5 minute Bible

AbunaPaulos.jpg Abuna Paulos at the Timqet Celebration January 2005 (Photo from Jhaustein, Wikipedia)

This week’s readings tell the exciting story of how the Church broke loose. Till this time faith and culture had been intimately related. So if you wanted to convert to Judaism you became Jewish and adopted the rules and customs of Jewish life. In particular you adopted the 613 rules of the Torah.

The first two readings tell of Saul’s conversion and (the now renamed) Paul’s first missionary journey and the conversion of Jews and Gentiles.

Then Acts 15 tells of the revolutionary Council of Jerusalem and the dramatic decision it took.

The last two readings tell of a decade of Paul’s preaching around the Eastern end of the Mediterranean and his journey in captivity to Rome.

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"Beyond the Pale" - Trim Castle, on the south bank of the Boyne, was an outpost to protect "the Pale" the Norman invaders' enclave around Dublin.(Photo by William Murphy)

In Matt 26 when Peter was supposed to be praying with Jesus he went to sleep, here a similar physical need interrupts his prayer, he’s hungry (in Peter’s retelling says he fell asleep here too :) But God uses the two situations quite differently – here his hunger gives him a vision!

When God says… !

OK God’s message to Peter is quite clear, the behavioural rules that we think measure God’s favour don’t
the good news of God’s love is for everyone. But what about those food laws? This vision is not about food laws, but about the God who made them.

Those rules marked out a people. Those who keep these rules are part of this people…  But Jesus regularly broke the rules – and in breaking them healed. Peter and Paul do the same.

Reading Acts 10-11 with Acts 15  and especially Gal 2 poses all sorts of headaches for historians. However, one thing seems quite clear, despite this vision, and probably despite Peter’s triumph in Jerusalem, one day in Antioch he has a relapse :( The good news is that Bible heroes even people like Peter, with his vision, his triumph in Jerusalem and everything can fail – just like me, and you!

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There are a couple of things to notice here:

• firstly how Luke stresses the role of the Holy Spirit (or rather, God, since at the start it is “an angel of the Lord”)
• it may have been a desert/wilderness road but like Abraham in Gen 12 “he got up and went” our response to such promptings is often more cautious, even at times Jonah-like
• the Ethiopian official was prepared (been to temple, so God-fearer, reading Scripture – measure of his importance he had a copy)
• Isaiah again!

Bible Jesus Read, The

Philip Yancey. Zondervan 2002, Paperback, 240 pages, $2.73

Like Yancey’s friend (see Reading prophets for pleasure and profit) he recognised what he was reading was difficult.

Do you understand… ” “How can I, unless someone guides me?”

The passage he was reading came from Is 53:7-8. Philip started with this scripture, and proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. Christianity fits with, but goes beyond – fully fills – the Scripture that preceded it.

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In a valley in a remote (predominantly Animist) area of Thailand the huge cross on this church witnesses to the new faith of the valley's owner.

Stephen is a “martyr” (in English that means someone who dies for their beliefs, but in Greek it means someone who bears witness to their faith). Stephen points to Jesus, and witnesses to truth – even at expense of speaking against “holy” things. In his defense he retells the story of salvation Heilsgeschichte but focused on Israelite unbelief and  presenting Jesus as fulfillment of old old story (Acts 7:35-37). In vv.48-49 he presents the temple too as foreshadowing what Jesus fulfills.

Literary foreshadowing with Saul as the witness to the death of Stephen the witness.

If we believe what Stephen says, how can we avoid witnessing to Jesus? If Christ has done things for us, so that we know what God offers humanity in him, surely we too must witness…. God has a track record in the OT that is consistent (indeed fulfilled) in Jesus and God has a track record today (also consistent with Jesus) in our lives….
NB at the beginning of Acts 8 we see the actions and the words of these witnesses align – how about our life and our words?

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Igorot Beggar photo by martiniko

Peter gets some powerful lines in these two great chapters :) Since I was a child I’ve loved his: “I don’t have silver and gold, but what I do have I’ll give you. Get up and walk!” So different from what we usually hear… And then when faced by the authorities he talks about his Master as the “Stone the builders rejected” quoting Ps 118:22. This superb Psalm all through contrasts human power and “protection” with God’s steadfast love that endures forever…

So in these chapters, two powerful reminders from Peter that Christian faith is NOT about human power, just the opposite. And the challenge of hearing how the first Christians lived. The Bible is perspicuous, we just wish we could remain blind and deaf!

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