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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• 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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]]> http://5minutebible.com/e100/e100-74-acts-826-840-philip-preaches-isaiah/feed/ 0 http://5minutebible.com/e100/e100-73-acts-68-%e2%80%93-88-stephen-the-witness/ http://5minutebible.com/e100/e100-73-acts-68-%e2%80%93-88-stephen-the-witness/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:41:29 +0000 tim http://5minutebible.com/?p=768

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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Using a photo by Stacirl (some see a face in the flames)

What a chapter! What a day!

An unheard of miracle that foreshadows the spread of the gospel to all the world and the fellowship that transcends frontiers and cultures. Like in Joel everyone receives God’s Spirit, young as well as old, women and men alike, slave and free, the Spirit bursts all human categories. Indeed death could not hold him down – Jesus lives in his people, the work continues!

Is it now you’ll begin to reign? Yes, but not in a tawdry political kingdom. Jesus is lord and Messiah (king), not by popular vote, but by declaration of God. No wonder there were 3000 converts that day!

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  43 Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.  44 All who believed were together and had all things in common;  45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts,  47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

That couldn’t last, once Jesus return proved to be more than a few years off, they had to get haircuts and real jobs :(
But what a shame we’ve lost so much of that sense of togetherness in God…

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Photo by Gerardo García Moretti

The last reading last week about the ascension of Jesus to heaven explained that soon the Spirit would come. The disciples might not know all the secrets of God (as religions forever claim to do), but they will experience and share God’s power. Then in the first reading this week we move from the ascension to Pentecost, foreshadowing the spread of the gospel to everyone, each in their own language. God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus bursts free, and reigns!

But it was not the almost magical phenomena, like a bunch of provincial fishermen speaking loads of foreign languages, that kept those first few thousand converts and daily added others. It was their “togetherness in God”! Then in Acts 3-4 two powerful reminders from Peter that Christian faith is NOT about human power, just the opposite. (Despite Peter’s lovely line “I have no silver or gold, but what I have, I’ll give you. Get up and walk!”) And the challenge of hearing how the first Christians lived. The Bible is perspicuous, we just wish we could remain blind and deaf!

Then there’s Stephen, who witnesses to the truth despite everything. (Here you’ll learn another big word Heilsgeschichte) and in doing so notice how human failure, like Israel’s unbelief, is all part of God’s “old old story” that Jesus fulfills. Philip’s preaching of Isaiah also underlines this fulfilling.

And finally in the fifth reading, yet another reminder that we humans are broken, but that God’s gospel is for everyone – especially us broken human beings!

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Roman game scratched into pavement in 1st Century Jerusalem (Photo by hoyasmeg)

Luke begins his sequel to the gospel “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning… but his summary ocuses on the resurrection and stresses that it was real.

He then reports the risen Jesus telling the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit, who he calls “the promise of the Father” then Jesus echoes the start of the gospel story in Luke 3:

John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. (Acts 1:5)

They ask him if he’s going to start reigning now, but he replied:

It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.

At a stroke doing away with most of what Christians think of as “prophecy”! But offers something better…

[This podcast will contain also a reminiscence of OT scholar David Clines in Jerusalem.]

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Fish and bread (no, the bread is nothing at all like Jesus' bread, which was fresh and wholemeal ;)

In this podcast I’ll introduce the idea of the ending of John as a sphragis, and very briefly mention what that might mean for reading John’s gospel, but most of the time will be spent on the much less technical question of why I am convinced that Jesus rose from death and met with the disciples – because after all this passage is about the resurrection, and not about the technical details (however fascinating to biblical scholars ;)

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Photo by firstbaptistnashville

This chapter gives what it tells us is an eyewitness account of a Roman execution. Jesus, who has done no real wrong, except offend the religious leaders, and worry the politicians is subjested to the casual brutality of an imperial production-line death. Such a death, of an innocent man, is shocking. But Jesus was not merely a man, this was also the death of God, so as Jesus points out to the Roman govenor, Pilate, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you” John 19:11 such a death overturns all expectations, gods are powerful, vengeful, gods are kindly and helpful… gods do not die so that humans may live!

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CHRIST – DEATH
The fourth vertical window on the north side depicts the death of Christ. It is a dramatic, powerful, eerie and gruesome composition recording the most momentous event in history. Dark grays in the upper portion represent the actual darkness that invaded the cross where Christ died. The streams of red tell of the great suffering and sacrifice of our Savior. The gold around the cross and throughout the window symbolizes the presence of God in the death of Christ.