To the End of Acts

The final chapters of the Book of Acts focus entirely on the fate of Paul and end with Paul in a kind of custody in Rome. 
There are two places that have loomed large for Paul and in the final chapters of the book he visits them both. First, Jerusalem and then at last, Rome. 
Paul has been preacher to the Gentiles, his whole mission and work have been about preaching the gospel outside of lines in which faith has been constrained. He is opposed for such openness and those in the opposition make sure that he faces accusation in the places in which powerful people might imprison or even kill Paul. The last chapters begin in Ephesus where there are already friends of Paul who warn him against going to Jerusalem. In Jerusalem and then in Caesarea we see a line of officials and governors who preside over trials and accusations. Paul is imprisoned and beaten and spends days, months and years in custody. In the midst of all of this he repeatedly tells his story of faith when asked to explain himself. He speaks of his conversion. He speaks of coming to see the truth of the light of Jesus Christ. 
He appeals to the authorities that he is a Roman citizen and therefore deserves a hearing as such. This is what sets him towards Rome. In the midst of all of this, Luke (the author of Acts) tells us that Paul hears the promise of God, the reminder of God’s presence. It all seems so random without that. When the ship carrying Paul sets sail for Rome there are more misadventures. The ship is wrecked on the island of Malta. 
The book ends with Paul in custody in Rome. It is not prison per say, something more like house arrest. People visit him to hear his story, to hear the gospel. He does not stop sharing the gospel. 

Dear God; 
We can have these misconceptions about a well-ordered life. We can be discouraged by what seems to be the messiness of our lives, things don’t work out like we think they should have. Help us to see that even for Paul, the one who more than anyone brought the message of the gospel beyond lines of division, this crooked path was a reality.  
Make us attentive to what this day may bring and call us to live out the light of the gospel even when things don’t go our way. 
In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Chapter 19 - Death by Long Sermon

Acts 19 includes one of the more interesting, maybe troubling, but somewhat quirky stories in the Bible. Verses 1-6 contain again a list of names and places. We see once again that the missionary journeys of Paul and others were largely unplanned and lacked a clear “strategy”. As a theological professor I heard recently said, “It seems often that the Holy Spirit is an enemy of management and order”.  
In verse 7 something else strange happens. The account ends with a miracle, but the occasion for the miracle, the incident itself is questionable in terms of mission. 
Paul is preaching in an upper room at night and he “speaks until midnight” as he has a plan to leave the next day. He wants to get everything said that he feels needs to be said before he departs the area. Apparently his speaking was less than enthralling. The 8th and 9th verses say, “And a young man named Eutychus, sitting at the window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead.” 
Many many times, in my time as I preacher, I have had people fall asleep during sermons. I have never, to my knowledge, had anyone die from the boredom. Paul and others run down to where Eutychus has landed and apparently died and Paul says to the others that “life is in him”. It is not entirely clear from the text, the original language, whether Eutychus actually was dead. Still. It’s a strange story to tell and a strange miracle if it is a miracle. It’s also a comfort that some people found even Paul to be quite boring. 

Chapter 19:21-41 - Artemis of the Ephesians

Demetrius was an artisan and a businessman in Ephesus. As the Gospel message spread in the region, Demetrius became concerned. His art, his trade was the production of silver shrines to the goddess Artemis. He saw the message of Paul and the followers of Jesus as a threat. Verses 21-41 outline his plan to stop the message from taking hold. As Willie Jennings points out in his commentary on Acts, Demetrius was shrewd and knew what could make people respond and react. He said that Paul’s message would hurt the people financially and was an attack on the theology of the people. “There is danger not only to this trade, but to the great goddess Artemis, that she might be counted as nothing.” 
Systems of economics and religion that hurt more people than they help ought to be called out.  
There is no doubt that the Artemis industry financially benefitted Demetrius and a number of others, but the heart of it was a system of economic and religious exploitation. Often people who had little money at all would spend money within this system likely seeking some kind of appeasing of the gods, but really lining the pockets of the industry and those behind it. 
The gospel is a threat to such exploitation. It remains so. However, too often Christians have taken the side of the exploitation rather than the side of freedom. In the text, the strategy of Demetrius is to have people holler out that “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” You can still hear such cries now as people, Christians included holler out status quo declarations intended to uphold social and economic and religious systems that are taken as “the way things are”. Often these are systems that benefit the few at the cost of the many. They are often systems that are racist and sexist. 
Watch out for the “Demetrius’s” of our own day. Consider also where Demetrius’ words of selfishness, disguised as wisdom can come from your own mouth. 

