Open-Air Acts: Navigating Life’s Ups and Downs with Comedy and Creativity (Acts 9:23–31;20:7–12)

Opening Up-and-Down

From the opening bell, indices like the Dow and S&P 500 chart the seismographic ups and downs of market values across the business day. Volatility, what some call “animal spirits,” ³ is baked into the system. The trick is to navigate this juddering rollercoaster toward maximum profit and, by all means avoid, a “crash.”

What does this have to do with Luke’s world? Nothing in terms of financial metrics and everything in terms of spatial geography. Luke stages the story of Jesus Christ and his followers as a precarious vertical journey in a hierarchical universe, typical of the era’s worldview, with “heaven above and . . . earth below” (Acts 2:19) and with earthly rulers dominating underclasses (Luke 22:24–25). Animating this trek, however, is the dynamic Spirit of God, imaged as a kind of animal spirit, likened to a dove that dives through an open heaven, descends upon Jesus at his baptism, and then drives him into the wilderness for combat with the devil (Luke 3:21–22; 4:1–2). The Spirit-Dove of peace and power ⁴ soars high and strafes low, lifts and levels (Luke 1:52; 3:4–6), soothes and shakes things up and down (Acts 4:31).

This wild up-down, high-low work of God’s Spirit is manifest from the start of Jesus’s life: conceived by the Holy Spirit as Son of the Most High in the womb of a “lowly” young woman from backwater Nazareth of Galilee (Luke 1:26–38, 46–55), descended from King David’s messianic line and born in Bethlehem of Judea, the city of David, yet delivered in a typical peasant residence (no palace) ⁵ and laid in an animal trough (manger) (1:32; 2:1–7). Soon thereafter, the aged Spirit-inspired Simeon recognizes the child Jesus as the consummate mediator of God’s “salvation” for Israel and “all peoples” (2:25–32). But this salvation will upend the status quo, as “this child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel” (2:34). This portends the world-shaking mission of Jesus and associates who will become (in)famous for “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6), ⁶ for upsetting the normal order of things.

Positive signs of putting the world to rights, of pitching the world right-side-up, emerge in periodic portals to new dimensions. The bridge between Luke’s Gospel ending and the opening of Acts marks significant shifts in spatial orientation. Jesus’s crucifixion casts a pall of gloom over witnesses to this horrific “spectacle,” including some faithful women who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee (23:48–49). Their world has shut down and shadowed over, like the eerie midday darkness that drapes the earth for three hours while Jesus hangs on the cross (23:44). His corpse is then taken down and sealed inside “a rock-hewn tomb” with a sizeable stone plugging its entrance (23:53; 24:2).

Against all odds, however, fresh life and light begin to open out from death and darkness. When Mary Magdalene and other women disciples arrive at Jesus’s tomb at dawn on Sunday, they find the blocking stone mysteriously “rolled away.” The tomb is open, but after entering, the women also find it empty: Jesus’s body is gone. But then “two men in dazzling clothes” suddenly appear and scare the daylights out of the women (24:1–5). These “men,” angels in human form (24:23), announce that Jesus has risen, breaking open the ultimate barrier between life and death. But there’s also the social boundary between women and men to consider. When the women report their wondrous experience to the male apostles, Peter and cohort dismiss their word as “brainless babbling” (24:11, my translation). ⁷ Peter dashes to check the tomb for himself and finds it empty, just as the women claimed (24:12). Things are opening up but scarcely resolving at this stage.

As two other Jesus-supporters, Cleopas and an unnamed companion, trudge back from Jerusalem to their Emmaus hometown, they discuss their traumatic loss of messianic hope with Jesus’s crucifixion (24:13–21). The accounts of Jesus’s empty tomb and missing body (24:22–24) leaves many questions unanswered. The traveling pair can hardly see straight or know what to think. In this perplexed state, the risen Jesus approaches and walks beside them—but remains incognito. The couple regard him as a stranger, yet one who speaks with strange intensity and insight while “opening the Scriptures to us” concerning the Messiah’s “necessary” mission through suffering to glory, death to life (24:25–27, 32). Finally, their “eyes were opened” to recognize Jesus when he enters their home and breaks open bread at their table, though right after this epiphany, Jesus vanishes from their midst! (24:30–31). These grand openings remain partial and momentary. An empty tomb and vacant table, together with unfolded Scriptures and unveiled eyes, open up a tantalizing quest for the living Christ.

