Daily Bible Reading - Will Continue Monday 7/23

Daily Bible Reading: Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 18-20 and Acts 9

Sirach 19 – The writer deals with the very serious issue of rumor mongering: “Never repeat what you are told and you will come to no harm; whether to friend or foe, do not talk about it, uness it would be sinful not to talk about it, unless it would be sinful not to, do not reveal it; you would be heard out, then mistrusted, and in due course you would be hated” (19:7-9).

“Have you heard something? Let it die with you. . [if you find offense in what you’ve heard] Question your friend, he may have done nothing at all, and if he has done anything, he will not do it again. Question your neighbor, he may have said nothing at all, and if he has said anything, he will not say it again. Question your friend, for slander is very common, do not believe all you hear. A man sometimes makes a slip, without meaning what he says; and which of us has never sinned by speech? (19:10-18).

Sirach 20 – About speaking and silence, paradoxes and inappropriate talk. “Better a slip on the pavement than a slip of the tongue” (20:18). There are few passages in this chapter that seemed quotable.

 

Acts 9 – Saul is furious with these Hellenized Christians – remember they are still part of the Jewish community and they are preaching a very controversial message – that the Temple and strict adherence to the Mosaic Law are no longer necessary. He goes to the High Priest and from him gets letters that will permit him to pursue these now scattered “heretics” and have them returned to Jerusalem where they will meet the same fate as Stephen

As he is traveling near the city of Damascus, he suddenly sees a light from heaven and hears a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (9:4) He asks who it is, and he hears “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (9:5). The men with him hear the voice too but do not see anything. Saul is blinded by the intense light; they lead him to Damascus, where he cannot see for three days.

                 

Meanwhile the Lord appears in a vision to a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. He tells him to go to the place where Saul is, that Saul too has had a vision that a man named Ananias will bring his sight back. Ananias is afraid, knowing Saul’s reputation, but the Lord says, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel” (9:15). He goes and lays his hands on Saul, and immediately “something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored” (9:18).

He stays a few days with Ananias and immediately “he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God” (9:20). His preaching has great “convincing power” as early Friends said. When some “Jews” [remember they are all still Jews, but these are Jews wedded completely to the Law and Temple worship.  They plan to kill him; he learns of it and escapes the town.

He comes to Jerusalem, but the disciples are all afraid of him, “for they did not believe that he was s disciple” (9:26). A man named Barnabas tries to help him, bringing him to the apostles and telling his story to them. But now he starts to preach and “argue” (9:29) with the Greek speaking Jews that seem to agree with their conservative Aramaic-speaking brothers. They try to kill Paul, but when “the believers learned of it, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus” (9:30).

                 

Now Luke’s attention turns to Peter’s work. Peter comes down to the “saints” living in Lydda. There he meets a man named Aeneas who was bedridden and paralyzed. Peter heals him and wins many converts. Healing parallels Jesus’ healing in Luke 5:24. In Joppa a disciple named Tabitha dies. They carry her to an upstairs room. The disciples send for Peter. He goes into the room, kneels down and prays. He turns to the body and tells her to get up. She gets up, and word of her recovery brings in many converts. Again, this closely parallels Jesus’ raising of Jairus’ daughter in Luke 8:49. Peter stays with Simon the tanner.

Daily Bible Reading: Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 17-18 and Acts 8:25-40

Sirach 17 – “The Lord fashioned man from the earth, to consign him back to it. He gave them so many days’ determined time; he gave them authority over everything on earth. He clothed them with strength like his own, and made them in his own image” (17:1-3).

“He filled them with knowledge and understanding, and revealed to them good and evil. He put his own light in their hearts to show them the magnificence of his works” (17:7-8).

“Their eyes saw his glorious majesty, and their ears heard the glory of his voice” (17:13).

“One day he will rise and reward them, he will pay back their deserts on their own heads. But to those who repent he permits return, and he encourages those who were losing hope” (17:23-24).

Sirach 18 – “He who lives for ever created all the universe. The Lord alone will be found righteous” (18:1).

“What is man, what purpose does he serve? What is the good in him, and what the bad? Take the number of a man’s days; a hundred years is very long. Like a drop of water from the sea, or a grain of sand, such are these few years compared with eternity. For this reason the Lord shows them forbearance, and pours out his mercy on them” (18:8-11).

“Man’s compassion extends to his neighbor, but the compassion of the Lord extends to everything that lives; rebuking, correcting and teaching, bringing them back as a shepherd brings his flock” (18:13-14).

