Acts 28
I was much given to catching garter snakes as a boy, always keeping a few in a large terrarium in my bedroom. At least I did so until the night of the great escape. I must not have sufficiently weighted the lid. My horrified mother disallowed snakes in the house thereafter.
Tramping the woods around our family cabin, I learned to distinguish between gopher snakes and copperheads, the latter not to be trifled with. Once I moved to California and started hiking those mountains, I ran into plenty of Western rattlesnakes. On those rare occasions when I visit a zoo, I head first for the herpetarium, and sometimes in El Salvador or here in Mexico I’ll run into a keeper of yellow boa-constrictors willing to let me drape one around my neck. I do this only with assurance that they’ve been recently fed.
As Paul and his companions discover they have shipwrecked on Malta, receiving gracious reception from the natives, who build them a warm fire; Paul gathers brushwood. From the brushwood a snake affixes to his hand. The natives take this as a sign that Paul is a murderer, so this was no garter snake. A cat snake is the only venomous snake on the island of Malta, and since the natives anticipate Paul’s death, that is what it must have been. When Paul doesn’t fall over, they change their minds and decide he is a god. Folk can be fickle.
Paul and company are graciously entertained by Publius, the island’s leading man, and well-provisioned for their continuing journey on to Italy, launching on an Alexandrian ship with the Twin Brothers (Castor and Pollux) for its figurines.
To be discovered by God, and woven into the life of God, is to be freed from many of the concerns which previously constrain a life devoid of God’s near Presence. Paul seems heedless, putting himself repeatedly in harm’s way, courting disaster, making enemies. Festus cannot understand. King Agrippa perceives that Paul is trying to persuade him to become a Christian. Paul tells Agrippa he wishes Agrippa were as free as he was, apart from his chains. Paul can see the captivity in which Agrippa is held, and wishes better for him.
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“And so we came to Rome,” Luke writes. Paul had always wanted to press on to Spain, and who can blame him, but Rome will prove to be his final destination. He has arrived at the hub of the Empire, and to a thriving Christian community with whom he has previously enjoyed correspondence (the Book of Romans), though he is now meeting his correspondents for the first time. They will enjoy two years of converse, mutual encouragement and shared growth.
The martyrdom of St. Paul occurred in 64 A.D. in the last year of Emperor Nero’s reign, after the Great Fire, for which Nero chose Christians as scapegoats.
In the First Epistle of Clement (95 – 96 A.D.), in an Epistle of Bishop Ignatius (110 A.D.) and in many other of the writings of the early Church Fathers, it is said Paul was decapitated and buried outside the walls of Rome, where, in the 4th Century, the Emperor Constantine, having become a convert to Christianity, built his first Church, subsequently enlarged. Today that Church is the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. In that Basilica in 2002, an 8 foot marble sarcophagus was discovered, inscribed with the words “PAULO APOSTOLO MART” or, “PAUL APOSTLE MARTYR,” radio-carboned to Paul’s era
Why did Luke conclude the Book of Acts, written to Theophilus, lover of God, at this juncture? “This salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen,” reads one of the concluding lines. Luke perhaps understands that God’s ways are mysterious and beyond all fathoming. A new thing had emerged on the earth, a gift from the Jews, now taking Gentiles captive for the God of Abraham and Sarah in unforeseen ways. Luke could recount the beginning of the tale, but sensed a story yet to come, and well beyond his predictive capacities.
You, dear Theophilus, are still writing that tale. We do not as a rule handle snakes in the parishes of the Anglican Communion, but we handle a wild Gospel. God is not tame, nor those God indwells, and ecstatic dexterity is the name of the game.
On Easter Day 2020, the principal Feast of the Christian Liturgical Year, it did not seem right that we should find ourselves apart. To offer a bit of encouragement during Eastertide, when we would customarily be gathering together and breaking bread with gusto, I conceived this light series of daily reflections based on the Book of Acts. The Day of Pentecost has come, and we have mused through the Book of Acts together, with, I hope, deepened intimations of the freedom for which we have been set free in our own generation.
Grace and peace,
The Reverend Canon George F. Woodward III
A PRAYER OF SELF-DEDICATION
“Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto thee, and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always to thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.” The Book of Common Prayer page 832
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