Dear God; 
Let me see the truth of Jesus Christ in the world. Show me where my actions and words protect me rather than seek the good of others, particularly those in need. 
In Jesus’ name, 
Amen 

Chapter 17 - Paul in Athens

Paul’s missionary journeys of the Book of Acts turn out to be more like running from the authorities and running from those who sought to do him in. He winds up in Athens as he and Silas have had to quickly depart from Berea.  
We know about Athens. Athens is a big deal.  
Acts 17 tells us that some people in Athens used to do nothing much all day except talk about ideas and philosophy. This they saw as highly civilized. Such Athenians would have considered themselves terribly sophisticated intellectually and politically. In many ways they were, we are still today impacted by the ways in which Greek philosophy saw the state, the mind, the soul. 
Paul looked around Athens and saw something else as well. He saw religion – everywhere. 
As Paul spoke the Christian gospel word got out about a new way of seeing things. Paul was asked to speak to more people. When he did he told them what he had seen. He started off not by saying, “You are so advanced. You are so sophisticated.” He started off by saying, “You are so religious.” He noted that there were idols everywhere, things made by hands. 
The analogy to today is pretty basic and obvious. 
We think that we are so sophisticated today. In many ways we are an advanced society. People can make the assumption that we have outgrown religion or faith. But look around. The idols are everywhere. People give their lives to serving idols of silver and gold, to serving electronic numbers, online balances. 
Paul tells the Athenians that life is not found in idols. Life is found in God.  
In fact, Paul quotes some of their own philosophers in saying that in God we “live and move and have our being”. He includes all in this. We all live and move and have our being in God. 
He then tells them about Jesus who has overcome death as an assurance that our life in God outlasts this world we know. 

Dear God, 
There’s so much religion around here. Idols are everywhere. Idols of silver and gold, wealth and material goods. Idols of celebrity and technology and status and power. And none of them bring life. Let me see, this day, that my life is in you. Let us see that in you we live and move and have our being. 
In Jesus’ name. 
Amen 

Chapter 17:1-9 - Against the Decrees of Caesar

The gospel will face opposition. The gospel has an order of things that is an afront to other orders of things. As Paul and Silas speak the gospel, two groups of people recognize the threat. The gospel is a threat to religious systems that have their own arrangement of control and hierarchy. So, in the time of Paul and Silas, some Jewish leaders oppose what they are saying. Luke, the author of this account says that a mob, ruffians, are stirred up to carry the force of this opposition. The second group threatened here by the gospel being declared is the Gentile order of that time and place, the Romans. Paul and Silas are accused of being “against the decrees” of Caesar. 

Willie Jennings makes an important point here. He reminds us to never dehumanize those who make opposing arguments. The religious leaders, the Gentiles and even the “mob” are people. Jennings says that argument does not ultimately present gospel if opponents are in any way dehumanized. You can see this today. How many people have been convinced of anything by argument on social media? Instead, people become entrenched in views. If you feel that you are being dehumanized or mocked, you will not consider the argument of the one who doing the mocking. The gospel is presented in word, but more so in the life of those doing the presenting. If God is for us, then we ought not to be against people. 

Chapter 16:16-34 - Imprisoned and Freed

For the act of healing a young woman from her pain and mental anguish, Paul and Silas are beaten and thrown in jail. In jail Paul and Silas sing and pray. The other prisoners hear and listen. It is around midnight. The ground shakes, right then there is an earthquake and the doors of the jail cells are opened. Not only that, but the chains of all (not only Paul and Silas) the prisoners come unfastened as the ground shakes. This is no ordinary earthquake. The doors open and the chains fall off, and the jailer himself is awoken. Upon surveying the scene he determines that he will be killed either by the prisoners, or by the magistrates so he draws his sword to kill himself. Paul stops him. Paul tells him that all of the prisoners are still there. The jailer asks what he must do to be saved. Paul says that if he believes in the Lord Jesus Christ then he and all his family will be saved. The jailer then took care of them, washing their wounds. Paul then baptized him and his family. It is a scene of strong imagery this washing of wounds and sin. 

