Paul was in prison how many times? 7EasterC, 052922, St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Moses Lake, WA

You who love the Lord, hate evil! If I could just be certain that God is speaking through this person or writer, then I might believe that this person is speaking the truth about God. Have you ever thought that way? Like maybe some version of that? When you study the scriptures, you hear things like, “The first five books of the Bible were written by Moses.” Really? Moses was alive at the creation of the world? That is what people believed for a very long amount of time including Jesus and to this day. But the truth is, that upon critical analysis, you will soon discover that there are many writers. “Most scholars agree(d) (now) that the five books of the Pentateuch—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—came from four sources: the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist and the Priestly source.” That has been determined by the style of the writing, the vocabulary used, all of the literary analyses we use today for anything “penned” by an author. Paul, for example, in the original Greek uses very long, complex sentences compared to other writings in the New Testament. I think his style shows up in our modern liturgy! Now that the subject of Paul has been mentioned, have you ever noticed how many times Paul has been imprisoned and why has it happened so many times? Clement of Rome, (one of the first popes) claims that Paul was seven times behind bars; Paul says simply that it was “far more imprisonments” than his rival apostles (2 Cor. 11:23). It has been suggested that the frequency of Paul’s imprisonment is not descriptive of a heroic political prisoner. It describes someone “poor, homeless, and of an ethnicity that marked him.” Paul “looked a lot like those who get overpoliced and thrown in jail today.” Furthermore, Paul is not following the Roman way of life, but Jewish customs which are not in line with that city’s ethnic values. Profiling by some police is still a real thing. If a person is in hoodie and sweatpants with holes and looking disheveled, that person should not cruise down a four-lane street in a brand-new car. The police will believe it is stolen. People I worked with in Pierce County will tell the same story if that person is black. So why is Paul imprisoned with his companion Silas this time? The story goes that a slave-girl was making money for her owners by fortune-telling. She was thought to be “possessed by a spirit of Python; she was a Pythoness. Python was the name of a snake which guarded the oracle of Delphi and was killed by the god Apollo. Apollo was a deity of the Greeks and Romans. “Python was used for ventriloquists” to utter “mysterious oracles which were believed to be the voice of Apollo.” Luke writes that Paul was annoyed. That seems to be an understatement. In fact, “Acts does not provide a significant rationale for Paul’s reaction. Perhaps the best we can argue is that the (slave) girl’s proclamation while true was also misleading in Paul’s eyes. That is, the ambiguities of her message, the source of her inspiration, and her role as a profitable fortuneteller corroded the full message Paul hoped to proclaim. If Paul was just annoyed, why didn’t he ignore her? The Greek word here actually means, “greatly annoyed.” As a Christian, Paul hates evil and decided something could be done. In Lukan style, Paul setting at liberty the slave girl who is oppressed. We also, can respond to the evil around us. Shootings of innocent children in our schools are evil and have been going on for far too long. We need to take action to address this situation. There are certainly several things we can do. And it is more than just praying about it, far more. Complacency is not an option. Complacency changes nothing. How we treat others matters and what we teach our children matters from the time they are born. If it takes laws and police to enforce what is fair, so be it. If it takes mental health interventions, we can help make it happen. Luke is spot on with his stated mission of the gospel: To set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim release to the captive. Justice must prevail and evil needs to be stamped out. We love the Lord by loving others. You who love the Lord, hate evil! Hate it enough to do something about it with me.