Considering context

Jo Penn November 17, 2024 5 2

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Acts 16:11-13 (NRSVA)

11 We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 12 and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. 13 On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there.

Here the apostle Paul is on his second missionary journey. Paul had experienced the Holy Spirit blocking his preaching in an Asian province (Acts 16:6b) and subsequently Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia begging him to come over and help them, which he took to be God’s guidance for his next steps on the journey. 

Paul takes Timothy, Silas and Luke (the author of Acts) with him on his journey to Macedonia, where they decide to spend time in Philippi, a leading city of the area and known for where Roman soldiers went to retire, in a part of the world that followed Greek gods.

On the Sabbath, Paul and his companions seek out the place where the small resident Jewish community would be meeting to mark their day of rest, worship and community. This place is outside the gate, by the river, away from the jurisdiction of the city, and close to water as the symbol of life. (Genesis 2:17) 

Paul and his friends sit down and speak to the women who had gathered there, we are not told whether the men of the community were meeting close by or not. The encounter has something of an echo of John 4 – where Jesus met with a Samaritan woman at the well, the first person to whom Jesus revealed himself as Messiah. Here, Paul is to meet another woman, who is also not Jewish by birth and through that conversation she too will come to see who Jesus is, by a river rather than a well.  

I wonder:

- how Paul and his friends introduced themselves to the women, and how the women received them; 

- how the strangers’ arrival disrupted the women’s Sabbath pattern; and

- how conversation flowed to the point where Paul was inviting the women to follow Jesus, ‘not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power’. (1 Corinthians 2:4b)

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,

Help us to be open to new encounters with the life-giving Spirit in our regular meeting places for prayer, worship and shared life.