Pray the scene. Paul and Silas have been joined with the other prisoners. They tell the jailer when he sees the doors all opened that “we are all here”. We.  
Willie Jennings says that the prayer and singing in the prison show us that prayer and singing so often comes from the christological place of suffering. Joining in this suffering allows us to be joined to others and from that place we may declare our hope in Christ. 

Division will not do. Then and now people are walled away, held on another side. I read an article about walls between nations recently. It stated that the walls exist so that we can forget the people on the other side, so that we can deny our role in their suffering. Paul and Silas have joined the prisoners and they join the jailer and the Spirit of God sets people free. 

Chapter 16 - Healing and Prison

The story of the slave girl who is healed in Acts 16 has layers of meaning. It calls us to an awareness of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. 
Paul and Silas are heading to a place to pray. On the way a slave girl, a person who has virtually no power in the culture, begins to follow them. The young woman had been used by her “owners” to earn them money by way of divination and fortune telling. Now she seeks some kind of freedom in following Paul and Silas and uses whatever little agency she has to cry out that Paul and Silas are servants of God proclaiming the way of salvation. This would seem to be a good thing, almost as if she is proclaiming the gospel herself. However, it is actually a kind of mindless praise of Paul and Silas themselves. Most of us have heard this kind of talk. It can come with people who feel relatively little power yet seek to call out in a way that their voice is heard. It is a kind of empty praise. Be careful of God talk. Empty God talk can come from places of lack of power, but it can also come from places of status quo security and it can be a distraction to the actual work and presence of the Holy Spirit. 
Paul and Silas certainly do not hear this talk as holy declaration. Paul is annoyed, but he also does see that the woman needs help. He heals her of the spirit that is causing this chaos. 
Soon after, this slave girl’s owners discover that the spirit that allowed her to be a fortune teller, the sprit that caused her pain, but gained them wealth, was gone, healed. Unlike Paul, they do not see the young woman as a person. They see her as a means to money. Then, as now, people do all kinds of terrible things simply to get more money. This woman had been kept down from her true humanity and identity by the culture, by the powers that be and by her “owners”. The owners complain to the authorities and Paul and Silas, who had freed this young woman from her turmoil and pain, are seized and beaten, arrested as agitators and thrown in prison. 
We ought to be agitators where money has come to have more value than people. 
We ought to be agitators where poor people are treated as expendable at best or used for gain of others at worst. 
Paul and Silas are pointing to a new reality, a world of the light of the Holy Spirit. 

Dear God; 
I have lived such a comfortable life. Grant that I could see the ways of the world that dehumanize so many people. I pray for the self-reflection to consider where my action or inaction has hurt others simply so that my way of life could be maintained. 
I pray also that I would have the discernment to see when words about you are true and powerful and when they are empty God-talk masking some grievance or pain or masking some commitment to a heartless way of things. 
Thank you for this day. 
In Jesus’ name; 
Amen 
 

Acts 16 - Lydia

Again a list of place names, an itinerary of a journey, but the story is about a person. When Paul and Silas settle in Philippi for a number of days, they head to the synagogue and then to the riverside. They speak with a number of people there including a woman named Lydia. Lydia is a “seller of purple cloth”. In other words, she is likely fairly well off. She is also identified as “a worshiper of God”. That’s interesting. This identification comes before her conversion. 
There is something there for us. 
It can be all too easy and frequent that people are identified as not worshiping God unless they worship like we do. To be sure, in this story there is still a conversion. Lydia’s heart was opened, she was illumined by the Holy Spirit. Before that, though, she was already a worshiper of God. 

Dear God;
Would you expand our view of people who see things differently than we do? Would you allow us to see past the surface to the heart? Help us to see how people who believe differently than us so often do seek good in the world. And as we see, Holy Spirit, would you exalt the name and presence of Jesus Christ not to divide us from others, but to bring us together? 
In Jesus’ name. 
Amen. 

