More

Commentary on 1 Kings 19:9,11-16

In today’s reading we have one of the most beautiful images to be found in the Old Testament. When Jezebel heard of the slaughter of the priests of Baal (at the end of Wednesday’s reading), she vowed to submit Elijah to the same fate. Elijah then fled into the wilderness. He was ready to lie down and die, but God still had work for him to do and gave him the food he needed to carry out his commission.

Our reading today opens with Elijah going to the mountain of Horeb, sheltering and hiding in a cave. Moses had done the same and had been crouching in the “hollow of the rock” when Yahweh appeared to him. It is here that God speaks to Elijah. The Lord asks:

What are you doing here, Elijah?

Elijah replies that God’s people have deserted him and torn down their altars; Elijah is the only prophet left and his life is in danger.

It is then that he is told to go and stand on the mountain in the presence of his Lord. Traditionally the Lord is especially present on the tops of mountains. We remember Moses on Mount Sinai, the mountain where Jesus delivered his Sermon, and the mountain where Jesus in glory appeared to three of his disciples. We read, too, in the Old Testament how many centres of worship were put in high places.

On the mountain, Elijah is told to await the Lord passing by, and:

…there was a great wind…but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire…

In ancient times, much more than in our own, the power of wind, earthquake and fire could fill people with terror and awe as pale signs of God’s own power. With all our technology today, we are still largely helpless when these elements rage out of control. Tsunamis are dramatic examples, but so are the earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes, cyclones, floods and droughts, lightning strikes…

On Mount Sinai, too, when Moses and the Israelites encountered Yahweh there were storms, earthquakes and lightning proclaiming the presence of the almighty Yahweh, but with Elijah on that day on the mountain, God was not in any of these. They were only the remote signs of his deeper presence.

There came “a sound of sheer silence” (in other translations, “a gentle breeze”) And Elijah immediately recognised the presence of God. The whisper of a light breeze or the sound of silence signifies that God is a spirit and that he converses intimately with his prophets. The image of a gentle breeze reminds us of the gentle breath or wind of the Spirit which, as Jesus told Nicodemus, blows where it will. It speaks most eloquently of God as spirit and of the way he penetrates quietly into the most intimate corners of our life. It is why it is so necessary for us to be sensitive to God’s loving presence at all times.

In the symbolism of the phenomena on the mountain, the Lord appears to be telling Elijah that although his servant’s indictment of Israel was a call for God to judge his people with windstorm, earthquake and fire, it was not God’s will to do so now. Elijah must return to continue God’s mission to his people and Elisha is to carry it on for another generation.

Full of awe and fully aware of the closeness of Yahweh, Elijah hides his face with his cloak (in case he might come face to face with Yahweh) and emerges from the cave. Yahweh asks him:

What are you doing here, Elijah?

It is the same question asked earlier. Elijah now has an opportunity to give a different answer from the last time, but he gives exactly the same one as before. He is full of zeal for God’s glory as he sees his fellow-Israelites breaking down the altars of God and killing the prophets. He himself is the only one left. He intimates he is calling for divine vengeance.

He seems to have missed the point of the symbols he just experienced. The Lord is not to be looked for in violent behaviour, but in the quiet inspirations of his presence.

Elijah is now given a mission – his last as a prophet. He is to go first to the wilderness near Damascus. Apparently he is to go back by way of the road east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. He will go back to the east side of the Jordan, from which he had originally come. He is also told to anoint two kings, Hazael for Aram and Jehu for Israel (Northern Kingdom), and also Elisha as his own successor.

Jehu was a military commander under King Ahab and Joram, Ahab’s son. He was anointed king over Israel by “a man from the company of the prophets” at the instruction of Elisha, with a mandate to destroy the house of Ahab. In general, anointing was reserved for kings (earlier we saw the anointings of Saul, David and Solomon). However, here it seems to mean no more than ‘designate as chosen by God’ because the actual anointings will be done by Elijah’s successor, Elisha.

Elisha’s name means ‘God is salvation’ or ‘God saves’ and it expresses the essence of his calling. His name evokes memory of Joshua (‘The Lord saves’). And Elijah is now being given someone to finish his work just as Moses was given Joshua. Elisha will channel the covenant blessings to Israel just as Joshua brought Israel into the promised land. In the New Testament, John the Baptist (identified as Elijah) was followed by Jesus (the same name as ‘Joshua’) to complete God’s saving work.

