Reading: Acts 27-28, Psalm 132

We come to the end of the book of Acts, and we are left on a bit of a cliffhanger. Somewhat like the gospel according to Mark, Luke leaves us at the end of his second volume without a resolution to the big problem he has set up in the last third of Acts. Paul has been hounded by accusations of all sorts, none of them able to be substantiated, but he seems destined to eventually fall into the hands of one or the other of these offended groups that are after him. Either the gentiles in Ephesus or his own people in Jerusalem or some other group will eventually bring him down. So he appeals to the highest court available, the Roman emperor. If he can get the emperor to sign off that he is not dangerous, surely he will be left alone.

Or so it might seem. But is that what Paul is really doing? It is what one of us might do. I probably would. But Paul’s motives are quite different, and I think that is part of the point Luke is making in telling us the story. Paul isn’t trying to get out of trouble. In fact, in some ways he is trying to get in more trouble. So much trouble that he will get the attention of people that would totally ignore him in any other circumstances. Paul is not appealing to the emperor of Rome in hopes of getting vindicated by him, but in hopes of converting him. This guy has some serious audacity. When he was brought to trial before Herod Agrippa in yesterday’s reading, his entire defense was an offense. He tried to convince Agrippa to repent and believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have no reason to think he is planning to do anything different when he comes before the emperor in Rome.

The trip there is not an easy one, though. The ancient world was not a safe and easy place for long distance travel. Under the Roman empire, travel was much safer and easier than it had ever been before, but it was still quite a trial by today’s standards. Add to that the universal and timeless inefficiency of government, and we have Paul and company, apparently still including Luke, in transit for years. The Roman centurion charged with getting him to Rome appears to be a relatively reasonable guy, but he makes some poor choices in travelling methods. The sailors he hires make questionable choices. They attempt to escape their duties when the ship is under threat. The captain makes really unwise decisions to sail during the storm season, which we know from ancient records was notorious and well known to be a bad idea from hundreds of years earlier than this particular event.

The long and short of it is, Paul ends up shipwrecked on Malta after weeks of stormy weather and a good deal of drama. He of course proclaims the lordship of Jesus through all of it, and when he arrives on Malta he continues his mission. Paul doesn’t appear to be fazed at all by these distraction and setbacks. One might think that once he had set his mind on testifying before the emperor of Rome, he wouldn’t wish to be distracted by sailors, centurions, or legates on Malta. But that is where he is, so that is where he proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ.

After fending off the now well worn problem of people thinking he is a god, Paul makes his way up the boot of Italy and makes it to Rome. There he is put in a holding pattern, awaiting the emperor’s pleasure. Just because he is a Roman citizen does not mean he is exempt from the natural law of bureaucracy. He will be stuck in Rome another couple of years before his audience with the emperor. So what does he do? He proclaims the gospel, of course. He also writes extensively, as he has been doing all along during his travels. Those writings, along with those of some other key figures, make up the rest of the New Testament canon. He may have been delayed, but Paul was by no means wasting his time. He was doing what he could where he was with what he had.

And that is where Luke leaves us. Paul is waiting for trial. Wouldn’t have it been nice to know that outcome? About what happens when Paul stands before the emperor and proclaims that Jesus is the real authority who makes all things new? In some sense, yes. But I think to include that would almost be beside the point. Luke leaves us with the ongoing mission, which of course is the situation Christians have been in ever since. His point is not that Paul will succeed or fail, but that the message of the gospel is spreading throughout the world. The book of Acts is not ultimately about Paul, it is about the gospel. About repentance and belief in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sin and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Though he is almost certainly a gentile, Luke sees that this story goes deeper than the life of Paul and even than the story of the four gospel book. It runs back to the very beginnings of the human story.

We turn now to the epistles. The letters that Paul and others wrote in the earliest days of the churches to explain, encourage, and correct them in what repentance and belief in the name of Jesus really means. Luke has given us the narrative of the early church events. The epistles will give us the instructions that those churches lived by. It will become apparent in those that Paul’s message was every bit as linked into the Hebrew Scriptures as the gospel story as told by Matthew, Mark, and John. Paul was presenting Jesus as the fulfillment of a story that began literally at the beginning of everything.