NOTES for Act 16:11-15

The Macedonian who appeared to Paul in a dream was calling him not only to his own country. With the preaching in Philippi, the Gospel message reaches Europe, which from now on is to be a stronghold of Christianity for centuries. It is symbolic that at the founding of the first Christian community in Europe we see a woman, Lydia. From the very beginning, in her person, Europe's openness to the Good News reveals something qualitatively new. Of course, women's souls in the East also opened in love toward God; the Old Testament offers many examples, so Lydia continues a longstanding tradition. And yet, and yet...

Not all the women of Europe are like Lydia, however. Paul has to confront an unfortunate woman possessed by a spirit of divination. There are plenty of such women even now, except that the great income they bring is not for their masters, but for themselves. In casting out the spirit of divination, Paul acts, one might think, against his own advantage: the possessed woman is giving the apostle and his companions free publicity, drawing people to their preaching. Yet Paul has no need of demons' help, however tempting it might be to use it “for good” and “in the name of a higher purpose.” The services of the powers of darkness must be paid for, and the price of their “services” in preaching will inevitably be a distortion of the Gospel's essence. For the second time, after the encounter with Simon the Magician, the Church, in the person of Paul, rejects the temptations to make use of occult powers.

Today's reading helps us better understand how the Kingdom spreads through the world after Pentecost. The account begins with a disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over the membership of their future missionary group (Acts, vv. 36–41). The disagreement was serious enough to create tension between them, which is the literal sense of the corresponding Greek word. It was probably connected with Paul's passionate and resolute character: apparently, he did not place much trust in John Mark, who, as the evangelist tells us, had earlier left Paul and Barnabas in Pamphylia. These differences evidently caused the apostles to part company. The episode clearly shows that even people who know the Kingdom are sometimes far from free of disagreements and even quarrels. The only question is how such quarrels end. In our still untransfigured world, they often end, as we know, in enmity. In the Kingdom, things do not reach that point: when a fundamental disagreement arises, those involved usually simply part, generally for a time, and continue separately the work God has entrusted to them, though the work itself remains shared. Of course, a quarrel is not the best form of human relationship. But if it does not lead to enmity and hatred, disagreements do not become insurmountable or destroy the unity without which the Kingdom is impossible. Such a situation does, of course, create obstacles and difficulties, but God's power overcomes them: here there is none of that resistance to His will before which God stops, respecting human freedom of choice. The situation involving Timothy that Luke mentions is also interesting (Acts 16:1–3). Given the Apostolic Council's decisions, one might think circumcision was entirely unnecessary for him. Yet Paul circumcises Timothy, in the evangelist's words, “because of the Jews.” Apparently, the point here is not that “there is no salvation without circumcision,” but that one should not set oneself against a particular church, probably composed entirely or predominantly of Jews. In such a situation, observing Jewish religious norms was entirely natural; ostentatiously rejecting them would have been more likely to unsettle the community. This is how the religious question is resolved in the Kingdom: if religion is an organic part of an individual's or a whole community's life, it has a place in both the Kingdom and the Church. In that case, religion itself becomes one of the forms of the Kingdom, which is as varied as the lives of those who enter it.

What do we look to when we discuss what a person needs or does not need to do for salvation, or when we discuss questions of church order, when we ask questions like: "how and what should we believe?", "what decision will be pleasing to God?", "what does He expect personally from me"?

Usually we recall certain words from Scripture, from church rules, from other people's experience. At worst, we do whatever comes into our head. But the book of Acts opens before us an astonishing example of apostolic faith, when the Holy Spirit clearly lets them see how they must act and where they must go. That is why Luke can say so simply: "the Spirit did not allow them to go there"...

Only one question remains: if the apostles' experience differs greatly from our experience, what does that give us - a reason for gloom and despair, or a reason to plead for the Spirit?