1 :1-16: To Rome; “Ends” VII: “Entering Rome” & “Hope”

Preface! Smoky Row!

There’s no way I can answer all the little questions that we might have about this passage. It’s an interesting one, with all sorts of cultural notes that curious people want answered--and we’re curious people. It’s an exciting passage, though, and it comes at an important time in our calendar.

We’re in Advent, the time of the year in which we both prepare our hearts for Christmas, remember and appropriately celebrate ’ first arrival, and we think about Jesus’ arrival to come, and consider how we should prepare ourselves for that. So Advent is a big deal. And then, as far as Acts goes, we’re at that moment after Paul and the ship have been saved, when they’re on dry ground, although soaking wet themselves. And Luke will guide us as Paul is guided into Rome, too.

I will try to connect today’s passage to our Advent theme of Hope, but I won’t force it. I don’t want to 2 break anything. And because of all that’s happened already in the service, today’s message is a shorty, as they’ll all be all month.

Prayer:

Where are we? ! God’s kept his promise to Paul. Everyone on the ship was saved, even though the ship and everything in it was lost. They wash ashore on some island, just as Paul said they would, and we learn that the island is Malta. Luke calls it “Melita,” so we may see that sometime, but everyone everywhere agrees he’s talking about Malta. Malta is its own country today: One of the smallest in the world, but it’s been conquered by every Empire that’s ever been, because it’s important.

Here’s Malta:

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And here’s what happens on Malta to Paul and the rest of them:

On Malta: 3

2 The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They built a fire and welcomed us all because it was raining and cold. 3 Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. 4 When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, “This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped from the sea, the goddess Justice has not allowed him to live.” 5 But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. 6 The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead; but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.

Luke writes this as if Paul doesn’t hear it, doesn’t know the flip-flopping opinions that the inhabitants have about him. Luke doesn’t, at least, show Paul standing up and denying the rumors the way Paul has had to do now and then, and the way king Herod didn’t early in Acts. Luke also shows these Maltese as basically good, basically kind, and that’s significant: Not everyone who has strangers in need show up on their shores or at their doors will welcome them. Paul literally shakes 4 off a snake’s bite that would have killed anyone.

There is a chief on the island, in Maltese folklore he’s a prince; in biblical language, he’s just “the first,” maybe a Roman official, but the most powerful person there. His name is Publius. “Poplio.” Publius hosts the ship’s crew--or at least some of them--and Paul heals Publius’ father and goes on to heal everyone else. Maltese history claims that Publius goes on to convert to , bringing the entire island along with him, and becomes not only a Bishop, but the patron of the island. As a result of all this, Malta identifies itself as the first nation to convert to Christianity. Saint Publius has a feast day in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and there’s all sorts of history wrapped up in this man. Luke gives us none of that, which doesn’t mean it’s false, but does mean that we won’t keep talking about it. Again, though, Luke presents the Maltese in an incredibly positive light. We read:

7 There was an estate nearby that belonged to Publius, the chief official of the island. He welcomed us to his home and showed us generous hospitality for three days. 8 His father was sick in bed, suffering from fever and 5 dysentery. Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him. 9 When this had happened, the rest of the sick on the island came and were cured. 10 They honored us in many ways; and when we were ready to sail, they furnished us with the supplies we needed.

They spend three months on the island, apparently blessing and being blessed by those who live there. And then, when it’s safe to sail again, they do. As Luke’s done throughout Acts, he records each stop along the way. Before we read it, here’s the bouncing:

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Luke writes all this out:

Syracuse, Rhegium, Puteoli, & Rome:

11 After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered in the island—it was an Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux. 12 We put in at Syracuse and stayed there three days. 13 From there we set sail and arrived at Rhegium. The 6 next day the south wind came up, and on the following day we reached Puteoli. 14 There we found some brothers and sisters who invited us to spend a week with them. And so we came to Rome. 15 The brothers and sisters there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these people Paul thanked God and was encouraged. 16 When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself, with a soldier to guard him.

They move from here to there, to Puteoli, where they find Christians, and the Church welcomes them, and finally to Rome, where this time, the Church comes to find them. And we leave off, both in today’s passage and as we’ll see, Acts itself, with Paul under house arrest in Rome, waiting to appear before Caesar as God has told him he must. Next week we’ll see what Paul does now that he’s in Rome, and if we’ve been paying even the littlest bit of attention to what Paul does whenever he arrives someplace, I’d bet we could guess.

So what is today’s passage? 7 What is today’s Passage? On the one hand, it’s just more travelogue, you know? This thing happened in this place, that thing happened there. Except this is the end of it, because Paul finally arrives to where he was going.

It’s the last insta story on Paul’s trip to Rome. There’s some nice shots of Paul with Publius’ dad, a bunch of Maltese waving goodbye, the church in Puteoli and avocado toast outside the Three Taverns.

Things happen. Paul should die from snakebite, but doesn’t. We’re meant to see the miracle, here: How God continues to protect Paul. We learn just how good the Maltese are, and how spiritual they are, even if we might not agree with the way they ascribe the miracles that they recognize.

