July 29, 2018 “Appeal” – Acts 25:1-12

Acts 25:1-12
“Appeal”
July 29, 2018 – Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

If you go to the Eugene Emeralds baseball game Wednesday to see Marci throw the first pitch, you may also hope the excitement continues with a good game. Part of the fun can be a close call by an umpire. The home plate ump rules a hit down the line to be a foul, but it looks fair to the hitter’s team. A runner is waved in safe while the first baseman is sure his foot missed the base. A manager comes out on the field and gets in the umpire’s face. Everything stops while that call is argued back and forth.

In the major leagues, instant replays take some of the fun, along with some of the error, out of those close calls. Just rewind and zoom in and anyone can see clearly whether a pitch was below the batter’s knees or whether that runner actually touched the base. Umpires still shake their fists and wave their arms, but on television the last appeal always goes to the camera.

For Paul the last appeal was to go to Caesar, the ruler of the Roman Empire. “Caesar” started out as a family name of Rome’s first sole ruler Julius. By the time Paul is languishing in Caesarea, a city Herod named after Augustus Caesar, the first true emperor, the name was starting to become a title. The emperor during Paul’s imprisonment, Nero, would be the last one to actually have a family connection to Julius Caesar. To people throughout the empire, the man at the top was simply “Caesar.”

Based in Roman law, we have a whole system of appeal in this country. A case heard in one of our 94 district courts can be appealed to one of 12 circuit courts. Beyond that, as you well know, a case can be appealed to the Supreme Court. Both circuit courts of appeal and the Supreme Court have made decisions which changed American life. In 2011 a circuit court decided it was legal to record an official acting in public, like a police officer. It led to all those arrests and other police actions, another possibility of appeal. Many of us both hope for and dread how some appeals might go in the future, but it’s a crucial part of our justice system that came down to us from Rome.

Roman law recognized that any particular magistrate or judge might not make a just decision. In civil cases that was just too bad. No appeal was possible. But in criminal cases involving the life of a citizen, there could be an appeal. In the republic before the emperors a Roman could appeal to the populus, to a trial before a jury of the people of Rome. Later in the empire that power of hearing appeals was consolidated in the emperor. The emperor was the Supreme Court in Paul’s case, the final court of appeal.

The right of appeal seems like basic justice. You get fired for no good reason. You order a book on-line and when it arrives it’s the wrong one. You get a ticket for running a red light but you didn’t do it. You pay to have your car repaired and it breaks down again a week later. You get a diagnosis from your doctor and it’s mistaken. Your spouse cheats on you or hits you. You want someone to whom you can appeal, a fair judge to hear your case.

Last week we left Paul after two years in jail with no final judgment on his case. As his letters demonstrate, the apostle had an excellent mind. He grasped both Jewish and Roman law and all their subtleties. So now in Acts 25 he’s had two years to think about it. Paul was an excellent jailhouse lawyer. He’s gone over in his head all the legal questions of his case, day after day, week after week. What arguments can he offer in his defense? Which points of law should he raise? Where can he appeal?

We’ve already heard that the Roman governor, Claudius Felix, was no help. He kept listening to Paul, hearing the case, but never made a decision. He hesitated on one side to turn a Roman citizen over to certain death at the hands of Jewish assassins. But he needed to do all he could to mend relations with the Jewish people on the other side. So he just kept Paul locked up, hoping for Paul to bribe him. No appeal seemed possible.

Things changed when a new procurator arrived in verse 1 of chapter 25. After only three days in office, governor Festus himself went to Jerusalem to meet the Jewish leaders and to hear their charges against Paul. Hatred for Paul had escalated to where now a plot against him comes not just from a few dozen zealots, but from Jewish leaders themselves. Verse 3 tells us that they once again asked to have Paul transferred to Jerusalem so he could be ambushed and murdered along the way.

In contrast to Felix, Festus was a man of action. He detected the subterfuge of the Jews’ request. He refused to send Paul to them, but instead in verse 5 invited the accusers to come back with him to Caesarea and testify against Paul. Then Festus kept the process moving. He spent a few more days in Jerusalem in verse 6, then returned to his tribunal in Caesarea. The very next day he had Paul brought in. In verse 7 the Jerusalem delegation repeats all the old charges, but they can prove none of it.

