June 17, 2018 “Good Conscience” – Acts 22:30 – 23:11

Acts 22:30 – 23:11
“Good Conscience”
June 17, 2018 – Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Pinocchio was a wooden puppet who wanted to become a real boy, at least according to Walt Disney. The Blue Fairy sent him out on all sort of adventures, with the admonition to be good, to do what is right. To help him along the way she gave him a partner named Jiminy Cricket, who served as Pinocchio’s conscience. As she sent him off, the fairy said, “Always let your conscience be your guide.” You may remember Jiminy Cricket’s little song repeating that advice,

When you get in trouble
And you don’t know right from wrong
Give a little whistle, give a little whistle

When you meet temptation
And the urge is very strong
Give a little whistle, give a little whistle

Take the straight and narrow path
And if you start to slide
Give a little whistle, give a little whistle
And always let your conscience be your guide

We find the apostle Paul in trouble again in today’s text, but we hear him affirming that he has followed his own conscience and that it is a good one. As he was brought before men who accused him of spiritual failing, he asserted that, before God, he has always had a good conscience. He is completely innocent of any charges they might bring against him.

Paul was standing before the Jewish “council.” In Aramaic or Hebrew, this is the Sanhedrin, the assembly of Jewish scribes, priests and others who met in the Temple every day except the Sabbath and holy days. They were there to judge cases brought to them in regard to Jewish law. It’s the same Jewish court before which Jesus was brought on the evening before and the morning of His crucifixion. Now Paul, like Jesus, is standing in front of a hostile assembly which wants to find something wrong with him.

In the last verse of chapter 22, it’s actually the Roman tribune we met last week, Lysias, who brought Paul there to the Sanhedrin in the Temple. This soldier has taken an interest in the man he arrested at the center of a riot, as we read last week. Verse 30 says he wanted to find out of just exactly what Paul was being accused. So he brought Paul to them and stayed to observe the proceedings.

Chapter 23 opens with Paul standing before them righteous and defiant. He knows that wrong is being done and it is not he that is doing it. “Men, brothers, up to this day I have lived my life with a good conscience before God.” By calling them “brothers” Paul declared his equality with his judges at the same time he proclaimed his goodness.

What Paul meant as a plea of innocence, the high priest Ananias heard as insolence. Verse 2 says he ordered those near Paul to hit him in the mouth. It’s not clear if that actually happened, but I assume it did. In any case, Paul responded with a vicious verbal blow of his own: “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall!” We read a text today from Ezekiel about the great tree God would plant, but Paul was referring to an earlier passage in Ezekiel, chapter 13 verses 10 and 11, about people building a weak, crumbling wall of peace, on which false prophets smear whitewash with their phony prophecies.

That whitewashing of decaying walls still happens when people justify evil like separating children from parents with misguided appeals to Scripture, as if a command to obey government implies a command to accept whatever a government does, right or wrong. That was clearly not Paul’s attitude toward the Sanhedrin, nor should it be the attitude of Christians toward their governments today.

Paul acted as his own attorney. Verse 3 continues with his argument that in ordering him struck before a determination of his guilt Ananias had violated the very law by which he presumed to judge Paul.

In verse 4, others in the Sanhedrin trotted out another possible biblical justification for not questioning or criticizing what leaders to. Paul himself quotes it in verse 5 from Exodus 22:28, “You shall not speak evil of a leader of your people.” That verse along with Psalm 105:15, where God says, “Do not touch my anointed ones,” can and has been misused to justify all sorts of evil done by people in authority, on the mistaken assumption that since God allowed a person to arrive in a position of power, whatever that person does must be right. That wasn’t true then and isn’t true now, and Paul knew it.

So when they asked Paul, “Do you dare to insult God’s high priest?” and it sounds like he backed down in verse 5, claiming that he didn’t know Ananias was the high priest, you have to read between the lines. He is not apologizing for saying something wrong. He is being sarcastic. He was saying something like “I did not realize that someone who is high priest could behave like this man has. He’s not acting like a high priest.”

