The Story Chapter 30 - Paul's Final Days

Take a look at the apostle Paul with me this morning, will you?

You might need to bring a candle. It’s dark down here, and far beneath the baking heat of Rome’s streets, the cells are cold and stink of human waste.

 

The prisoners flinch from the light; some raise their hands to shield their eyes, clanking their chains. Most turn away; but one lifts his head and accepts the pain so he can watch the light come, and as you approach you see that same light reflected in the deep wells that are his eyes, making them shine like stars.

 

Through the dirt and grime, and matted hair, it’s hard to tell if he’s old, or just looks old because life has weathered him. But for all his dishevelment, he has a presence about him that’s hard to define;  a bearing that tells you that although he may be a prisoner in body, his soul is unfettered and unbroken.

 

This is Paul, apostle to the Gentiles by the will of God, in the last few weeks of his life. Chained up in a Roman dungeon, waiting for whatever fate God has in store for him. A loser in the Lower Story; a giant in the Upper.

 

And one of the things that strikes you when you read Paul is how his confidence in God gave him the strength to endure and overcome all the challenges he faced in the Lower Story. He was no superman. He was as weak as the next person and he never tired of telling us so. It was God within him who gave him the power to endure. This is how he put it to the church in Corinth:

 

We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all–surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

 

Again and again in today’s chapter, we find Paul embracing risk, hardship, even violence and imprisonment for the sake of the gospel. Jail in Jerusalem and Caesarea, shipwreck on Malta, house arrest in Rome and after a brief spell of freedom, this final incarceration before martyrdom under Nero in around 67AD.

 

Paul’s life is so singular and dedicated that beside him, all of us are left feeling a little like the ‘before’ picture in those old Charles Atlas bodybuilding advertisements! Compared to him, we might well find ourselves wondering whether we should even be called disciples or followers of Jesus at all.

 

But as ever, we have to begin where we are. We have to play the ball where it lies. And it lies in a certain place for you and for me. In this place, with these people, and these limitations, and these opportunities.

 

We’re never asked to live someone else’s life. Not everyone in the Bible was a Paul, thank goodness! Somebody had to be there to pick up the pieces when he moved on from town to town! The church needs different kinds of people. But every single one of us is called to follow Jesus with the same kind of passion and commitment that Paul showed, even if it’s expressed in different ways.

 

And that, maybe, is where we can learn from Paul this morning – for all that his experience and ours are of a different order. And if I could ask one question of him as he sat there, chained to a dungeon wall but with his eyes still bright with hope, I’d ask him “How did you do it? What’s the source of that inner strength that’s kept you going throughout all of this?”

 

And maybe he’d smile and say – “I’ve already told you. Go and read my letters – it’s all there.”

 

And sure enough, it is. Even the cursory glance we’ve taken at Paul’s letters over the past few weeks in the Story has told us all that we need to know.

 

It seems to me that his strength came from two sources – his sense of God’s call on his life, and his deep personal knowledge of God, in Christ.

 

Flick through the letters that Paul wrote to the churches, and almost without exception the opening verses say something like this – “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God.” This is who he was. Or better still, who he became. An apostle – one who was sent – and sent by the will and purpose of God.

 

He wasn’t always Paul, remember. He was Saul. And then he had that encounter with Christ on the Damascus road, and everything changed. And it’s fair to say that Paul never got over that encounter. It was the formative experience of his life. It cast a shadow over everything that was to come, but a shadow made of light, not darkness. It illuminated everything for him  - within and without, present and future. From now on he would see everything in the light of that meeting with the risen Christ.

 

And the gospel’s peppered with such stories. The newness of it all, the radical nature of the changes people were being asked to make, brought the whole question of call and conversion into sharp relief.  You had to leave something in order to follow the Christ. Your Judaism, your pagan religion, maybe even your family if they disapproved of your newfound faith. You’d heard Christ’s call on your life, and you’d made your own personal response to it. You knew where you stood. You’d crossed the line, burnt your bridges. And that decision brought a whole new direction and purpose to your life.

 

Outwardly, nothing might have changed. You might have been a midwife, or a washerwoman, a soldier or a farmer. You would still be those things. But inside, you were living for something new – the King of Kings had displaced self from the throne room of your life and you knew that you were no longer your own. You’d been bought at a price, and you owed God not just your service, but your very life. A Copernican shift had taken place inside, and the rest of your days would be spent working it out and living it out.

 

And the same Christ still calls, as he called Saul all those years ago.

Still calls us to choose, to follow. To decide.

 

Easy for Saul – you might say. He got the whole son et lumiere experience! Shining lights and heavenly voices. Yes – and blindness, persecutions and martyrdom to boot, don’t forget.

