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Week Eighteen, Day Two
Acts 19: 1-7
The 19 th chapter of Acts is largely a description of Paul's time in the city of Ephesus. It is probably the place in his ministry where he stayed the longest. Always an itinerant, it is surprising that Paul probably spent three years in one place.
Ephesus was a major Greek, and later Roman, city located about half-way down the western coast of what is Turkey today. It was renowned for the Temple of Artemis, which was build around 500 years before Paul's visit and is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Ironically, the temple was destroyed approximately 400 years after Paul by a Christian mob lead by John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople.
Paul writes his famous epistle to the church at Ephesus. It is one of the seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation. Legend has it that the Gospel of John was written out of the Christian community in Ephesus and that Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians from there. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was reputed to have spent her last years there, and a church there was built in her honor. A house about four miles out of town has long been said to have been her last residence.
When Paul and his company first arrive in Ephesus, they find a small band of about a dozen disciples already there. They were surprised and ask them if they had received the Holy Spirit after they believed. The implication is that receiving the Spirit was a sign that accompanied coming to faith. The Ephesian disciples said that they didn't even know that the Holy Spirit existed.
This spiritual state would make them fit right in with most modern churches. Their faith had all been intellectual. They had no actual experience of the presence of God in their lives. Theirs was a faith of mental assent , but not spiritual ascent .
Paul then asked them then what their baptism had meant, and they explained that they had experienced only the baptism of John for repentance, not the baptism of Jesus for forgiveness. Paul explained to them the next step of their faith, and they believed and were baptized in the name of Jesus and received the Holy Spirit in the same way the first believers had on Pentecost.
This story leaves me wondering if we in the modern Church might not have stopped too soon in our faith process.
Blessings,
Michael Piazza
President, Hope for Peace & Justice
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