Elisha is the “son of Shaphat” which means ‘he judges’ and is also descriptive of his mission. And he is from Abel Meholah, like Elijah, from the east side of the Jordan. And that was where John the Baptist also carried out his mission.

Even though Israel would experience divine judgement through Hazael, Jehu and Elishah, God would continue to preserve a remnant faithful to himself among the people. Hazael subsequently became a serious threat to Israel during the reigns of Joram, Jehu and Jehoahaz.

Today’s reading reminds us of those people who, in Jesus’ time, asked him for spectacular signs to prove his identity and authority. There are people today too who look for striking miracles, the spiritual equivalent, one might say, of wind, earthquakes and fire, but the Lord comes much more subtly into our lives and does so every single day.

And when he comes, he may be giving us things to do, as he did with Elijah. Let us listen for “the sound of sheer silence” and be ready for his gentle voice to whisper into our ear today. Unfortunately, we are bombarded with so much noise, much of it of our own choosing, that God finds it hard to get a word in – not to mention a whisper!

More

Commentary on Matthew 5:17-19

We have said that Matthew’s Gospel is primarily directed at a readership with a Jewish background. It is clear that their Jewish background and traditions were things which were not easy for Christian converts to give up. Both Paul and Matthew go out of their way to assure Jewish converts that Christianity is not a rejection of Judaism, but its natural development. It is everything that Judaism is and more.

So, in today’s passage which continues the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus solemnly assures his readers,

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

Jesus has come not to terminate the Law, but to bring it to a higher level. In a very rough simile, it is like the upgrading of a computer by upgrading its operating system. It is still the same computer doing the same things, only better. The vision of Jesus helps us to see the Law in a new light.

So Jesus says that the Law is still to be observed. Of course, we will see very clearly in the following days exactly what Jesus means. He is not saying that every single injunction of the Law (some of which seem very strange to us) has to be literally observed, but rather that the spirit behind those injunctions is still in force. His words are meant to console, but they are also a challenge, as we shall see. The New Law does not mean simply the addition of new elements. There is what we would call now a ‘paradigm shift’ to a Way which goes beyond laws to the Law of Love.

In our Church, too, we need to be ready to move forward creatively to new ways of understanding our faith and living it out. The traditions of the past are still valid, but we must never get bogged down in them to the extent that we do not respond to the clear signs of the times.  Tradition can be understood in two ways: either as a fundamental belief that has existed from the very beginning, or simply a way of doing or understanding things which has been around for a long time.

“When will the Church stop changing?” we hear some people ask. The answer is, hopefully never. The day we close ourselves to change is the day we die, as Paul warns us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians. To quote Cardinal John Newman:

To live is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often.

Cardinal Newman knew about change. He made radical changes in his own understanding of the Christian faith, changes which he saw as unavoidable although they involved great sacrifices on his part, and led him from the Anglican to the Catholic Church.

More

Commentary on 1 Kings 18:20-39

Today we have the dramatic challenge that Elijah made to the worshippers of Baal and to his own idolatrous fellow-Israelites. It will give clinching proof of who the true God is and this will finally be confirmed by the ending of the drought (tomorrow’s reading).

The scene is on Mount Carmel, a mountain in northern Palestine near the Mediterranean coast. King Ahab, in conformity with a request from Elijah, has ordered all the Israelites to gather there together with the 450 prophets of Baal.

Elijah throws down the challenge to his people by asking them how much longer they are going to continue hopping from one leg to the other, alternating between their worship of God and of Baal and of trying to have the best of both worlds. Elijah is speaking sarcastically. In her religious ambivalence between her worship of Yahweh and of Baal, Israel is but engaging in a wild and futile religious ‘dance’.  Elijah tells them to make up their minds and choose one or the other; they cannot follow two antagonistic ways of worship. He draws a sharp contrast between the worship of the Lord and that of Baal and puts out of their minds that both deities can be worshipped in some combined rituals.

Elijah now throws down the challenge – himself against the 450 priests of Baal. He is the only true prophet in Israel to stand boldly and publicly against the king and the prophets of Baal. In fact, we are told earlier in the book that Elijah was on the run. Anyone who knew where he was hiding would be executed.

The elements of the challenge are straightforward. The 450 priests of Baal will prepare an altar with a dismembered bull and Elijah will do the same. Each side will call on the name of their divinity and the one who answers by consuming the animal with fire is the true God. To this all agree.

