Homily for Thursday, 4th Week of Easter

Homily for Thursday
4th Week of Easter

April 26, 2018

Acts 13: 13-25
Nativity, Washington, D.C.

“From Paphos, Paul and his companions set sail and arrived at Perga in Pamphylia” (Acts 13: 13).

Parts of the middle section of Acts of the Apostles, where we are now, read like a travelog, and you probably wonder where all these strange places are.  St. Paul and his fellow missionaries are roaming all over the territory that is now Turkey and then on to Greece.

Paul Preaching in Athens, by Raphael

On the feast of St. Mark yesterday we omitted the reading from Acts that describes how St. Paul and St. Barnabas were commissioned as missionaries by the Church at Antioch in the Roman province of Syria—the 3d-largest city in the entire Roman Empire and the site of a major Christian community, where—as we heard in the reading on Tuesday, the Gospel was beginning to be preached to pagan Greeks and not only to Jews.  Thus St. Luke, the author of Acts, is showing us the gradual expansion of the faith.  In fact, we believe that Luke himself was a native of Antioch.

We’ve already heard of the 1st steps in that expansion to the Gentiles with Philip’s preaching in Samaria and to the Ethiopian, and Peter’s receiving the household of Cornelius into the Church.  That expansion continues as Paul and Barnabas, accompanied by John Mark, undertake what we now call Paul’s 1st missionary journey.  In the 1st lines of ch. 13, which we didn’t read yesterday, they go to Cyprus—where Barnabas was from (Acts 4:36)—and preach the Gospel with some success.  Today it’s back to the mainland.  They land at Perga on the coast of southern Turkey, in the province of Pamphylia, then make their way about 100 miles inland to another town called Antioch in the province of Pisidia.  (These different cities with that name were all named for members of a Greek dynasty that ruled the region after Alexander the Great until they were conquered by Rome, in the 3d and 2d centuries B.C.)

We’ll hear often how Paul and his companions go into the synagogs on the Sabbath in different cities and preach Jesus Christ.  The sermon that begins today will continue tomorrow, and it’s similar to the long sermon that St. Stephen delivered back in ch. 7 before his martyrdom.  Luke presents these sermons as typical Christian preaching, showing how Jesus of Nazareth brings to completion all that God has been doing in Israel, starting with Abraham and continuing thru Moses and David.  Jesus is the Son of David who fulfills what God promised, the salvation of his people.  And John the Baptist—whose disciples also had spread around the eastern Mediterranean—pointed to Jesus as the savior of Israel.

Thus far today’s reading.  What does it tell us?  1st, Jesus comes forth from a people, a people with a definite, God-directed history.  He’s not a myth, like the stories of the Greek and Roman gods.  2d, Jesus fulfills a plan that God set forth thru that people, Israel.  3d, by referring to that people and their history and showing forth God’s plan, Paul more effectively preaches the Gospel.

Of course that message holds true for us in the 21st century, and not just for the people of the 1st century.  It would mean even more for us if we were more familiar with Israel’s history and the words of Israel’s prophets—for they truly are our own history, our own ancestors; the Old Testament is our own Scriptures.  Our Scripture reading has to begin with the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament; but then we have to reach back to the Torah, the prophets, the Psalms, etc.

The reading, or more generally, the preaching set forth in Acts, can also point out to us that it’s important for us to know the history of Christianity after the apostles—the story of the Church from the 1st century to today.  Who are we, how did we get here, how has God continued to direct the history of his people?  How is what we believe and teach as true today in continuity with what Paul, Barnabas, Peter—and Jesus—preached?