Monday, 9th Week of Ordinary Time

Acts 9:10-31

It’s one of those small things that are easy to miss, except that it’s really a major moment in this story. And it comes at verse 20: “And immediately [Saul] proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” Many times, Jesus has been called the “Christ,” or “Messiah” (both which mean “anointed”). This is the first time that any of Jesus’s disciples have called him God’s Son. What did they mean by this?

In the Old Testament, the beast known reference to being a son of God comes in the promise of God to King David, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son…my steadfast love will not depart from him…And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. (2nd Samuel 7:14-16). Sadly, it had all gone wrong. David’s kingdom had not been sure forever. Too many of David’s royal sons had failed to act in such a way as to deserve being called God’s sons. In a time when no one conceived of such ideas as democracy, the only kind of government under which people felt secure and free was that of a good king who protected his people as a shepherd protected his sheep.

So. God had made a promise to his adopted son. How was that promise to be fulfilled when David’s successors had failed to be good, protective shepherds? God’s own eternal Son came, as God’s perfect representative. As a human being, he was also the perfect human representative, representing the fullest experience of human joy and hope, human grief and anguish. As God, he triumphed over human suffering, so that no human experience of suffering and sin is beyond the power of God to redeem. In this world, we want protection from injustice, pain and grief. God’s own son did not shield himself from those things. He redeemed them.

In all this, those faithful Jews understood Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises made to David, which made him the “Anointed,” the Messiah, the Christ that has been long promised them. What Saul first began to grasp was that this “Son of God” had fulfilled Israel’s promises, while transcending them at the same time. What this might mean, practically speaking, we will begin to see later this week.