It is not merely a matter of deciding whether Yahweh or Baal is lord of the mountain or which is the stronger, but simply which is the one, true God.  Both the Lord and Baal were said to ride the thunderstorm as their divine chariot:

The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice.
And he sent out his arrows and scattered them;
he flashed forth lightnings and routed them. (Ps 18:13-14)

and

…you make the clouds your chariot; you ride on the wings of the wind… (Ps 104:3)

Elijah’s challenge is direct. His own statement, his later prayer and the people’s acclamation at the end of the reading make it clear: the uniqueness of the God of Israel is at stake.

Because of their greater numbers, Elijah told the priests of Baal to proceed first. They set up their bull on the altar and from morning to midday they called on Baal to send down fire while they danced from leg to leg (echoing the jibe against the Israelites “hobbling” between God and Baal). The ecstatic cultic dance was part of the pagan ritual intended to arouse the deity to perform some desired action. But nothing happened.

Elijah mocks them satirically:

Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.

In his mocking, Elijah also reveals he is aware of the myths surrounding Baal.

The priests shout even louder and, as is common in such religions, become wild and ecstatic, slashing themselves with knives and pouring blood. Self-inflicted wounds causing blood to flow were symbolic of self-sacrifice as an extreme method of arousing the deity to action, but such mutilation of the body was strictly forbidden in the Mosaic law. As the deadline of noon passed they continued with their ecstatic and trancelike raving in which their ritual reached its climax at the time of the evening sacrifice. But the god was silent and:

…there was no voice, no answer, and no response.

Their efforts had come to nothing; their god could do nothing to help them.

It is now Elijah’s turn. He calls on the people to gather round him. Using twelve stones to represent the 12 tribes of Israel he rebuilds the altar. It is possible it had originally been built by the people of the northern tribes after the division of the kingdom (Jerusalem and the Temple were in the southern kingdom) but had been destroyed by the agents of Jezebel and the worshippers of Baal. The 12 stones represented all the tribes of Israel as God’s one people despite the political division into two kingdoms. What is about to happen concerns the whole people and not just the 10 northern tribes. The Lord had said to the people of all the tribes: “Your name shall be Israel”.

Around the altar, Elijah had an enormous trench dug large enough to hold two measures of grain. Wood was placed on top of the altar and the dismembered bull on top of that. He then gave instructions for four jars of water to be poured over the sacrificial victim and over the wood. This was done three times altogether. By drenching the whole structure with water, Elijah was making the subsequent happening all the more convincing.

Then Elijah prays. His prayer is in marked contrast to the frenzied actions of the Baal priests. He calls simply on the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, thus recalling the great covenants that had been made between God and his people. In plain language, he calls on God to answer his prayer so that people will know, not who is the more powerful, but who is the one and only God. And he appeals to Israel to remember all that the Lord has done for her since the days of her forefathers.

The coming manifestation will demonstrate:

In immediate response to Elijah’s prayer, the Lord’s fire comes down on the altar, consumes the holocaust offering (sodden though it is with water) and totally evaporates the water in the surrounding trench. The people’s reaction is to fall down in awe and worship, and repeating over and over:

The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.

The end of the story – not recorded in our reading – is that the priests of Baal were then seized and all of them executed by having their throats cut. Hopefully, we might think now of other less drastic ways of dealing with them.

Life with our God is, in the long run, a simple and straightforward affair. There are people who try to make religion very complicated. For many, superstition and idolatry are not far away. The idols today, from which people expect great returns, are those of the consumer society, of money, fame, power and ‘success’. The god of Mammon has taken over the lives of many, and many Christians, like the Israelites in the story, try to hop uncomfortably between the two. But Jesus said that we had to make a very clear choice – it has to be one or the other:

No one can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matt 6:24)

The God of the Gospel simply invites us to become closely united with him in prayer and love. That is the God of Elijah and should be ours too.

More

Commentary on Matthew 5:13-16

We may be totally filled with the spirit of the Beatitudes, but it will not do very much good unless their effects are clearly seen in our lives. To be a Christian, it is not enough to be good; we must be seen to be so. It is not enough to ‘have a spirituality’ that fills us with a feeling of peace and tranquillity. The spirituality of the Gospel is outreaching. We have not only to be disciples of Christ but also need to proclaim him.

