PAUL IN ROME

Paul always wanted to go to Rome. From the earliest part of his work as a missionary to spread the gospel, he talked about wanting to go to Rome. But every time he tried, something happened to block his trip and he never made it. The book of Romans was written to Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome and Paul throughout the book keeps saying how he is going to come to Rome to see them. But it never happened when Paul thought it would and when the trip finally did happen, it would turn out to be his last journey anywhere.
To talk about this final visit to Rome we need to remember the verse from Ephesians we read earlier. In Ephesians 3:1 Paul says that he is a ‘prisoner of Jesus Christ’. That is how Paul identifies who he is. And in this short verse, we learn a very valuable lesson not only about how Paul comes to see himself in relationship to God, but in how we are to see ourselves and our life lived as a follower of Christ. When Paul begins to see himself in this role as prisoner of Jesus Christ, it helps him to transform his time in prison into an opportunity for ministry and it also helped to transform his understanding of God’s work in his life.
Our story starts back in Jerusalem. The Jews were angry with Paul’s insistence to preach the gospel of Jesus. They tried every method they knew to keep Paul quiet and it wouldn’t work. So the Jews charged Paul with taking a gentile named Trophimus into a forbidden area of the Temple - an offense that was punishable by imprisonment or death. Paul didn’t do it, but the Jews believed he did and they tried to kill Paul for this crime. Paul appealed to the protection of Rome. This is one of the several times when the fact that Paul was a Roman citizen really helped him. Roman citizens could by pass local authorities and ask for Roman jurisdiction. But Paul still had to enter the Roman legal system and was shipped to a Roman prison in Caesarea where he got lost in their system and spent 2 years in prison. While there, Paul was examined by the Jewish Sanhedrin, the Roman Governors Felix and Festus, and King Agrippa. We have a lot of these conversations recorded in the book of Acts between Paul and these individuals and several of them were convinced by Paul to hear and believe the Gospel! But Paul, tired of being in prison used his Roman Citizenship again to appeal to Caesar - to be tried by Caesar in Rome. So the Roman authorities sent Paul to Rome on a ship. This voyage took a year and included a shipwreck and a deadly snake bite. When he arrived in Rome he was placed on house arrest - he lived in what was termed ‘an apartment’. He was free to move around the apartment during the day and at night he was chained so that he couldn’t escape.
This story of Paul is a reminder to us that life doesn’t always go as we plan it. Paul never thought he would end up in prison when he got to Rome. Paul saw himself going to Rome to be vindicated by Caesar and then free to stand in the Forum preaching to huge crowds. He thought that he would preach to Caesar and the Senate of Rome and see great numbers of Romans converted. But, instead, Paul ends up in prison. His idea of his mission didn’t turn out at all like he thought.
And that isn’t any different in our life, is it? The path of life never takes us where we think it will. Most things in life never go as we plan them, do they? Whether it is a relationship, a job, a vacation, or a hobby, there are always changes to the plan we have scripted in our minds. And as people of God, on some level we know that if we were left to drive the course of our lives ourselves, we would end up in bigger trouble than we already do! And if we tried to make the plan of our life, we would not be able to do the work God lays out before us.
The fact is, we rarely know what is best for our lives. And why is that? It’s because we lack all the information. We cannot see down the road. We don’t even know what is going to take place in the next few minutes, much less a week, or month or a year from now. So we base our look into the future of our lives on faulty information - we don’t have all the facts. But God does. God can see the big picture; God knows the future; God knows the outcome of every decision we might make. So God directing our lives just makes more sense. But then we have to relinquish some of the control we have and follow God’s plan instead of our own! And that is what it means to be a ‘prisoner’ of Jesus Christ - to let God direct your life just like a prison warden!
And while Paul may have been disappointed by being put into prison, God had Paul right where God wanted him. God put Paul into prison so Paul could expand his ministry - and for us that really doesn’t make any sense - it just sounds strange to lock someone up and then work it out so they can do more than if they were free. But God knew what he was doing and we always have to keep those words of Proverbs in our mind - ‘lean not on your understanding’.
Paul finally realizes exactly what happened. He says, “for this cause, I Paul, was imprisoned for you Gentiles.” Paul wanted people who read his words to understand that he now comprehended that he was imprisoned for the sake of those who needed to hear the Gospel of Jesus. And when Paul realized that, it put his imprisonment into a whole new perspective.
