Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Saturday, August 31, 2013 Read – Acts 28:1-10 Once the participants in the journey have made it safely to land Luke tells us of one last threat that has the potential of preventing Paul from arriving in Rome. As Paul gathers wood and throws it on the fire a venomous snake, a viper, attaches itself to Paul’s hand. The inhabitants of the island expect that Paul will soon be dead – a prisoner guilty of a crime will not go unpunished. Paul may have made it safely to land but justice will not be robbed. After a sufficient time has passed and the natives realize that Paul is not going to die they begin to think that he must be a god – ordinary people do not survive viper bites! This story sounds a little like the story Luke told us earlier when Paul and Barnabas visit Lystra (Acts 14:8-18). In that story Paul was also mistaken as a god. In the story at Lystra, Paul and Barnabas protest and finally convince the people that they are not gods – and in the end the people turn on Paul and Barnabas and drive them out of town. Here there is no word of protest. Perhaps we should not make anything of that. Luke and Luke’s readers know that Paul is not a god – it is curious though that Luke does not make that clear. Luke follows up the story of the viper with another that reminds Luke’s readers of two other stories he has told us – the story of Peter’s shadow bringing healing to many (Acts 5:15) and of Paul’s handkerchiefs and aprons bringing healing to any who touched them (Acts 19:12). Both of these other stories are troublesome to most of us – they sound too much like magic! So in this story Paul heals the leader of the island’s father and then goes on to bring healing to many others on the island. Stories like these are difficult for us to understand, mostly because we have been trained with a scientific mind, and we can think of many examples when what was done by Paul is not and maybe cannot be repeated. We want to generalize the experience from a single instance to a general principle and we know that it does not hold true. While we may have difficulty dealing with these stories we will need to let them stand as part of Luke’s story.