In today’s reading from the Sermon on the Mount immediately following the Beatitudes, Jesus presents us with a number of images expressing this. Jesus first says that his followers should be “the salt of the earth”. Salt is an essential ingredient in almost all cooked food (even sweet food) to provide taste. We all know what it is like to have soup that contains no salt; we know how much part salt plays in flavouring mass-produced fast foods.

We are to be like salt; we are to give taste, zest to our environment. We do that through the specific outlook on life which we have and which we invite others to share. At their best, Christians have been very effective in doing this, and have had a great impact on the values of many societies and in bringing about great changes.

To be tasteless salt is to be next to useless. Salt that has lost its taste is fit only to be thrown out. At the same time, in the West we sometimes, too, put some salt on the side of our plate. That salt, however, tasty it may be is still not doing any good unless it is put into the food. And this is an interesting feature of salt, namely, that it blends completely with food and disappears. It cannot be seen, but it can be tasted.

That reminds us that we as Christians, if we are to have the effect of giving taste, must be totally inserted in our societies. We have to resist any temptation, as Christians, to withdraw and separate ourselves from the world. It is a temptation we can easily fall into, and there are many places where the Church is absent nowadays. There is no salt there. For example, in our commercial districts, in our industrial areas, in our entertainment and media centres, where is the visible Christian presence?

Other images used by Jesus today include being the “light of the world” or being “a city built on a hill”. There is no way it can be hidden; it sticks out like a beacon. And what is the point of lighting a candle and then covering it over with a tub? You light a candle to give light so that people can see their way and will not fall. To be baptised and to go into virtual hiding is like lighting and then covering up a candle.

Finally, Jesus gives us the reason for making ourselves so visible—so that people may see our good works. Is it in order that we can bask in their admiration and wonder? No! Rather, it is so that people will be led through us to the God who made them, who loves them and wants to lead them to himself.

It is for us today to reflect on how visible our Christian faith is to others both as individuals, as families, as members of a Christian group, as parishioners, as a diocese. Are there people or places in our area where a Christian witness is for all intents and purposes absent? Can we do anything about that?

More

Commentary on 1 Kings 17:7-16 Read Tuesday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

More

Commentary on John 21:20-25

Peter has been given his mandate to shepherd the Lord’s flock and been fully rehabilitated after his sad betrayal earlier on. But it is still the same old, impetuous Peter.  Having heard about his own future, he now wants to know that of the “the disciple Jesus loved”, i.e. the ‘beloved disciple’. Basically, Peter is told to mind his own business; it is no concern of his.  Jesus says enigmatically,

If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!

As a result, Jesus’ words became distorted and were understood to mean that the ‘beloved disciple’ was not going to die.  He would stay alive until the Lord came.  But this is strongly denied by the author of the chapter (biblical scholars strongly believe that this final chapter is not by the author of the rest of this Gospel).

The New American Bible comments here:

“This whole scene takes on more significance if the disciple is already dead.  The death of the apostolic generation caused problems in the church because of a belief that Jesus was to have returned first.  Loss of faith sometimes resulted (see 2 Peter 3:4).”

Another very different explanation is possible if the ‘beloved disciple’ is not identified with John, but with the symbolic figure who represents the perfect follower of Jesus.  This person appears four times in John’s Gospel—and perhaps five, if we identify him with one of the unnamed disciples of John the Baptist who spent a day with Jesus in the company of Andrew (see John 1:35).  At this point, he is not called the ‘beloved disciple’, as he is just beginning to be a follower. Later in the Gospel, he is identified on four different occasions of special significance—leaning on the breast of Jesus at the Last Supper; standing at the foot of the Cross; going with Peter to the empty tomb on the day of the resurrection and understanding the meaning of the arrangement of the cloths (something which meant nothing to Peter). Finally, he is seen as the one who recognised as “the Lord” the stranger who told the disciples where the fish were to be found.

Hopefully, all through the history of the Church there will be ‘beloved disciples’, people who have lived out the Gospel to a very high degree.  And such people will continue to be found until Jesus finally comes to bring us all to himself.

For our own lives, in the light of this passage, we can ask ourselves once again what we see to be the mission that Jesus has for us at this time.  And second, while we do of course need to be responsible for the well-being of our brothers and sisters, our main concern is to focus on where God is calling us and not be too worried about what he expects from others.

On a final note, the author claims to have witnessed everything that has been written, but that it still is only a fraction of all the things that Jesus said and did.  We would indeed love to know what some of those unreported words and actions were, but we have more than enough with the existing texts to provide a challenge to us for the rest of our lives. And with the imminent approach of Pentecost, we remember that the Spirit is there to continue teaching and guiding us and leading us ever deeper into the meanings of God’s Word.

