After the kind of treatment Paul encountered on his missionary journey, it is a wonder "he got up and went back into the town!"

"They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the town, leaving him there for dead."  Death as a result of hatred is a sure sign of the presence of evil.

The evil opponents of Paul in the Acts reading are those who disdain Paul's preaching the Good News to the Gentiles.  The evil we encounter today as disciples of Jesus is much the same.  It is an evil born from fear and anxiety over change, fear of including those who are not of our tribe, and fear about the prospect of relinquishing our false idols or our disordered attachments.  I just returned from a weekend in another Midwestern city where, on a Sunday morning, outside a Catholic parish, protesters carrying placards that read "FAG LOVERS WORSHIP HERE," and "FAGS ARE ABOMINATIONS!" marched and taunted churchgoers as they entered.  Outside a local abortion clinic in a town where I myself used to march in protest, I am appalled to find ugly accusations and verbal stones being thrown by fellow Christians at those entering the clinic.  Racial bigotry, hatred of homosexuals, and ill treatment of our political and religious opponents are the modern stones we launch at those Jesus loved and for whom He died.

What Jesus' message brought to the world was that God had broken into the tightness, the closed hardness of our hearts, or the human desire to keep others at bay.  In life, Jesus welcomed and ate with sinners, cured sinners' illnesses, and released the possessed from their bondage.  In death, he brought sinners into life.  Because of this, a small band of believers who were witnesses to Jesus' life and death and resurrection proclaimed that there was another way to the One God.  Rather than keeping others at bay, and by staying rigidly within the confines of one's own certitude about who God is, and what God desires, this small band of believers clung to relationship with one another that they had received by the power of God's Holy Spirit.

God, the Christians said, is a Three-in-One, a Tri-Unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The best way to God is to form a circle, let everyone in, especially the sick, the suffering, and the sinners.  That is how Paul's friends dealt with evil.  "His disciples quickly formed a circle about him, and before long he got up and went back into the town."  Paul went back to the community that just stoned him!  The best way to God, for Christians, is through community, and not just the community that loves us, but the community that threatens and hates us.

Since God is a loving Community of Three-in-One, we are most like God when we act as dynamic givers and receivers of selfless love, the same love that compelled Jesus to give away His own life so that His Father's will would be done.  Everything depended on Jesus' willingness to live the life of love He had known with the Father, so that He could be our model in loving others.  "As the Father loves me, so I also love you.  Remain in my love."  This is what forms the circle around Paul as he lay in death.  This is what raises Jesus from the dead.  This is what redeems those whose hatred of themselves and whose fear of others threatens to destroy them.

"It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.  This I command you:  love one another."

For me, Jesus' great gift of peace, His parting gift, is the peace that comes from knowing the love of community.  It is the sure knowledge of being someone's "beloved."  It was the knowledge that Jesus had at His Baptism, at His Transfiguration, and during His death on the cross.  Jesus knew the communion of love that could overcome all fear and anxiety, and could even give new life.

 Lord, help us to form the circle.  Help us to expand it to include all people, as Your love is expansive enough to include all of us.  Thank You for the great gift of loving community.  Amen.