June 10, 2018 “Good Citizenship” – Acts 21:27-40, 22:22-29

Acts 21:27-40; 22:22-29
“Good Citizenship”
June 10, 2018 – Third Sunday after Pentecost

Thursday evening a few of us met a man who holds citizenship in three countries. Covenant missionary Fabio is a native citizen of Brazil and a naturalized citizen of both the United States and Spain. “I’m like the apostle Paul!” he said. That’s true. As we follow Paul into one of the great crises in his missionary life, he makes not one but two appeals to citizenship, first as an educated Jewish citizen of Tarsus, then as a Roman citizen. You and I have the opportunity here to reflect on our own citizenships.

When we left Paul last week he had committed to observance of a purification ritual at the Temple in Jerusalem. This was an effort to assure Jews who believed in Jesus that he did not oppose their commitment to maintaining a Jewish identity through law and custom even while serving Christ. He wanted to demonstrate that he was willing to do the same.

Yet it all backfired. Paul’s non-Christian Jewish enemies took his visit to the Temple as an opportunity to trump up charges against him. Verse 27 of chapter 21 tells us that some of the same Jews who opposed him so strongly in Asia were visiting Jerusalem. They spotted Paul in the Temple and immediately tried to incite a mob against him. In verse 28, they shouted out the very charge Paul was trying to dispel, that he was against Jewish people and their law. Then they added the accusation that he brought Greeks, Gentiles, into the temple and defiled it.

It was all false. Paul had been seen on the streets with a Greek friend from Ephesus, but he had not brought him into the Temple. Nonetheless, verse 30 says the whole city was upset. People came running from every direction to the Temple. They grabbed Paul, dragged him out of the temple and began to beat him to death. At this point, in verse 31, the cops showed up, Roman soldiers.

Roman troops stationed in Jerusalem were in a situation like United Nations peacekeepers in Congo or South Sudan or like American troops in Iraq after our invasion there in 2003. Roman soldiers had the thankless task of trying to police and keep order among people and factions which they did not understand at all. As we will see in the next few chapters, Romans were boggled by disputes between the ruling Sadducees and Pharisees, in tension with Zealots, Hellenistic Jews, Essenes and other Jewish factions. It’s much like UN soldiers dealing with tribal differences in Africa or like American soldiers baffled by the differences between Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds and Turkmen in Iraq.

In verse 33 we meet a Roman tribune, literally a chiliarch, a commander of a thousand men. In chapter 23 we learn that his name was Lysias. To reestablish order, Lysias did what any police officer might do. He arrested the man at the center of the riot. He ordered Paul to be bound in chains, then questioned him. But the crowd was shouting over it all. You could easily picture a disturbance like this in a dusty Middle-Eastern city in a place like Syria. The soldiers were carrying spears instead of automatic rifles, but it was exactly like something you might see on the news tonight. Noise, confusion, people running here and there, and weary military men trying to restore order.

It was so loud in the street the commander could not hear what Paul was saying. So he ordered the prisoner to be taken into their own barracks hall. The crowd was getting so violent, says verse 35, that at the steps to the barracks they had to pick up Paul and carry him.

There in the doorway, the din from the crowd was blocked enough so Paul could speak to the tribune in verse 37. The Roman was surprised that Paul spoke Greek. He had thought perhaps Paul was a notorious Egyptian terrorist who led a recent revolt. Again, not much different from events in our time.

Paul asserted his Jewish identity in verse 39. He speaks Greek because, he says, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city.” He was making a couple of points. First, as a Jew, Paul had a right to be where he was, in the Temple in Jerusalem. Other Jews may be out for his blood, but he was not violating any law. Second, he was from “an important city.” Tarsus had a fine reputation as an educational center. Paul was an educated man. He spoke Greek like a man of the world. He was not some backwater revolutionary. He belonged in this place and had rights.