More

Commentary on Acts 28:16-20,30-31

Today we complete the readings for the Easter season. During these seven weeks, we have been going through the Acts of the Apostles. As with most of the books which form the liturgical readings, much had to be omitted, but at least we do get a general picture of the extraordinary developments of the Church from a small group of uneducated fishermen to a chain of communities which, in such a short time, reached to the very centre of their known world—the empire’s seat of government in Rome. This would be the new centre from which it would over the centuries expand to every corner of the world.

Yesterday we saw Paul in the presence of King Agrippa and Bernice, while Festus explained the reason for Paul’s arrest to them. The following day, Paul was again brought before the king and, for the third time in Acts, gave them an account of how he had tried to destroy the followers of Christ only to experience his own conversion on the way to Damascus. At the end of the speech, Festus said he thought it was all crazy nonsense, but both he and the king agreed that Paul had done nothing to warrant punishment. If he had not appealed to the emperor, they agreed, he could have been released.

We are then told of the long and eventful sea journey to Rome, which included a storm and being shipwrecked on the island of Malta. When they eventually arrived in Rome, members of the community were there to welcome them on the Appian Way, the ancient highway that led to the city of Rome.

It is at this point that today’s reading begins. We are told that when Paul entered Rome, he was allowed to live by himself with a soldier who was guarding him. It was clearly a benign form of house arrest. Another reading says that “when he entered Rome, the centurion handed the prisoners over to the commander. But Paul was allowed to live outside the [Praetorian] camp.” As noted in the Jerusalem Bible:

“…this additional information agrees with what in fact must have happened. By the concession of custodia militaris (military guard) the prisoner had his own lodgings, but his right arm was chained to the left of the soldier in charge.”

Clearly, the prisoner was not regarded as dangerous.

As he did so often in the past, Paul made contact with the local Jews. The decree of the emperor Claudius, which, we remember, had caused Apollos and Priscilla to leave Rome, had been allowed to lapse and Jews now had returned to Rome with their leaders. Paul wants to establish good relations with the Jews of Rome as soon as possible. He insists that he has nothing as such against his own people, although it was certain Jews who did cause him a great deal of trouble and who were ultimately responsible for his having to appeal to Caesar. Ironically, as we saw, Governor Festus and King Agrippa had agreed that Paul had done no wrong and could have been released if he had not made his appeal to Caesar. In fact, as Paul had emphasised all along:

…it is for the sake of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain.

In the final sentences of Acts we are told that Paul spent two years in his place of arrest:

…proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

He was able to receive all who came looking for him and was able to preach without hindrance. The two years represents the legal period during which he could be kept in custody. Within that period his case would have to be tried, so it is likely that, at the end of the period, he was released. At the end of his short letter to Philemon, he seems to be looking forward to his release and asks that a room be made ready for him in Philemon’s house. During this time also he would have written his letter to the Christians at Colosse and the letter to the Ephesians (although the immediate authorship of this letter by Paul has been questioned), as well as his note to Philemon.

As the New International Version Bible points out, there are a number of indications that Paul was released from his imprisonment at the end of two years:

• Acts stops abruptly at this time;
• Paul wrote to churches expecting to visit them soon; so he must have anticipated a release (see Phil 2:24; Philem 22);
• A number of the details in the Pastoral Letters do not fit into the historical setting given in the book of Acts. Following the close of Acts, these details indicate a return to Asia Minor, Crete and Greece;
• Tradition indicates that Paul went to Spain. Even if he did not go, the very fact that a tradition arose suggests a time when he could have taken that journey.*

It is clear that the sudden ending of Acts indicates that it is not an ending at all but a beginning. Luke’s story had begun with Jesus’ ‘mission statement’ made in the synagogue at Nazareth. From there, Jesus progresses steadily south to Jerusalem, which is the climax of his life and work—through passion, death and resurrection. The story is then taken up with Acts, which begins with the Pentecost experience when the baton of Jesus’ mission is passed to his disciples. It begins where Jesus left off, in Jerusalem, and from there spreads progressively to the surrounding territories and then on to Macedonia and Greece and ultimately to the heart of the empire and the centre of their world—Rome. The Gospel is being preached freely in the very heart of the Roman Empire.

