Daily Liturgy and Scripture

A lot of wild things are going on in this passage today. Paul and Silas are blocked from going where they thing they ought to, and find themselves in a town with a fortune teller and a family of believers. The Spirit has gone ahead of them, though. There among this odd crowd, they find entire households ready to receive the word they have to bring. 

Just after yesterday’s reading about the church coming together to be of one Spirit, today we have Paul and Barnabas parting ways because of a disagreement. This seems like a pretty big deal, since both of those guys were giants in the early church. The Spirit is still at work, though, and the parting of ways certainly brings about fruit that we can see in the Bible. John Mark wrote the gospel of...

If you think churches don’t need to be linked together, here’s a great example of why that might actually be a good idea. In its earliest days, members of the church were guided deeply by the Spirit. That Spirit was bringing new wisdom to the believers, but it wasn’t broadcast directly from Heaven to everyone’s ears. They still needed one another, needed to come together to agree on the moving of...

The church is really wrangling with the way Christianity should look. Since it started among the Jews, of course they think it should look Jewish. Jesus was Jewish, after all. But strange things are happening, and the Spirit seems to be moving among the Gentiles. Spoiler alert: we’re going to keep it all about Jesus. It doesn’t belong only to the children of Abraham, because Jesus is the the “ligh...

A crowd that can be won with celebrity is a fickle thing. They wanted to grant celebrity status, even god status, to Paul and Barnabas. The pair only wanted to help them see Jesus, so they declined. But when less scrupulous religious types showed up, they granted them the same thing. Only this time, the new preachers were more receptive. They took the celebrity and turned it on Paul and Barnabas i...

After Paul preaches, he is immediately rejected. It says, “by the Jews,” but that shouldn’t be understood as the entire Jewish nation as a whole. There were definitely Jewish converts, but the Jewish power players who tended to speak for the people had set themselves against the apostles. In that scenario, Paul didn’t fight with them or argue. He simple moved on. How many times have we chosen to f...

Paul stands up to preach, and what he says sounds really familiar. Certainly, his lifetime of Jewish scholarship came into play, he was quoting the Jewish history that he had built his identity on. But that isn’t what makes it poignant. This short jaunt through history leading up to Jesus is a much more brief version of the sermon Stephen had preached when he was stoned. And who was there, giving...

We don’t know what was going on in Paul’s mind when he declared blindness to come upon this false prophet. Consider the man doing it, though. Paul himself had been struck blind by Jesus himself. For Paul, this became an awakening. He didn’t just go blind and regain his sight to carry on the way he always had. Paul regained his sight so that he could learn to see God’s way. Perhaps Paul acted in an...

It was really a wild time to be a Christian, here as the Church was being launched. Peter was an important part of that plan so God preserved his life until the time came for his martyrdom. This little scene is kind of funny: the servant girl who sees him gets so excited that she forgets to let him in. Truly, God welcomes all personalities in this crazy Kingdom he’s building.

Once again, God is building his church. This time, it's a combination of both persecution and connecting leaders. Since we're going to read a lot more about Saul/Paul and Barnabas, let's key on those who were spreading the good news after having fled in the wake of Stephen's stoning. Surely, that was a horrible event. Stephen was a leader in the church, and many probably thought his death would be...

The way God brings the Church together isn't always the same. The reasons for that are known only to God, but this is a pretty good example of that. For Peter and Cornelius, he came through visions and dreams. He didn't do that for the entire church, because it's a partnership that God has made with man. In this case, he let Peter take the stage. Of course, the Spirit is in all of it, but it's ver...

The work of the Spirit is playing out among the people: the dream given to Peter and the vision given to Cornelius are coordinated works to expand the Kingdom. That is exactly what happens, as Peter recognizes. No longer are the Jewish believers excluding those outside the Jewish faith, because the Spirit can move in all. Good news for those of us who weren’t born Jewish!

