Goodbye at Miletus

Waves slap against the harbour wall. A ship is waiting. And a group of grown men are kneeling together on the stones, arms around one old friend, crying like children.

Paul is on his way to Jerusalem, and he is in a hurry. He wants to arrive in time for the feast of Pentecost. So he has decided to sail past Ephesus, the great city where he spent about three years teaching and building a church. But he cannot bear to go by without a word. When his ship stops at the port of Miletus, south of Ephesus, he sends a message: ask the elders of the church to come. They make the journey. And Paul, knowing this may be the last time, speaks to them from his heart.

You know how I lived among you, he says, from the very first day I came into Asia. I served the Lord with humility, with tears, through hard trials. I didn't hold back anything that would help you. I taught you in public and from house to house. I told Jews and Greeks alike to turn to God and trust in our Lord Jesus. And now, Paul says, I am going to Jerusalem, bound by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen there. Only that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that chains and hardship are waiting. “But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy.”

Then he says the hardest words of all. I know that none of you, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, will see my face again. So he gives them a charge. “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers.” Look after God's people like shepherds, he says, the church God bought with his own blood. Because after I leave, fierce wolves will come in, not sparing the flock. Even from among your own group, some will twist the truth to draw people after them. So stay awake. Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you, night and day, with tears.

Paul holds out his hands. I never wanted anyone's silver or gold or clothes, he tells them. You know these hands worked to supply what I needed, and what the people with me needed too. I showed you that by working hard we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus himself: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” And when he had said this, Paul knelt down with them all and prayed. They all wept. They threw their arms around his neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all at his words that they would never see his face again. Then they walked with him all the way to the ship.

When Paul said these hands, he meant it literally. Acts tells us that in Corinth he stayed with Aquila and Priscilla because they shared the same trade: they were tentmakers, working with cloth and leather. In his letters to the Thessalonians, Paul reminds them that he worked night and day so as not to be a burden to anyone while he preached. A leader of the church, earning his own bread with a needle and an awl.

Goodbye at Miletus. You'll find it in Acts chapter twenty, verses seventeen to thirty-eight. A farewell between friends, full of tears, prayer, warnings and love, and Jesus' words about giving that Luke kept for us here. So here is a question to carry with you. Who has cared for you the way Paul cared for these friends, and how could you thank them?