Paul was laying claim to the blessings of citizenship, based on his birth and Jewish identity. He belonged. He had rights. Two weeks ago I told you about the mud and rock slides years ago on the highway to our cabin in Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona. The road was cleared enough to let cars pass the first night, but for two days it stayed closed to those simply passing through. While front-end loaders were moving tons of mud, only local traffic was allowed. We had to make it clear to police officers that we owned property in the canyon, that we had a right to be there, that we weren’t just tourists. That’s the kind of citizenship Paul asserted in verse 39, a right to be there.

The Roman commander still had no idea about Paul’s additional citizenship, but he was convinced that Paul had a legitimate place in Jerusalem. So when Paul asked to address this crowd, the commander gave him permission.

We’re going to skip Paul’s speech to the crowd in the first part of chapter 22. We’ve heard most of it before back in chapter 9. It’s an account of his conversion, how Jesus met him on the road to Damascus, knocked him to the ground and blinded him. He tells how he came under the care of Ananias who taught him to call on the name of Jesus, how he was baptized and had his sins washed away by Jesus.

Paul’s response to persecution was to give his testimony, to tell what the Lord had done for him. For the crowd, he did not just establish his credentials as a Jew. He clearly stated his claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Being Jewish and Christian was certainly possible. It was his own identity.

Paul pushed it a little too far for the crowd. At the end of his story in verse 21, he told the Jews not only about his conversion, but about his call. “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” That was enough for the rioters. With a mission to the Greeks, Paul must be a traitor. So, where we pick the story back up in verse 22 of chapter 22, they are shouting again, “Away from the earth with such a fellow! For he should not be allowed to live.”

At this point Lysias repeated his orders to take Paul inside. He must have hoped he would quiet everyone down, but Paul had the opposite effect. The crowd shouted and tossed off their clothes and flung dust in the air. They were in a frenzy. The soldiers were frightened for their own safety. So they dragged Paul back inside and slammed the door.

Again like recent times, unfortunately, the commander ordered torture for Paul. Flog and question him and find out why he was causing such a disturbance. Rome’s army had its ways to deal with troublemakers. The tribune went to his office and left Paul in the painful care of a centurion and his hundred men.

They were positioning him for his whipping, spreading Paul’s arms and legs and tying them so he could be flogged, when Paul calmly turned to the centurion and asserted his additional citizenship in verse 25, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who is uncondemned?”

Go back one more time to the war in Iraq. Mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison shocked many. Just imagine, purely as fiction, that one of those prisoners tortured there had been an American citizen, falsely arrested, not guilty of any crime. The political fallout and punishment for our soldiers would have been far worse than it was. Just that sort of worry made the centurion stop all preparations for flogging. He went and told his tribune in verse 26 that Paul was claiming Roman citizenship.

The exchange between Paul and Lysias in verses 27 and 28 is intriguing. The officer asked Paul if he was in fact a Roman citizen. Paul simply says, “Yes.” The chiliarch responded with his own story, “It cost me a large sum of money to get my citizenship.” Like many in the Roman army, especially in later times, Lysias was of foreign blood, perhaps even a barbarian. He worked his way up the ranks and then found a Roman noble willing to give him citizenship in return for a bribe.

Roman patrons often made gifts of citizenship to people they favored, sometimes to whole towns. But paying for the privilege was frowned on. It was a low-class way to become a Roman. So it was a slap in the face when Paul replied, “But I was born a citizen.” The commander realized he had less status than his prisoner.

Verse 29 says that immediately the torture squad, “those who were about to examine him,” drew back. Lysias was alarmed to realize he had tied up and been about to harm a citizen who would have the protection of the emperor.

American law has historic basis in Greek and Roman law. Citizens have a right to fair trial. They must be found guilty before they are punished. As we will see in the next few weeks, Paul was more than willing to assert those rights under Roman citizenship in order to get where he wanted to be to preach Jesus. It’s a fascinating story, but what do you or I learn from it? What spiritual truth may you and I take away this morning from this bit of ancient history?

First note how Paul views his citizenships. Dual citizenship was more unusual in Roman times than it is today, but the apostle was clearly proud and confident in stating that he was both a Jew and a Roman. Contrary to what you may have thought, he didn’t change his name from Saul to Paul when he became a Christian. He had both names, the Jewish name Saul and the Roman name Paul, from birth. And he claimed the benefits of both. He was unashamed of his race and of his citizenship in one of the great kingdoms of the world.