Chapter 16:6-10 - Led By the Spirit

Being led by God does not always entail an absolutely clear and mapped out plan. Depending on your personality, that might be a blessing or it might be a difficult thing to hear. The early disciples are doing the work of witness as the church itself is being established and growing and as they do that work, it is described with such terms as “being forbidden by the Spirit” to speak in a certain place. They try another place, but again we are told that “the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go”. Then they simply go somewhere else. After that, one of them (Paul) has a dream about a person from another place (Macedonia) asking them to come to where he is to help. The section ends with the disciples, having been told Paul’s dream going to Macedonia to preach the gospel.  

This is no strategic plan. They have not surveyed the neighbourhood, they have not done demographic studies. As far as we can tell they have not struck a committee and held lengthy prayer meetings. They clearly have had in mind some things that God has prevented them from doing and now they have taken direction from a dream of one person in the group. And God is with them.  
Yielding to the Spirit does not always mean that you will know exactly what happens next. 
Underneath all of this lack of clarity is a strength of trust. 
God is going with them. As we trust God and yield to the Spirit, we will be guided, even when it may all appear rather haphazard.  

Dear God, 
Help me even today to trust in your presence and in your guidance. Let me see where it is that you are preventing me from going and bless me with an awareness of your presence in the decisions that I make. Thank you for your guiding hand and for your abiding love. 
In Jesus’ name; 
Amen. 

Chapter 16:1-8 - Timothy

We are now introduced to Timothy. Timothy is a person who embodies the in-between nature of the early (and present) Christian faith. He did not fit clear categories. His mother was Jewish and his father was a Gentile. Timothy’s presence and indeed his body bring questions for the early church that resonate to this day. So many questions, struggles and disagreements through the years have been around whether this person or that one is acceptable. We are told that Timothy was spoken well of, he is given positive report. However, even to many who were impressed by him, he did not quite fit. The next part of the text has troubled many biblical commentators. Paul circumcises Timothy because some of the people felt that this was one of the lines of acceptability. What are we to make of this? Willie Jennings notes the in-between struggle of acceptability that finds its expression in the body of Timothy. Jennings presents that through history, many people have felt that they have not fit the definitions of acceptability simply because of how they were born or who they were born to. Jennings argues that Timothy, all the way along here, demonstrates love.  
The question of who is in and who is out. The question of who is acceptable can be seen over all of Christian history. 
It may help us to remember a saying of Karl Barth; 
“A person is measured not by what they have done for God, but by what God has done for them.” 

Chapter 15 - Paul and Barnabas

The last six verses of the 15th Chapter of Acts give an account of a disagreement and a separation of Paul and Barnabas. These two friends and co-workers in the gospel wind up going separate ways. The incident the occasions the division is a disagreement over a third person named Mark. Mark had earlier “abandoned the work”. Now Barnabas wanted to welcome Mark back for the next journey and Paul did not see that as the thing to do. The text says that the disagreement was “sharp” and that it led to Paul and Barnabas parting ways. 
This is an interesting and sobering story within the midst of the mission and work in the book of Acts. The presence of the Spirit does not mean the absence of disagreement. It is painful to see a friendship like this face such change and even dissolution. Willie Jennings, in his commentary on Acts, mentions that Barnabas always seemed to be going ahead of Paul. Barnabas had been first to show Paul what it meant to give away possessions. Barnabas had demonstrated the acceptance of Paul when other believers were still wary of doing so. Barnabas had shown Paul a way forward in Antioch in relation to Gentiles. Now Barnabas was showing Paul what grace meant to someone who had earlier abandoned the work. We don’t hear much about Barnabas after this, but his influence would remain strong in Paul’s life and work. 

Dear God,  
How much have we seen friendships change and even end? In all of our lives there are people with whom we worked and lived closely who are now not key present parts of our life. Give us grace. Show us what it means to accept that relationships change and even end. But show us your presence in the midst of this. Thank you for those who have been our friends and show us the way of love. 
In Jesus’ name. Amen. 