Once again, Paul declared himself innocent of all accusations. He has not broken any Jewish law. He has not defiled the temple. And, most important of all to Festus, he has not done anything “against Caesar.” Ultimately, that’s what kept Paul in prison. By accusing him of starting riots and stirring up trouble, the priests and Sadducees have given the impression that Paul is a revolutionary, a traitor, a terrorist plotting rebellion. If it were true, Roman judgment would be swift and harsh. But there is no evidence.

He was more decisive, but Festus faced the same political pressures as his predecessor. So verse 9 says he too wished “to do the Jews a favor.” He would get the people he governed on his side from the beginning. Give them something they want so that he could expect their cooperation in the future.

So Festus came up with a compromise. He asked Paul if he would be willing to go to Jerusalem and stand trial. He may have sensed the murder plot lurking in the background. By asking rather than ordering Paul, he could appear to the Jewish leaders to be moving in their direction, but allow Paul the Roman citizen an out. It was slick politics.

Paul realized that Festus was no more help than Felix. Appealing to him would be pointless and probably dangerous. But he was standing before a Roman bema, the provincial tribunal. So in verse 10 he decided to appeal, to take his case to the highest bema, to the tribunal of the emperor Caesar. He chides Festus for making him do this by adding “I have done no wrong to the Jews, as you know very well.” He does not need to appear in a Jerusalem court. He needs a higher judgment.

Why did Paul choose that appeal? We’ve been studying Acts for a couple years and based on what we’ve read, it’s not the sort of rescue we might expect for God’s greatest missionary. We’ve heard of dramatic, miraculous escapes from jail, angels coming down to open locked doors and break open chains. Just two weeks ago we saw how God used divine coincidence to have Paul’s nephew in the right place at the right time to foil a murder plot.

Yet Paul chose a mundane, ordinary legal appeal that any Roman citizen could make. Instead of seeking miraculous divine aid, he put his fate in the secular hands of the government. “I appeal,” he said in verse 11, not to God, not to angels, not even to Christian brothers and sisters, but “to Caesar.” It’s strange. It’s even stranger if you consider who Caesar was at that time. You may have heard of this fellow named Nero. He was an insane tyrant who wasted Rome’s money on extravagant projects, murdered his own mother. He unjust and cruel and probably started a huge fire that burned down his own city. Why would Paul appeal to the judgment of Nero? Why would he utter two fateful words in Greek, Kaisara epikaloumai! “I appeal to Caesar”?

We might imagine Paul was desperate. He had no other appeal. To let them take him to Jerusalem was certain death. Perhaps he was as desperate as people who get on boats or ships in Libya or Tunisia or other places in northern Africa to escape war and starvation and wind up stranded in the Mediterranean, like 40 migrants on a ship there right now. Four countries have refused to let them land. Where can they appeal? Maybe Paul was as desperate as young people facing violence and poverty in Guatemala and other places in Central America who cross our southern border and seek asylum. Right now most of those claims are being denied. To whom will they appeal?

At least Paul as a Roman citizen had an appeal to Caesar he could make. Maybe even crazy Nero’s justice was better than a swift execution by his own countrymen. But we should not imagine that Paul’s appeal to Nero Caesar was any kind of endorsement of the Roman emperor, as though he thought that Nero was actually going to do God’s will in his case.

Paul’s said in his defense in verse 8, “I have in no way committed an offense against the law of the Jews, or against the temple, or against the emperor.” The Greek word here for “offense” is the word commonly used for sin in the New Testament. “The law of the Jews” is clearly God’s law, the eternal moral law governing all humanity. Paul makes a clear distinction between God’s law and human law like the Roman legal system.

No, Paul’s appeal to Caesar is pure pragmatism. Jesus taught His disciples to be as “shrewd as serpents,” and to use the things of this world for God’s purposes. If a loophole in Roman law could help him, Paul would use it. So he appealed to Caesar, but Paul knew that Caesar was not his final appeal. He could go still higher and he did.

Paul said, Kaisara epikaloumai, “I appeal to Caesar,” but he would never say another common simple phrase using that name and title. He would never say what Roman soldiers and other citizens said publicly in a loyalty oath demanded of them, Kaiser kurios, “Caesar is Lord.” Instead Paul affirmed and taught Christians to say, Kurios Iesous, “Jesus is Lord.” That’s why Nero and other Roman emperors fed Christians to lions, crucified them, and burned them at the stake. Those believers would not call a merely human ruler “Lord.”