Yet Paul viewed his earthly citizenships as secondary to an allegiance that was greater. In Philippians 3:20, he wrote, “But our citizenship is in heaven,” as we said in our call to worship this morning. Paul was a Jew and a Roman, but much, much more important to him, he was a Christian, a follower of Jesus. As a Roman citizen he claimed his rights, and even, we will see, appealed to Caesar. But the rights he truly cherished came from God and the appeal he always made was to his Savior Jesus Christ.

Paul used his earthly citizenships for Jesus. He was not a bad citizen of either Rome or Israel. He did not attack the Jewish king or speak against the emperor. He was no terrorist. He encouraged Christians to live at peace with those around them, including governments. But his purpose was not to make people into Christians so they would be good citizens. Instead, he encouraged Christians to be good citizens so they could serve Jesus better. Earthly citizenship was in the service of Christian discipleship, not the other way around.

So our first lesson is about pledging allegiance. Allegiance to a country is good thing. But allegiance to Jesus Christ is the greatest thing, the first thing. Allegiance to Jesus is our first and highest priority.

There is a second lesson here, however, in the idea of citizenship. I entitled my sermon this morning, “Good Citizenship.” You would normally take that to mean the concept of being a good and productive member of a country. Live as a law-abiding and patriotic participant in civil society. Good citizenship.

Yet citizenship is good in another way, not that the citizen is good, but that citizenship is good for the citizen. Paul claimed his rights, the benefits first of being a Jew and then of being a Roman. It was good for Paul in those moments to be a citizen of two nations. It is good, it is best for you and I to be citizens of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

When I teach about the Atonement, the great work of Jesus Christ to rescue us from sin and restore us to relationship with God, I like to show a clip from the film of “The Chronicles of Narnia.” In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis pictured in a fairy tale one of the great classic images of the Atonement as a change in citizenship, bought for us with Christ’s own blood.

Lewis portrays the devil as a witch who gained authority and rights over one of four children. Edmund betrayed his friends and family and fell under her power. Now she stands on her rights as the ruler of the realm of death. She says, “unless I have blood as the Law says, all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water.” According to the story, that was the Law of the Great Emperor, the “Deep Magic” from the dawn of time.

Likewise, early Christian church fathers saw you and I as held captive and condemned to eternal death under the rule and domain of Satan as the just penalty for our sins. We are citizens of the devil’s realm, we belong to him, with no way out.

But in Lewis’ story, Aslan, the great Lion who represents Jesus, has an answer. Aslan takes the sinner’s place, lays himself upon a great Stone Table and allows the witch to stab him with her blade, taking his blood instead of Edmund’s. Because of that sacrifice, the witch has to renounce her claim on Edmund. He no longer belongs to her, but to Aslan.

After Aslan’s death, Lewis creates a wonderful scene of his resurrection and joy. The Lion says that though, “the witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still… that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”

The church fathers taught that Jesus Christ took our place under the devil’s awful power of death. Dying on the Cross and rising again, Jesus cracked our doom, undid death and freed us from Satan’s control. That Roman tribune paid a high price for his citizenship, but Jesus paid the highest price for ours. Our citizenship in His kingdom was bought with His own blood. Everyone who believes in Jesus is no longer a citizen of sin and death, but a citizen of His kingdom, the kingdom of life. We belong to Him.

You may be a citizen of this country or some other or more than one. In Jesus you have a new and better and higher citizenship. Jesus brought you out of the terrible rule of Satan and placed you firmly within His gracious, peaceful, loving government. All you need to transfer your citizenship is faith in Him. Believe that Christ died and rose again for you and you are His. Your citizenship will be in heaven. And Jesus said that no one can take you away from Him, no can steal that citizenship He gives you.

Above all else, belong to Jesus. By grace He is yours, but most of all, you are His. It is good citizenship. It’s eternal citizenship.

Amen.