Chapter 15 - Sameness is not Faithfulness

There is an ongoing debate and argument in the book of Acts that mirrors arguments and debates in the church ever since. The question is this; must followers of Jesus Christ conform to the likeness of other followers of Jesus Christ?  
Over and over and over again, there is a confusion presented, a distortion. If you have been part of a church for any considerable period of time you have likely seen this. The mistake that is made (often by leaders within a community) is that conformity to Jesus means conformity to a particular human standard, norm, expression, and even physical bodily standard. In this chapter there are leaders who are saying that the bodies of new believers, in this case, Gentiles, must be conformed to the bodies of those who had already believed (Jews). It is notable that this same argument exists today and that so much of this same argument finds its expression around matters of sexuality or gender.  
For long enough we have been told that the people who argue for the old ways are the ones who are faithful. We should know better by now. 
The faithful ones are the ones who are open to God’s acceptance of others, of the new. The faithful ones are the ones who realize that God’s unity is being expressed in Christ’s love for all, in the gathering together of difference under the love of Jesus Christ. 
Think about how many times we have seen, from religious leadership a judgment that people who are “other” are unacceptable. For many years people who had “disabilities” were considered unacceptable or less than. Then, people who are homosexual or transgender were told that they are somehow not what they should be. 
It should have been, of course, a dead giveaway, that such insistence on sameness was faithlessness, not faithfulness when we realized that the people who were arguing against accepting others put forward that in order to be acceptable people had to be like – like them.  
Most of these people were not trying to be faithless. They were told that such insistence on sameness was the way God would have it and they maybe even thought that they were serving God by their supposed moral insistence.  
We can do better.  
The Spirit of the Living God, the Spirit of Jesus Christ is leading us to faithfulness that is open to difference, not insistent upon sameness. 

As Peter said in Acts 15; 
“And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that ALL will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”  

Chapter 15 – No Distinction

Having worked in an evangelical church for almost three decades I have come to know something of the meaning of the term, “domesticating difference”. 
Difference, in multiple spheres of interest, religion and culture can be seen as a threat or a deficiency.  
As a pastor in an evangelical church I sat through very many leadership meetings in which some kind of difference or deficiency on the part of someone not present at the meeting was being considered. Meeting of various topic, but of the same general concept. 

Should we “allow” women to be elders, to be in leadership?
What about those people who believe in supernatural charismatic spiritual gifts and their expression? 
Where do we stand on the “issue” of homosexuality? 
Should we call to account (even publicly) the “sin” of this person or that? 

In Acts chapter 15 we see two major themes. The first is the continued work and guidance of the Holy Spirit in the mission of the new church. The second is the ongoing and ever present opposition to that work. Leaders assert their power by insisting that Gentile believers should be circumcised (seems crazy, I know). Peter gives another presentation/sermon that argues against this. Those who opposed Peter were trying to “domesticate difference”. Peter presents that God the Holy Spirit is with Gentiles in the same power as God the Holy Spirit is with Jewish believers. In verse 9 there is this brief, but astounding description;  

“And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them.” 

We are not better. We are no more holy. We are no more deserving. 
We are not to put fences around the grace and love of God.  

Chapter 14 - Acceptance and Opposition

Paul and Barnabas preach the gospel at Iconium and then at Lystra. At Iconium many Jews and Gentiles believe, but many others foment opposition. 
How were Paul and Barnabas a threat? The message of the gospel is a threat to systems, to divisions in the world and even as many people receive, a defense, even to the point of violence of the current systems and structures arises. Paul and Barnabas flee and wind up in Lystra. It is here that there is a beautiful scene of healing. Paul is preaching, but while he speaks he focusses on a man who is listening who is unable to walk. Paul sees the man’s faith. There is this shared awareness of openness to the presence of God that many of us have experienced. That is what is happening here. Paul speaks to the man and the man is healed. The response from the onlookers is to assume that Paul and Barnabas are gods.
Here is the confusion. Rather than understand that they are reflections of the presence of God, the people assume that they are gods themselves, Zeus and Hermes. In the response of Paul and Barnabas to this misguided praise we come across a word that helps in Christian life and mission. Paul and Barnaba say that they are not gods, that it is God who made heaven and earth and all that is in them. We are “witnesses” to the presence and blessing of God. 

Here is our call; to bear witness. Even now. 

Dear God; 
May I know your presence today. May I see faith in the lives of others. May I know the beauty of the world and may I bear witness to your love for all people. 
Amen. 