This quest is partly satisfied when the Emmaus pair return to Jerusalem, relate their encounter with Jesus to the apostles, and suddenly see him again, popping into the room this time, instead of out (24:36). Again Jesus “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” concerning his dying-and-rising vocation as Messiah (24:44–46). Thereafter, he leads them out of Jerusalem to nearby Bethany, where he blesses them and takes his leave, being “carried up into heaven” (24:50–53).

This remarkable ascension closing Luke’s Gospel is reprised in Acts’s opening chapter, but with key addenda that keep the story flowing. Before departing, Jesus promises the gift of God’s Spirit to empower his disciples’ mission “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:4–5, 8). He is then “lifted up” by a cloud into heaven, while “two men in white robes,” reminiscent of the messengers at the empty tomb, announce to the wide-eyed disciples, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from into heaven, will come [back] in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (1:9–11). Notice the fluid movement between up-and-down, in-and-out, heavenly-and-earthly realms. While God has “set” basic times and places for human existence (1:7; 17:26), the symbolic universe of Acts is not set in stone. When the disciples become transfixed by Jesus’s skyward departure, the heavenly agents pull them back to the urgent work of spreading the gospel across the earth as the Spirit opens the way.

Comedy Tonight ⁸

The dizzying yoyo experience from Jesus’s crucifixion and burial, to his empty tomb and post-resurrection appearances, to his departure and ascension, mixes classic genres of tragedy and comedy, with a bent toward the latter. The dead Jesus rises; the departing Jesus will return, and in the interim imbue his followers with God’s Spirit. All’s potentially well that hopes to end well. The Acts story does not wrap up with a bow-topped happy ending (it’s no romcom or sitcom), but it does conclude on the promising note of an open ending (Acts 28:30–31). ⁹ And along the way, it depicts various mini-openings breaking through perilous obstacles.

Happy prospects and outcomes may or may not be funny. Happiness and humor are congenial companions but not always a (happily) married couple. Tough situations may work out fine but not necessarily in a fun way. Even so, comic relief from humor, laughter, wit, satire, and related diversions ease the way through hardships. Humor is a notoriously slippery device to translate across generations (e.g., contextual Dad jokes) and cultures. Puns, for example, play on word sounds and nuances in one language that do not easily cross over to other languages, to say nothing of the fact that not everyone finds puns funny in their own tongue.

Nevertheless, from classical antiquity through Shakespeare up to our own time, certain comic tropes remain fairly stable, like scurrying messengers, naked streakers, clueless fools, disguised characters (with or without masks) and pratfalling bumblers (with or without banana peels). In his effort to provide an entertaining as well as informative historical narrative, the Lukan writer periodically uses these comic conventions. We’ve already seen how the incognito risen Jesus toys with the unsuspecting Emmaus couple, effectively playing them for fools before revealing his true identity. ¹⁰ This may seem like a cruel joke to play on these grieving disciples, but it’s hard not to laugh as the scene unfolds.

Acts has multiple comic incidents, including the running slave-girl Rhoda, who leaves the prison escapee Peter standing outside her mistress’s gate while she dashes to report his arrival to those inside the house praying for his release. On top of it all, they dismiss her message as crazy and hysterical. “You are out of your mind,” they scoff, shades of the men’s mockery of the women’s empty-tomb testimony. Of course, the prayer group looks like fools when Peter is finally let inside (Acts 12:12–17). ¹¹ The seven sons of an alleged high priest named Sceva, who fancy themselves as powerful exorcists, try to “use the name of the Lord Jesus,” whom they know nothing about, to boost their performance. It all backfires disastrously—and comically—when one cheeky evil spirit claims to know Jesus better than these exorcists do and proceeds to pounce on them, strip them, beat them, and send them skittering away naked! (19:13–16). No fool is quite so exposed as a naked fool! ¹² Though not everyone’s cup of tea, bawdy talk and display have long been currencies of comedy.

