Observation: In a synagogue service in Antioch, Paul is invited to give "a word of exhortation" to worshipers. Paul gives a wonderful primer on what theologians call "salvation history", or the history of God's presence and gracious actions on behalf of the people of Israel, all through the Hebrew Bible and culminating with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Application: It's been a while since I updated this blog. I've been on vacation. And I may not get much time in the upcoming week since I'll be in Houston with our young people for the ELCA Youth Gathering. I feel grateful that a text like this came up on my "free day" when I can update my blog. When Paul is asked for "a word of exhortation," Paul tells his listeners a story they already know intimately: the story of God's saving acts. (By the way, if you're cramming for an Old Testament exam, [ahem Confirmation students ahem] you could do a whole lot worse than Acts chapter 13).
There are a couple of different traps Christians can fall into when we interpret the Bible. The first is to assume that "only the Jesus stuff counts." This is not especially helpful. In fact, the Church has been down that road before. There was an ancient heresy called Marcionism that proclaimed that the "Old Testament God" was bad and the "New Testament God" was good, and therefore the Hebrew scriptures should be scrapped in favor of the New Testament. The Church did not ultimately go that route. Jesus did not just touch down in a UFO completely outside the context of human history. He was a guy, with a family, and a nation, all of which were an important part of God's plan to save the world.
The other trap we get into is what I call the "every verse gets a vote" trap. This tends to come from a place of good intentions. If the Bible is God's Word, then every little word or phrase is inspired, which means it's all equally useful for our lives, and we should build our worldview in such a way that every last word of scripture has equal influence. The problem with this for Christians is that, by volume, the New Testament, and the Gospels within it, are whole lot shorter than the Hebrew scriptures, and the God we end up with when we give "every verse an equal vote" will be a stranger most modern-day Christians and even modern-day Jews, and most importantly, to Jesus and his first apostles. As Christians, we have to center our reading of scripture on God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ. It is his life, death and resurrection that gives shape to our whole way of telling our story.
When Paul is asked for "a word of exhortation for the people," he falls into neither trap. For his fellow devout Jews (and by the way, Paul considered himself a devout Jew his whole life, and actually continued to go by "Saul" among some Jews to his dying day, but that's another story) Paul tells a story of faith that centers on Jesus, but that reminds them that the God Jesus reveals is the God they have always known. I loved going through the verbs in this text. They all belong to God. God does everything for our salvation. Paul's sermon is the same "old, old story" that has given shape to their lives for centuries, but with a central character revealed in a new way: Jesus, heir of David's line, Messiah, our Lord.
Prayer: God, thank you for your Word. Thank you for revealing to us Jesus Christ. Help us always to open our Bible asking, "where can I find Jesus here?" Help us to ask the same question as we observe the lives of those who follow him, most importantly our own lives. Amen.
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