Book of Common Prayer

¹⁸ When morning came, there was quite a commotion among the guards as to what had become of Peter. ¹⁹ Herod looked for him but couldn’t find him. He interrogated the guards and ordered them to be put to death. Then he left Judaea and went down to Caesarea, and stayed there.

Herod’s vanity and death

²⁰ Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon. They all came together to meet him, and they persuaded Blastus, who was in charge of the king’s bedchamber, to seek a reconciliation. (They were, you see, dependent on the king’s country for their food.) ²¹ So a day was set, and Herod dressed himself in his royal robes and took his seat on the official platform to make a public address to them.

²² The people began to shout, “The voice of a god, not of a mortal!”

²³ Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he didn’t give God the glory. He was eaten by worms and expired.

²⁴ But God’s word grew and multiplied. ²⁵ Barnabas and Saul had by now accomplished their ministry in Jerusalem, and they came back to Antioch, bringing John Mark with them.

The calling of Levi

¹³ Once more Jesus went out beside the sea. All the crowd came to him, and he taught them.

¹⁴ As he went along he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the toll booth. “Follow me!” he said. And he got up and followed him.

¹⁵ That’s how Jesus came to be sitting at home with lots of tax-collectors and sinners. There they were, plenty of them, sitting with Jesus and his disciples; they had become his followers.

¹⁶ When the legal experts from the Pharisees saw him eating with tax-collectors and sinners, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?”

¹⁷ When Jesus heard it, he said to them, “It’s sick people who need the doctor, not healthy ones. I came to call the bad people, not the good ones.”

Questions about fasting

¹⁸ John’s disciples, and the Pharisees’ disciples, were fasting. People came and said to Jesus, “Look here: John’s disciples are fasting, and so are the Pharisees’ disciples; why aren’t yours?”

¹⁹ “How can the wedding guests fast,” Jesus replied, “if the bridegroom is there with them? As long as they’ve got the bridegroom with them, they can’t fast.

²⁰ “Mind you, the time is coming when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. They’ll fast then all right.

²¹ “No one sews unshrunk cloth onto an old cloak. If they do, the new patch will tear the old cloth, and they’ll end up with a worse hole. ²² Nor does anyone put new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the wine will burst the skins, and they’ll lose the wine and the skins together. New wine needs fresh skins.”