Including but not limited to indecency, comedy trades on incongruency ¹³ —an unexpected eyepopping or eyerolling break in the action, a sudden opening of the plot to surprising twists and turns toward positive outcomes for the protagonists. To anticipate fuller analysis below, both focal episodes feature comic exits through structural openings. First, the grown man Paul, under a death threat in Damascus, escapes through an opening in the city’s wall into a food basket attached to a rope line and lowered to the ground (9:23–25). Second, an unnamed young man sitting in an open window ledge listening to Paul preach, falls asleep during the sermon and out the window (20:7–9). By most accounts, dropping down from a basket pod and dropping off during a sermon are funny events.

These scenes are made more eccentric and exciting by their nocturnal settings (9:25; 20:7). Nighttime is off time, “frontier” time, ¹⁴ prime time for eerie, spooky, and yes, funny, shenanigans. Horror and humor can make strange bedfellows. ¹⁵ Luke has a penchant for nighttime dramatics, starting with the Lord’s angel scaring the nightlights out of ordinary shepherds but also sharing the stunningly joyous message that “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord [Jesus]” (Luke 2:8–11, 17–20). The three-hour eclipse of the sun at Jesus’s death (23:44–45) is purely tragic, not remotely comic, but its time-flipping signature hints at an evolving process of rending-and-mending a broken world. ¹⁶

Two midnight episodes (in addition to the window incident in Acts 20:7) more directly fuse humorous and harrowing elements. First, Jesus’s parable illustrating bold, persisting prayer features a man who has nothing in his cupboard to feed a late-arriving visitor (Luke 11:5–13). So he goes to his neighbor, a father with children at home—at midnight—to ask for three bread loaves to serve his guest. Naturally, the family is asleep at this hour. The shouting and banging at the door threatens to wake the whole household, prompting the groggy father to retort, “Do not bother me; the door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything” (11:5–7). Notice the momentary freeze on up-and-down, in-and-out action. Anyone who has struggled to get children down for the night understands the father’s frustration but also finds it hard not to smile at his yelling back at the inconsiderate neighbor. If the racket at the door doesn’t rouse the kids, surely, this snapback from the family bed will! The comedy of errors continues as the bread-seeker keeps pleading, and to shut him up, the father finally gets up and hands over the bread. I can’t help imagining he also gets milk for the kids and prays they will go back to sleep. (And somehow all this applies to approaching God the Father in prayer; that’s for another article.)

Second, Acts 16 relates Paul and Silas’s torturous confinement in “the innermost cell” of a Roman jail in Philippi, with their feet bound in stocks (16:23–24). Instead of chafing in these dungeon conditions, “about midnight” the missionary pair break out in prayer and praise songs loud enough that other prisoners could hear, expressing joy amid suffering, lifting their spirits in their bound bodies. Then “suddenly,” a tremendous earthquake erupts, and “the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened” (16:25–26). As the prison walls fall down around them, cells open and chains loosen.

Great news for the prisoners, but not so much for the jailer in charge. He’s been sleeping on the job, and upon his rude awakening by the earthquake, he immediately notices “the prison doors wide open” and assumes a massive jail break. Spotlight on this feckless fool. Cue laugh track, only to cut it off when the jailer whips out his sword with intention to kill himself! (16:27). Better to take his own life than face his superiors’ wrath.

But this fast-paced comedy sketch shifts again as Paul assures the jailer, “We are all here,” whereupon “rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas,” whisked them “outside and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’” Paul crisply answers, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (16:28–31). That’s all it takes for the jailer to invite the missionaries to his home. “At the same hour of the night,” he tends to Paul and Silas’s wounds, feeds them, accepts their “word,” and “without delay” submits to baptism along with his “entire household” (16:32–34). Whew, what a night! What a rip-roaring comic night of ups and downs, openings and upendings, with a Roman guard rapidly moving from fool to believer.

