Snakebite
Having survived two weeks being blown about in a storm, Paul's ship was driven onto a sandbank and began to break up. Everyone on board survived, and they ended up, shivering on a beach (now known as St Paul’s Bay) on Malta. The locals made a fire for the shipwrecked travellers, who helped by scavenging for twigs and bits of wood to make a fire. Paul, putting wood on the fire, was bitten by a viper, but shook off the attack and survived unharmed. Luke was an eye witness. But there's a problem with the story: it sometimes said that there are no venomous snakes on Malta. That's a slight exaggeration: there are no snakes with sufficiently strong venom to kill someone.
So what’s going on?
Did Luke make up the story? That's simply not his style. If he had been making up the story in order to validate Paul's ministry he could have put it in much earlier in the narrative .
Did he exaggerate a story about Paul being bitten by a less dangerous snake? The Black Whip Snake will bite and hold on, and (although not strictly classed as venomous) it can cause swelling and neuro-motor problems, but that's all. So maybe the bit about the locals expecting Paul to die was a bit of a misunderstanding. After all, the Maltese should have known what snakes existed in their own island. But they weren't Greek speakers (that's what “barbarians” means) and Luke may have not understood what they were saying.
As a doctor one would expect him to be able to identify venomous snakes ; that was part of the knowledge base of the first century medical profession. The behaviour Luke describes, a Viper biting and holding on, is typical of the Levantine Viper which is common today in North Africa, Cyprus and Turkey. It may be that the Levantine Viper was found in Malta two thousand years ago. The Levantine Viper is frequently find around small trees and Malta has very few trees today. So it could be that the loss of habitat combined with persecution, caused the snake to become extinct in Malta. We used to have wolves and bears in Scotland (wolves as late as the time of Cromwell). There are no lions or deer today in the holy land though clearly there were in Bible times.
So why does Luke include this story? I believe he does because it happened pretty much as he describes. I believe he does because it's an example of God at work.
For the Maltese like other people in the Roman world, justice was see not just as a principle but as a goddess. “This man escaped drowning but Justice got him in the end.” The Luke tells with a satisfying sense of irony, how the people changed from thinking he had been caught by a god, to thinking he was a god. In particular, for Christians, it illustrates the point that Paul experiences God's victory in Christ over the forces of evil as symbolised by the snake; and were a fulfilment of Jesus words in Mark 16. 18.
But Luke doesn't labour the point. He simply tells the story and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. And that is how we should handle the supernatural. We should expect God to be at work. When he is at work, there will always be an alternative explanation from somewhere. When he is at work, it is not an occasion for hype or exaggeration; it doesn't prove anything; it simply happened. That is how we should tell it. Let people draw their own conclusions.
Publius' Father
The celebrity guests were welcomed in the home of Publius, the “Chieftain” (literally first man) of the island, where they stayed for three days. He was a local landowner, and probably functioned as a “puppet king” under Roman authority. Paul heard that Publius' father was ill; the combination of fever and dysentery still happens and is known as Malta fever; it probably comes from a germ that is carried in goats milk. Luke's medical interest is showing here! Paul responded by bringing the healing of Jesus to the old man. The sentence in Greek reads like this: “coming to him, praying, laying his hands on him, Paul healed him.” There are four verbs, and each one describes a simple, complete action. None of them are long, drawn-out actions. The last one, healing him, isn't a long drawn out process involving the other three. It is three simple actions leading to a fourth simple outcome. These three complete actions that were part of the process are worth looking at in detail.
He Went. God can heal from a distance, and we can pray for people at a distance, knowing God hears. But the Jesus way to engage in the supernatural, is generally through presence, going there; being with people. It makes sense. In counselling, we are taught to be “fully present” with the person we are helping.; that is, fully engaged, listening, feeling what they are feeling. The very experience of “presence” can be a healing thing in itself.
He Prayed. All healing, whether medical or miraculous, comes from God. The doctor or other health worker who wants to bring healing from God, will not rely simply on their medical skill but will pray for those they work with. And similarly, the person seeking to minister healing supernaturally, will also remember that the source is God himself, not us; so we will pray, as we seek to be channels of God's healing. We will pray for the person we are ministering to, for grace, for an encounter with father’s love, for healing and strength. We will pray for ourselves, for power, for wisdom, for faith, for guidance: “Lord, what do you want me to say, what do you want me to do, what are you going to do in this person's life?”
He Laid hands on him. Someone once said “Jesus didn’t' send us out to pray for the sick but to heal the sick!” That is a slight overstatement, but I think I know what they mean. It is good, having prayed, and having received some sense of direction from God, to lay hands on the sufferer, as a sign of passing something on from God to the person. Jesus used many forms of contact – spitting, mud, touch, as well as speech – speaking to the sick person. Laying on hands says “I believe God wants to do something for you; reach out and receive what God has for you.” God will use us if we will use that simple example: go, pray, touch.
Crowds.
As a result of what happened, led to a flood tide of people, coming and seeking healing. This time, the verbs are imperfect, which means the coming and the curing kept on happening. The island would take about 6 hours to walk from one end to the other. Some may have heard and arrived almost immediately, but it must have taken at least a day or two for word to get all round the place, possibly longer as many people would probably be in scattered villages. I imagine that over the next three months while people were wintering on the island, Paul, Luke and those with them had regular visitors. He says when they left “we were honoured.” Paul's ministry got others including Luke involved too, and the healings may have been partly miraculous and partly medical.
So what does Luke tell us?
The whole story, from Publius' father to the crowds, is very similar to that of Peter’s mother-in-law (Lk 4. 38ff) so what Paul is doing is very much the Jesus' way of ministering. Here, at the end of he Acts of the Apostles, Jesus is still in business, healing the sick. The kingdom continues to operate through the Church.
Luke takes one verse to describe the old man's disease and how Paul sorted him. He takes one verse to sum up the ministry to the crowds. As in his telling of the story of the snake, Luke is calm, matter-of fact, and scientific. There is no place for drama, exaggeration or hype.
Luke says very little about what happened afterwards. He doesn't specifically say that people believed in Jesus. or that a church was planted. The only hint is that they honoured and rewarded Paul and his friends. And there is a tradition that Publius became the leader of the Church on the island. It's possible that the gospel had already come to Malta as it was a stopping off point for shipping to Rome. Luke doesn't tell us. We shouldn't make too many conclusions from Luke’s silence. He leaves a number of things unsaid. For example, the islanders decided Paul must be a god when he shook off the viper. Can you imagine Paul letting that go unchecked? But Luke doesn’t' mention what Paul said. As ever, Luke tells the story without labouring all the details. In the end, it's the same picture of Paul, as in the last chapter,, practical, pastoral, caring for those around him, in the power of the Spirit.
Maybe we need to engage in Kingdom ministry and not worry too much about the loose ends. We encounter evil in the world – Satan, sickness and the false gods of the paganism around us. We challenge that in the name of Jesus – not for the sake of he spectacular, but simply because presenting that challenge is the right response of the Kingdom of god. And then we need to leave the responses to the people and to God.
© Gilmour Lilly February 2015
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