Paul has spent a chapter establishing that he owes his gospel to nobody. Today he describes the one occasion when he did submit it for review, what the review concluded — and then what happened a while later in a dining room in Antioch, when the agreement met an actual meal.
What happens
"Then after fourteen years I again went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also… when they recognized the grace bestowed upon me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas their right hands in partnership, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only, we were to be mindful of the poor, which is the very thing I was eager to do. And when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong. For, until some people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to draw back and separated himself, because he was afraid of the circumcised. And the rest of the Jews also acted hypocritically along with him, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy… I said to Cephas in front of all, 'If you, though a Jew, are living like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?'"
What to notice
The Jerusalem leaders are called styloi, pillars — temple architecture. Solomon's temple had two named pillars at its porch, Jachin and Boaz (1 Kings 7:21). Paul is describing James, Cephas and John as the load-bearing columns of a sanctuary — a considerable compliment, which also comes wrapped in hoi dokountes, "those reputed to be," a phrase he uses three times here and which is not entirely warm. Dexias edōkan… koinōnias — "they gave the right hands of partnership" — was a formal legal gesture, the way treaties were sealed; this is a ratification, not a friendly moment. The single stipulation is one line and it is not doctrinal: "only, that we should remember the poor."The one condition attached to the recognition of Paul's gospel is a charitable obligation. Then Antioch, where the tenses matter: synēsthien, he used to eat with the Gentiles — imperfect, habitual — and then hypestellen kai aphōrizen heauton, he began drawing back and separating himself, both imperfect, a gradual withdrawal rather than an announcement. Hypostellō is a military word for pulling back, also used of furling a sail. Nobody made a ruling. He just started sitting somewhere else. The charge is hypokrisis, and the Greek is lighter than the English: hypokritēs is an actor, the man who speaks from behind a mask. Paul is not accusing Peter of secretly disbelieving in the Gentile mission but of performing a role he does not hold. The worst line is four words: sunapēchthē kai Barnabas, "even Barnabas was carried away" — the man who vouched for Paul when the Jerusalem church was still afraid of him (Acts 9:27) — and the verb is passive. The diagnosis is a rare word: ouk orthopodousin, "they are not walking straight-footed" — a gait rather than a decision. And one last thing to be honest about: Paul never tells us how it ended. We do not know whether Peter sat back down.
The addressee is the point. Halelu et-Yahweh kol-goyim — "praise Yahweh, all you goyim." Not Israel. The whole psalm is a summons to the nations, and it is placed on the day the Church reads about an argument over whether Gentiles are fully at the table. Paul knew the verse: in Romans 15:11 he strings together four scriptures to prove the Gentiles were always intended, and this is one of them. The verb in Psalm 117:2 is stronger than the English suggests: ki gavar aleinu chasdo, "for his hesed has prevailed over us."Gavar is a combat word, from the root behind gibbor, warrior — used of floodwaters overwhelming the earth in Genesis 7:18–20. His covenantloyalty has overpowered us, not merely is great toward us. And on this particular memorial a word meaning prevailed is not accidental: Our Lady of the Rosary was instituted as Our Lady of Victory, after the naval engagement at Lepanto in 1571. Two verses, and the argument is complete: the nations are told to praise, and the reason given is a hesed that overwhelms. Nothing about qualification, and nothing about circumcision.
Luke has told us more than once that Jesus withdrew to pray, and never what he said. Here a disciple waits until he has finished and asks — not teach us to pray better, but teach us a prayer, the way a school has one.
What happens
"He was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, 'Master, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.' He said to them, 'When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your reign come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.'"
