Wednesday, 15th Week of Ordinary Time

Acts 23:23-35
Morning Prayer

Claudius Lysias was officially known as the Tribune in Jerusalem. His boss, Felix, was the Governor of the region of Syria, which included the modern-day Israel and Syria. Lysias may not understand why Paul was causing so much anger in Jerusalem. But hearing of the plot against him, Lysias sees an opportunity to get this problem off his hands by kicking it upstairs to his superior in Caesarea, about 60 miles away from Lysias in Jerusalem. And he won’t have to hear the Jewish Council yelling at him anymore, at least not about this Paul again, he hopes.

Paul had generally tried to fly under the radar of Roman political authority, never trying to pick a fight with the powers that be, but working around them. It must have seemed strange to Paul to be escorted to the Roman governor with this much Roman protection: nearly 500 Roman soldiers with one job, to protect him. And Lysias’s letter to Felix, reproduced by Luke, repeats a theme that has been sounded often in Luke’s account of Paul’s travels: “I found that he was being accused about questions of their law, but charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment.”

If Acts was written after the failed Jewish rebellion from 66-70 AD, then Luke would most certainly want to make it clear that Christianity was not a threat to Roman authority. At the same time, the reader of Acts would also have seen that this movement, which outsiders called “Christian” but the Christians called “The Way”, was not subservient to Roman authority. Today, we who are part of The Way know that we are not unalterably opposed to any authority, political, financial, and religious. For all things belong to God, and God can work thorough all things to bring about good. But the Good News we have for all our neighbors does not belong to any political party, business, or even a particular church.

In fact, the more we fly under the radar screen of partisanship and polarization, the more we will actually be heard by those who need something deeper than a sales pitch or ideological screaming match—who need love.