Month: December 2017

The Bible in a Year – 2 December

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

2 December. Acts chapters 9-10

Yesterday I wrote about the changes that Stephen experienced, and his challenge to the Jewish leaders that they needed to change their worldview too.  In today’s reading, several more people are challenged to similar realignments of thinking.  First we have Saul (later called Paul) whose blinding vision on the Damascus road turns him overnight from a persecutor of the church to its strongest witness.  Then there is Ananias who is persuaded by an angel that Saul is now “one of us” rather than “one of them”.

And then there is Peter.  He is challenged in two different but related ways.   Firstly is the vision of ‘unclean’ animals (non-kosher meat)  which he is told to eat, for “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (9:8). This turns out to be a metaphor for having to accept that Gentiles can be as clean in God’s sight as observant Jews.    And as the Gentiles turn to faith, they receive the Holy Spirit, and Peter realises again that there is no longer any  distinction in God’s eyes between the Jews and the rest of the world.

The lesson about not calling unclean what God calls clean could be applied to many of the ways in which people discriminate against each other in our day – whether on grounds of religion, or ethnicity, gender, age or sexual orientation. “In every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him” (10:35) should be a key text for those who would challenge such attitudes.

The Bible in a Year – 1 December

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

1 December. Acts chapters 7-8

Carrying over from yesterday’s reading to today’s is the story of Stephen, known as the first Christian martyr.  Given that is my first name, I feel an association with him, though of course I hope I will not suffer the same fate.

It is well known that Stephen was stoned to death for blasphemy as he claimed to see Jesus standing at the right hand of God in heaven.  What is less well known is the speech he gave in his defence to the first, trumped-up charge of “saying that Jesus will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.” (6:14).   That was the key word – “change”. Religious people don’t like change, they much prefer to stick with the customs they know, whether those customs were started by Moses a thousand years earlier or by the last-but-one vicar twenty years ago.

So Stephen, inspired by the same Holy Spirit who had empowered this church administrator to perform miracles of healing (6:8), gave a long and detailed account of the life of Moses, to demonstrate that Moses himself was open to change in very radical ways.  Here was a man adopted as an infant by a princess and forced to serve the oppressors of his people (presumably a reference to the Romans is implied here), then at the age of forty forced to flee the country and become a nomad for having made a mess of trying to bring about justice, then forty years later at the age of eighty  having a vision of God that drove him back to Egypt to confront the political powers, and finally spending the last forty years of his long life leading millions of refugees out of Egypt to the brink of the promised land.  Moses would have been the first to say that listening to God’s call and obeying it, however much that may disrupt your routine, is far more important than sticking with the routine for its own sake.   “It’s about time you changed, because that’s what God is telling you” was the theme of his sermon.  They did not like it one bit.  And thus ended the ministry of this promising church leader, but like Jesus calling out for forgiveness for his persecutors as he died.

If Stephen is my inspiration, that means that I too have to be willing to change.  Twice I have changed careers, and moved several times, in response to God’s call.  But I am still in middle age and he may call me to change again.  Those who get too attached to a particular way of doing things are likely to be left behind when God moves on with his followers, and I don’t want to miss the boat.