NOTES for Act 21:27-22:30
Today's reading raises the question of national tradition, its role in a people's spiritual life, and its place in the Church. Of course, when it comes to the Jewish people, the situation is not straightforward: here, the national and the religious have been inseparably linked since the Babylonian exile, when Jewry became an ethnoreligious community, and every member of the Synagogue was considered a Jew, whatever nation they had belonged to before converting to Judaism. Yet the story in today's passage makes us reflect above all on national self-awareness, as well as on its limitations. It is noteworthy that it began with the accusation that Paul had brought foreigners—Gentiles who had no place there—into the Temple (Acts 21:27–29). The evangelist mentions that the accusation was mistaken (Acts 21:29), but this does not alter the substance of the matter, especially since later, when Paul addressed the assembled people, they listened more or less calmly until he mentioned that God had sent him to preach to the Gentiles (Acts 22:21–22). At first sight, such a reaction may seem strange. After all, Paul was not preaching some new religion; he was bearing witness to the Messiah and the Kingdom, and such testimony could only draw the Gentiles' attention to the Temple, the Torah, and Judaism as well. Moreover, in Gospel times, Jewish missionary activity had spread quite widely; this was how considerable numbers of proselytes came to be in the synagogues, believing in the God of Abraham without accepting Judaism in its entirety. It would seem that Paul's messianic preaching might bring even more converts into the Synagogue. Yet there was something in his preaching that was unacceptable to Jews who placed their own tradition above all else: it opened the messianic Kingdom to everyone, not only to Jews but to all other peoples as well. Of course, no one would have barred foreigners from the path to the Kingdom, but to the Jews it was obvious that the way into it led only through the Synagogue, and by no other route. Put simply, they were absolutely certain that those seeking the Kingdom had to become Jews before entering it, because the messianic Kingdom, by definition, could be open only to Jews. The very idea that the boundaries of God's people might be extended beyond the Jewish community seemed blasphemous to many of them. They therefore regarded Paul as an enemy of God and a traitor to his people. Thus, excessive attachment to one's own national tradition becomes an obstacle on the way to the Kingdom.