Acts 28:1-10

Somehow we seem to have found ourselves in the middle of an action adventure novel. After surviving his shipwreck at sea, Paul and his shipmates are pleasantly surprised to discover that they have landed on Malta, an island south of Sicily, where the natives show them “unusual kindness.” But as soon as that episode closes, a new adventure begins. While gathering firewood, Paul is bitten by a deadly viper snake. The natives take it as a sign that Paul is an evil man, but he shrugs off the viper and remains unaffected by its deadly venom. This leads the natives to re-evaluate their assessment of Paul and they begin to deify him. When Paul heals the father of Publius, the leader of the island community, along with many others who were sick, the islanders provide a fully provisioned ship for them to continue their voyage to Rome.

For a moment it felt as though I had wondered into an Indiana Jones movie. This part of Paul’s story seems to have been embellished in the telling and has acquired a folklore feeling.

Folklore is an important way that we convey meaning. There are experiences in our lives that become larger than life as we retell the stories because in retrospect we realize they were more significant than we imagined.

When I first came to church, I was impressed by the folklore surrounding Dr. Carlton Brooks Miller and his ministry at First Congregational Church. He obviously has had a huge role in helping our church grow during the early part of the 20th century. His charisma is legendary and whenever his name is invoked it is spoken with deep awe and reverence, but I’m fairly confident he put his pants on one leg at a time.

I don’t mean to diminish the significant of Dr. Miller’s life and ministry in any way. Folklore is extremely important. We don’t remember the historical details of a person’s life. We remember them for the impact that they made on us and on others. That impact is always larger than the sum of the actual words spoken and deeds enacted.