Perspective is important. How you view the events in your life is every bit as important as the experiences themselves. We are taught by Paul to walk ‘by faith and not by sight’ and that God is working ‘all things together for good for them that love the Lord’. As we go through each day in our life, if we look back at what has happened and put it in the context of learning to allow God to direct our lives - see where things have worked out because we look for how God was guiding them and times where things didn’t work out because we tried to strike out on our own - we will learn a great deal about how God is active in our daily walk - and we learn a lot about perspective and about allowing God to guide us.
Because he was locked up in prison, Paul had a lot of time on his hands. He wasn’t traveling, he wasn’t running from someone trying to kill him, he wasn’t making tents, he had time. So he used that time to write many of the epistles we have in the New Testament; he had time to talk to people about the message of Jesus Christ and interestingly enough many of the soldiers who were guarding him and members of Caesar’s household came to know salvation in Jesus during this time.
Paul was even able to reach the Jews during his time in the Roman prison. Paul invited the Jewish leaders in Rome to hear the reason he was imprisoned there. He figured the Jews in Jerusalem had sent word to Rome to let the Jews there know why Paul had been arrested to begin with. The Jewish leaders came to Paul’s apartment and Paul described the circumstances of why Paul had ended up in Rome instead of being executed in Jerusalem. Paul wanted them to know that he knew that God was using this imprisonment for his purpose and Paul held no ill will to the Jews for setting this in motion. But Paul also never misses an opportunity, so Paul presents to these Jewish leaders the message of Jesus. Several of the Jewish leaders kept coming back to hear Paul talk and several of them became believers.
Paul remained in prison in Rome the rest of his life. His paperwork had been lost when the boat he was on was shipwrecked and so copies had to be sought from Jerusalem and signed by various officials from Jerusalem and the prison he was in in Caesarea and while all this was going on, Paul was forced to stay in prison.
This was not the last time God used imprisonment to have his work done. We see during history some great advances for the cause of Jesus Christ have come from people who have been put in prison - John Bunyan wrote the great Christian classic Pilgrim’s Progress while in prison, Vaclav Havel was thrown in prison in Czechoslovakia and wrote The Power of the Powerless which inspired the country who elected him president when he was released, Nelson Mandella spend 27 years in prison but was able to teach a whole generation of South African leaders to help end Apartheid, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the entire time he was in prison great volumes of books and letters used today to train pastors, Martin Luther King wrote one of his greatest works from the Birmingham jail.... God can use any moment of our lives, good or bad, for his purpose.
Now in prison Paul is cheerful and filled with joy because he could see that God was using this time to do what God needed done. Because Paul was in prison that meant that other people had to pick up the missionary aspect of Paul’s call and go out and preach the gospel as Paul had been doing and so the Gospel was actually spreading faster - more people preaching could go more places and reach more people.....
It is important that we understand that God doesn’t send these hardships that may hit our lives, but God can certainly use them to further his purpose. God can bring good out of evil. God can turn around any situation so that his will is done.
God took the evil of his son’s crucifixion to bring salvation to the world and through the life of Paul and through history we can see how God can take persecution and turn it into revival; he can take disaster and turn it into strength.
And that is where we put our faith and our trust - that is where we understand our lives as ‘prisoners of Jesus Christ’ 0 in a God who we truly believe is always working for our good and the good of the world.

Amen!

Paul, Barnabas and Mark

(Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-12) I remember back in the 60s being a child of the church, active in all the youth events we had going on - and also a big fan of this new rock ‘n roll music that was becoming popular - when this song came out “Turn, Turn, Turn” sung by The Byrds - and it was a passage from the Bible! It was so great that something in popular culture that I had heard on the radio. And it had a great message - there are seasons in our life; there are times in our lives for different things; not only those age things - young, middle age and elderly; or those work things - school, work, retirement; but there are also seasons and times in our relationship with God. There are times when God is teaching us and times when God is calling us to do things; there are also times when we are very close to God and then there are times when we drift away; there are times when we are willing to do what God wants us to do and there are times when we run from those difficult challenges God puts before us. And these are precisely the times and seasons that affected the relationships between Paul, Barnabas and Mark.
The night that we refer to as Maundy Thursday; the night Jesus and the disciples shared together the Passover meal - the meal we refer to as the Last Supper. Jesus and the disciples then travel together to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus spends time in prayer and the disciples, who are suppose to be ‘watching’ are in actuality sleeping. The disciple Judas shows up with the Temple Soldiers who arrest Jesus. A scuffle occurs between the soldiers and the disciples until Jesus calms everyone down. We also read in the Gospel of Mark there is someone else there with the disciples and Jesus and the soldiers - a young man who is so scared by what was going on that somehow in all the confusion he loses his clothes and runs home! Some think this was Mark who later was a prodigy of the Apostle Peter and wrote the Gospel.
