Acts 28:16-31 “Rome”
A man walks into the humane society looking for a new pet dog. As he peers into the cages many of the dogs bark at him excitedly. However, one dog did not bark at all but rather came up to him and pressed his nose through the bars of the cage and whimpered. The man decided that that was the dog for him. He found the attendant and asked to take the dog home with him.
The attendant was pleased to save the animal, but warned the man that it was a Christian dog. The man had to ask what that meant. The attendant decided that he would demonstrate for the man. He sat in a chair and told the dog to “fetch a bible.” The dog looked all around and finally saw a Bible on a bookshelf nearby and brought it to the attendant. But, that was not all. The attendant commanded the dog: “Open the Bible to Psalm 23.” Carefully the dog flipped the pages until the 23rd Psalm appeared.
The man was impressed and was even more in favor of taking the dog home with him. He took the dog’s leash in hand and started heading out to his car. However, the dog was pulling strongly and seemed to want to break away from the leash. The man commanded the dog, “Heel, heel!”
Just then the dog turned on him, knocked him over, placed both paws on the man’s head and started to pray!
That was an unexpected ending! And, in the Book of Acts we also seem to be left with an unexpected ending. The book ends with Paul still in prison in Rome. All of us are left wondering what is going to happen next to Paul, but we just do not know. The Bible tells us no more. Does he go to trial? Is he released? Is he martyred? WE do not know for sure. There are theories out there. In Bible study, we talked about the various stories that are told of Paul after Luke finishes writing this from Rome.
This reminded me of when we first started this journey through the book of Acts way back in January of this year. In Acts 1:6-7, you will recall, the Disciples are gathered around the resurrected Christ just before his ascension, and they ask him: “Lord, is this time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Christ’s response is to tell his Disciples that it is not for them to know everything that God has out in God’s own authority. Likewise when we ask what happened to Paul after his two years of imprisonment in Rome, perhaps the best answer is to say, “God knows!”
Now, bear with me for just a moment as I conjecture on one particular point. Even though this is not biblical, that is to say that nowhere in the Bible do we have specific mention of this, I believe that Paul eventually died. Can we agree on this? He is definitely not still in prison in Rome somewhere in the year 2008. He is with his Lord and Savior in heaven, assuming he died having been reconciled.
In this light, we can say that the emphasis of the book of Acts is not about how Paul died. It is about how he lived. Moreover it is not just about how he lived, but how he lived for Christ, knowing that he was going to meet him again one day just as he had done on the Road to Damascus. And, for each one of us, we can only hope that after we have gone to meet our maker that people, those loved ones we have left behind, will recall how we lived as believers in Christ rather than merely focusing on how we died.
This point became very poignant for me last month when I got an e-mail from a cousin in Maryland telling me that another distant cousin had died in June at a rather young age of 52 from cancer. I had to wrack my brain to even remember if I had ever met this other cousin or to remember anything at all about him. Had he been married? Had he had children? What was his profession? And then came the obvious question: Was he reconciled to the Lord? The only thing that I knew about him was his death. He was 52 and died from cancer. Too many young people die from cancer. Well, I did have a family genealogy chart, so I looked him up to see that he was married and had children. Still, I really did not know how he lived his life!
The book of Acts is about how Paul, Peter, Barnabas, Timothy, Silas and so many other holy people, whom we today call “saints,” lived their lives. The book of Acts is a testament to how those who had been touched first by Christ and then the Holy Spirit lived out their lives in ministry. It is a schematic as to how we should live our lives with Christ and the Spirit today.
Some of you may be rightly thinking that I am crazy when I say that this book is a schematic for our lives. After all, we just spent the last eight months in church here reading about trials and tribulations that we could only hope would never beset our own lives! By the time we get to the end of the book, for instance, we see that Paul has spent over four years under arrest for crimes never committed. There have been mob riots against him. There have been attempts to kill him. He has had major disagreements with Barnabas and Peter. He has been blown off course, shipwrecked, and bitten by a poisonous snake. You must be thinking, “oh please pastor, don’t tell me that I am supposed to live my life that way!”
I will pray that those things never happen to any one of us here. However, when suffering does come into our lives for the sake of the Lord, we should do well to remember Paul’s own words in his letter to the Romans, Chapter 8: 18, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” And of course we remember Paul’s words in verse 28 of that same chapter: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
We should remember from our own reading of Acts that when Paul faced his accusers he did so cheerfully. When he was in prison, he spent the time singing praises to God in worship. When he was shipwrecked, he reached out and healed others. This is how we are supposed to live our lives.
I want you to consider one more thing about Paul that is not in the Bible but that we must confess is absolutely true. Paul’s faith lived on and spread. That is right: his faith did not die when he did. We know today that it grew and spread around the world and is part of who we are here today even!
When we consider why the Book of Acts ends where it does it really does not make much sense unless we look at it epidemically. There is a wonderful book out right now that my wife Helen asked me to read called The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. His topic is about how ideas seem to spread much like diseases. An idea can stay in a relatively small group until the group gets to a certain size and environment, and then the idea will take off like an epidemic. One point he uses to display this phenomenon is the cell phone use today. Cell phones were around for a long time before their use suddenly exploded in the 1990’s so that practically everyone today has one. At some point there came a tipping point when so many people had them that it seemed everybody would have to get one.
Consider the Book of Acts: It is a story of still a relatively few Christian believers. Paul would go into a town and meet with just a few at first. At some places, such as Thessalonica or Ephesus, he was run out of town. Other places he was not even allowed to go into by the workings of the Holy Spirit. Throughout the entire Book of Acts there is a nagging question as to whether this new religion was ever really going to take off or not. We are standing on the other side of history and so already know for certain the outcome, but the first readers of Luke’s writings, there must have been some question in their minds still if Christianity was going to make it or not.
Then, Paul comes to Rome. Something amazing happens as the ship from Malta comes to the Italian peninsula. As Paul arrives in Rome, those who have heard of him already come in from far and wide to welcome him. Look at verse 15 of chapter 28: “The believers from there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage.”
You see, when Paul reaches Rome, he also seems to reach a tipping point in the ministry of the church. One almost misses the fact, that amazing fact, that when Paul comes to Rome, the faith of Jesus Christ has preceded him already!!! The epidemic of faith in Jesus has already spread before him. He is welcomed as a hero of the faith, not a prisoner of the State!!! Luke wrote his journal up until that point in history when the Faith could no longer be stopped! Amen to that! The faith was taking on epidemic strength in spreading to others. It had come to the point where everyone could see that it would change the world for sure. To be sure, that is the climax of Paul’s story in the faith. Once Paul reaches Rome and sees that Christ’s name has preceded him, he knows what we all know today—the Faith will grow and thrive even long after we are all gone from this planet and are with our Lord again.
It is interesting to note that when doctors talk about epidemics, they nickname the first carrier of disease as “Patient Zero.” For instance, with the spread of AIDS in North America, Patient Zero was a Canadian flight attendant who infected at least 30 other people. We should do that with our Christian Faith and call Saint Paul “Christian Zero.” From his day to ours, we are still infected with that same strain of belief in Jesus Christ. In this way, we are absolutely connected still with Saint Paul. And, when we ask why Luke decided to stop writing just then, we can honestly say that the story is still be written as we are still carriers of the Faith of Saint Paul. But, we do know the tipping point, it was Rome. Amen.