33rd Day of Easter, Thursday May 14: Acts 18:18-28

Paul begins his return to Antioch, by way of Ephesus, Syria, Caesarea and Jerusalem. After a pause in Antioch, he’s off against through Galatia and Phrygia in Turkey. Priscilla and Aquila came with him as far as Ephesus, and appear to have stayed there, she and he as evangelists. However often transcribing monks changed her name to Prisca, she remains a prominent female apostle.

Apollos is known to us from Paul’s letters to Corinth as the teacher of a party in conflict with others within the church. Acts gives us some hints of this Egyptian’s strengths in rhetoric and oratory, and his limits in emphasizing a baptism of repentance over the movement of the Spirit. Priscilla and Aquila try to round out his vision. Would that we work as constructively to keep factions in the same big tent!

Whose voice do we give the most weight? What do we do when leaders appear to contradict each other, or at least to compete with one another? Ministers come and go – do you quit your church if you don’t like the current one(s), or do you try to find something of value from each one, to teach them a bit – and to try to stay under the same big tent, even with a preacher not to your liking?