Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Whoo! There’s a lot going on in our Office Reading from Acts today! There are miraculous handkerchiefs; misguided exorcists; some slapstick comedy; and a renunciation of magic amidst a massive conversion in the city of Ephesus. And it’s all, believe it or not related…though I think the bit of slapstick (when the scared-out-of-their wits exorcists run naked and ragged down the street, pursued by a spirit) is there principally for some narrative flair, for a memorable scene to anchor— in a bit of physical comedy—the deep theology that’s actually being worked out in the passage.

And I think the key to it all is: living relationship—what does relationship with what’s real, with the true power at work in the universe, really look like?

Now the context for all of this is the city of Ephesus, a city that in the ancient world was devoted to the goddess Diana. Saint Paul is preaching and ministering there in Acts 19, and, indeed, the events of our reading today will (at least in part) get him into a bit of trouble with the devotees of Diana a little later in the chapter. One of Diana’s aspects (her aspect in the underworld) was called Hekate, and under this name, Diana was goddess of magic, witchcraft, necromancy and the like. The image we get early on in our reading of miracles attending Saint Paul’s presence (even handkerchiefs and bits of cloth that’ve touched him seem to have healing power) is setting us up for a conflict between the miraculous and the magical in a city renowned for magic.

Now, it’d be easy to collapse a miraculous handkerchief and a magical talisman into one another—to think that the one was really just a version of the other. But what the text wants to make clear is that whatever power the handkerchief had, it had it by virtue of God’s sovereign grace (“God did extraordinary miracles through Paul”) working through a human life and using the material circumstances of that life to be and become signs of faith. The miracle is not the magical.

The magical depends on the manipulation of hidden forces to accomplish the will of the operator—it is, in a very deep sense, mechanistic: this word or name pronounced correctly under these circumstances with these ingredients pull unseen levers and flip unseen switches to manifest this or that effect or to force or coerce this or that spirit to do one thing or another according to the dictates of a fallen human will. It is the world seen as little more than a product of a spiritual machine. No wonder the exorcists in our reading thought that by merely pronouncing Jesus’ name they would have their desire!

The miraculous, however, is different: it is the fruit of a human life transparent to the glorious love of God which brings things to their fulfillment in relationship with the unfolding glory of that love. The miraculous vision of the world is not that it’s here to be manipulated or coerced, but that it is capable of redemption, of mind-boggling glory, according to the will of the One who made all things to bear and reveal the Glory, and who can use even a bit of cloth to reveal the healing power of love dancing in every corner of creation and yearning to draw all things into the ecstasy of the dance.

Now…making these distinctions might feel a bit academic, I realize Dear Friend. But how often do we approach our prayer as if it were a magical mechanical exercise rather than a means by which our life can become more transparent to God? How often do we pronounce the powerful name of Jesus hoping it will have some supernatural effect…without living a life so conformed to the life of Christ that the Name can be heard in every beat of our hearts, read in every act, discerned in every word, a life no longer ours but God’s and through which God’s glory can be revealed?

A miracle, Beloved, is a revelation of the Glory. And there is no greater miracle than a human life made transparent, by grace, to the glorious Life and Love of God. I hope that today, in our prayer, we will be drawn more fully into the miracle of love for which we were made, that the Name of Jesus may truly live in us!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+