Chapter 13:1-12 The Sprit Overcomes

There is a reminder in this chapter that the Spirit of God guides, directs, and reveals. The Holy Spirit is not constrained to some kind of sentimental touch to a quiet heart. Here are a list of names, and activities and places, and the Holy Spirit is guiding multiple people to and through these early days of the church. 
Willie Jennings, in his commentary points out that the Spirit still works today, that as we make ourselves open, as we take up the practices of attentiveness and the expectation of direction, we can walk in the light of the Spirit. 
The verses also describe opposition. This person named Elymas, also called Bar-Jesus, seems to be open to the spiritual, but in a way of transaction, a way of control a way of exploitation of others, not a way of life. 
It is simply enough to say that the Spirit overcomes this opposition. 
Peter and the followers of Jesus do not go around looking for enemies. However, when opposition arises, as they walk in the Spirit, that opposition is revealed to have a power that is in nature false and no match for the live giving strength of God. 

Chapter 12:6-25 The Church in Captivity

Acts 12 starts with the execution of James by Herod the king (a different Herod than in the Jesus’ birth narrative). The new church is being scattered and attacked. When Herod sees how the killing of James pleased certain people, he had Peter arrested as well. The church is in captivity. The people of the church are familiar with the prison, with the power of the state.  Then these fantastical things happen.  

• a light shines in the Peter’s cell (what is happening will not be concealed in darkness) 

• the angel taps Peter and wakes him up (the church is awoken in times of opposition, “He woke me up again to sing Hallelujah.”) 

• Peter’s shackles fall off, the angel tells him to get ready to leave, to dress for escape. 

• Peter is led past the guards and out of the prison. 

• He is unable to conceive that what is happening to him is real. 

• Peter is free. When he goes to the where fellow followers of Jesus are gathered, they are unable as well, to conceive that it is Peter, that he is free. 

Then tragedy ends the story as the guards are blamed by Herod for the escape and put to death. The guards are victims as well, but they had been working for the opposition, for the power of the enemy, for the darkness over the light. As Willie Jennings says, we must work for the deliverance of not just the prisoner, but also the guards. 

There are two captivities in the story. First there is the obvious captivity of Peter and then there is the less obvious captivity of those desensitized to protect the power of the status quo even if that status quo denies life and denies the presence and love of God. 

The chapter ends with the death of Herod. Herod is presented as almost comical. Herod claims what only God can claim and accepts the praise of the people. The people holler out that Herod’s voice is that of God and not of man. Soon, though, Herod’s voice will be silenced. 

Chapter 12:1-5 The State, The Prison

Chapter 12 appears like thunder. Another major theme of the Book of Acts comes to the fore. The followers of the way of Jesus, the Christians, are attacked, some are imprisoned and some are executed. The charges are not always clear, but the basics tend to be that they are charged with threatening the state. They threaten law and order and peace. Sound familiar? We distort and abuse scripture when we assume that Christians were on the side of the power of the state, that Christians were on the side of maintaining the status quo. Since the time of the Book of Acts a troubling thing has happened repeatedly in history and is happening again now. Leaders interested in control and silencing of opponents, governments seeking to maintain control at all costs have co-opted the Christian faith (or a distortion of it) to legitimize their own aims. It happened in Germany. It is happening in Hungary and in Poland now and it is happening in the United States. In these places and at these times, the prison, and violence perpetrated by the state in the name of law and order become a tool against dissent. 

Willie James Jennings, in his commentary, writes; 

“Just as we never leave the presence of the Spirit in Luke’s narrative, we never leave sight of the prison. It is always with us, always offering the antithesis to the good news. The prison always announces worldly power and reveals those intoxicated with the lust for violence, but not primarily from the site of the cell but from the place of the warden, the guards, and those benefiting financially and politically from the mechanisms of incarceration.” 

