Acts 22:1-22

I find collective nouns fascinating. A group of birds is a flock unless they are geese and then they are a gaggle. If you take one bird and replace it with another, it is still a flock. If you replace every bird, it remains a flock. Groups of people do not work the same. A group of people driven by emotion and led by a single individual may be a mob. However, if you exchange the leader with another person, the dynamics change and your mob may become a crowd. With another change in leadership, your crowd may become a protest. Single individuals in a group of people are seldom interchangeable.

The group of people that Paul made his defense to was different from the group of Asian Jews that started the riot. They were different from the group of Jewish leadership that formed the Sanhedrin. People, who had nowhere else to be, formed this crowd. People with families, jobs and responsibilities do not have time to protest. These people were Jewish, but they had not prospered under Roman control. They were beggars, unemployed day laborers and homeless street people.

When Paul spoke to them in Aramaic, they became an audience. Paul told them that he was a Jew who was born in Tarsus but raised in Jerusalem, and they were impressed. They were even more impressed to learn that he studied under the scholar Gamaliel. They listened carefully as he told them how he persecuted the followers of Jesus. They continued listening as he told them about the blinding light and his conversion experience.  His repentance and baptism did not upset them; they remained very quiet and listened intently.

When Paul told them that the Lord sent him to the gentiles, they changed from an audience back into a mob. They were outraged; they were Jews, “God’s Chosen People”, and they believed Gentiles needed them to reach God. They were wrong; Jesus cut out the middleman. Jesus became the only intercessor we will ever need.