Mark’s mother was one of the many Marys who were disciples of Jesus. This Mary owned a home in Jerusalem and her home was one of the meeting places for the disciples; in fact the second floor was most likely the ‘Upper Room’ where Jesus and the disciples held the last supper and where the disciples hid out after Jesus’ crucifixion. Mary’s home continued to be the meeting place of the believers as the early church in Jerusalem began to form. So Mark as a young boy lived around the disciples and the early leaders of the church. He would have heard and listened to the conversations and the teachings from those who lived with Jesus; he would have heard first hand accounts of all that was going on as this new church was coming together. He, even though he was on the fringes, would have been completely immersed in the things of the disciples and the church. He was also a cousin of Barnabas.
Paul and Barnabas left Antioch and traveled to Judea where they evangelized and took an offering to those who were suffering from the persecution and the famine going on in Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas spent a good deal of time in Jerusalem - some of that in Mary’s home where Mark would have been present. When Paul and Barnabas leave Jerusalem, they take Mark with them.
Mark had these great aspirations of being an evangelist like Paul and Barnabas and the disciples and the leaders of the church he had spent so much time with. He was young and enthusiastic and pretty clueless about what this new adventure as going to entail.
So Paul and Barnabas and Mark go back to Antioch where they regroup and head out again on what is termed their first Missionary Journey. The typical missionary journey is composed of going into synagogues first and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and usually getting
thrown out of the synagogue. Paul and his companions would then go to the streets and preach and there would sometimes be those who were receptive and sometimes not. If he did have people who listened and became believers, then Paul would help them to begin a church, stay with them for a while and get them started on the right tract and then leave when he felt the church had a firm foundation and a good grasp of what they needed to do. More often than not, Paul and his companions would at some point during this time of preaching be ridiculed, beaten, stoned, and often arrested with subsequent jail time. Not an easy life for them, but Paul was determined to do what God called him to do regardless.
So about the time Paul and Barnabas and Mark had come to their second city in this first missionary journey, a city known as Perga in southern Turkey, Mark had become homesick and disillusioned. He had this great idea that this was going to be easy and fruitful and people were just going to hear the Gospel and be saved and everything would be great! He wasn’t so thrilled with the ridicule and the beatings and the stonings and the arrests....... So Mark packs up and leaves Paul and Barnabas and travels home - and Paul is furious.
Barnabas’ name means ‘encourager’ and Barnabas is known as this ‘nice guy’ who wanted the best for everyone...... and Barnabas tried to justify Mark - he’s young and inexperienced and then Barnabas hit the nail on the head when he says, “He just wasn’t ready yet.”
What an important lesson for us to hear. God is all about timing. God knows when the time is right for whatever work we would like or want to do when it comes to working for him and working for his church. Even as a church God knows when the time is right to do something - or perhaps not to do something.
Because we are God’s workers; our role as God’s people is to do what God wants done and as we read stories throughout the Bible what we see are people called by God, people trained by God and then people sent to do what he wants them to do. There are countless examples like Moses - whom God didn’t call to do his work until he was 80 years old after God had trained him how to work in the palace in Egypt and how to live in the desert because those are the skills Moses would need to do what God wanted him to do. Had Moses tried to lead God’s people out of Egypt when he was a young man he would have been an abysmal failure; look at David whom God chose to be king when David was a boy but God knew David wasn’t ready so David spent time in the palace learning kingly protocol as King Saul’s palace musician, David spent time in Saul’s army learning how to lead an army into battle..... and when the time was right, David became King.
God can see the big picture and God’s timing is perfect and we need to keep that in mind. If we have this great desire to do something for God or for the church and we keep hitting these stone walls or nothing seems to work, doesn’t mean that isn’t what we are suppose to do, it just may mean this is not the time.... have some patience. When God knows the timing is right and if it is God’s will, things will happen. That is part of what we learn as we grow in our understanding and our trust of God.
The good news for Mark is that later in his life, he and Barnabas again set out on a missionary journey and had great success. Mark then became the helper of Paul when he was in prison Apostle Peter - after which he wrote a gospel! It wasn’t that Mark was a failure - it was that it just wasn’t the right time for him as he set out on that first journey.
So if you are struggling with feeling like you want to do something and nothing is working out, just have some patience. When the time is right, God will open all the right doors and it will happen!
