| Acts 20 As a boy I always enjoyed slide shows. These were family affairs during visits to the grandparents after dinner and homemade sour cherry pie. Mysteries were revealed, accompanied by popcorn and orange Fanta. My parents had existed before I came into the world, indeed, had lived lives separately from one another and had dated other people! Who was that girl at my father’s side at the Bucknell fraternity party? Could these really be my elders in short pants with baseball-bats; tow-headed girls in white dresses with patent leather shoes? Bald Uncle Johnny once had wavy hair and drove a red MG convertible roadster! Unfamiliar places with unfamiliar names were rattled off, and I was set into a larger web of relationship which I did not fully understand, or need to. The projector would wheeze and hiss. Slide after slide offered fresh revelation, in sepia-tone moving to color, securing my own place in the vast universe. When St. Paul high-tails it out of Ephesus, having riled devotees of Artemis, he heads North, revisiting regions in Macedonia and Greece where the new Church is blossoming. The place-names are 2,000 years old and unfamiliar to us, but they recount our patrimony. Paul’s traveling companions all now have Greek names, so the deviation from Judaism is complete, and, for the first time in the Book of Acts chapter 20, we see Christians worshipping on Sunday, the first day of the week, commemorating the Lord’s resurrection. They may still attend synagogue on the Jewish sabbath, though it is doubtful they are welcome, or that those with Greek names would have had much interest. |
| Indeed, a new generation of disciples is rising up, or, in the case of Eutychus, falling down. Eutychus is not the first or the last young man to have been subjected to an overly-long sermon. He sinks into a deep sleep and falls out of a three-story window. Paul races downstairs and cradles the youth in an embrace modeled on the account of Elijah (1 Kings 17: 21 – 24) resuscitating the dead son of the widow of Zarephath, of Elisha’s revival of the Shunammite widow’s son (2 Kings 4: 34) and of Christ’s own restoration of the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7: 11 – 17). Eutychus is returned to vibrancy and the future of the Church is reaffirmed “and they were not a little comforted.” Though Paul intends to sail past Ephesus on his way to Jerusalem, he asks the primary leaders of the Church in Ephesus, the ἐπισκόπους (episcopos, overseers, the bishops) to join him in Miletus for a poignant reunion. He counsels and instructs them. Wolves are coming. Paul would not be one to say “it does not matter what a person believes as long as he or she is sincere.” Paul comforts, exhorts and encourages them “in strength” to master very specific truths and practices. The contours of belief matter for those about to meet wolves, for Eutychus and the youth rising in the Church, and for generations yet unborn. The specifics of belief and practice matter for you. They do not imagine that they will see one another again, and they weep and embrace. There is loss in life, and there is loss in service to Christ’s Gospel…the loss of the presence of people we deeply love and to whom we are deeply attached as the Spirit blows our ship past Ephesus. A litany of place-names meaning little to others rings within us. The faces of family members, of co-laborers in the cause of Christ, endure on the iPhone chips of our hearts and the spiritual Fotor apps embedded in our souls. We might now pronounce, in cherished and true tone, Greek names, rather than names in old Aramaic or formal Hebrew; the names of new friends…yet all fine comrades of yore lodge deep. There is grief on this Faith-journey, and trouble enough; but consolation too. Grace and peace, The Reverend Canon George F. Woodward III FOR THOSE WE LOVE “Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to thy never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that thou art doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” The Book Of Common Prayer, page 831 Previous Reflections may be found on the parish website StPaulSMA.com under ‘Blogs’ here. YouTube postings are available here. Previous editions of THE EPISTLE can be found here. |
| St. Paul’s Anglican Church Calzada del Cardo, 6 Centro 37700, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico 415.121.3424 www.StPaulSMA.com |