Being Very Trying vs. Trying to be Interesting
AM Psalm 119:97-120 • PM Psalm 81, 82
2 Samuel 9:1-13 • Acts 19:1-10 • Mark 8:34-9:1
St. Paul spent over two years in the Roman province of “Asia” which did not then encompass the entire modern continent but was instead just the western half of modern day Turkey. It was a long term professorship-in-residence in the wealthy, large and highly cosmopolitan city of Ephesus. Among its architectural splendors was the Temple of the Greek goddess Artemis. While rebuilt a number of times owing to flooding and arson, the ultimate reconstruction, finished by the time of St. Paul’s arrival, made it the largest all-marble structure of its time—indeed, it was numbered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Ephesus had an early community of followers of the late John the Baptist (Mandeans) who were nonetheless calling themselves Christians, but Paul insisted that they be re-baptized because they had never heard of the Holy Spirit. For their christening gifts they got the usual speaking in tongues but impulses to prophesy, instead of the typical tongues of fire.
Ephesus had a prosperous Jewish community with a large synagogue within which Paul argued for three months for the conversion of its members to Christianity. He was not well received, and got booted out. Paul attributes this failure to the obstinacy of the synagogue leadership.
Much greater success came through lecturing for two years in the amphitheater of the philosopher Tyrannus, the marble ruins of which can be seen even today. Converts included some Jews disaffected with the synagogue’s elders, but many more were Greeks, who then likely had come at some point previously, to the classes on logic and rhetoric more typically held there. I suspect that the Greeks abandoned the religious fervor that three times underwrote the construction of that great temple to Artemis because Paul decided to tell them a compelling story...instead of obstinately hammering away at the audience.
Written by Tony Stankus
Tony Stankus is the first librarian at the U of A ever to be promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor. Now 70, he became a convert at age 66, because he could no longer resist the transcendent joy of the liturgies at St. Paul’s, nor the warmth of its people and priests.