Amen!

THE CHURCH IN ANTIOCH

What is Paul up to today ? Paul has been called by God to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But things haven’t gone well for him. He’s tried preaching in Damascus and was run out of town; he tried preaching in Jerusalem and was run out of town - so Paul does what many of us do when things aren’t going as we would hope, Paul went home.
Meanwhile, many of the followers of Jesus have left Jerusalem to escape the persecution which is still going on. The disciple James has been beheaded and even without Paul persecuting the believers, there is still rampant opposition to those who were professing a faith in Jesus. These believers were simply called “The Way” - they were followers of “The Way”.
A bunch of these followers went to the Turkish city of Antioch when they left Jerusalem. And these followers actually started a church in Antioch. The persecution here was not so bad and the church was growing by leaps and bounds. Even though the followers who had come to Antioch from Jerusalem were Jews, they were so excited by the Gospel of Jesus they were preaching to anyone who would listen and Gentiles, non Jews, began to hear and believe in Jesus. This is radical. This is unheard of. The prevailing belief with the leaders of the church in Jerusalem is that to be a follower of Jesus you needed to be a Jew - this new way of looking at God and faith was simply a branch of Judaism, so to be a follower of Christ you had to be a Jew. That was God’s intent - or so the church leaders believed. When word somehow got back to the Jerusalem council that Gentiles were being included in the church, the Jerusalem Council was greatly concerned. So they sent Barnabas up to Antioch to ‘check it out’.
Barnabas isn’t the hard nosed mainliner that the Jerusalem Council is. He sees all these people in Antioch, Jew and Gentile, coming to believe in Jesus and he is thrilled. He thinks it is great and since he is the ‘big cheese’ from Jerusalem, the believers in Antioch sort of put Barnabas in charge of getting this quickly growing church organized. Barnabas gets to work but quickly realizes that he is in over his head - he can’t handle this on his own. Trying to figure out what to do and not wanting to contact Jerusalem for help because he figures anyone they send will just cause trouble for all these new Gentile believers, he thinks of Paul. Barnabas remembers that Paul had said that God had told Paul he was to minister to the Gentiles, so Barnabas figures they would be a good team. Barnabas, being a Jew, could work with the Jewish believers and Paul, being called to the Gentiles, could work with the Gentiles and together they could get this church organized and working together.
Barnabas heads up to Tarsus - Antioch is in southern Turkey and Tarsus in central Turkey. Took him a while, but eventually Barnabas finds Paul and tells him about Antioch and shares his idea with Paul about them working together to help the church there. Paul is excited about that idea and the two of them return to Antioch and get busy!
While it is not found in the Bible, historical records found referring to Antioch state that in a very short period of time, over 150 house churches had been founded in this city and continued to grow until it was reported there were over 1000 believers in the city.
Our picture of what the church is all about centers on our picture of our buildings where we gather to worship and work. As we in the modern day church struggle with what the church is supposed to be and God is calling us to be and do, we need to have an understanding of how God led his ‘church’ to begin and at the start, God’s church began as house churches.
Let’s talk a little about these house churches. They were just what they sound like. The followers of Jesus would meet in homes. There were no church buildings. When the number of believers in a house church became too great to meet in a particular home, they would sort of split up and some would go to another home and begin a new house church there. And using this model the number of believers and the number of house churches grew rapidly.
But what was it like when they met at one of these house churches - and was nothing we would be familiar with. First of all we know they met in the evenings after work, often those who were able came every evening, or as many evenings as they could. However, regardless of how many times they had gathered during the week, everyone came together on Sunday evenings. - we have to remember that for them Sunday was just an ordinary work day. The concept of weekends or even ‘a day off’ was just not part of their culture. People in ancient Turkey worked 7 days a week at their job, 52 weeks out of the year. No holidays, no vacations.
But these ancient Christians did feel compelled to meet on Sunday to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus. Every Sunday evening they gathered in a home; they brought food - a cover dish dinner - and they observed the Lord’s Supper. We are told in the book of Acts that the ‘breaking of bread’, which was their term for communion, was the primary purpose of their gathering and until modern times communion was more central to worship than anything else. It wasn’t until the 20th century that communion became this formal, occasional act. In these house churches communion was part of the meal as they sat around the table - which is what it was when Jesus did it! The communion elements were items found as part of the meal - with a common loaf and a common cup.
When these house churches gathered, they would have their equivalent of what we would call Bible Study and they would pray and sing what was termed “psalms and spiritual songs”. While they intentionally met every Sunday, we are also told they would gather together as many times as they could during the week and what they did together would be essentially the same thing. Each meeting would last 3 - 4 hours.
