Arrested and manhandled by the mob, Paul doesn’t claim the safety of his Roman citizenship right away. How easy it would have been, after having been carried by the soldiers to the barracks, for him to say to the tribune “protect me, because I’m a citizen by birth, and therefore my person is inviolate throughout … Continue reading Acts 21:27-22:29 Fearless Integrity
This passage presents a real challenge to what I’ve been thinking and saying about blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. Ever since reading Luke 12, I’ve been assuming such blasphemy has something to do with ignoring the intuitive, improvisational urging of the Holy Spirit, and yet here Paul is, twice ignoring very clear indications that the … Continue reading Acts 21: 1-26 Does Paul ignore the Holy Spirit?
This is Paul’s farewell address, and I hear an echo of Jesus’ own farewell address in it. In the twenty-second chapter of Luke, Jesus also meets with his disciples in a room. He has more clarity about what’s going to happen to him than Paul does, who doesn't know that the journey he's undertaking will … Continue reading Acts 20:17-38 Saying Goodbye
This is a very long reading, the longest I think we’ve gotten in Forward Movement’s arrangement of Luke and Acts daily readings. The riot at Ephesus is the center of it, and the story of Eutychus dying from listening to a long sermon seems like a strange little coda. But I think that the two … Continue reading Acts 19 – 20.16 Sleep and Riots
I have to admit that this read through of Acts is constantly challenging my thinking about orthodoxy and heresy. In general I hold orthodoxy pretty lightly. I’m glad that generations of Christian thinkers have thought so hard and so deeply, and argued so well, but I tend to think that the variety of their ideas … Continue reading Acts 18:1-28 Orthodoxy and orthopraxis
KPB Stevens 