Reading: Acts 19-20, Psalm 128
Today’s reading contains one of the favorite stories of long winded orators. While it is tempting for me to go deep on the significance of (not) sitting on window sills when listening to lectures, I will refrain in the interests of saying something actually interesting and significant. Still, bear in mind that in the Bible, some dude died because he got tired while sitting on a window sill listening to a really long lecture. Don’t do it.
Paul has come to Ephesus, which had already seen the gospel preached by Apollos. Or, least some form of the gospel. We are told that Apollos knew only the baptism of John for repentance, but did not understand the baptism of Jesus. This could mean any number of things, but it seems clear that while Apollos and the Jewish people in Ephesus understood something new was happening with the arrival of John and Jesus, they had somehow missed the significance of Jesus as the Messiah. Paul shows up and corrects the situation, and the twelve men who are listening to him receive the Holy Spirit just as the apostle did. Which is cool and all, but apparently caused some problems.
To understand what is going on in Ephesus with Paul, the Christians, and a silversmith named Demetrius, it is worthwhile to consider the history of the city. There are a number of interesting events that over the previous century that play into what occurs. First of all, we know that the Temple of Artemis was in Ephesus, hence the hours long shouts great is Artemis of the Ephesians. But that is not the whole story. Ephesus was yet another provincial capital, but it did not enjoy the positive reputation with the Romans that Thessalonica did. Ephesus had, about a hundred years earlier, engaged in one of the more successful revolts against Roman rule. A rather successful general had driven the Romans out of the region of Ionia (modern day west coast of Turkey) and set up an independent city state. As will pretty much everything of that era, the Romans eventually conquered them again, but not before the Ephesians embarked on a rather nasty anti-Roman programme. See, they really didn’t like the Romans, so they killed them all. Anyone with a Latin accent was murdered. Historical estimates are that something like 80,000 Romans were killed. Not the brightest spot in Ionian history. Anyway, the point is, while Ephesus was an important city, the Romans were not necessarily favorably disposed towards it, and they certainly were keeping their eye on it. They weren’t as revolution prone as the Jews, but they were in the same general category- fiercely independent, prone to outbreaks of violence, and not about to let anyone say their gods were less than the best.
Enter Paul and the new church. A local silversmith, Demetrius, realizes that if Paul’s message gets traction, his business will suffer quite a bit. So he takes advantage of Ephesian proclivities against foreigners to turn a crowd against Paul. It grows into a riot of the usual sort: most of the people in it don’t really know why they are there, but boy are they going to make sure everyone knows that they are mad. The initial attempts of the poor city leader to understand what is happening is drowned out by an hours long chant. Sound familiar? To anyone who has tried to hold a reasoned debate on a college campus recently, it might. These are not new problems.
Anyway, the clerk eventually gets everyone’s attention by drawing it to the possibility of Roman intervention. Hey guys, the Romans aren’t just going to let us riot for free here. We need to have a good excuse or there will be serious consequences. Anyone know why we are here? It turns out that Paul and his message about Jesus does not meet the qualifications for rioting, and he sends everyone home. Pretty good administrator, this clerk.
Following the riot, Paul was able to work in Ephesus for quite a while, traveling around Macedonian and the Asian provinces for quite some time. It appears that Luke personally joined the apostle at this point, as his narrative starts to use “we” to refer to his journeys. Luke condenses these various trips into a couple of paragraphs, telling us that God continued to work amazing things through Paul in and around Ephesus. Diseases healed, dead people brought to life- real Kingdom of God stuff that shocked and amazed everyone. Things are really rolling in Asia and Greece. There is a big movement forming, with churches springing up everywhere. Paul has a real movement on his hands.
And then he leaves. Not the response one might expect from an up and coming leader of a religious movement. But Paul clearly did not see himself as leading much of anything. His concern was to spread the message that Jesus is Lord. When that was done, he was done, and he wanted to go home to Jerusalem for the day of Pentecost. On the way though, we get his farewell message to the leaders of the church in Ephesus, which is quite a speech. He warns them that not everyone is safe- there are wolves around. He tells them not to pursue wealth or social advancement apart from the gospel. He wraps up with one of the more famous quotations from Jesus, which does not appear in the gospel books, but has nonetheless come to encapsulate much of the Kingdom message: it is more blessed to give than receive. Luke has told the story of Paul’s mission as a mission of giving. Paul went to put the gospel of Jesus into the world, and to take nothing back but the encouragement of seeing people transformed by it. That it may not astonish us today that such a man would say such a thing is a testimony of the measure to which it has impacted out culture, society, and sense of values. That it is better to give than receive is not only counter intuitive, it is counter to the value systems that most humans have lived by. If we think that is normal, we are the oddballs. Most humans are more like Demetrius of Ephesus- how can I get the most that I can out of where I am? Paul sets his life on the opposite path. How can I give the most?