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Week Eighteen, Day Four

Acts 20: 1-6

After the riot in Ephesus, Paul knew that is was dangerous to lead a movement that threatened people's pocketbooks. He decided that, after two years, it was time for him to get out of town. He made some short trips and stirred up trouble in other places, and then he returned to Ephesus where he called the elders of the Church together and made an impassioned farewell speech. It is an emotional good-bye because Paul says that, unlike other churches he had planted, he was not coming back to check on them.

In this parting speech, Paul encouraged them to care for those in need, “remember the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” This quote is fascinating because, if taken seriously, it shifts our very way of being in the world. It also is interesting because these are among the few red letters in the Bible after the first chapter of Acts.

The Gospels contain the words of Jesus, and those words often are printed in red. However, after the ascension of Jesus in Acts chapter 1, the red letters essentially end. Here in Acts Luke quotes Paul quoting Jesus. That simply doesn't happen anywhere else in the book of Acts. Paul also very rarely quotes Jesus directly in any of this writings that make up much of the rest of the New Testament.

The other fascinating thing to me is that Luke records these red letters here, but they are nowhere to be found in the Gospel of Luke, nor are they found in any of the other Gospels. This is the only place they are found in the Bible. Paul didn't know Jesus firsthand, so it may well be that these words are taken from another account of the life of Jesus that Paul had but that has been lost to us.

Finally, I find it interesting that, if Luke records Paul quoting Jesus only once, this is the quote. Clearly, this was much more than just a quaint religious cliché to be quoted at the time of taking an offering. In the context of the early Church, it was a way of living and the core of a value system that believed God was more interested in blessing what we give than in blessing what we get. What would a society look like whose supreme value is philanthropy, not consumption?

As one who lives in a city where the chief recreational activity is shopping, this verse calls us to a greater shift than we imagine. Maybe that is why it got left out of the Gospels. Maybe it was a shift so radical that Luke buried it here in the 20th chapter of Acts where no one would think to look for red letters.

Blessings,

Michael Piazza
President, Hope for Peace & Justice

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