St. Mary's Episcopal Church

Easter 5c: Pisidian Antioch and Jealousy
(Acts 13. 44-52)

Last time I was in Pisidian Antioch, it was a hot day in August, a week into my sabbatical.
Pisidian Antioch to differentiate it from all the other Antiochs, Pisidia being an area in what is now central Turkey.
There was still plenty of dust for Paul and Barnabas to wipe off their feet.
The synagogue was gone, and the 5th century St. Paul's Church was in ruins.
15 or so of us walked up a rocky hill lined with thistles through the rubble of this town where once 10,000 or so people lived.
Little was left because the deserted buildings had become a quarry.
We sat on the steps of the remains of Augustus' temple, which was being built when Paul and Barnabas visited Pisidian Antioch.
These same steps would become an outdoor worship space in the years after Paul preached when Antioch in Pisidia did become largely Christian.
Good steps to be sitting on as we listened to the reading of the lesson from Acts 13, the first part of which we heard last Sunday and the second part we heard today.
That hot day in August, we talked about one of the theological problems of the early church:
When I have a new life in Christ, what part of my old life can I keep, and what do I let go?
Even if my old habits don't get in the way of my new life in Christ, does it matter if those habits make my brother or sister stumble?
In Paul's day, the urgent problems often had to do with which food was okay to eat, and whether or not Gentile converts needed to follow Jewish practices like circumcision.
Paul and Barnabas traveled to Pisidian Antioch to teach and preach on what we call the first of Paul's three missionary journeys; not numbered by Paul; it was all one big 10,000 mile long missionary trip for him.
Antioch in Pisidia was not a particularly important or strategic town.
Paul and Barnabas most likely went there on the recommendation/suggestion of a convert, the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, who had become a follower of Christ on the Isle of Paphos, through Paul's witness a few verses earlier in Acts 13.
Sergius Paulus' family being from Pisidian Antioch.
Now here's something you may not know:
We always think about Jesus' gospel being good news for the poor and down trodden. And it is.
But most often, Paul pitched his teaching to the people of money and power and intellect.
Like Sergius Paulus.
Paul was a strategic evangelist.
Certainly he preached to all, but he targeted the leaders, hoping with their conversion that the town would follow.
Sergius Paulus' message of introduction of Paul and Barnabas, if there was one, was most likely to the people of power in Antioch.
When they arrived, as was their custom, Paul with Barnabas went to the synagogue to teach and preach.
Synagogue being a community of Jewish believers-synagogue being the name for a gathered community with or without walls.

If there was a building, there are no remains left today, though some archeologists think that St. Paul's Church may have been built on the base of an old synagogue.
As we heard in last week's lesson from Acts, Paul's teaching was theologically sound-good Jewish salvation history capped with the coming of Jesus the Christ.
It was a very well received sermon, and Paul and Barnabas were asked to come and teach again the next Sabbath.
As so often happens when we hear a sermon and then begin to reflect on the cost it may make on our lives, in the time between last Sabbath and this, Paul's teaching began to be the topic of grumbling.
Mumbling. Jealousy.
Part of Paul's teaching about the new life available for all, Jews and Gentiles, was that the Gentile converts did not have to follow some of the Jewish practices, like circumcision for adult male converts.
Needless to say, this made Paul's teaching very, very popular among the Gentiles, particularly the men and boys.
When nearly the whole town gathered to hear Paul and Barnabas the next Sabbath, the Jewish leadership got jealous when they saw the crowd.
Who were these two itinerant preachers walking into town and preaching this gospel of grace making it so easy to convert to new life in God?
The Jewish leadership had suffered, sacrificed for their faith-with less enthusiasm, less success in new membership than Paul and Barnabas.
Their jealousy festered.
Their jealousy resulted in words of contempt. Slander.
Jewish leadership contradicted what Paul and Barnabas had said.
They said that Paul and Barnabas were speaking blasphemy.
Jewish leaders began to have meetings with the matriarchs of the faith and the leaders of the town.
Paul and Barnabas were driven out of Antioch, dusting the dirt of the streets off their feet as a sign that they had left all that disharmony behind them.
Jealousy caused a lot of discord in Pisidian Antioch.
The not wanting something good to happen to someone else because we think it will hurt us.
The not celebrating the grace and blessing in someone else's life because we think it diminishes ours.
Anyone here ever jealous?
I know I have two particular places in my life where I am particularly vulnerable to jealousy.
It's not very pretty.
It's a place that I have to depend on my relationship with Jesus.
I need the Holy Spirit to help me when those jealous thoughts rise.
Sister Meg (Funk), the Benedictine nun whose book we are using as a resource in our Bible study on Wednesday mornings (Humility Matters for Practicing the Spiritual Life, Continuum Publishing, New York, 2005), gives strategies for dealing with thoughts that can lead to temptation which can lead to sin.
What can we do when jealous thoughts bubble up?
Sister Meg says that the first step is to be aware of those thoughts and deal with them before they snowball into sin.
Sister Meg says that we can simply notice those thoughts, look at them, and direct them away from our mind.
What if the leaders in Pisidian Antioch had thought: I'm jealous. What's that about?
Or Sister Meg says that we can replace those thoughts with another thought-a thought like prayer.
Like the Lord's Prayer or the Jesus Prayer, Christ Jesus have mercy on me a sinner, prayed over and over and over till he jealous thoughts are gone.
Maybe even prayer for the person or incident that has led us to be jealous.
Or Sister Meg says that we can simply look at that feeling or thought of jealousy. Hmmm. Not give it any energy to do any evil.
Or Sister Meg says we can do some apostolic action. Do something good for another person.
Maybe even the person that we are jealous of.
Sister Meg's tips are really tangible ways that we can put our hand in the hand of Jesus and walk with him.
Because giving into jealousy never, ever builds up.
It only hurts the bearer of jealousy in the long run.
We know that when we're walking in jealousy we're walking apart from Jesus.
Paul and Barnabas were driven out of town by the fruit of jealousy.
But it was those people who let their personal jealousy prevent them from hearing God's good news for them who were really hurt.
A final word about jealousy from Paul from his letter to the Galatians.
Antioch in Pisidia is in the larger geographic region that was called Galatia.
In the letter Paul wrote to the Christians gathered in Galatia, which most likely was passed from church to church and read aloud in Pisidian Antioch, Paul wrote what it looked like and what it didn't look like when people walked in the Spirit, that is walked with Jesus.

He said these are the deeds that we do when we don't walk with Jesus:
Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife,[and here it is] jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions,[and here it is again] envy, drunkenness, carousing.

Of course Paul also told us what it looked like when we walked with Jesus-what he called the fruit of the Spirit:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5. 19-23).
Or the most final word of all, from Jesus himself, from our gospel today:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.' (John 13. 34-35)