In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. This morning's reading from the acts of the apostles continues this dramatic story of Saint Paul. It gives us a very unusual insight into the workings of Jewish I mean, of Roman justice in connection with the Jewish nation. And notice the statements here, how how completely forthright they are on the part of Festus.
His respect for the law, his prudence, his mystification at what these Jews are saying that they're dealing with with somebody named Jesus. One of their own who who died, and now they say he's alive again. Poor old Fetch says, I don't know how to deal with this. Who would? So, he said, well, I can't I don't know how to deal with it.
And he appealed to the emperor. One of the things that strikes you about this is the contrast between the way they treated Paul and the way they treated Jesus in Jerusalem. The trial and condemnation of Jesus was not according to the to the strict standards of Roman justice by no means. It was based upon fear. It was based upon cowardice on the part of the Roman officials or those representing Rome.
They needn't have been Romans in the truest sense of the word. Because what moved Pilate, what moved Herod was not their pursuit of justice. It was the pursuit of their own best interests. Pilate was just scared out of his boots that there was going to be an uprising, that there was going to be a rebellion, that there was going to be anarchy, lawlessness. And if there's one thing that Rome, imperial Rome would not tolerate was anarchy.
And when that raised its serpentine head, Rome put its thumb, its finger right on its representative. It wasn't supposed to happen. So Pilate was on the spot. We all understand that. He was running scared.
He was not seeking justice. And here's a man who had who was, for all intents and purposes, was the was the supreme court. In spite of what he says and what he does taking a basin and washing his hands, could he wash his hands of the crime of condemning a man who had not been justly tried nor had been justly condemned? Paul's case is entirely different. Paul gets Paul has recourse to the Roman law and he's treated he's treated according to the Roman law.
And finally, he winds up in Rome. This story of Paul is tremendous. And as I have said, we can we can understand, we can feel completely and entirely with Paul. His sentiments are ours. He's facing trials and troubles.
Above all, he's facing the unknown. And yet, here we see a man of utmost faith. We have his letters that give these insights into his life, into his thinking, into his estimation of himself. So much so, that there have been, and I suppose there still are, but there have been in very recent times, learned men who maintain that the church of Jesus Christ was largely the foundation of Paul. Because so much of what we have, so much of what we think, so much of what we read, so much of what we take inspiration from comes out of Paul's letters or about Paul from the book of the Acts.
Well, let us not be afraid of that at all. There's no there's no problem whatsoever of of Paul usurping the role of Jesus Christ. Paul knew perfectly well where he was. But it is true without a shadow of a doubt that Paul plays a very dominant role in the early church. No question of this at all.
But there's nothing there to run away from. There's nothing to be frightened about. There's nothing to scare away from at all. And so, this story of Paul is so opposite in our own lives. But remember this, and I've said it many times, the world in which we're living in many ways is much less sympathetic to Jesus Christ than the world in which Paul lived.
Keep this in mind. Paul goes all the way from Tarsus to Jerusalem. He goes all the way up the coast. He goes to Asia Minor. He goes through Greece.
He goes through probably through Macedonia. I'm not sure of that. But anyway, he crosses the Adriatic in some way and he winds up in Rome. He had traversed all of the most cultured part of the Eastern Mediterranean world. He had gone through any number of civilizations, and cultures, and languages.
He had dealt with all kinds of people. Of course, the main the main channel he followed was Jewish. But the point is this, no matter where Paul went, no matter what group of people Paul met, no matter what crowd or public square he stood in and produced and stated and proclaimed the good news, No matter where Paul went, he did not speak to atheists. He did he spoke in all instances to men and women who at least formally, professedly believed in some kind of a god or gods. They believed in a world beyond this world.
They had spiritual values. Wherever he went, despite all the differences of culture and language and time and place and even race. He never was in a place where he stood up and had to talk to a bunch of atheists. There was no nation in that whole Mediterranean Basin that ex professor proclaimed their atheism and rejected the existence of a God, and the spiritual world, and some kind of a world beyond this, and a life beyond this. Nowhere could you go where would you find any group of people professing this.
That's where we come in because there's that's our world. Because in the in our world today, you have a mighty nation which is spreading its doctrine. Never doubt that. Don't think that it's it's somnolent. And here is a here is a mighty nation which ex professor on principle with all the power it can muster in all fields, denying this existence of God, rejecting the idea of the spiritual, refuting if it can all ideas of man's destiny being beyond this world.
That's what we're faced with. You'll say, yes, but I'm not living in that kind of a society. Well, yes, you are. You're facing it in one way as the enemy if you want to say that. But in another way, you're facing it as someone within your household.
Because the materialism of the dialectical materialism of Marx is still with us and very much with us. We call you wanna call it secularism? Go ahead. That's more appropriate to our world. But secularism denies the existence of God, denies the immortality of the soul, denies the reality of the spiritual, denies any such thing that this life is merely an introduction to man's truest destiny in another.
That's secularism. I don't care what name you give it. Now, that is the world you're living in. Make no mistake about it. Make no mistake about it.
You can prove it by reading this morning's paper or yesterday's paper or last week's paper. You can see it if you watch your TV shows. You can see it all around you. It's inescapable. You are in it.
Now, I'm not exaggerating this. Believe me, I am not exaggerating this at all. Read the criticisms of novels. Read the criticisms of plays and see on what principle these criticisms operate. You even take right now, where we have this debate in Montgomery County on what kind of sex education to be caught in our schools.
Take take the pros and the cons, either side you want. See what principles they're operating on. Why do you want this taught? Why do you not want it taught? Ask yourself, what principles?
Why do you want it taught? Why don't you want it taught? You'll see the great answer is secularism. So what Paul went through is not precisely what we're going through. In some ways, we're going through something much worse, much worse, much worse.
It was one thing, it was one thing for a Cranmer to be executed. It's one thing for a Thomas More to be executed by men who did the execution and who believed as firmly as he did in God, immortality, the spirituality of the soul. That's one thing. It's another thing to have the executioner who believes in the nothing of that. Nothing.
We're living in a very peculiar situation, so let us not underrate it. If all of this is not too evident, keep in mind what we've been saying about the world. There you have the answer because the another way of saying world is secular. The name of the father, son, the holy spirit. Amen.