Book of Common Prayer

Warding off the inevitable

¹⁵ After those days we made preparations to go up to Jerusalem. ¹⁶ Some of the disciples from Caesarea went with us, and took us to the house of Mnason, an elderly disciple from Cyprus. That was where we were going to be staying.

¹⁷ When we came to Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters welcomed us gladly. ¹⁸ On the next day Paul went in with us to see James, with all the elders present. ¹⁹ He greeted them and laid out before them everything which God had done through his ministry among the Gentiles, telling it all step by step. ²⁰ They praised God when they heard it.

“You see, brother,” they said, “that there are many thousands of Jews who have believed. They are all of them fiercely enthusiastic for the law. ²¹ But what they have heard about you is that you teach all the Jews who live among the nations to abandon Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children and not to keep the customs. ²² Where does this leave us? They will certainly hear that you have come. ²³ So do what we tell you: there are four men here who have taken a vow upon themselves. ²⁴ Join in with these men. Purify yourself along with them, and pay the expenses for them as they have their heads shaved. That way everyone will know that there is no truth in the accusations against you, but rather that you too are behaving as a law-observant Jew should. ²⁵ As for the Gentiles who have believed, we have written to them with our decision that they should keep themselves from what has been sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from fornication.”

²⁶ So Paul took the men and, the next day, underwent the ritual of purification alongside them. He went into the Temple and made the declaration, stating when the days of purification would be completed and when the time would come for sacrifice to be offered for each of them.

Questions about table-company and fasting

²⁷ After this Jesus went out and saw a tax-collector called Levi, sitting at the tax-office. “Follow me,” he said. ²⁸ And he left everything, got up, and followed him.

²⁹ Levi made a great feast for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax-collectors and others were there reclining at table. ³⁰ The Pharisees and the legal experts began to grumble to Jesus’ disciples.

“Why do you lot eat and drink,” they asked, “with tax-collectors and sinners?”

³¹ “Healthy people don’t need a doctor,” replied Jesus. “It’s sick people who do! ³² I haven’t come to call the righteous; I’m calling sinners to repentance.”

³³ “John’s disciples often fast, and say prayers,” they said to him, “and so do the Pharisees’ followers—but your disciples eat and drink.”

³⁴ “Can you make the wedding guests fast,” replied Jesus, “while the bridegroom is with them? ³⁵ But the time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them. That’s when they will fast.”

³⁶ He added this parable. “Nobody tears a piece of cloth from a new coat to make a patch on an old one. If they do, they tear the new, and the patch from it won’t fit the old one anyway. ³⁷ And nobody puts new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins: it will go to waste, and the skins will be ruined too. ³⁸ You have to put new wine in new skins. ³⁹ And nobody who drinks old wine wants new. ‘I prefer the old,’ they say.”