Daily Liturgy and Scripture

God really is dong a new thing among the early Church, and sometimes it’s hard to know where the old rules stop and the new covenant begins. This is a good example as the Jews claim that circumcision, the covenant given to Abraham, must be practiced among all of them. This is actually pretty reasonable. God made the covenant with Abraham, after all, and God set that rule up. But God is going beyond the action, he wants his Church to have the faith as well. So it is that circumcision came to an end, but the faith of Abraham is still what we participate in.

When you’re feeling beaten up, it’s good to go home. Home is a place that feels welcoming, and hopefully there are people there who support and love you. That’s what Paul and Barnabas are heading back to, and Paul certainly has the right to have claimed being beaten up. Getting back home is where we regain our footing and the sense of who we are so we can be strong. That was what God gave Paul in the Antioch church.

As Paul and Barnabas continue preaching, it’s interesting what erupts among those who oppose them. Luke, who wrote Acts, says that the Jewish leaders were jealous because Paul and Barnabas were drawing such a big crowd. It’s kind of a sad moment, really. If they had been able to listen to what the Spirit was doing, perhaps they could have joined the crowd. Instead, they opposed Paul and Barnabas, then kicked them out. It’s a tragedy when ego comes before the moving of the Holy Spirit.

If we had wondered why God would have chosen a man like Paul to become a leader in the Christian church, this verse gives us a pretty good indication. Paul was a scholar in the Hebrew Scriptures, and knew God's story well. His persecution of the early church, prior to his conversion, had been part of his passion for God's story. Now that he sees God's story more fully, there is nobody better than him to tell it. He is able to help the Jewish believers understand how it all fits together, especially those like himself who may not know how Jesus fits until someone shows them.

Paul, who had been struck blind in his conversion experience, inflicts blindness on a false prophet. This is really unusual for the apostle known for his defense of grace. On the surface, this seems like retribution, something he uses to silence the false prophet. What if it wasn't? What if he was giving this man the same route to redemption that he took? We don't know for sure, but since the Spirit joins Paul in this action, it certainly seems possible.

The city of Antioch is one of the most important in the history of Christianity. God was raising up Paul as he worked in that church, and it would become a center of operations for the Church for years to come. It’s no coincidence that the Spirit went ahead of them, and that God was creating this new base of operations. Most of the believers in that day would have probably looked to Jerusalem, that’s certainly where the apostles were spending a lot of time. But God isn’t interested in doing things we expect. Sometimes our greatest growth comes from the times when he surprises us, does something somewhere else, and challenges us to meet him where he’s taking us.

When God decides to move, it really causes waves. The expansion of the Kingdom from the Jews to the Gentiles wasn't done by writing big words in the sky, but through people. How would you have done it if you were God? It seems that entrusting that kind of news into human hands is an unusual way to do something big, but that is the whole point of Jesus. God wished to fully include his people in His plan, however inefficient it may seem to us.

As God prepares the Church and does new things within it, he also prepares the people of that Church. In the case of Peter and Cornelius, he is bringing together the Jewish people of the promise and the Gentiles who are not of Abraham’s line. This was started on the day of Pentecost, when other languages were heard spoken, a sign that God was on the move outside of the established “in” crowd. Now God says it directly to Peter: I am making one Church, and it is all because of Jesus.

Happy Pentecost Sunday! And indeed it is happy, because the Spirit of God is with us. Not only those born from Abraham, but those who come to God in faith, just as Abraham did. This is the enduring promise of God even today, and the Spirit remains with us still.