“In a time of plenty, remember times of famine, poverty and want in days of wealth. The time slips by between dawn and dusk, all things pass swiftly in the presence of the Lord” (18:25-26).

Acts 8:25-40 - Peter and John return to Jerusalem. There Philip experiences “the spirit of the Lord” (also referred to as an angel), telling him to get up and go south toward Gaza. On the way, he encounters an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Ethiopian Queen on his way home from worshipping in Jerusalem. He was seated in his chariot reading Isaiah.

The Spirit impels Philip to go and engage him. He asks him if he understands what he is reading, and the man answers, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (8:31), and he invites Philip into the chariot. The passage he is reading is about the suffering servant: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter . . .” (Is 53:7). Philip, using this scripture, proclaims to the man the good news about Jesus. When they come by some water, the eunuch asks if there is any reason why he may not be baptized.

A Jerusalem Bible note says that there is a verse, verse 37, that is an ancient gloss preserved in the Western Text that says “’If you believe with all your heart, you may.’ And he replied, ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.’” The verse is omitted in the NRSV and in the Jerusalem Bible translation (also the Good News version).

Philip does baptize the man. “When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing” (8:39). Philip finds himself in Azotus (a town right on the Mediterranean in Gaza) and there proclaims the good news to all the towns between there and Caesarea (8:40).

 

Daily Bible Reading: Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 15-16 and Acts 8:1-24

Sirach 15 – “[W]hoever grasps the Law will obtain wisdom. She will come to meet him like a mother, and receive him like a virgin bride. She will give him the bread of understanding to eat, and the water of wisdom to drink. He will lean on her and will not fall, he will rely on her and not be put to shame” (15:2-4).

“Do not say, ‘The Lord was responsible for my sinning’, for he is never the cause of what he hates . . .He himself made man in the beginning, and then left him free to make his own decisions. If you wish, you can keep the commandments, to behave faithfully is within your power” (15:11-15).

“He has set fire and water before you; put out your hand to whichever you prefer. Man has life and death before him; whichever a man likes better will be given him. For vast is the wisdom of the Lord; he is almighty and all-seeing. His eyes are on those who fear him, he notes every action of man” (15:16-19).

Sirach 16 – “However many [children] you have, take no pleasure in them, unless the fear of the Lord lives among them” (16:2).

“[M]ercy and wrath alike belong to the Lord who is mighty to forgive and to pour out wrath. His mercy is great, but his severity is as great; he judges every man as his deeds deserve: the sinner shall not escape with his ill-gotten gains, nor the devout man’s patience go for nothing” (16:11-13).

“Do not say, ‘I will hide from the Lord, who will remember me up there? I shall certainly not be noticed among so many; what am I in the immensity of creation?’ Why look the sky and the heavens above the sky, the deep and the earth tremble at his visitation. The mountains and the base of the earth together quail and tremble when he looks at them. But who bothers his head about such things? Who attempts to understand the way he moves? The storm win itself is invisible, and most of what he does gods undetected. ‘Who will report whether justice has been done? Who will be expecting it? The covenant is far away.’ Such are the thoughts of the man of little sense, the rash misguided man who loves his illusions” (16:17-22).

Acts 8:1-24 – We are told that “Saul approved of their killing [Stephen]” (8:1).

A severe persecution begins in Jerusalem “and everyone except the apostles fled to the country districts of Judaea and Samaria” (8:1). The Jerusalem Bible note and Ray Brown both indicate that those scattered were the Hellenist believers in Christ, not the Hebrew believers. Their testimony against Temple worship brought on the persecution. The Hellenists were “scattered” and became the first Christian missionaries (Brown, 51). Saul is seen as behind the persecutions. He ravaged the church “by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women” (8:3) and committing them to prison.

                 

Philip goes to the province of Samaria to carry the work. He did many signs there as well, curing the paralyzed or lame, healing the possessed. Now a man there name Simon was a great magician, and he too was converted by Philip. He “stayed constantly with Philip and was amazed when he saw the signs and great miracles that took place” (8:13). When the apostles heard that Samaria was being converted they sent Peter and John there, that “they might receive the Holy Spirit” (8:16). They laid hands of them and they received the Spirit. When Simon saw this, he offered them money for this power. Peter rebukes him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money! You have no part or share in this, for your heart is not right before God” (8:20-21). Simon seems to repent and asks them to pray for him (8:24). Simony, the practice of profiting from sacred things, comes from his name.

 

Daily Bible Reading: Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 14 and Acts 7:45-59

Sirach 14 – “Happy the man whose own soul does not accuse him, and who has never given up hope” (14:2).

