Brief synopsis of the readings: Last week we saw the Acts of the Apostles move from Peter and the original followers of Jesus to Paul and Barnabas. This week we continue to witness the travels of Paul and Barnabas. They travelled through several areas (Lystra, Iconium, Antioch, Pisidia, Pamphylia, Perga, Attalia, and Antoich). At the end of the reading they proclaimed that they “opened the door of faith to the pagans.” John’s Gospel describes the scene at the Last Supper directly after Jesus called out Judas. Jesus knew who was going to betray him and dismissed him (knowing Judas would come back with those who would arrest Jesus). Jesus then told those gathered that God will be glorified, and that God will glorify him. But he also tells them that he will not be with them much longer. He then commands them to love one another and that by loving one another, others will recognize them as Jesus’ disciples.

These readings are what I often call the “and then…” readings. These are readings where something happens to cause their characters to come to a different understanding of themselves by the end of the reading. These readings change their lives in ways that none of them expected.

OK, you have to know I’m going to do this: Most of the year I begin with the first reading and move into the Gospel, but since the Gospel/Acts chronology is reversed (that is, the events in the Gospel happen before the events in the first reading), I’m going to begin with the Gospel.

All four Gospels describe the Last Supper, but John’s Gospel describes the same events through a different lens. In the other Gospels, the interaction between Jesus and Judas is really run by Judas. Here Jesus calls Judas out by name and Judas storms out. We can only imagine the reactions of the other apostles but the word “bewilderment” must take an important place.

And Jesus’ words after this must have compounded their bewilderment. This is where the “and then…” begins. We honestly don’t know what the remaining apostles were expecting, but it’s fair to say that nobody expected Judas’ expulsion. We know that they recognized Jesus as the Messiah. Did they expect that he would raise an army to defeat the Romans and return them to the days of King David? Did they expect that God would intervene and lead them into a new promised land?

We don’t know but it’s a fair bet that they never expected that Judas would return with Roman soldiers who would arrest and kill Jesus.

And yet, we know this will happen. And we know that it had to happen. Only by Jesus dying and rising from the dead do we all have a path to eternal life. Only by descending to the lowest can we rise to the highest.

And so when Judas stormed off Jesus did not attempt to comfort the remaining apostles. Instead he gave them a command: love one another as I have loved you. If we can see the betrayal of Jesus by Judas as the ultimate act of hate and fear, Jesus leads in the other direction. He commands them to love, and he goes further.

He tells them that only by loving one another will they be successful. Only by loving one another will they be recognized by those who never knew Jesus. Only by loving one another will they be able to reach the whole world by communicating a message that attracts others. And only by loving one another can we recognize the song made famous by Vacation Bible School: They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love.

And this is where we bring in the first reading. Last week I spoke about how the earliest followers of Jesus limited their ministry to other Jews, and how that didn’t work. I also spoke about how Paul and Barnabas then decided that if they weren’t successful with the Jews they would move to the rest of the world and carry their message to the Gentiles. This wasn’t just an easy or practical decision. Paul and those who travelled with him were conditioned to look on the Gentiles with derision. They were not supposed to eat with them or even have much contact. They were not the chosen ones. For Paul and Barnabas to see them as part of the salvation plan of Jesus called them to move beyond the world they expected.

And yet today we see a continuation of their journey: Paul and Barnabas moved onto “Plan B,” and they found success. Because of this large numbers of Gentiles found themselves attracted by Jesus’ message and became followers and this morphed into the worldwide Christianity that we recognize today.

And so what of us? We all dream of “Plan A.” If we are truly honest, we often believe that we can convince God to follow our Plan A. But if Jesus didn’t call out Judas, if Jesus hadn’t been betrayed, executed, and resurrected, we wouldn’t be who we are. Instead we would be a subset of Judaism, a small group who looked on Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, a man who lived a full life and died of natural causes in old age. We would have lasted a few decades after Jesus and just disappeared.

More to the point, that Jesus would not have appeared to Paul. We would not know about the “road to Damascus” and Paul would have spent his life as a Pharisee, persecuting the followers of Jesus.

I write this because all of us (all of us) recognize times when we’ve had the “and then…” moments. We’ve decided that we know what God wants us to do and what will happen. We bask in the certainty that the world will follow our directions and all will be well.

Except that it doesn’t. We’ve seen how our lives to veer into “and so…” moments that make our lives complicated and oftentimes painful. That perfect job goes away, that perfect person refuses our proposal, that best friend betrays us.

And only in the years or decades in hindsight do we understand that our nightmare becomes the ground that spouts our greatest joy.

These readings call us not only to recognize this with past tragedies, but with current ones. So many of us live and die on the last thing that did or didn’t go our way, but we shouldn’t. If these readings teach us anything it should teach us this: While God doesn’t show us why things happen to us, God’s love does show us that at the end of the day we will end up as Jesus did. We will end up with an empty tomb. Those who survive us should not look for the dead among the living because we will all live forever.

And our eternal life has several “and then…” moments.