Christianity, from being a tiny movement of a small number of Jews, is now a world phenomenon. From now on, its mission is to make the Kingdom a reality in every corner of our planet. There are many more triumphs and tragedies to come. But to have reached Rome in such a short time was little short of miraculous. So, these final sentences sound an understandable note of triumph for the fledgling Church.
_______________________________________

*Regarding Paul’s ministry after his discharge, his second imprisonment, and his death, see the section: “Introduction to the Letters of St Paul” in the Jerusalem Bible.

More

Commentary on Acts 25:13-21

We are now moving rather quickly to the end of Acts.  We have to finish between today and tomorrow, which is the end of the Easter season.  Next week we will return to what is called “Ordinary Time”.

After Paul was rescued from the uproar in the Sanhedrin, a group of Jews were determined to assassinate Paul and were concocting a plot to bring it about.  However, Paul’s nephew got wind of it and passed the information to the Romans.  So Paul was taken away from Jerusalem and sent under heavy guard to Governor Felix in Caesarea to await formal charges from his Jewish accusers. 

Both the Jews and Paul presented their case to Felix in the most flattering terms.  Felix was rather sympathetic to Paul and was apparently aware of Christian beliefs.  He kept Paul in custody for a further two years because he liked discussing religion—until Paul began to tell him about moral behaviour and the judgement to come.  Feeling somewhat uneasy (about his own behavior!), he postponed further meetings indefinitely.  He also hoped for a bribe from Paul to expedite his release (apparently not expecting Paul to practise what he preached!).

The next governor, Festus, was more favourable to the Jews.  He again allowed them to come up to Caesarea to confront Paul in court.  Knowing what the Jews wanted, Festus asked Paul if he would be willing to go to Jerusalem to be tried.  Paul knew that was tantamount to a death sentence (indeed the Jews planned to murder him on the way), so he played his final trump card. As a Roman citizen, he appealed for a Roman trial. The governor now had no choice. He said:

I ordered him to be held until I could send him to the emperor.

We now enter today’s reading.  We see King Agrippa and his sister Bernice come to pay a courtesy visit to Festus in Caesarea.  It was customary for rulers to pay a complimentary visit to a new ruler at the time of his appointment.  It was to the advantage of each that they get along (we might compare the relationship of Herod Antipas with Pontius Pilate. See especially Luke 23:6-12).

Agrippa and Bernice were an interesting couple to say the least. Agrippa, Bernice and Drusilla were children of King Herod Agrippa I.  Herod Agrippa II was 17 years old at the death of his father in AD 44 (Acts 12:23).  Being too young to succeed his father, he was replaced by Roman procurators.  Eight years later, however, a gradual extension of territorial authority began.  Ultimately he ruled over territory north and northeast of the Sea of Galilee, over several Galilean cities and over some cities in Perea.  At the Jewish revolt, when Jerusalem fell, he was on the side of the Romans.  He died about AD 100—the last of the Herods.

According to the New International Version Bible, Bernice:

“…when only 13, married her uncle, Herod of Chalcis, and had two sons.  When Herod died, she lived with her brother, Agrippa II.  To silence rumours that she was living in incest with her brother, she married Polemon, king of Cilicia, but left him soon to return to Agrippa.  She became the mistress of the emperor Vespasian’s son Titus but was later ignored by him.”

Titus, as emperor, was responsible for the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 70.  The memory of that event is recorded on the sculptural reliefs of the Arch of Titus still standing in the Roman Forum.

The governor now took the opportunity for Paul to present his case to the king, who was a Jew.  The governor gives a slightly distorted account of the proceedings held in his presence with the Jews from Jerusalem.  In reply to the Jews’ demand to have Paul surrendered to them, Festus said that it was not in accordance with Roman law to hand someone over before he had a chance to speak in his own defence.

However, when the trial began in Festus’ presence, none of the charges he expected were brought forward.  Instead they were arguing about matters concerning their own religion and there was talk of a Jesus who had died, but whom Paul was claiming to be alive.  Festus wanted the Jews to deal with this issue themselves, but because Paul had appealed to Rome, he had to remain in custody until he could be sent to Caesar.  The emperor in question was Nero who reigned (if that is the appropriate word) from AD 54-68.

