Acts 12:1-19

The early Apostles remind me a lot of my boy Tony.  Tony’s a good dude – good friend, good brother, treats his Old Lady right, all that stuff, but, get this, the dude just cannot stay out of prison.  DUI, public intox, resisting arrest – you name it he’s done time for it.  Did you know it’s illegal to discharge a pistol at a Kid Rock concert?  I didn’t.  Neither did Tony.  (In his defense, it was in Vegas.)  Seriously bro, the guy’s spent more time in the can than anyone I know who is not currently a member of D12.  Great guy, though – just like the Apostles.

Take Peter, for example.  He was, by all accounts, a bang-up dude.  If you can look past the whole “Jesus? Who’s that?” episode, Peter was probably the big man’s favorite disciple – right up there with Scottie Pippen, Andy Richter, and Dick “Dick” Cheney in the Sidekick Hall of Fame.  He was also a multiple felon.  In fact, when our story begins Peter is once again sitting in the slammer; this time for the crime of “being a Christian.”

I don’t know what King Herod’s deal was – maybe his senior prom date left him for an FCA small-group leader, maybe his fiancé’s Baptist grandma wouldn’t let them have dancing at their wedding – but, whatever the reason, the head honcho of the Hebrews hated Christians even worse than he hated Keith Olbermann (which is saying something).

Herod had already arrested James (John’s younger bro) and paid a gangbanger to shiv him in the shower.  This got a buncha positive press from the Jew-folk, and word was out that our boy Pedro was next on the list.

The night before his trial Peterman was sleeping in his cell, chained up to two guards like he was some kind of flight risk, when this dude in a shiny robe started shaking him.  Peter jerked awake.

“Don’t tase me, bro!” he shouted.

“Shhhhhhh,” said the angel.  “Get your gear, dude.  We’re pulling a Shawshank.”

Peter thought he was hallucinating, but he knew better than to talk back to an acid trip.  He pulled on his orange jumpsuit and gathered up the Spice Girl figurines which he’d carved out of soap.  He tried bringing his ten copies of Catcher in the Rye too, but the angel made him leave them behind.

The two snuck past the guards in Peter’s cell, past the other guards outside the door, and past the Minotaur at the center of the prison.  Within minutes they were standing before the prison gate, and it flew open all by itself.  Some scholars have taken this to mean that the gate had a motion sensor (like the ones at Kohls), but a more realistic explanation is that Peter’s rescuer was actually Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Peter and the angel walked all the way down the street and then the angel peaced out.  Peterman looked around and realized he wasn’t dreaming.  He had just pulled a Prison Break and it hadn’t taken him four seasons on Fox to do it!

“Holy Count of Monte Cristo!” said Peter.  “Looks to me like the Good Lord himself came down here and sprung me from the stir before King Cruel-and-Unusual could go all Abu Ghraib on me!”  Then he ripped his shirt off and danced around in the rain, and everyone agreed it was a real special moment.

After his escapee epiphany, Peterman went straight to his buddy Mark’s mom’s house where he knew the rest of his crew would be hanging out cause it was a Thursday, and Thursday night was Catchphrase night for the early Christians.  He knocked on the door and the babysitter answered.

“Who can it be now?” she sang through the door.  Apparently this chick was a big Men At Work fan.  Don’t ask.

“It’s your Uncle Pete!  Now quick, open the door before the fuzz get here and start Rodney King-ing me.”

The babysitter was so excited to hear Peter’s voice that she ran off to tell the grownups and completely forgot to let him in.  Also, she peed her pants a little.

“Peter’s here!  Peter’s here!” she squealed, but no one believed her.

“Dadgummit, Rhoda!” said her father.  “Didn’t I tell you to stay out of the Four Lokos?  They got you seeing stuff again!”

“No, I’m serious.  It’s really him,” Rhoda insisted.

“I believe you,” said her Uncle John.  “But my tommy gun don’t!” Then he pelted her with some Nerf darts and everyone had a good laugh.

While this was going on, one of the other adults overheard someone banging on the door while shouting “five-oh, five-oh!”  He opened it to find Peter on the other side.  Both men were so overjoyed that they went straight in for a hug.

“I love you, man,” said the guy into Peter’s shoulder.  “No homo.”

“No homo,” agreed Peter.

The other grownups came to the door and Peter told them to keep it down.  He had to get on the move again before the poh-pohs caught up with him.  He told them that a one-armed man had murdered his wife and that he was being setup.  Then he disappeared into the darkness.

No one knew what he was talking about, but they were all certain of one thing: they owed Rhoda an apology.