I can relate to this one very deeply. I have not always been a “believer.” Or, it’s more complicated than that – I have not always felt comfortable with the very deep sense I always seemed to have that there was/is a God. I’ve always had a deep intuition that there must be, but my “reason” has not always been comfortable with that intuition. For some years I just turned my back on religion, but eventually decided it was more “rational” for me to concede that a good deal of what I most deeply “rested on” had to do with an acceptance of the divine, a connection with the “cloud of witnesses” the Judeo-Christian tradition offered me. So I again become a person of “faith” and “hope.” Can I KNOW that there is a God? Can I KNOW that the Christian message is THE TRUTH? I cannot KNOW. But I can live by it; I can rest comfortably in it; I can leave this life knowing that I lived well, lived faithful to a message that raises me to life every day, every minute.

“The eye of the grasping man is not content with his portion, greed shrivels up the soul” (9).

“My son, treat yourself as well as you can afford, and bring worthy offerings to the Lord. . . . Do not refuse yourself the good things of today, do not let your share of what is lawfully desired pass you by” (14:11-14).

“Every living thing grows old like a garment, the age-old law is ‘Death must be’. Like foliage growing on a bushy tree, some leaves falling, others growing, so are the generations of flesh and blood: one dies, another is born” (14:17-18).

Acts 7:45-59 - He tells of the building of the Temple by Solomon, and God’s rejection of the idea of being given a home in anything man-made, but does not connect David to this. He simply repeats the passage from Isaiah (Is 66), which says, “Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool” (7:49-50) The “Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands” (7:48).

                 

Then, to conclude, he calls them a “stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears . . .forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do” (7:51). They become enraged at him.

Suddenly, he has a vision of God’s glory and “Jesus standing at the right hand of God,” (7:55) which he proclaims to the people. At this they rush against him, drag him out of the city and stone him, laying their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. Stephen kneels and cries out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” and he dies (7:60).

The interesting thing about Stephens’ preaching to me is his reliance upon a narrative approach to elucidate what it is God wants the people to understand. Stephen’s memory of the details of the story is not perfect—it is as he remembers it, that God calls Abraham out of Mesopotamia (not Haran), that Moses is forty or eighty or one hundred and twenty at different points along the way. He clearly uses the numbers in a schematic kind of way, probably from an extra-biblical tradition. This shows that it is the community’s use of the story that counts as much as the details of the story itself.

The points of the story that seem important to Stephen are the continuity of God’s care for his people and work to redeem them, the tendency of the people to reject his prophets, particularly Moses and by implication Jesus who is for Stephen clearly the prophet God was to raise up “like Moses.” And the particular point Stephen wants the people to hear is that the time of the Temple is over. God does not dwell in it, but in Jesus and in the creation. It is hard to know if the thing that makes the people murderously mad is his accusation of their stiff-necked refusal to be led by God, his denigration of the Temple or his claim to see Jesus at God’s right hand—I rather think it was that.

 

Daily Bible Reading: Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 12-13 and Acts 7:1-44

Sirach 12 – Bad advice here, at least from a Christian perspective: “The Most High himself detests sinners, and will repay the wicked with a vengeance. Give to the good man, and do not go to the help of a sinner” (12:6-7). Jesus broke this “wisdom” rule a time or two. But this, after all, is human wisdom. If you lend aid to someone who is bad, you are making him stronger in his wickedness.

Sirach 13 – Beware of rich and influential men. They will take advantage of you and leave you humiliated.

“When the rich man stumbles he is supported by friends; when the poor man falls, his friends push him away. When the rich man slips, there are many hands to catch him, if he talks nonsense, he is congratulated. The poor man slips, and is blamed for it, he may talk good sense but no room is made for him. The rich man speaks and everyone stops talking, and then they praise his discourse to the skies. The poor man speaks and people say, ‘Who is this?’ and if he staggers they push him down” (13:21-23).

We are very tribal: “Every living thing loves its own sort, and every man his neighbor. Every creature mixes with its kind, and man sticks to his own sort” (13:26-27). He extends this especially to class-tribes, but democracy has bred political tribes as well. Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind is great on describing the moral psychology of these tribes.

Acts 7:1-44 – After Stephen is accused, the High Priest asks for his response: Stephen addresses his “brothers and fathers” (7:1) by reviewing the whole story of his people. Starting with Abraham, he retells the story slowly and in great detail.

