Maybe the problem was they wanted to have it both ways, these folks that Paul encountered that afternoon in Ephesus. The text says there were twelve of them, or “about twelve,” actually. (It’s interesting how sometimes in scripture it’s clear that exactitude isn’t important to the writers, which maybe means the exactitude and inerrancy we later generations of readers and interpreters insist on is sometimes more invention than fact, too. Do you think?) “About twelve,” Luke says, who, when Paul asks them whether they received the Holy Spirit when they were baptized, say, “No, we’ve never even heard about a Holy Spirit. We’re disciples of John, you see, who baptized us into the belief that when we admit our faults and promise to mend our ways, that’s all that’s needed. God will forgive us. Isn’t that enough, huh? We’d like to maintain our allegiances and loyalties to the old things, at least some of them. Isn’t that enough? We like the things we used to do and that fascinated us. We’d like to have it both ways. Can’t we, can’t we, please?”

 

To which Paul says, “No! John baptized with the baptism of repentance, which is important and OK, but not enough.” He reminds them John always told the people “to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.” That’s where you put your faith, loyalties, and allegiances, all of them, and, where there’s conflict, to the exclusion of alternative possibilities, other things that might fascinate. “No, you can’t have it both ways, my friends,” Paul says.

 

Now, I don’t know what it is exactly that they might have wanted to have along with the forgiveness of sins that John had told them they would have if they repented of whatever evil they were engaged in. Nobody can know for sure, but we can speculate. If they were Jews, it might have been just to be able to live life out by being obedient to the clear rules of the Torah. Maybe they hadn’t. You know, you fudge a little…because you have to. Sometimes there are economic implications. You keep the shop open a few more hours after sundown on the Sabbath. I mean there’s good money to be made in the Ephesus marketplace on a Friday night. Or, you loan a few hundred shekels to a neighbor down on his luck, and you charge a little more interest than the rules of the rabbis say you should. I mean, that’s free enterprise and good for the country. But, we can change our way and just live by the rules. At least we won’t have to think.

 

No, Paul says, that’s not good enough. There’s Jesus. And Jesus requires you to think and, more importantly, to love and to love in spite of the rules. Sometimes to love Jesus you’ll have to break the rules if the rules conflict with the law of love. And don’t they ever sometimes.

 

If these folks were Gentiles, on the other hand, and they may well have been, they may have had loyalties having to do with the gods of their ancestors or the emperor. The Caesars, after all, weren’t the kind of sovereigns you wanted to be caught being disloyal to. Most of them were just plain nuts, and greedy, as were their political appointees, the governors and procurators. So you gave a little nod, at least publicly you did a little “Hail, Caesar” now and then. Long live the emperor, even when he rounded up innocent victims because of their religious convictions and forced them into prisons or the arena as targets for the lions and the gladiators. Can’t we just look like we’re loyal to the emperor?

 

Also, and though it’s not certain, it’s likely, I think, these twelve folks, or “about twelve,” that Paul found in Ephesus that day were wealthy people. Other converts to the faith that the Book of Acts mentions were for sure, we know: Apollos, who is mentioned just previous to this lesson, was a prominent citizen, well-respected. Aquila and his wife Priscilla were two Jews who had come from Italy recently because the emperor, Claudius, had ordered all of the Jews out of Rome. Well, you had to have money to do emigrate, and in fact most of the converts from Judaism to Jesus in Asia Minor did have money and influence, best we can tell. But a loyalty other than money and influence was required, a loyalty to Jesus, who required love and justice above all other things, including money and influence. “No, my twelve friends,” Paul might have said – probably said – “you can’t have it both ways. If you have money, OK, but you must use it to accomplish love, not to just get more; if you have influence, OK, but you must use it to accomplish justice and not just to get more influence or money or protection or security.”

 

Oh, my, how the Gospel does begin to chafe! Imagine how those dozen Ephesians squirmed when he said they couldn’t have loyalties anymore to some of the principles they had previously been committed to, the give and take of commerce, the making of money, climbing the ladders of society, building walls and boundaries against the would-be invaders that were outside their communities desperate to get in, they presumed.

 

Oh, my, how the Gospel begins to have contemporary relevance! There are so many things that are so attractive to our own instincts and seek, siren-like, to gain our loyalties: money still, certainly -- some things never change -- but also security, as much, I suppose, as those folks that Paul encountered wanted to be secure and certain about life and the hereafter. And power and protecting our borders and doing it the easy way just by building fences and not thinking about it, not thinking about who’s on the other side. We’re on this side, after all, and that’s what should count because if we’re secure, the whole world will be safer somehow. How many times have you heard that argument from the politicians who prey on our fears and emotions? 

 

But here comes Paul saying to about twelve folks who are about as ordinary as us, “You must believe and be baptized in the name of the one who comes after John, that is to say, in Jesus.” Jesus is something entirely different and apparently requires something entirely different from just the loyalties of your past – your old hopes, aspirations, dreams, investments, struggles. How shocking that must have been for those “about twelve” people to hear!

 

But they sure did hear it…and have it affect them. “On hearing this,” Luke says next, “they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” They converted. Wish I could preach like that. Maybe you don’t, but I wish I could. I wish every preacher could. Imagine the effect it would have in our world. People would give up on their rationalizations and reasons always to defend themselves and protect what they have, having their fears be their Lord and what they’ve been wrongly taught about the natural order of things, give up on their instincts to always, first and foremost, invest in their futures – because you never know what might happen – give up on all that and turn to Jesus, and let him and his ethics be Lord, the ethics of love, the ethics of respect for all creation and all creation’s children, and the absolute equality of them all, and let those convictions guide their ethics and be their new loyalty, first and foremost above all other things.

 

“How could they do that?” you ask. “How could we? What you propose, preacher, is so impractical. You’re a dreamer, preacher. I mean, after all, there’s the real world we live in. I mean a lot that you propose, like loving Mexicans and Middle Eastern Muslims and people that we’ve always been taught are unsavory is just impossible!”

 

Well, maybe so, given an otherwise unredeemed world and limitations of our fallen natures. But there’s another factor. When Paul then laid his hands on them, “the Holy Spirit came upon them,” and they became able to do – those “about twelve” ordinary folks – what previously had been impossible, impractical, and unheard of. The text says, “they spoke in tongues and prophesied,” which is a metaphor for doing whatever is needed at the moment to help bring about the transformation of God’s world into a world of God’s love and God’s justice.

 

They did the impossible. So can we, you see…because the Holy Spirit gets involved and makes the difference between the impossible and what we are called by Almighty God and our Lord Jesus to do, what we can do if we want to. What do you think? What shall we do?

 

What shall we do? Maybe listen for what God is calling us to do, and then do that. Let us pray.

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Come, Lord Jesus. Come, dear God. Come, Holy Spirit, not as just our creator, friend, and savior, but as our inspiration and helper. Amen.