Acts 13-14

So it was 44 A.D. and the Artist Formerly Known as Saul had been jamming out in Jerusalem for over a decade.  He was getting plenty of air time in the synagogues and lots of love on the K-LOVE affiliates, but Pastor Paul – in the immortal words of Billy Ray Cyrus – had dreams too big for that town and he had to give them a shot.  He got that shot in the spring when he was at this super intense prayer sesh up in Antioch.  The elders were looking for volunteers to take The Gospel to the heathens and hookers over in Galatia, and Paul immediately jumped at the chance.  His buddy Barnabas signed on as well, and – BOOM - SALVATION: The World Tour was underway.

As the first headliners in recorded history, Paul and Barnabas made quite the pair.  Both had previous touring experience – Paul with his short-lived country trio, “Peter, Paul, and Mary,” and Barnabas with a Pentecost-themed folk collective called “The Flaming Lips” – and both could work a crowd like nobody’s business.  They were the Simon and Garfunkel of their day.  Paul wrote the sermons and did the interviews.  Barnabas told the jokes and burned the incense.

After playing a few warm-up gigs in backwater towns like Seleucia and Salamis, Paul and Bro-nabas did a monster 2-hour set in Paphos.  They brought it hot and heavy that night, and everyone, including the mayor, was way into their scene.  But then this loud-mouth magician showed up and started heckling.  At one point he got up on stage and started repeating everything Paul and Barnabas said but in a voice like he was retarded.  After about 15 seconds of this, Paul grabbed the mic back and told the guy that he was the spawn of Satan and was probably the worst thing to happen to the world since people started putting fruit in beer.  Then he struck the dude blind.  People in Paphos didn’t interrupt sermons much after that.

Paul and B-nabs peaced out of Paphos and headed across the water to Pisidia where they were scheduled to play an afternoon show at the Pisidia City Limits music festival.  When the pair got to Pisidia, they were met by the biggest crowd they’d seen all tour.  Turns out the video of Paul trashing the heckler in Paphos had gone viral and, as a result, they were getting mad respect from the DC Talk demographic.  Paul knew that it was time to blow the lid off this tour.

He grabbed a mic and started freestyle-rapping the entire the history of Israel.  He talked about the time the Hebrews got lost in the desert for 40 years.  He talked about how much King Saul sucked and how much King David rocked, and he talked about Jesus – how he was God’s kid and how he could forgive their sins and all that other stuff that the people of Pisidia (aka Pissers) would’ve known had they been watching the Israeli news.  It was a lot like Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” except it lasted five hours and made no mention of foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, or Bernie Goetz.

Paul-A-Palooza had hit the bigtime.

The festival organizers had no choice but to add an encore performance the following weekend.  The entire city came out for that second show and the two blew their faces off once again with Divinely-inspired truth rarely seen this side of Fox News.  A few people passed out.  A couple more threw up.  This one paralyzed dude started walking around like he was freaking John Locke from LOST.  It was intense.

Everyone in Pisidia was way into Paul and Barney’s deal.  Everyone except the Jews that is.  The Jews had been waiting all day to see a show on another stage (probably Matisyahu) and they were pissed at the Sermonizing Superstars from Antioch for dominating the festival.  They started giving Barnabas crap for his “Jew-fro” and a few of them started carrying on when Paul accidentally said “genitals” instead of “Gentiles.”  Real amateur stuff.

Well, as the people in Paphos could have told them, Paul and The Barn Burner didn’t take kindly to being bagged on.  “Listen schmucks,” said Paul.  “We tried playing gigs in Israel and none of you came out.  So here we are, hanging out in Asia Minor where people recognize the truth when it’s blasted into their earholes, which is more than I can say for you schlemiels.”

This did two things: it made the Minor Asians love Paul and Bro-nabas more than ever.  (The merch booth sold out of “You Say Gentile Like It’s A Bad Thing” T-Shirts in less than five minutes.) And it pissed the Jews off something awful.

And that was the story for the rest of the tour.  Everywhere PB & J (Paul, Barnabas and Jesus) went from that point forward they were met by adoring throngs of Gentiles and irate mobs of Jews.  One day they’d be in Lystra with people bowing before them like they were the second coming of John Lennon.  The next they’d be in Iconium dodging a barrage of beer bottles like they were some Nickelback cover band.

By the time they got to Derbe both Paul and Barnabas were exhausted (aka beaten to within an inch of their lives).  They decided to call it quits.  So they turned around and retraced their steps, playing return shows in every synagogue along the way.  By the time they got back to Antioch, they’d been on the road for two years.

You hear that, Dave Matthews?  A freakin 24-month tour!  Put that in your joint and toke it!

