I SYMPATHISE with Saul. While everyone else is getting stuck into stoning the first Christian martyr, he stands to one side, apparently applauding and approving what the crowd does. An isolated, peripheral figure in my imagination, he reminds me of myself, every time we took our children to an amusement park with rides. Motion sickness made this more of a torment than an entertainment for me; so I, too, was always standing to one side, holding the coats.

Luke’s apparently trivial comment is not merely a throwaway detail. It tells us something important about the crowd. They took off their coats to stone Stephen. They intended to get stuck in, too, and put their best effort into his obliteration. It would be hard work. They would get too hot for coats. Here is a biblical equivalent of rolling up one’s sleeves.

The same trivial remark tells us something about Saul, too — or, rather, it hints at something. When I stood apart from my group, holding the coats, I did so because I knew how awful it would feel to participate. I wanted to be part of the fun of the day, but not so much that I became sick. In the past, when I have read this passage, I have always seen it simply as a first glimpse of the man who, after a time of persecuting the new faith, would become the apostle to the Gentiles. But, if Saul was such an eager persecutor — and (in this instance) an apparently righteous one, responding to an egregious case of blasphemy — why was he looking after the coats? Why not join in with gusto, taking off his own coat, choosing a nice, jagged missile, and hurling it at Stephen?

The lection misses out the end of the story, which is the first verse of Acts 8: “And Saul approved of their killing him.” Perhaps that tells us all we need to know about how to judge Saul’s actions. But I prefer the kinder possibility: that he was at least wondering whether there was more to the new faith than blasphemy. Perhaps he rejoiced at Stephen’s death because he hoped that it would stop his own wondering, the allure of that new way of love and service.

It is in the nature of faith to have questions, to go in search of understanding. In this Gospel, John lays the groundwork for Thomas’s scepticism at the resurrection of Jesus by reporting his question “How can we know the way?” Once more, Gospel sublimity triggers in me memories of trivial and humdrum versions of the question at issue: how reluctant most of us are to stop while driving and ask for directions. How difficult it can be to listen to the answer, and hold in our mind all the twists and turns of the journey ahead of us.

Finding “the way” is not like following a satnav even when it sends us up a dirt track; nor is it like trying desperately to remember whether it was “right” or “left” at the next crossroads. There is never a reason to become lost, because Jesus is always beside us, and he is the Way. He leads to the Father, and all who worship the Father come by the Way, whether they know it/him or not.

Philip’s request (actually a command) to Jesus is a reprise of Thomas’s. In both examples, Jesus gave an answer first, and then they asked for what he said was theirs already. They know the Way. They have seen the Father. Their requests show how little they have understood Jesus. It is surprising that they continued to follow him, however ineptly, when he seemed to be saying things and making claims that made him either “mad, bad, or God”. Their continuing companionship suggested that they trusted in him, even though they could make no sense of his divinity, and misunderstood what he told them.

We can take courage from the fact that the disciples kept walking the way with Jesus. If they did not listen properly, because they thought they already knew what their extraordinary friend was going to say, well, they were hardly unique among humankind. Most of our close relationships are just the same. If this Gospel reminds us to be better at listening to those we love, at least one of its many purposes will have been accomplished.