Call Me Crazy Series

Call Me Crazy

Acts 26:1-32

You know throughout the centuries of human existence there have been those who dared to dream and imagine things that were, to their contemporaries, the epitome of crazy. History has since vindicated them, but at the time they made their bold proclamations, they were considered out of their mind.

In 1870 the United Methodist Church was holding their annual conference in Indiana. The presiding Methodist Officer was one Bishop Milton Wright. At one point in the proceedings, he asked the audience for some thoughts about the future. The president of a Methodist college said, “We are living in a very exciting time when I think we will see many new inventions. I believe it won’t be long until we will fly through the sky like birds.” Bishop Wright was so disturbed by this statement, he publicly reprimanded the college president by saying, “This is heresy. This is blasphemy; I read in my Bible that flight is reserved only for birds and the angels. We will not have such talk in this meeting.” Feeling good about his pronouncement, Bishop Wright then returned home to his two young sons, Wilbur and Orville Wright! Call Me Crazy.

It was the same for Christopher Columbus. People were so sure this insane explorer would sail off the end of the earth that many of their coins carried the Latin inscription, “Ne Plus Ultra” – meaning, “No More Beyond.” But after 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the new coins read, “Plus Ultra” – which means More Beyond. Call Me Crazy

The timeline of human history is dotted with examples of people like this. So significant was their contribution to modern discoveries, we know them by a single name - Pasteur, Galileo, Doppler, Einstein, Tesla – just to name a few; all of whom were mavericks and considered out of their minds because of the far-fetched propositions, but later – sometimes much later after they had died – they were vindicated as science finally caught up with their impossible ideas.

In a similar way, many of the Apostle Paul’s contemporaries considered him out of touch with reality. Even today some maintain that Paul had a hallucination on the Damascus Road and that his subsequent teachings perverted Judaism. But the fact of the matter is this: Paul was the sanest of theologians.

In our text before us today, Paul’s sanity is in fact questioned.

If you’ve been with us, you’ll remember some of what Paul has gone through that has brought him to this point. Paul had completed his third missionary journey, and at the conclusion of that journey he desired greatly to go to Jerusalem. His intent, no doubt, was to proclaim the wonders of him who called him out of darkness into light – the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, things didn’t go as Paul might have hoped. He’s in the temple, trying to endear himself to the Jewish people by performing a rite of purification, when some troublemakers from Ephesus recognize him and incite a riot. He's attacked by a mob in the Temple who then take him outside and begin to beat the life out of him. The beating stops when several hundred Roman soldiers are dispatched from Fort Antonia to break up the riot.

After being beaten by the mob, he asks the Roman commander for permission to speak to them. There's a hush across the crowd as Paul begins to speak, until he says the "G" word - Gentiles. Then their seething prejudice boils over and they start to cry out, "Away with such a man from the earth." He’s then brought before the Jewish high council, the Sanhedrin, and is whisked away by soldiers again for fear they would tear him apart because of the violence that ensued in that place over what he said.

The commander - seemingly exacerbated with the problem of Paul - takes him to Caesarea and hands him off to the Roman Governor Felix. That's what you do in an organization, you take unsolvable problems up the chain of command, right? Felix doesn't really decide anything about Paul's case and leaves him in custody for 2 years.

Felix is then succeeded in office by one Porcius Festus. That brings us to chapter 25, which we won't read today - but here's a summary. Three days after Festus becomes the Roman governor of the region, he travels to Jerusalem. When he arrives, the high-ranking Jewish officials immediately start to lay out their case against Paul so that Festus might do something with him - preferably kill him.

That got me to thinking - 2 years had elapsed, and Felix had not made any decision about Paul. A new governor, Festus, is on the scene and the first thing the Jewish officials want him to do is make a decision about Paul? And I got to thinking, why? Why are they so intent on taking him out? He's in prison, how could he affect them from prison? Two words - prison epistles. Paul is still the bane of their existence because of his prolific and powerful writing from prison.