Bible Text: Acts 23:11-24 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: Acts | The apostle Paul is on a dangerous mission.  He hustled to get to Jerusalem in time for Pentecost so he could share the gospel with all the Jews who would be coming for the festival.  The whole way from Troas, which is way up at the northern tip of Turkey, to Jerusalem, Paul’s friends kept warning him, please don’t go to Jerusalem.  You will be arrested.  You will be killed.  It’s too riksy.  But Paul had a calling from God.  So he went.

The reason his friends were worried was because there was a great deal of tension in Jerusalem between the Jewish Christians and those who didn’t believe in Jesus.    Even though Paul himself continued to follow Jewish law, Paul was out in the mission field, proclaiming to Gentiles that they did not need to follow the law.  That was making its way back to Jerusalem and causing Jewish families to wonder.  Should we circumcise our sons?  Do we need to keep following the cumbersome rituals of our faith?  The Jews who didn’t believe in Jesus were feeling very put-upon, trying to defend the old ways in the midst of change.  And at Pentecost, with so many additional Jews in town, things were going to be even more touchy in Jerusalem.

So when Paul arrived, the brothers urged him to engage in some public displays of Jewish piety to try to show goodwill, which he did.  But that was not enough to quiet the Jews who had closed their minds to the gospel.  Paul’s goodness only seemed to incite them further.  A riot broke out and a crowd of people started beating Paul.  Roman officials had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to civil unrest.  Roman guards arrived and arrested Paul, which ironically, saved his life! Usually we would assume getting arrested is a bad thing.  But in this situation, getting arrested protected Paul from the real threat against him:  conflict within the religious community.  He walked right into that hornets’ nest, just as his friends feared he would.

But getting arrested gave Paul the opportunity he wanted to witness to the Jewish people about his faith.  He got the chance to tell his whole story to the Sanhedrin, and many of them were supportive of Paul.  They said, “What if he has been visited by an angel?”  They wanted to give Paul the benefit of the doubt.  But others were only enraged all the more.  They simply could not accept the fact that God had told Paul he would be sent far away to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.  With that, they decided he was not fit to live.

Forty men took a vow that they would not eat or drink until they had killed Paul.  Paul’s nephew got wind of the plot against Paul and was able to warn him.  The Roman officials did not want anything bad to happen to Paul under their watch, because Paul was not only a Jew, he was also a Roman citizen.  So they arranged for Paul to be taken under cover of darkness by military escort to safety in Caesarea.

Spoiler alert if you haven’t read through the end of Acts yet:  God tells Paul he will testify about him in Rome, and Paul does.  The book of Acts ends with Paul, under house arrest in Rome, teaching and talking with whoever wants to stop by and learn.  Those Jewish men who wanted to give Paul the benefit of the doubt were on to something.  He had been touched.  Not by an angel, though, but by the very Spirit of God!  And whatever the Spirit of God begins, the Spirit of God brings to completion.

But Luke does not tell us what happened to the forty men who took the vow.  Did they starve to death?  Did they live up to their vow to not eat or drink until they had killed Paul?  That’s quite a bind they put themselves in, vowing not to eat until they had killed a man who had now disappeared.  The saddest thing is, they had the unique opportunity to hear the gospel presented to them by the greatest evangelist of all time, but they could not open their ears to the truth.  They could not open their hearts to the possibility that God was at work in a way different from what they expected.  They were stuck.  And that stuckness turned to ugliness.  They embodied the very opposite of what Paul wrote to the Galatians, that where the Spirit of God is heard and nurtured, the fruit of that is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  The fruit of these men was anger, defensiveness, violence, and hatred.  Their desire to keep Judaism kosher–get it, little pun there–is admirable.  But they were the ones who were tainted.  They were willing to kill an innocent man.

As we have studied the book of Acts this summer, I have been continually struck by two things that always seem to be in tension. The first is how critical it was that the early Christians held on to the truth of the gospel no matter what.  Despite the threat of persecution, plots to kill them, even martyrdom, the church grew because people had become convinced that Jesus Christ is Lord.  They were willing to suffer through anything in order to be loyal to Jesus.