Acts 9:1-19

You ever had a vision from God?  And no, I’m not talking about a “hey that cloud kinda looks like a Ford F150 filled with football players and illegal immigrants; I guess God really does want me to move to Texas” kind of vision.  I’m talking about an in-your-face, life-altering, game-changing encounter with The Almighty.  My guess is you haven’t.  And if you have, it probably involved a sack of shrooms and a Phish concert.  That doesn’t count.

But there was a dude in the Bible who had one of those haymaker-to-the-temple type of visions.  His name was Saul and he lived around the time of Maximus.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that they were friends or anything, but they probably could have been since they were into a lot of the same stuff like traveling, facial hair, and killing people.  The only difference was Saul focused his killing on Christians while Maximus was more into barbarian hordes, tigers, and the occasional Roman emperor.

In the years after Jesus’ departure for heaven, Saul had pretty well established himself as the primary pain in the early church’s ass.  For some reason he would get real pissy anytime anyone mentioned anything about Jesus being the son of God or dying for our sins or anything like that.   All it took was for someone to say “Jesus loves you” and it’d be nothing but stonings, arrests, and rage blackouts for the rest of the day.  Real buzzkill, that Saul.

After awhile the church in Jerusalem got tired of Saul ruining their Sunday morning services and they started meeting in secret which was a real shame since they had been meeting in this sweet theater over in Old Town, but now they had to get together in the assistant pastor’s apartment which was cramped and always smelled like sweaty eggs.

Since the Christians in Jerusalem were keeping things on the DL, Saul had to look elsewhere to satisfy his addiction to hassling people.  He decided to go to Damascus because he had some buddies he could crash with and because there was a big Vacation Bible School in town that he wanted to heckle.  He grabbed two of his homeboys, a buncha Doritos, and a couple donkeys, and they set off for D-Town.

They were about halfway there when things got trippy.  A bright light fell from the sky and Saul heard someone say, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  Being new to the whole “vision from heaven” thing, Saul thought he was hearing the voice of one of the youth pastors he’d recently locked up for showing The Passion of the Christ at a high school lock-in.

Saul shielded his eyes and asked, “Bartholomew, is that you?”  And the voice said, “No, it’s me, Jesus, the guy you’ve been bagging on all over town.”

Awkward, right?  Here’s Saul, running his mouth all over Jerusalem, talking trash on Jesus to anyone who’ll listen, and then all the sudden Jesus shows up and calls him out on it.  Saul’s two buddies didn’t make it any easier on him either.  They just stood off to the side and said, “ohhhhh busted!” but Saul was too busy getting reamed to tell them to shut-up.

Eventually, the light faded and Jesus went away.  But when he left, Saul’s sight left with him.  In the immortal words of Manfred Man’s Earth Band, he had been “blinded by the light.” No word if he was also “revved up like a deuce in the middle of the night”.

Saul told his buddies that he was blind and that they had to help him get to Damascus.  And they were like, “Whatever dude, let’s get out of here before someone else comes along to rip you a new one.”  And Saul was like, “No.  I’m serious.  I can’t see a freaking thing.”  So one of his bros threw a football at him.  The ball hit him square in the face and they decided he probably wasn’t joking.  They escorted him the rest of the way to D-Town, but you better believe they gave him tons of crap for ruining the roadtrip.

Meanwhile, Jesus had gone ahead to Damascus and appeared to this guy named Ananias.  He said, “Ananaias, my man.  Get over to this house on Straight Street and hit up this guy named Saul.  I told him you’d be coming.”

Ananias heard this and he was like, “Heeeeeeck no!  My sister told me about this dude.  She’s a Sunday School teacher down in Jerusalem and Saul shaved her beard because of it.  What’s to say he won’t do the same to me?”

But Jesus said, “Hey.  Ananias.  It’s me.  It’s under control, alright?  This dude is going to be my missionary to those sexual deviants across the pond and he needs to know about some heavy stuff he’s gotta deal with now that he and I are friends.”

So Ananias went and met up with Saul who had been praying for three days straight – partly because God had changed his heart and partly because there wasn’t a lot else for blind people to do in the days before talk radio.

Ananias put his hands on Saul and said, “Hey Saul.  Jesus – that guy you bumped into on the way into town – sent me over here to fix your eyes and to fill you with the Holy Spirit.  So be healed, be filled, and hey, take it easy on my sister would ya?”

Some contact lenses with expired prescriptions fell from Saul’s eyes and – wallah! – he could see again.  He left the house, got himself baptized, ate fifteen falafels (he hadn’t had anything but Doritos since leaving Jerusalem), and changed his name to Paul because he knew he’d never get into missionary school with a name like Saul.