Today, in several places, especially on the west coast, as churches have struggled with how to reach out to the ‘lost generation’ - the 20 - 40 year olds who have effectively abandoned the church - this is what has been successful for many of that age group returning to the church. Worship is an evening gathering, with a cover dish and worship around the table with communion. Worship is a bible discussion and prayer and singing. And instead of their own mission, the members of these groups participate in mission through other organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and Red Cross and established Soup Kitchens and homeless shelters. And this seems to be working in not only bringing those back who have abandoned church but also to reach out to new believers.
Back to Antioch, and this is really interesting, every now and then all the believers would rent a warehouse or meet by the river and would come together for a combined worship service - the three churches Joanne served in WV would do this on every 5th Sunday; they would combine with my church and all meet together for one church service, communion and a cover dish dinner! It was a wonderful time for everyone to be together.
When we talk collectively about ‘the church’ in Antioch what we refer to is a gathering of the ‘elders’ of the house churches. Each house church would elect an elder who was sort of ‘in charge’ of that small group. Then the elders would meet together on a regular basis to keep things on tract; to make sure their teachings were consistent, to see if there are needs within each house church such as people who had lost jobs or had health problems or whatever was needed so that the house churches could help one another. And of course there was some of the Lydia doesn’t get along with Sara and so someone was needed to arbitrate disputes and this was the job of the council of elders.
And because of the work of Paul and Barnabas in organizing all of this and keeping it going, the church continued to grow and to flourish and most importantly to stay on tract in their teachings of Jesus Christ. There were city officials who were becoming nervous because of this rapid growth of these followers of “The Way” and they adopted the term “Christians” to label them - it was a derogatory term because these people were looked at as just being weird because they gave up their time so frequently to meet and to ‘eat flesh and drink blood’! And it was considered ‘weird’ that they were so willing to care for one another - to take care of one another and to watch over one another as they did. The followers of The Way kept the name ‘Christian’ because they felt it truly was who they were - followers of Christ.
But then two significant things happened here in this church - the first was a report of a famine that was affecting their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine and the report that persecution was so bad in Jerusalem that believers were living in poverty. So immediately a collection was taken up to send money to help these fellow believers - and the problem became “Who was going to take it to them?” After some prayer, what the elders realized is that God was calling Paul and Barnabas, not only to take the money to those in need in Jerusalem, but also to strike out and to begin their mission to spread the Gospel message of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles of Turkey and Greece. The church in Antioch grieved over the idea of losing Paul and Barnabas, but they clearly heard what God was telling them to do which was to essentially be Paul and Barnabas’ sponsors as they struck out to do God’s work in other areas. So the Antiochan church becomes the central location for the missionary journeys of Paul and Barnabas - and supports Paul and Barnabas both financially and spiritually as these newly labeled ‘Christians’ pray continually for the work Paul and Barnabas are doing.
There is a lot we can learn from looking at these churches - the beginning of what we are familiar with today as the church; we have church buildings and congregations everywhere you look. But we have no persecution; we don’t have to worry about meeting together and someone finding out; we don’t have to worry about losing our jobs because we are the members of a Christian Church. We have something here that has been here hundreds of years; with something we are born into and have known all our lives. But in Antioch this idea of church was brand new. None of these people were born into the church. They are all 1st generation Christians and it falls on their shoulders to continue these churches so that there can be a second generation of believers. This idea of gathering together for the sake of Jesus Christ was brand new in these times in Antioch. The members of this new church were so excited that Acts states that ‘great numbers were added every day’. People looked at the excitement and at the dedication and the enthusiasm with which the people served Jesus Christ and the church and they wanted to know more about what that was all about. People saw in these house churches how people cared for and sacrificed for one another. This was new in the Roman and Greek cultures which taught that ‘looking out for number one’ was how everyone should live. They actually taught that it was OK to trample the ‘little guy’ and to take advantage of someone else in order to benefit yourself.
This Christian teaching of loving God and loving neighbor was a really different and unheard of concept - and it is that which brought many new people into these fellowships.
Maybe this is a little nudge to us that we need to figure out how we can exhibit that excitement in Jesus Christ that we see in that early church in Antioch. Excitement that is so real that other people notice and want to find out more about it. Imagine what people would see if we could exhibit that excitement and enthusiasm about the work and ministry here at Bethany as we see in the ancient church in Antioch!

Amen!