Book of Common Prayer

We have ways of keeping you safe

²³ So the tribune summoned two of the centurions.

“Get ready a squad of two hundred,” he said. “They’re going to Caesarea. Also take seventy horsemen and two hundred light-armed guards. They leave at nine o’clock tonight. ²⁴ Get horses ready for Paul to ride, and take him safely to Felix the governor.”

²⁵ He wrote a letter which went like this:

²⁶ “Claudius Lysias, to the most excellent governor Felix, greeting. ²⁷ This man was seized by the Jews, who were going to kill him. When I learned that he was a Roman citizen I went with the guard and rescued him. ²⁸ I wanted to know the charge on which they were accusing him, so I took him into their Sanhedrin. ²⁹ There I discovered that he was being accused in relation to disputes about their law, but that he was not being charged with anything for which he would deserve to die or to be imprisoned. ³⁰ I then received information that there was to be a plot against him. So I am sending him to you at once. I have told his accusers that they must inform you of their charges against him.”

³¹ So the soldiers did what they were told. They took Paul and brought him by night to Antipatris, ³² and the next day they allowed the horsemen to go on with him while they returned to barracks. ³³ The company arrived at Caesarea and handed over the letter to the governor, presenting Paul at the same time. ³⁴ Felix read the letter, and asked which jurisdiction Paul was from. He found out that he was from Cilicia.

³⁵ “I will hear your case,” he said, “when your accusers arrive.”

He ordered that he be kept under guard in Herod’s Praetorium.

Jesus and John the Baptist

¹⁸ The disciples of John the Baptist told him about all these things. John called two of these followers ¹⁹ and sent them to the master with this message: “Are you the Coming One, or should we expect someone else?”

²⁰ The men arrived where Jesus was. “John the Baptist,” they said, “has sent us to you to say, ‘Are you the Coming One, or should we expect someone else?’ ”

²¹ Then and there Jesus healed several people of diseases, plagues and possession by unclean spirits; and he restored the sight of several blind people. ²² Then he answered them: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind see, the lame walk, people with virulent skin diseases are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor hear the gospel. ²³ And a blessing on the person who isn’t shocked by me!”

²⁴ So off went John’s messengers.

Jesus then began to talk to the crowds about John. “Why did you go out into the desert?” he asked. “What were you looking for? A reed swaying in the breeze? ²⁵ Well then, what did you go out to see? Someone dressed in silks and satins? See here, if you want to find people wearing fine clothes and living in luxury, you’d better look in royal palaces. ²⁶ So what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes indeed, and more than a prophet. ²⁷ This is the one of whom the Bible says, ‘Look: I send my messenger before my face; he will get my path ready ahead of me.’

²⁸ “Let me tell you this,” he went on. “Nobody greater than John has ever been born of women. But the one who is least in God’s kingdom is greater than he is.”

²⁹ When all the people, and the tax-collectors, heard that, they praised God for his faithfulness; they had been baptized with John’s baptism. ³⁰ But the Pharisees and the lawyers, who had not been baptized by John, rejected God’s plan for them.

³¹ “What picture can I use,” Jesus continued, “for the people of this generation? What are they like? ³² They’re like children sitting in the square and calling this old riddle to each other:

³³ “When John the Baptist came, he didn’t eat bread or drink wine, and you say, ‘He’s got a demon!’ ³⁴ When the son of man came, eating and drinking, you say, ‘Look! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!’ ³⁵ Well, wisdom is justified by all her children.”