 

You want your Damascus road? Do this for me. Take yourself off to a quiet room and spend an hour in your imagination at the foot of the cross. Read one of the gospel accounts if it helps ground you in the story, but then set the book aside and simply sit with the crucified Christ for an hour. There’s your call. There’s your proof of God’s enduring love. A grace planned for us and given to us before the beginning of time.

All that remains is what you will make of it – and as the hymnwriter reminds us, there is only one valid response to the call of Christ at Calvary. “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life my all”.

 

That’s part of the reason Paul’s faith was so strong – he answered the call of Christ  with all that was in him. But then secondly, he also knew his God. Knew him well.

 

It’s thought that Paul’s second letter to Timothy was written from this dungeon in Rome, and as he languishes there he dictates these words to his young colleague, who was like a son to him: “Of this gospel, I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher – there it is again- That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day”

 

 I know whom I have believed.

 

That encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus was the beginning of a deep, abiding relationship with God, worked out in the ordinary things of daily life – relationships, conversations, travel arrangements, troubles, joys. Prayer didn’t remove Paul from the real world. It embedded him more deeply within it.

 

Prayer was a hallmark of Paul’s life, he knew the scriptures like the back of his hand, but these weren’t just ends in themselves -  religious duties or observance. They were means to an end – the end of knowing Christ, so Paul could live out his faith effectively in the places God put him.

 

I know whom I have believed, he said.

And we need to take care with that word ‘know’ because it’s easily misunderstood.

 

For us, knowledge is about information and facts. But Paul’s not talking about that here. He doesn’t say ‘I know what I have believed’ He’s saying ‘I know whom I have believed’. He’s not talking about facts, he’s talking about a person. Someone he knows intimately.

 

Those of us familiar with the King James Bible will remember the use of that kind of language around human intimacy – we read lines like “And Abraham knew Sarah and she bore him a son.” So much summed up in that one word. Love, intimacy, openness, sharing. The closest kind of communication.

 

You see there’s knowing and there’s knowing.

 

There’s knowledge about someone, and then there’s actually knowing them.

 

I was down in Glasgow a couple of weekends ago for the 10^th anniversary of the Stockline disaster, and the former Chief Fire Officer Brian Sweeney was there as well. Brian was the public face of the rescue operation over those three or four days and was constantly on the news giving updates. And one day, during the emergency,  a Maryhill punter, a bit worse for wear, stopped him in the street and started bragging about how he knew that big man Brian Sweeney. “If you see him, you tell him Rab says hello”. “Don’t you worry - I’ll make sure I tell him” said Mr Sweeney.

 

There’s a world of difference between knowing about someone and actually knowing them. We can know all the Bible stories, all the history, all the theology and still not know the Christ they point to. We know him not by opening our minds to absorb knowledge about him, but by opening our hearts to receive him as Lord and Saviour. All the rest flows from that. That’s the kind of knowing that matters.

 

Folk often tell me that they struggle to speak up about their faith with others because they don’t know enough. “I don’t know my Bible well enough” they say. “Or, I can’t answer all the difficult questions they’re asking”. Well, there’s a time for those kind of discussions, but in all honesty, that’s not the kind of knowledge that really matters. The knowledge that matters is the kind that comes through a life of prayer and walking closely with God – the kind that flows out into the way you are and the way you live. People are rarely argued into the kingdom. They’re attracted into it. A life lived in Christ naturally radiates.

 

In other words, it’s not just about what you know. It’s about who you know.

 

I’ll finish with a story.

 

There’s a story about a renowned actor, many years ago, who was at a function, and the host asked if he would recite something for the entertainment of the guests.

 

The actor asked if there was anything special they’d like to hear, and an elderly minister asked if he’d recite the 23^rd Psalm.

 

And after pausing for a moment, the actor said he would, if the minister would do the same. And although the old man protested that his delivery would inevitably be inferior, he agreed.

 

So the actor began – and he spoke beautifully, placing just the right weight on every word and syllable. And when he finished he got a great round of applause from the guests.

 

And then the minister stood, and recited the same words. And though his voice was unremarkable, by the time he’d finished there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

 

And the actor rose again, and he said “Ladies and gentlemen – I reached your eyes and your ears; this man has reached your hearts. The difference is just this: I know the Psalm. But he knows the Shepherd”.

 

What was the secret of Paul’s inner strength? Strength that saw him through all the challenges of an apostolic life? Two things: a deep sense of God’s call on his life, and a commitment to do whatever it took to know God better. That’s what it took, and that’s what it takes, to be able to give this kind of testimony:

 

“For me, to live is Christ – to die is gain.”

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹²I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³I can do everything through him who gives me strength”.