When his accusers got up to speak, they did not charge him with any of the crimes I had expected. Instead, they had some points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive. – Acts 25:18-19

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 23, 2018): Acts 25

Stephen Hawking received his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) when he was 21. What he received from the doctors was a death sentence -  he had about two years left to live. In an interview with the New York Times on December 12, 2004, or forty years after his original diagnosis, Hawking remarked, “My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus." Of course, for one of the greatest minds that has ever lived, that is not quite true. Hawking never gave up on his expectations. Instead, he followed his expectations into the stars. And it is still his expectations that shape his discoveries and his view of the future. Hawking’s illness has had a shaping effect on his expectations but has never totally subdued them. Hawking’s reality, as is true with every one of us, is shaped by what it is that he expects to be real, and what it is that our future holds for each of us. And the one truth that we need to understand is that the first step in changing our future is rooted in changing our expectations.

Porcius Festus succeeded Antonius Felix as Governor over Judea somewhere around the year 59 C.E., during the reign of Nero as Caesar in Rome. Festus was a man of fixed expectations and, while that can be positive in many roles in life, it would not serve him well in this role as Governor over Judea. The main problem was that Festus expected that any province the Roman Empire would function under Roman Law. The Jews had created problems for the Empire by demanding numerous civic privileges or immunities under the law in their territory. It was a problem that Felix had never been able to fix, and a situation that now the expectant Festus was going to exasperate. Much of what would happen during Festus’s short reign would become the building blocks for the war that would break out between the Jews and the Romans in 66 C.E, and would end with the destruction of Rome in 70 C.E. and the massacre and mass suicide at Masada in 73 – 74 C.E. In short, Festus expected the Jews to act like Roman citizens, but the Jews were not up to the challenge.

With regard to Paul, Festus’s expectations are made clear. He had brought the Jews to Caesarea to present their charges against the Apostle. Felix had done the same thing late in his reign over the area. But Festus expected Roman style charges that would have Roman-style penalties attached. What he received were religious questions about Judaism and complaints about a Jew that had been executed three decades earlier, but who Paul claimed was still alive. What the Jews presented to Festus were covered in the realm of “civic privileges” to which Festus’s expectations had blinded him. In this, Festus almost takes on a sympathetic role in the story, much like Pontius Pilate, begging with the Jews, and now the Jewish king Agrippa II, to give him a Roman crime so that he could deal out Roman punishment.

Of course, for Jesus and Paul, that was an impossibility. There were no Roman crimes that applied to the behavior of either of the men. For Festus, a Roman who was probably at best an agnostic, and who was tolerant to many different religions, questions of religiosity would never equal a crime, let alone a transgression deserving of death, which, once again, was the punishment that the Jewish authorities required for Paul.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Acts 26