This is an important lesson for us as Christians when we face injustice and wrong done to us. We often imagine that Jesus and the apostles just went quietly along with whatever was done to them, obeying the government or whatever. But Paul spoke up, often and loudly, criticizing evil and hypocritical behavior. In almost the same situation, Jesus Himself questioned the integrity of the high priest for allowing Jesus to be struck by a Temple soldier, “Why do you strike me?” Christians don’t strike back, but we do speak up when evil is being done to us or to someone else.

Paul had another tactic to deploy there in front of his accusers in the Sanhedrin. It’s a strategy to which someone counseled me years ago when I defended my doctoral dissertation. “Get them arguing among themselves.” If you can get the committee examining you off on some philosophical point on which they themselves disagree, the heat will be off. Pit the nominalists against the realists, the Cartesians against the Kantians, the Thomists against the phenomenologists. They will get lost in their own intramural arguments and forget all about asking you any difficult questions. That’s just the sort of thing Paul did.

Verse 6 says that Paul noticed that some of the Sanhedrin were Sadducees while others were Pharisees. That’s another reason to think Paul did in fact know that Ananias was high priest. He was seeing clearly enough and knew enough about them all to recognize that they belonged to different factions.

All through the Gospels and Acts we see there are two main groups of Jewish leadership and government in New Testament times. Often in our minds we lump the Sadducees and Pharisees together simply as opponents of Jesus and of the Christian faith. But there were major differences between these two sects. Pharisees actually believed many things which we still believe as Christians, like the authority of the whole Old Testament, that there are spirits and angels, and that God will raise people from the dead at the end of time. Sadducees believed none of that, especially, as verse 8 explains, in angels, spirits or resurrection.

Paul exploited that third and maybe most import difference by claiming his heritage and training as a Pharisee, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees,” and calling out his belief in Pharisaical doctrine, “I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead!”

In the early twentieth century Karl Barth wrote a book on Paul’s letter to the Romans which forced the theological community to take Paul seriously once again. His book was called a “bombshell on the playground of the theologians.” Here in our text, Paul tossed out into the Sanhedrin what he knew would be a doctrinal bombshell. He took the Pharisee side of faith in the resurrection and stood back to watch the fur fly.

Paul’s strategy at first seemed to work. We read at the end of verse 7 that “the assembly was divided.” But then in verse 9, that division gets upgraded to “a great clamor.” Pharisees stood up to take Paul’s side and defend him, “We find nothing wrong with this man.” They brought up another disputed doctrine, pouring gasoline on the flames, “What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?”

By verse 10 we discover that Paul’s “divide and conquer” strategy backfired. The dispute became so violent that the Roman commander Lysias, who was still observing all this, became afraid these fanatics would tear Paul to pieces. So he ordered his troops to come, grab Paul and haul him back to the barracks for safekeeping.

Imagine Paul being shoved back into his cell, and chained again to the wall. He had briefly seen the light of day, but now he was locked up again. Those of his own race were out to kill him, and even their own divisions would not prevent it. As we will read next week, at least forty Jewish zealots were teaming up at that very moment, hatching a murder plot against Paul. Lying there on the cold floor, pinched by the chains, he must have been terribly tired and discouraged. His strategies had failed. His enemies were still after blood. He was worried. He was uncertain about the future, about whether he would live much longer. Yet he held onto his faith, onto what his conscience knew was right before God.

You may experience similar feelings. Our world is uncertain. Stocks rise and fall, jobs come and go, politicians either lie or do nothing. In our own lives, it’s all uncertain. People we love turn our words and actions against us. Even the material world seems out to get us. A car breaks down. A computer crashes. Our bodies turn weak and sick. The future feels absolutely out of our control. Even if we’ve never been incarcerated, we may feel how Paul felt. At the least we ought to try and grasp how he felt because so many people in our world and especially in our country are being held in prisons right now.

It might sound strange to hold up as an example here a man who opposed the Protestant Reformation and criticized the theology of Martin Luther and William Tyndale. But as the play A Man for All Seasons portrays, Sir Thomas More was a Christian with a good conscience, a good conscience to which he held all through terrible uncertain years of political and religious controversy.

More was an English lawyer who become the Lord High Chancellor of England under Henry VIII. More’s troubles began when Henry started to break away from the Catholic Church because the Pope refused to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Ann Boleyn. Sir Thomas rightly saw the wrongness of his king’s desire. His conscience refused to let him sign a letter asking for the Pope to annul the king’s marriage.