It’s good stuff, you know? Making friends, experiencing miracles, being welcomed by Christian brothers and sisters, and getting to where they are going. This is good.

And I’ve been trying to think about how to connect this passage to hope, the idea of hope, and the only easy way to do it is to remember that all this good stuff-- 8 making friends, experiencing miracles, being welcomed by Christian brothers and sisters, and getting to where they are going--all this good stuff happens on the other side of a very specific hope being realized: the hope of their rescue, their salvation.

Recalling Plot: Remember, Luke wrote that “we finally gave up all hope of being saved.” Paul encourages all to “keep up their courage,” and relates a promise from God that they will be saved. But there is a two week gap in the story in which we don’t hear anything at all from anyone. All we know is that throughout it, they were driven by the storm and had eaten nothing. They were waiting, just waiting. And during that time of waiting they were forced to choose between hope and hopelessness, between the certain death some of them believed was coming, and the miraculous rescue Paul promised would arrive.

And this is how the story goes: Having given up all hope, lost all hope, enough of them decided to trust God--to trust Paul who trusted God--such that they were saved. Their deep hope for rescue was realized, God made good on His promise. And on the other side 9 of hope all sorts of good things happened: making friends, experiencing miracles, being welcomed by Christian brothers and sisters, and getting to where they were going.

Two Things: Activity We talk about hope all the time, as Christians. It comes up, you know? Every time we invite prayer, we’re saying, in effect, “Hope with me that God will bring about what I hope God will bring about.”

But this passage brings to bear two things about hope that we can’t forget:

Hope is not an internal tilt of the will, but activity. Christian hope is not a noun, but a verb. To “hope so,” but not do anything is to simply “want or wish.” Hope invites activity--whether it is praying, or watching and waiting, or choosing to trust someone, the way the soldiers in last week’s passage chose to trust Paul, and prevented everyone’s death. To hope is to bring something more than our interior feelings to bear. So if we ask ourselves what we hope for, we have to ask ourselves, too, how is our internal hope affecting the posture we take and the choices we make? How is our internal hope changing our behavior? 10

Two Things: After Hope And today’s passage especially invites us to remember that hope, once it is realized, will be followed by something. If what we hope for comes about, if what we hope for comes about, then something else will follow it.

This is not tricky, this is just the way time works. There’s a dot on a timeline, a moment, and then, all the time that spreads out afterward. Hope isn’t a period, it’s an ellipse. Today, after the hope that Paul offered the ship is realized, the hope that they would survive, after it’s realized, then all that good stuff we’ve seen happens: common kindness, miracles, blessings, and getting where they’d intended to get all along.

And I guess I just want to point out this simple thing, but a thing that we can forget: Whatever it is we’re deeply hoping for, there will be life after it. We all get to live, must live, past the other side of hope coming true. I mention this only because it should put whatever it is we’re hoping for into perspective. Because there’s a way of hoping for something that can consume us, overwhelm our long-term thinking, 11 distract us from the reality that whatever comes, we’ll have to persist past it, live past it, if we live at all. A particular hope can become an idol, a thing that sucks all our attention and energy and power into it, and then when it is realized in some way or another, we’re left deflated, unsure how to move forward or what to do with ourselves. That didn’t happen in today’s passage; it may not happen often, but we’re all in danger of it happening, because it is very easy to mistake hoping for something in our lives as the purpose of life itself.

We can get so wrapped up in some “thing” happening, some hope being realized, that we live for it. And when it comes to pass, if it comes to pass, we’re left unprepared for the day after and the day after that. If hope is more than an internal bent of our will, an internal desire, but is a verb that causes us to act and do and live in certain ways, if all we end up hoping for is this or that thing to happen--this new job, that retirement, this moment in our child’s life or our parent’s life or our company’s life--if all we’re doing is living for that hope, then we’ve functionally given up the embrace every good thing that might come after it. 12 In advent we remember to hope for Jesus’ return, and live as if he’ll return, and we also remember that there’s life on the other side of his return, a life in which everything is restored, every promise is made good on, and we’ll get to live, have to live, through that. We don’t just hope for Jesus’ return; we hope for the life to follow it. We’re not training ourselves for a moment, we’re training ourselves for eternity.

What? So what are we hoping for? And how in our lives are we revealing that hope in the choices and behaviors and postures we take? What are we hoping for? And how in our lives are we revealing that hope in the choices and behaviors and postures we take?

And has hope for something eclipsed living well? Has our hope for some good thing caused us to neglect the fact that there’ll be a tomorrow after it, if it comes about, and that tomorrow will be just as important as the day our hope was realized? Are we living just for a particular thing to come to pass? Because if we are, we’re giving up on all sorts of things that are necessary for a good life on the other side of hope. 13 Finally: Finally, of course, if we’re hopeless, if we no longer have whatever it takes to hope well--trust in God or others, imagination to perceive a future that doesn’t exist, a closeness to the Spirit to be surprised by nice things--if we’re hopeless, let’s remember that this ship didn’t hope alone, and neither can we. Find someone, lean on them, and may we all be good to lean on when another person comes our way.