 

The Jerusalem Bible notes that accompany Stephen’s address emphasize that he is in some instances using a “non-biblical tradition” (211). He begins with Abraham even before he moved to Haran and focuses on the promise made to him, his faithfulness to God despite never getting “a square foot of ground” (7:5) or a single child; then he touches on the institution of circumcision. He tells the story of Joseph and his brothers, Joseph’s rise in Pharaoh’s court and the eventual return of return of Abraham’s body to the tomb at Shechem.

 

He proceeds to tell the story of Moses and his call, and the difficulty that the people – his people – had in accepting his leadership. It is the rejection of Moses’ leadership that Stephen focuses on because he is trying to show everyone that Jesus was the expected “prophet like Moses” [see Deuteronomy 18:15]. Stephen says of Moses, “it was he who was entrusted with words of life to hand on to us. This is the man that our ancestors refused to listen to: they pushed him aside, turned back to Egypt in their thoughts” (7:38). Again, a Jerusalem Bible note is great. “For the Christian, the gospel preaching is ‘the word of life’ . . . ‘the word of salvation’ . . Since life springs from God’s word, this word is itself ‘living’ . . . And Jesus is himself ‘the Word of life’ “ (213).

 

Daily Bible Reading: Sirach [Ecclesiasticus] 11 and Acts 6

Sirach 11 – “Do not praise a man for his good looks, nor dislike anybody for his appearance” (11:2)

“. . .the Lord’s deeds are marvelous, though hidden from mankind” [11: 4 note translates: “unseen and unforeseeable. One turn of the wheel and all conditions are reversed”]. The lives of the very important and the lives of the lowly are all impossible to predict, but the writer encourages us to believe that all things flow from the hand of God.

“Do not find fault before making thorough inquiry; first reflect, then give a reprimand. Listen before you answer, and do not interrupt a speech in the middle” (11:7-8).

“My son, do not take on a great amount of business; if you multiply your interests, you are bound to suffer for it; hurry as fast as you can, [you will not achieve, if you do not seek, you will not find—Hebrew translation from footnote d]” (11:10).

“Good and bad, life and death, poverty and wealth, all come from the Lord” (11:14). Still we must trust in the Lord and keep doing what we know we must do. Some of these verses seem very apropos in our times of economic uncertainty and arguing over who is responsible for the hardships so many endure and the windfall profits that seem to go to the few.

“In a time of profit, losses are forgotten, and in a time of loss, no one remembers profits . . .Call no man fortunate before his death; it is by his end that a man will be known” (11:25-28).

The section ends with warnings against trusting too liberally. There are evil-doers and scoundrels in the world. We must be somewhat cautious in trusting others.

Acts 6 – A rift develops between Hellenists (Jews from the diaspora who read the scriptures in Greek) and the Hebrews (from Jerusalem who spoke Aramaic but read Hebrew Scriptures). A Jerusalem Bible note says that the missionary movement was to come from the Hellenists.  The Hellenists complain that their widows are being neglected in the daily distribution of food (6:1).

The 12 have a meeting, worried that staying involved with such details will take them away from preaching the word (teaching and elaborating the gospel) and praying. Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmens and Nicholaus of Antioch are named (by laying on of hands) to do this work. These names are all Greek.

                 

Many continue to be attracted to the community, even many priests. Stephen, “full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people” (6:8). Some in the Synagogue of Freedmen begin to challenge him. “But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke” (6:10). The Freedmen are probably descendants of Jews who had been carried off to Rome by Pompey in 63 BC, who were sold into slavery and later released. It was a Hellenistic synagogue from the list of peoples who worshipped there. 

They instigate some to accuse Stephen of blaspheming against Moses and God. They stir up people against him and then seize him, bringing him before the council. They send in false witnesses who claim they have heard him say that Jesus will destroy the temple and change the customs that Moses handed on to them. His face, we are told, “was like the face of an angel” (6:15).

Ray Brown tries to make a case for the proposition that the Jerusalem Church and the apostles, in particular, had a period during which they did not have to deal with persecution, from about 41 to 62, when James was martyred in Jerusalem. But this would put Stephen’s martyrdom outside the circle in a way I don’t feel comfortable with. I don’t think the church would have experienced itself as not persecuted when Christians of the Hellenistic branch were suffering.  He does point out that there were frictions between Hellenistic and Hebrew members of the Church. Twelve men are appointed leaders of the Greek-speaking Christians, including Stephen. And it is true that these Christians did not seem to place as much emphasis on the Temple as the others did, hence Stephen’s remarks before his martyrdom. But Jesus had said these same things.