The Martyrdom of Polycarp is a long and beautiful story about a disciple of John the Apostle who was put to the fire at age 86. All the old man needed to do to be free, to appeal his case, was to say, “Caesar is Lord,” but he refused and went to his death praising God and His Son Jesus.

So Paul appealed to Caesar, but he never believed that Caesar would be his salvation, that Caesar would every really and truly be his help. He simply accepted the pragmatic reality of a government beyond his control and trusted God to work out his circumstances. In verse 12, Festus formally declared, “You have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you will go.” That was that.

Don’t get me wrong. The right of appeal under human law is a good thing. I’m glad our country has it, at least to some degree. When you can’t appeal, like those people seeking asylum, it can be terrible. Even in small matters it hurts. EWEB repaired a broken water main on a private street in our homeowner’s association. They did not do a good repair job on the street. They would not come back and do it right, so our board appealed their decision. They denied the appeal. There’s nowhere else to go.

We as Christians should do what we can to help people appeal injustice and abuse. If business and government are not listening, if Caesar is turning a deaf ear, then we need to help people understand there is a higher authority to whom they may appeal. It’s the same for Christians in the twenty-first century as it was in the first century. Jesus is Lord and no one else. Jesus is the final court of appeal, not any human judiciary, no matter how important.

That means you and I have a responsibility as Christians toward those who have nowhere else to turn, no appeal in this world’s system of courts. When rights are violated, when harm is done, our Lord Jesus Christ wants His people to come alongside those who are suffering and need someone to whom they can appeal. I’d like that to be true right here in our own church.

I would like to take this opportunity to make very clear to anyone here who may be silently, secretly suffering hurt or injustice, God wants you to be heard. God wants to give you a place of appeal. And we want to help. I want to help. If you are afraid to go home, or afraid when someone comes home, then you need a place to appeal, you need somewhere to turn. So I say to you, Jesus is Lord. You can appeal to Him and to His people. You can find help here. Followers of Jesus, the members of His Body the church will help protect you, help you find justice. I promise you.

We want to offer you safety from injustice because Jesus Christ loves you. You are not alone. When Jesus was in this world, He suffered injustice Himself. He was beaten. He was cursed. He was abused. There was no one on earth to whom He could appeal. He knows how you feel and He wants it all to change. He came and died and rose again for just that reason, to give everyone who suffers a place to appeal, a place to turn for help.

If you’ve been treated unfairly and it’s practical, by all means appeal to Caesar. Use the law and advocates and courts and human resources and all those human places of appeal to try and obtain justice. Just remember who and what all those judges are. They are poor, sinful and often mistaken human beings like you and me. So appeal to them, but do not put your final hope in them. Appeal, but don’t make human institutions your last court of appeal. Paul did not and neither should you.

Christians proclaimed their trust in God’s authority by saying Kurios Iesous, “Jesus is Lord.” They also learned to say and sing and pray another two word phrase using that same word “Lord,” Kurios in Greek. You’ve probably heard it, Kyrie eleison, “Lord have mercy.” In the liturgy, it’s a three-part recitation, “Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.” Our Lord’s mercy is our final and best appeal, when all other appeals fail.

I had a college professor who would say that if anyone didn’t like her grade on a test or a paper, she could appeal. Make an appointment and come and talk to him and he would go over it all again. But he gave us this warning, “Remember though, that I’m starting over, so it could go either way. I may find that I made an error and you got right something I marked wrong. But it’s also possible I may find an incorrect answer I didn’t notice before. So, if you appeal, your grade could up, but it could also go down.”

Human judges and courts and authorities are like that. They can help us, but they can also hurt us. Not so with Jesus Christ. No matter whether you are right or wrong. No matter whether anyone else is on your side or not. When you sincerely appeal to Jesus, when you pray “Lord have mercy,” He will. Your appeal will be heard. Jesus will forgive you if you have sinned, help if you need help, and send you grace for whatever trouble you are in. Let’s make that appeal. May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on us all. Kyrie eleison.

Amen.