But the second recurring theme is how often the early Christians had to change and adapt.  First they had to get used to the idea of grace being a free and generous gift, not something they had to work for or earn.  Then they had to get used to Jesus saving the Samaritans.  Next they had to accept that Jesus came to save the Gentiles, too. Even the hated Romans!  And they had to make a huge policy shift to accept the Gentiles as co-heirs to salvation, without them having to become circumcised, law-abiding Jews first.  It seems God was constantly showing them new truths they needed to embrace.  Next week we will begin to study the Apostles’ Creed, to see the foundational Christian beliefs that solidified during this chaotic time.  But those beliefs were not articulated because God’s work was done.  Those beliefs were articulated so people could have a framework in which they could see God continually doing new things.

This is the tension we live in, too, isn’t it?  Knowing what to hold on to as sacred, where we should absolutely not be swayed—but also being open to the new thing God is doing in our midst.  This summer I re-arranged the books in my office and found one I had forgotten about.  It’s a compilation of Peanuts cartoons that have to do with God.  I gotta show you the cartoon on the back cover of this book (And the Beagles Shall Lie Down with the Bunnies:  The Theology in Peanuts by Charles Schulz). Charlie Brown walks up to Snoopy and says, “I hear you’re writing a book on theology.  I hope you have a good title.”  Snoopy thinks to himself, I have the perfect title.  “Has it Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong?”

It took a dramatic, blinded by the light, experience on the way to Damascus for Paul to see that he was wrong.  But now?  Paul was a person who had become so convinced that Jesus is Lord of ALL that he was willing to risk his life to share that good news with others.  Those who were convinced that Paul was wrong were willing to risk their lives as well.  Yet the gospel grew.  Paul held on to his conviction that Christ’s grace was a free gift not dependent upon following the law. And God took all the animosity and resistance aimed his way and used it to create situations where new people could hear about Jesus.

I want to share a story with you that I think Paul would have liked.  It comes from Bishop Latrelle Easterling, of the Baltimore Washington Annual Conference, who is Bishop Johnson’s good friend.  I hope you won’t be offended by the story, because it is offered in goodwill and good humor.  But if you are, you can complain to Bishop Johnson and I am pretty sure she will understand why I wanted to pass it on to you.

An old man, a boy, and a donkey, which is also called an ass, were going to town. The boy road on the donkey, and the old man walked beside him. As they went along and passed some people who remarked, oh what a shame it is that the old man was walking, and the boy was riding on the ass.  The boy and the man thought maybe their critics were right, so they traded places.  Later they passed some people who remarked, “What shame!  He makes that little boy walk while he rides so comfortably upon that ass!”  Then they decided that they both would walk.  Soon they passed some more people who thought they were stupid to walk when they had a decent ass that they could ride.  And so they both climbed on to the donkey.  Now they passed some people who shamed them by saying, how awful to put such a load on that poor ass.  And the boy and the man said, you know what they’re probably right!  So they decided to carry the donkey on their shoulders.  As they began to cross the bridge, they lost their grip on the animal, and he fell into the river and drowned.  The moral of this story is, if you try to please everybody, you might as well kiss your donkey good-bye.

For all the ways we can come to know God, we have to admit there is a lot of mystery we cannot comprehend. We need to continually empty ourselves of the old so we can receive the new God has for us.  We may be wrong on some things!  But we also have an obligation to learn how to tune out the voices that criticize and distract us from what we know to be true.  We have to develop that singularity of focus, so we can endure hard times, and even find ways to turn challenges into opportunities.

I’ve been thinking about what it must have been like for Paul to escape from Jerusalem.  I wonder if, as Paul rode on horseback out of Jerusalem, surrounded by two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred more spear men, if he threw his head back and started laughing.  God had arranged for two hundred seventy Roman military men–the same men the Israelites considered enemies–to guard him as he traveled out of Jerusalem, which is also known as Zion, or city of salvation.  What irony!  Paul has to leave the city of salvation in order to be safe!  And to get to safety he has to be escorted by a very large military detachment, the very kind of people who nailed Jesus to the cross.  Talk about things coming full circle!  Whodda thunk!

Paul’s experience reminds me of how God often turns things upside down and right side out.  From Genesis to Revelation, God takes what others meant for evil and turns it to good.  Just look at the cross!  We have it in our faith experience that God can take our darkest Friday and turn it into the brightest dawn.  It’s always sunrise somewhere!

As we come to the communion table this morning, we come open and humble, fully aware that we do not know it all and we might very well be wrong on some things.  But let us also come with resolve to stay true to the mission God has for us.  The good news of Jesus Christ is meant for all people, and we are to be his witnesses in Lima, in Delaware County, and even to the ends of the earth.  Amen.