Thursday, 14th Week of Ordinary Time

Acts 21:27-40

Morning Prayer

He almost made it. The seven days of ritual purification were almost done. Then Paul likely wouldn’t be seen in the Temple, with his mere presence an incitement to riot. But while it doesn’t say, I think we can assume that Paul made it back to Jerusalem, as he had hoped, in time for the great Jewish festival of Pentecost. That was when the people of Israel celebrated the giving of the law to Moses. Israelites zealous for the law had come from distant parts. And having seen Paul and a Gentile together, they were ready to assume the worst; that Paul had brought this Gentile where no non-Jew was to be brought.

It’s really a miracle that the mob didn’t kill Paul before the Roman Tribune got there with his troops. Still, the last thing the Tribune wants to do is to try and comprehend an incomprehensible quarrel among these strange people. I’m reminded of the cartoon where a frog agrees to carry a scorpion across the water, because of course the scorpion would sting the frog and drown with him. Of course that’s exactly what the scorpion does. Why did you do that, the frog cries. Now we’ll both drown! It makes no sense! You forget, the scorpion said, this is the Middle East. Little has changed.

The path of least resistance is to slap chains on Paul, and then figure out what he’s done to disturb the fragile quiet. Paul’s path of least resistance might be to play the card of his Roman citizenship, and get out of there alive. But Paul has never been known for taking that path. So first, he shows the Tribune that he can speak educated Greek, which gains him just enough respect to get his request granted. The he speaks enough Hebrew for the crowd to accept, for now, that he is one of them.

Tomorrow, Paul will proceed to do what he has done wherever he has travelled. He will speak to his brother Israelites, and try to persuade them the God’s promises are not a zero-sum game. The redemption of Israel is not meant to come at the expense of the Gentiles. But neither is the redemption of the Gentiles meant to come at the expense of Israel. Salvation is not an either/or game, where God sticks it to the enemies of the righteous as a reward to them. Salvation is both/and. It is about the vindication of the righteous and the redemption of the unrighteous. We’ll see how successful Paul is tomorrow.