Word to the Wise
Friday, May 21, 2010 - Friday in the Seventh Week of Easter
[Acts 25:13b-21 and John 21:15-19]His [Paul's] accusers stood around him, but did not charge him with any of the crimes I suspected. Instead they had some issues with him about their own religion and about a certain Jesus who had died but who Paul claimed was alive.
It can be startling but very educational to hear what someone who has no Judeao-Christian background at all thinks of one's faith. In today's first scripture, we learn about the impression of the Roman governor, Porcius Festus, in a letter he writes to the Jewish ruler, Agrippa. Festus is confronted with a mob that is upset about a religious matter and not about anything pertaining to Roman law. The problem does concern a Roman citizen, however. That citizen is Paul of Tarsus in Cilicia - a Roman colony! What is most interesting is the way in which Festus understands the complaint. It is "about a certain Jesus who had died but who Paul claimed was alive." That is about as concise and succinct a description of Paul's preaching as could be written!! It is also a very concise and succinct statement of our own belief. We believe in a certain Jesus who died and is alive! Of course, those few words encompass an enormous reality and we will rarely be able to simply say them and then sit back and see what happens! [Try it!] Even Paul, when he preached in Athens, did not start with that statement but took another approach. [cf. Acts 17]. We learn how the Greeks viewed his preaching on that occasion. We know Paul could be persuasive with Roman governors because Festus' predecessor, Felix, whose wife was Jewish, kept Paul under house arrest for about two years and had him come in for discussion frequently. Getting another point of view from a radically different source can be helpful to one's preaching, even if occasionally deflating. The Romans and Greeks had their own polytheistic religious systems. In our own day, we face other systems that may say to our declarations of belief, "So what?" How do we respond? AMEN
config
view
logs
4096.0 KB
110 ms
4