Chapter 11:19-30

The joining that had started with Peter and Cornelius spreads out now further. It does not remain the programme of a few people, but becomes the way of life for a church in formation. It will remain anathema to some, but it is the way of God. 
The city of Antioch takes on significance. Here is a place where faithful Jewish Christians are speaking with Gentiles. There is a man sent from Jerusalem to Antioch to investigate what is happening. Barnabas could have been the inspector who seeks to maintain status quo.
Instead, he turns out to be a key figure in the narrative of the book and in the history of the world. This is due to the fact that he is open to the movement of the Spirit of God. He blesses the openness of the faith to those who had been outsiders.  

Dear God; 
Now as well. The church today has too often become a place of division and hard lines and exclusion. Help us to see your work and presence across the lines that we have drawn. I do this imaginative exercise. I picture that there is a line and on one side are people who will enter into eternal bliss, on the other side are those will enter into eternal damnation. I am observing this as a kind of reporter, and I ask some people in the eternal bliss camp a couple of questions. 1. How did this dividing up happen? The answer is “We divided up the people”. 2. What do you have to do to get on this side of the line? The answer: “You have to be just like us and think just like us and believe just like us.” 
And then I know that it’s a scam. 
Dear God, you have always been better than this. You have always destroyed the lines of exclusion that we have built. And now I see Jesus, the light of the world, redeeming all things.  

Give me eyes to see,  
In His name; 
Amen 

Something else happens in Antioch as Paul and Barnabas, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, begin to change the world. In Antioch, the people who speak of the love of Jesus are given a name. It is a name of derision thrown onto them by their opponents. In Antioch the followers of Jesus are for the first time called; Christians. 

Chapter 11:1-18 – The Transgressing God

We have spoken about how the character and divinity of God expressed fully in Jesus is demonstrated more in boundary-breaking than in boundary keeping. 
God, in the words of Willie Jennings, is a Transgressing God. 
In this chapter, Peter is called to account for sharing food and faith with Gentiles with “the uncircumcised”. The bulk of the first 18 verses of the chapter contain Peter’s explanation to those who are accusing Peter of not keeping true to the faith. 
Chapters 10 and 11 of the Book of Acts are astounding in that there is a joining of people to people. Those who would have been deemed outsiders, the non-faithful are welcomed. Peter simply explains the vision that he had and the encounter with Cornelius and the coming of the Holy Spirit in power to the Gentiles. Those listening seem to accept the explanation.  
Jennings, in his commentary, picks up a concept of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in saying that this is an example of “The word of God against the word of God”. The people demanding an explanation from Peter are standing on the scriptures. Peter clearly was reluctant to do as God was saying as he was himself seeking to remain faithful.  
We have all seen religious institutions and religious people speak and teach as if truth itself is fixed. Our faith has been abused in such ways. We have been told that we can’t possibly be open in faith to others who are outside, unacceptable. By God’s grace and presence, Peter heard the call to be open to others. By God’s grace others heard the same. The past is tremendously important, but God still speaks. We don’t worship a memory. We don’t live according to some ancient moral code. We are called to hear “the word of God against the word of God” as demonstrated in the live-giving way of Jesus Christ. 

Don’t allow those who would seek to constrain and restrict Christian faith and practice to scare you. The loudest yellers almost always the weakest people. Christian faith is so so much better than any exclusivist rendering of it.  

Dear God: 

Give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Come Holy Spirit and show us the love of Jesus for ALL people.  Amen.  

Chapter 10 – Again

It is good to sit with this chapter. As Willie Jennings points out chapter 10 is the fulfillment of chapter 2. 

Some quotes from Dr. Jennings’ commentary; 

“Here now the revolution of the intimate enters its full force.”   

“This world matters to God. We matter to God far more than we matter to each other.”  

“This chapter is the pivot, the turn that makes intelligible everything before it and after it.” 

“The old order approaches on foot, and the new order drops from the sky.” 

“This is the risk of faith that comes to each of us, but none of us carries it alone. The risk here is found not in believing in new revelations but in new relationships. The new word that God continues to speak to us is to accept new people, different people that we had not imagined that God would send across our paths and into our lives.”  

Dear God; 
I consider that Peter, by your grace, took that risk that day. Give me eyes to see that this was the door to my inclusion in your salvation and redemption. Break open any idea I have that your salvation is limited or exclusive. Help me to see that your presence calls me to new relationship. Grant us an understanding of faith that breaks lines as we trust in the love of Christ. 
In his name. Amen.