While every stage in this story can be understood as taking place in response to the various actions of the participants, the incidents can also be seen as factors which were to bring Paul to the heart of the empire in Rome. Rome would in time become the centre of Christ’s Kingdom on earth. It is the fulfilment of the words of Jesus to the Apostles before his ascension:

…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Once again, we see the finger of God behind every action of every person in the story.  His finger is in our life stories too.  Can we see that?  And where will we find him in today’s experiences?

More

Commentary on John 17:20-26

In this final part of Jesus’ prayer during his discourse to his disciples at the Last Supper, Jesus now prays for all those who came to believe in Christ as Lord through the influence of these very disciples down through the ages. Each one of us is among those Jesus is praying for here.

In this prayer, Jesus prays above all for unity among his disciples as the most effective sign of witness. As he had told his disciples earlier on in the discourse:

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

He now prays that we may display the same unity among ourselves and with Jesus as that which binds Jesus and the Father.  It is through the love that Christians, coming as they do from so many ethnic groups and all classes of people, show for each other that they give the most effective witness to the message of Christ. He asks:

…that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

It is said that, in the early Church, people marvelled, “See those Christians, how they love each other.”  In a world divided along so many lines, people were amazed to see Jews and Greeks, men and women, slaves and freemen, rich and poor sharing a common community life in love and forgiveness and mutual support.  It clearly would lead people to ask what was the secret of this group.

Is that the witness that we are giving today? What do people see when they look at our parishes? What do they see when they look at our families? What are they to think of the painful divisions of so many groups who claim Jesus as their Lord?  How can we maintain such divisions in the face of these words of Jesus?

Obviously, we all have much to think and pray about regarding our ‘spiritual’ life and the impact we make in drawing people to Christ (and that includes bringing back many who have left in confusion and disillusionment).

So let us make our own the last words of Jesus’ prayer today:

I made your name known to them [his disciples], and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.

More

Commentary on Acts 22:30; 23:6-11

We are now coming to the end of Paul’s third missionary journey. Events are moving very fast as we have to finish Acts in the next three days! And a great deal is happening, much of which will have to be passed over. To fully understand, it might be a very good idea to take up a New Testament and read the full text of the last eight chapters of Acts.

As we begin today’s reading let us be filled in a little on what has happened between yesterday’s reading and today’s. After bidding a tearful farewell to his fellow-Christians in Ephesus, Paul and his companions began their journey back to Palestine, making a number of brief stops on the way—Cos, Rhodes, Patara. They by-passed Cyprus and landed at Tyre in Phoenicia. They stayed there for a week, during which time the brethren begged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. They knew there would be trouble. But there was no turning back for Paul and again there was an emotional parting on the beach.

As Paul moved south, there was a stop at Ptolemais, where they greeted the community. Then it was on to Caesarea where Paul stayed in the house of Philip, the deacon, now called “the evangelist” (earlier we saw him do great evangelising work in Samaria and he was the one who converted the Ethiopian eunuch). Here too there was an experience in which Paul was warned by a prophet in the community of coming suffering. Again they all begged him not to go on, but he replied:

…I am ready not only to be bound but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.

This was accepted as God’s will, and they let him go.

When they arrived in Jerusalem they received a warm welcome from the community there and went to pay a formal visit to James, the leader in the Jerusalem church. They were very happy to hear of all that Paul had done, but they were also concerned (and their concern would seem to indicate that there were some in the city who had not fully accepted the non-application of Jewish law for Gentiles).

The local Jews (including, it seems, the Christians) would have heard how Paul, also a Jew, had been telling Jews in gentile territory to “abandon Moses”, that is, not requiring them to circumcise their children or observe other Jewish practices. Some suggested a tactic for Paul to assuage the feelings of these people. On behalf of four members of the Jerusalem community, he was to make the customary payment for the sacrifices offered at the termination of the Nazirite vow (see Numbers 6:1-24) in order to impress favourably the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem with his high regard for the Mosaic Law. Since Paul himself had once made such a vow (when he was leaving Corinth, Acts 18:18), his respect for the law would be publicly known. Paul agreed with this suggestion and did as he was asked.

However, as the seven days stipulated were coming to an end, Paul was spotted by some Jews who had known him in Ephesus. A mob rushed into the Temple and seized him, and might have harmed him, if the Roman commander had not seen the riot. He rescued Paul, then arrested him and put him in chains and thus out of the reach of those wanting to harm him.

