standing before me, with a tone of voice that was both accusation and forgiveness, pity and love. As blindness struck my eyes, so my mind was opened. Whatever I must suffer, I will proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God.

Explore the reading

Ideas for unpacking Acts 9.1-20 with all ages

Jesus never met Paul during his earthly life. But with reports of the resurrection and the increase in the activities of Jesus’ followers, Paul got involved. He was there to approve the death of Stephen for ‘speaking against Moses and against God’. And with the best intentions of his convictions Paul then set out to destroy the rest of the followers, the embryonic Church.

Travelling to Damascus on a persecution mission, Paul finds himself confronted by Jesus. The accounts of what happened on the road vary (the story is told three times in Acts: 9, 22 and 26). What is certain is that Paul encountered Jesus in a very dramatic and life-changing way, and instead of a persecutor, became a witness to the resurrection. Grounded, blind, confused and humiliated, he found himself on a different road altogether, and it was not to be an easy one.

Just as the Peter we hear about in Acts seems to be a changed man compared with Peter in the gospels, so the man who becomes Paul is different from the man who was Saul. Saul, devout and educated in his own faith, was persecuting Christians cruelly: faith and knowledge do not necessarily mean we will do the right thing. We learn from Paul’s encounter that God sometimes comes directly to sinners, and even theologians. Paul also discovered that the risen Jesus still cares for his people when they are persecuted.

The account suggests that Paul’s change of direction was immediate, but as he gained his physical and spiritual sight, he had to come to terms with his years of schooling in centuries of Jewish learning. In some of his letters, which make up many other books of the New Testament, we can see him struggling to make sense of his complete change of world view.

But his first challenge was to convince the Christians that his life had changed. What on earth do you make of someone who was coming to arrest you, possibly to oversee your death (as he had done Stephen’s), who then says he wants to be your friend and fellow-worker. How do we each deal with someone who seems to become so radically different? We never know what is in store in our own life or anyone else’s life: we must always be prepared to be surprised – and to work with the surprising.

Sermon ideas

Ideas for sermon preparation based on Acts 9.1-20

Don’t forget PostScript: up-to-the-minute comment available on Thursday morning.
More movement this week, with close connections expressed in both readings between physical and spiritual/emotional journeys. Paul and Peter, the main protagonists of the Acts cycle, share in this dynamic, and the journeys of both are in their own ways dramatic. (You may wish to draw attention to the Peter & Paul: factfile sheets) that demonstrate the parallels between their stories.) Saul/Paul sets out as a member of the ‘Temple police’ (from last week’s Acts reading) with the intention of continuing the persecution of those on the Way. Something happens, which Luke explains as an encounter with the risen Lord. The effect is so profound that when Paul comes back to himself he has made the complete U-turn, affirming the identity of Jesus as Son of God.
Peter’s literal journey is shorter, in and out of the fishing boat, and with the rather dramatic leap into the sea to greet Jesus on the beach. His emotional and spiritual journey is different from Paul’s but just as profound. Peter had denied and betrayed Jesus before his death, but none of this stops the huge enthusiasm to meet Jesus again: in other words, Peter himself effects a kind of turning round, perhaps based on his experience at the tomb or in the upper room. Jesus’ response, while searching and maybe even teasing, is to heal the hurt and failure of the courtyard scene, and to affirm Peter’s identity in the cohort of disciples. The narrative ends in an image that mirrors the disempowerment of Paul. It is in the recognition of our vulnerability that the journey to follow Christ is enabled to start.
Recalling our own experience of vulnerability or disempowerment is relatively easy if rather uncomfortable, but consider imaginatively what else we rely on to lead perfectly ‘normal’ lives: the power in our cars, the power to heat our homes, the power to run computers, mobile phones, iPads, and so on. Feel the disruption of what it’s like to lose one of these even for a short time. And how do we learn from this?
One of the leitmotifs that threads its way through both these accounts is the change of heart, or U-turn, as politicians describe it unfavourably. Paul’s transition from sight to blindness to new sight is both physical and spiritual. Paul had been spiritually blind, and the likely vigorous man who began the journey is now led like a child, recalling lines from John Henry Newman’s poem Lead, Kindly Light: ‘one step enough for me’. The second transition is from temple policeman to new missionary, from gamekeeper to poacher, reversing the normal order. Paul is like the spy who has been ‘turned’, about which John le Carré writes so evocatively. But note that his underlying character has not changed that much. His energy for ‘threats and murder’ is now transposed to proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues.

Children

Story: The road to Damascus

A postcard from Paul, based on Acts 9.1-20

Over eight weeks we are going to encounter two key witnesses to the gospel: Peter and Paul.

This week, Paul sends us a postcard from Damascus where his life has been turned upside down.

If you have introduced Peter in previous weeks, set the scene that this is Paul, a very different character. You might read this story with a different intonation from the previous two.

With children

An idea for presenting the story to children

Over these eight weeks we are going to encounter two key witnesses to the gospel: Peter and Paul.

This week, Paul sends us a postcard from Damascus where his life has been turned upside down.

If you have introduced Peter in previous weeks, set the scene that this is Paul, a very different character. You might read this story with a different intonation from the previous two.

Talk about

After reading the Bible story to your group, use these discussion points.

Talk with the children about changes they have faced. This might be in school, family life, moving house. Be sensitive to those who may have struggled.
Talk about what the changes meant to them. How do they cope with change?

For very young children

With very young children

A chance to explore Paul’s experiences on the road to Damascus

You will need: a strip of cloth or a play road system; wooden or plastic people; torches; blocks or bricks to build Damascus.

Share this short paraphrase and actions.

Paul was walking along the road to Damascus.
(use your hands to make a walking action)
He saw a bright light.
(put your hands over your eyes)
He fell to the ground.
(bang the ground with your hand)
Paul heard Jesus speaking to him,
(cup your ears)
but he was blind, and could not see.
(cover your eyes with your hands)
Paul walked on to Damascus.
(‘walking’ action)
Ananias went to meet Paul.
(‘walking’ action)
Ananias prayed.
(put your hands together in prayer)
Now Paul could see again.
(cover your eyes and then fling your hands away)

Invite the children to make a ‘road’ and build Damascus at one end. Invite them to walk the figures along the road, and use the torches to make the bright light that blinded Paul.

End by repeating the Bible actions.