God truly builds his own Church. Peter never saw this coming: the inclusion of non-Jews, which is what his dream meant. Following devout diet laws was as strict in Jewish practice as circumcision, and both of those things indicated who was “in” with the religious crowd. Jesus came to open a new gateway: now everyone was included, and he was the key.

It’s really interesting to see how Peter has grown as a disciple. He’s come from being the one who swears to die with Jesus, to the one who denies knowing him, to the one preaching at Pentecost, and now he is raising people from the dead. It seems like he’s been inconsistent, maybe even undependable. But there’s another word for what he’s been: human. Where he is now and what he is able to do is o...

This is a big moment in the history of the Church. God has made a man who was the enemy of the Church into its greatest evangelist. What Paul got out of the deal was blindness, but he had already been blind. When the scales fell from his eyes, he got more than his physical sight back. He certainly must have seen the world in a new light.

The fact that God entrusted the progress of his Kingdom to the hands of people is mind-boggling. The Bible is full of people who fail royally, disgrace God's name, turn their back on him, and doubt his goodness. And yet, God continues with plan "a." On All Saints Day, we celebrate the many who have come before us, an unbroken line from Jesus (and really, before) until now. That includes the Ethiop...

Poor Simon. He almost had it. He heard the message, and he wanted to be part of what was going on. The problem was, his idea of the Kingdom of God was transactional. He saw himself as some sort of superstar magician among these new, Jesus-style superstar magicians. But the Kingdom isn’t transactional. We can’t go through a series of actions to get the things we need to be successful. The road to t...

It’s really mind-boggling to watch the way God works things out. The scene with Stephen is obvious: he stands up for Jesus, preaching a sermon for the ages. He uses Jewish history to appeal to Jewish leaders, and indeed it was an appeal. But among those leaders is a young man named Saul, mentioned as an afterthought at the end. Stephen’s passing of the Spirit will come powerfully in another few ve...

It took real guts to stand up in front of the Jewish high council and quote Jewish history. Of course they already knew it, but they didn’t know it in light of Jesus. This was Stephen’s mission: to help them understand how their prior knowledge of God fit into the new work he was doing with Jesus. Plus, the accusation from the lying witness was that Jesus came to change the customs given by Moses....

Today we remember Jude and Simon, two of the more obscure Apostles. Both of them shared names with other Apostles (Judas Isacariot and Simon Peter, respectively) and very little is known of them otherwise. One thing we do get from Jude, here at the end of John’s account: his clarification of why Jesus wasn’t appearing to the whole world. It’s a legitimate question, and an important one. God’s plan...

I can’t imagine anyone would have signed on for spreading the Gospel if they had known in advance how it would actually be shared. “So, you’ll be arrested, but then let out… and then you’ll go back, and then you’ll be whipped. And you’ll still keep talking about Jesus in the meantime.” This almost chaotic playing out of events really shows that the Spirit was moving the early church in ways that m...

The beginning of something is one of its most critical places. Get the beginning wrong, and the rest will never be what it could have been. Such was the case with the early church. The believers came together to take care of one another, but there was one couple who only wanted to look like they were generous. They didn’t actually want to BE generous. That is why God dealt with them in the way tha...

Peter and John are brought from jail to stand trial, but the religious leaders fear pressing the matter for fear of the people. That’s a special kind of defense: Peter and John continue to be bold, but the Holy Spirit has moved so powerfully among the people that things have gotten beyond the control of the powers. This same power is the same among us today, which should be a great encouragement t...

The Kingdom of God is not grown by holding campaign rallies or fancy recruiting events. It comes it much more subtle, humble and gentle ways. Peter and John were looking to extend it to one down-and-out beggar, but the Kingdom broke through in a way they didn’t see coming. Even when they were arrested and jailed, the Spirit is alive and moving to advance the Kingdom. That should be a great comfort...

To remember Peter’s sermon at Pentecost on the day that we remember the half-brother of Jesus is totally appropriate. There is no indication that James believed his brother to be the Savior until after Jesus ascended. (Would YOU believe your sibling was divine?) Yet in his book, we have him not only standing firm on that belief, but calling himself a slave of that same Jesus.