Canter Bridge

Great historical moments, when one knows the outcome, seem almost destined to have turned out the way they did. The participants in such critical junctures in the flow of human events, however, seldom or never have the luxury of such confidence. For them, there are many ways that things might turn out. Some might be dire. Some might cost them their lives.

Often wisdom takes a granular, tactical form that in the moment looks merely opportunistic. Seldom does one glimpse a guiding hand in history as one makes snap decisions while time’s a-wastin’ and the mob is getting itself up into full howl. Adrenaline plays at least as large a role as strategy. Tactics become the order of the day, even when there has been no time for these to descend in orderly fashion from a neat and overarching strategy.

Take Paul’s return to Jerusalem, pockets stuffed with news of Gentiles worshiping Israel’s messiah. It was, by and large, an unforeseen event. That is why it is worthy of such comment. Such massive movement of the morally unwashed in the direction of Torah and the God of Jacob who stood behind it was not in the playbook.

To complicate matters still further, the historical lurch of the benighted in the direction of Torah’s glory did not, by circumstance and by Paul’s own ad hoc instruction, bring them quite far enough. They admired the divine precepts more than they were able to follow them. The uncircumcised came to worship the One of Sinai but seldom went in for the surgery that might be supposed to ensue.

It was a complicated turn of events that cried out for the kind of tactical accommodation that is where wisdom more often than not shows its face.

The next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present. Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.

When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: ‘You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everybody will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law.’

Paul submitted to the order to stoop into the narrow entrance to this half-way house of messianic destiny. Yet, even then, things went horribly awry. He was understood by the mobs to be jousting at ribald offense against holy things rather than to be accommodating the passions of those who were their guardians.

Soldiers get involved, seldom a good thing for the placid rolling-out of new religious truths.

The Acts of the Apostles, as much as anything, narrates the Lord’s supervision of revolutionary change among the human family that is the object of his resolute love. Yet it does so without dishonoring the tactical maneuvers that forced themselves upon those who considered themselves his followers and his agents as grace and law collided with the cacophony of nations.

When an itinerant evangelist whom some had styled an apostle returned to the spiritual capital bearing outlandish news regarding the wideness of God’s mercy, everything that could go wrong did. The well-intentioned did what they could to remedy the chaos. Nothing worked.

Yet mercy ruled.