When the break with Rome did come, Henry demanded that all those loyal to him sign the “Oath of Supremacy” which stated that the king was now the “Supreme Head” of the church in England. Thomas More’s conscience again kept him from signing that oath, and he continued to refuse to support the marriage annulment. His conscience finally forced him to resign as Chancellor in 1532.

Over the next few years, various tactics were tried to punish Sir Thomas. He was accused of accepting bribes, but there was no evidence. Thomas Cromwell accused him of treason for meeting with and advising a woman who prophesied against King Henry that God would punish him for his divorce from Catherine. But a meeting of the Privy Counsel could find nothing treasonous in what More did and said.

Throughout it all, More maintained that his conscience was clear, that he wanted only the best for his king and for his country, and that he was being faithful to God. Then the king demanded that he sign yet another oath supporting Ann as the legitimate queen and her children as rightful successors to the throne. More adopted the simple strategy of refusing but not saying anything about it one way or the other. He could not be condemned for what he had not said. In the end it finally took the false witness of a man named Richard Rich testifying that More had in private conversation denied that Henry was the legitimate head of the church. Sir Thomas was arrested, tried and executed.

As he went up on the scaffold to be hanged, More is famous for one last moment of lightness in the face of death. The steps of the scaffold were so weak they looked like they would collapse, so More said to one of the officers leading him, “I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down, let me shift for myself.”

Standing there on the platform, More affirmed his good conscience one last time, proclaiming that he was dying as “the king’s good servant, and God’s first.” He was made a saint by the Catholic Church, but in an amazing turn he is also listed among the saints and heroes of the Church of England, the church Henry started with his sinful divorce. Thomas was a Christian with a good conscience. That conscience kept him faithful and even hopeful to the point of death. That is the kind of man Paul was too.

I believe the times we live in are times like Paul and Thomas More faced, a time when Christians who hold to what is right will be caught in the middle of factions in corrupt government and corrupt religion. It’s a time when those around us want us to declare our loyalty to a human being or to a cause or to a flag or to certain laws. But our loyalty must always first be to God. It’s a time to do what is right before God and keep a good conscience even when all the forces around us tell us we are wrong.

In that Temple courtroom Paul named the reason he held to his good conscience. He knew the day would come when God would resurrect all His people. Paul believed that not just as a Pharisee. He had seen the beginning of the resurrection with his own eyes. He had met the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. Paul was absolutely convinced that by remaining true to that faith and truth, he too would be raised.

Verse 11 says that that night in the barracks jail “the Lord stood near him.” It was the same living Lord Jesus who met Paul on the road. He met Paul now in prison. This time Paul could look at him with clear eyes and a good conscience and the Lord could say “Keep up your courage!” In prison, facing a lynch mob the next day, Paul’s conscience would allow him to be courageous in Christ his Lord.

Jesus told Paul His further plans for him, “just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also in Rome.” This wasn’t the end of the road for Paul’s good conscience, it was a step on the way to more faithful service.

I’d like to urge you too to have a good conscience and good courage. No matter what you may think or feel, you are not at the end. Your Lord is not done with you. If you keep a good conscience by staying faithful to Him, to the truth and to what is right, He will come to you like He came to Paul, leading you on to whatever is next in His plan for you to serve Him and witness to His grace.

Paul declared that he was on trial for “the hope of the resurrection.” You and I are on trial for that same hope. The trials, the troubles, the temptations are all around us, like they were for Paul and Sir Thomas More. Even Pinocchio went through an awful lot of trials in the Disney film. In the end it seemed like he died for all his trouble. That’s how it can look for us. That’s how it might look for Paul and More. But at the very end of Disney’s movie, the Blue Fairy arrived and brought him back to life. She brought him back as the real boy he always wanted to be.

Pinocchio is just a Disney fairy tale, but Paul’s faith, faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is all real. Pinocchio was supposed give a little whistle for Jiminy Cricket, his conscience to come and help him. We have the sure and certain promise that we can call on our Lord and that he will come and help us. He will give us courage and a good conscience for now. And in the end He will raise us to eternal life.

Amen.