It was only after the arrest that the commander realised the Greek-speaking Paul was not an Egyptian rebel. Paul then asked to be allowed to address the crowd and, in a longish speech, told the assembled Jews the story of his conversion on the road to Damascus (the second time the story is told in Acts; it will be told again in chapter 26). At the end of the speech, the crowd bayed for his blood and Paul was about to be flogged in order to find out why the Jews wanted him executed. At this point, Paul revealed to the centurion that he was a Roman citizen and that, unlike the garrison commander who had bought his citizenship, he had been born one. This created great alarm among his captors and he was released.

The Roman commander then ordered a meeting of the Sanhedrin to be convened so that Paul could address them. While those of the high priestly line were mainly Sadducees, the Sanhedrin also now included quite a number of Pharisees. This council was the ruling body of the Jews. Its court and decisions were respected by the Roman authorities. Roman approval was needed, however, in cases of capital punishment (as happened in the case of Jesus). Paul’s being brought before the Sanhedrin was already foretold by Jesus to his disciples (see Matt 10:17-18). Paul, in time, will appear before “councils, governors and kings”.

He began by telling them that everything he had done was with a perfectly clear conscience. On hearing this, the high priest Ananias ordered that Paul be struck in the mouth. It was not unlike his Master being struck on the face during his trial. Paul hit back verbally:

…God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. (Acts 23:2)

He said this because, although Ananias was supposedly sitting in judgement according to Mosaic Law, he was breaking the law by striking the accused. Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that Ananias was actually assassinated in AD 66 at the beginning of the First Jewish Revolt. When Paul is accused of reviling the high priest, he said he did not realise Ananias was the high priest and apologised.

It is at this point that today’s reading begins—and it is one of the most dramatic scenes in the Acts. Paul knew his audience and he decided at the very beginning to make a preemptive strike. He professed loudly and with pride that he was a Pharisee, knowing that his audience consisted of both Pharisees and Sadducees.

Addressing his words specially to the Pharisees, he said:

I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead.

That was not quite the whole story, of course, as he made no mention of Christ, but it immediately put him on the side of his fellow-Pharisees. As Paul had told the Corinthians in one of his letters, if Christ was not risen from the dead, neither could we rise and there would be no basis for our faith. The hope of a future life was at the very heart of his Christian preaching.

That, of course, is not what the Pharisees heard. They immediately latched on to the fact that Paul, as a fellow-Pharisee held a belief that was denied by the Sadducees. The Sadducees only accepted as divine revelation the first five books of the Bible, what we call the Pentateuch. The resurrection of the body (in 2 Maccabees) and the doctrine of angels (in the book of Tobit) did not become part of Jewish teaching until a comparatively late date. On both these issues, however, Paul (a Pharisee himself) and the Pharisees were full agreement.

In the first five books of the Old Testament, there is no mention of a future resurrection, nor spirits, nor angels. It was on the basis of this belief that the Sadducees had challenged Jesus about the fate of a woman who had married seven brothers (see Luke 20:27-38 and Matt 22:25-32). If there is a resurrection, which of the seven would be her husband? For those who did not believe in life after death, the question was nonsense.

Paul’s words on resurrection immediately diverted attention from him to this contentious dividing point between the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

All of a sudden the Pharisees made an about-turn saying:

We find nothing wrong with this man.

And, in a deliberate provocation to the Sadducees who also did not believe in angels, the Pharisees said:

What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?

This could be a reference to Paul’s account to them earlier of his experience on the road to Damascus.

All objectivity was forgotten and the Pharisees, despite their earlier protestations, sided with Paul, ‘their man’, and a brawl ensued. It got so serious—and, remember, these were all ‘religious’ men!—that the tribune, fearing Paul would be torn to pieces, came to his rescue and put him back in the fortress.

That night, Paul received a vision in which he was assured that he would be protected in Jerusalem because it was the Lord’s wish that he give witness to the Gospel in Rome.

Perhaps Paul’s behaviour in this situation is a good example of Jesus’ advice to his disciples to be simple as doves and as wise as serpents! Paul was more than ready to suffer for his Lord, but he was no pushover.

While we, too, are to be prepared to give witness to our faith even with the sacrifice of our lives, and never to indulge in any form of violence against those who attack us, we are not asked to go out of our way to invite persecution or physical attacks. That is not the meaning of the injunction to carry our cross. Jesus himself often took steps to avoid trouble.

Joan of Arc defended herself as did Thomas More and, indeed as Jesus himself did during his trial:

If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me? (John 18:23)

But, like them, we will try never to evade death or any other form of hostility by compromising the central teaching of our faith.