What to notice
The request is sociological before it is spiritual: kathōs kai Iōannēs edidaxen tous mathētas autou, "as John also taught his disciples." In that world a group's prayer was its identity card — the Baptist's people had one, the Pharisees had their forms — and the disciples are asking for the thing that makes them a school rather than a crowd. Luke's version is markedly shorter than Matthew's: five petitions, not seven, with no your will be done and no deliver us from the evil one. Most scholars think Luke's is closer to the original and Matthew's is the liturgically rounded form the churches actually prayed. The version the Church says aloud is Matthew's; the version read this morning is the leaner one. It opens with one word: Pater — Father, with no our, no in heaven, no qualifier — and behind it almost certainly the Aramaic Abba, which Paul quotes untranslated twice (Galatians 4:6, Romans 8:15) precisely because the word itself was the point. The bread petition contains the most famous unsolved word in the Greek New Testament: epiousiosoccurs nowhere in Greek literature before the gospels, and Origen said flatly that he thought the evangelists coined it. Three derivations compete — epi + ousia, "bread for our existence"; epi + ienai, "bread for the coming day"; or hē epiousa, the standard phrase for tomorrow. Jerome reports that the Gospel according to the Hebrews had mahar, Aramaic for tomorrow — and if that is right the petition asks for tomorrow's bread today. The verbs also differ from Matthew's in a way that suits Luke: Matthew has dos… sēmeron, give — once — today; Luke has didou… kath' hēmeran, keep giving, day by day. The forgiveness petition has a seam worth seeing — pardon is asked for our sins but our own forgiving releaseseveryone indebted to us, because behind both is the Aramaic choba, which means a debt and a sin with the same breath. And the last petition uses the definite article: the test — peirasmosbeing a trial, an examination, the pressure that finds out what a thing is made of. The prayer's last word is a request not to be examined.
Give us each day our bread — and forgive us, as we release our debtors
The connection today is not thematic. It is a dining room, and the lectionary has put a prayer about bread next to a story about who was allowed to eat it.
What happened at Antioch is worth stating precisely, because it is usually described as a doctrinal dispute and it was not — not yet. Nobody at Antioch had changed their theology. Peter had been eating with Gentile believers, habitually, for some time; the men who arrived from James did not, so far as Paul reports, issue a ruling or demand anything. Peter simply began sitting elsewhere — hypestellen kai aphōrizen heauton, both verbs imperfect, which is to say gradual. A practice changed before an argument was ever had, and if Paul had not stood up, the practice would have quietly become the doctrine.
Which is why Paul's charge is hypokrisis, play-acting, rather than heresy. He is not accusing Peter of believing the wrong thing; he says as much in Galatians 2:14 — you, a Jew, live like a Gentile — how can you compel Gentiles to live like Jews? Peter's convictions are not in question. His feet are. Ouk orthopodousin, they are not walking straight, and the whole rebuke is about a gap between what a man holds and where he sits down.
And the detail Paul includes that he did not have to is even Barnabas. That is the man who took a risk on him when nobody else in the church would. Paul names him among the carried-away, in a letter he knew would be read aloud — and the passive voice is the only mercy he extends: Barnabas did not decide, he was swept along, which is how this sort of thing usually happens to decent people.
Then the psalm, two verses long, telling the goyim to praise Yahweh because his hesed has overpowered us. It is the psalm Paul himself cites when he wants to prove the Gentiles were always in the plan, and it makes its case in twenty-nine Hebrew words without arguing at all. The scripture that settles the Antioch question is the shortest one in the book.
And then the prayer, which is what a table looks like when it is working. Give us — plural — each day our bread. Forgive us, for we ourselves release everyone indebted to us.Both petitions are in the first person plural and neither can be prayed alone. You cannot ask for our bread at a table you have withdrawn from, and the forgiveness clause makes our own releasing of debtors the stated ground of the request. Peter at Antioch has a problem with the third petition before he has one with any article of the creed.
The memorial belongs here better than a Marian feast might be expected to. The rosary is the Our Father said again around a circle of beads, and its whole method is that the prayer is said again tomorrow — which is Luke's grammar exactly: didou kath' hēmeran, keep giving, day by day. Not a request made once and answered, but a practice. And if epiousios really does mean tomorrow's, then the prayer asks each morning for bread belonging to a day that has not come — a reasonable description of what anyone is doing with a string of beads.
A Question to Sit With
Nobody at Antioch announced a new policy. Peter simply began sitting somewhere else, and the others followed, and a decent man like Barnabas was carried along without ever having decided anything. That is how it usually goes — the practice moves first and the reasons are supplied later, if at all. I would like to think my convictions govern where I sit. If someone watched only my feet for a month, what would they conclude I believed?