Within this lively array of comedic nocturnal hijinks, we now explore Acts’s two creative open-air acts more closely.

Basket Case (Acts 9:23–31)

This story comes on the heels of Saul’s (aka Paul’s) remarkable volte-face from arch persecutor to (destined) chief promoter of the Jesus movement (9:1–19). Enroute to Damascus to arrest believers in Christ, Saul suddenly “fell to the ground” as a heavenly light “flashed around him” and a voice demanded to know, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (9:3–4). The “me” behind the voice plainly identifies himself: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (9:5). No masquerade this time, just straight-up confrontation by the risen Jesus, though he now pops down to earth from his heavenly station. This is not the climactic return announced at Jesus’s ascension (1:11) but rather a brief interim visit to deal with Saul’s murderous threats (9:1–2). Presumably, Jesus pops back up to heaven afterward. In any case, this scene suggests an open dual-lane highway between heaven and earth.

Like at the Emmaus table with Cleopas and companion, on the Damascus road Jesus disappears from the scene after revealing himself to Saul. Human agents must now help Saul, because when he “got up from the ground . . . though his eyes were open, he could see nothing.” Travel attendants then guide him to a safe house in Damascus, where for three days he remains blind and consumes no food or drink (9:8–9). He’s given a vision, however, assuring him that a disciple named Ananias would come and “lay his hands on him that he might regain his sight”—which is exactly what happens—along with Saul’s infilling with the Holy Spirit, baptism into the Christ community, and commissioning to “bring [Jesus’s] name before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel” (9:10–18).

Ironic-comic reversals pile up: (1) only through blindness are Saul’s eyes opened to Jesus’s true identity; (2) thwarted in his mission to lay hostile hands on Jesus’s disciples, one of these disciples lays healing hands on Saul and prepares him for his expansive Christ-preaching mission to gentiles as well as Jews; (3) after his liminal three-day ordeal, Saul spends several more days with the wider Damascus messianic community, whom he previously aimed to abolish (9:19); and most surprising, (4) he doesn’t simply shut down his counter-Christ campaign but “immediately” begins to boldly proclaim Jesus as Son of God and Messiah in the local synagogues (9:20–22).

All this crazy stir around Saul is more than some Damascus Jews can take, ¹⁷ prompting them to hatch a plot to kill Saul (9:23). The wild wheel of (mis)fortune keeps spinning: the formerly murderous Saul (7:58–8:1; 9:1) is now a murder target. Saul catches wind of the scheme, however, and his new disciple-friends set in motion an escape plan. They have a major problem, though, as Saul’s pursuers are “watching the gates day and night so that they might kill him” (9:24). Spatial and temporal openings seem blocked. Time to engage in “stunning improvisation,” as Willie Jennings remarks. ¹⁸

Stunning, yes, in its ingenuity, but far from spectacular. Saul’s supporters engineer no great escape à la Steve McQueen, but more of a MacGyver-style jerry rig. ¹⁹ They take Saul “by night”—even with round-the-clock gate guarding, night remains the best time for secret action—“and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket” (9:25). This opening is either a window in a residence perched atop the city wall or a battlement gap in the wall’s upper rim for shooting arrows or scouting enemies. ²⁰ The makeshift escape mechanism is a large basket, big enough to hold Saul, pulleyed down by rope to the ground outside.

The dangling basket carry-case (spyris) takes center stage in the acrobatic comedy. Its main purpose was likely to contain foodstuffs, like the leftover bits from Jesus’s munificent dinner on the grounds. ²¹ The picture of the adult Saul, now regarded as a bold witness to Christ, descending the Damascus wall in a picnic basket is ridiculous, making Saul look the fool, though he gets the last laugh on his would-be killers. But why no wall-shattering fanfare (Jericho) or earthquake (Philippi) on this occasion? Why make our hero slide down the wall in a basket and slink away in the dark?

Steve Walton puts as positive a face as one can on the escape, reflecting a master plan of “secrecy . . . and imagination.” ²² It is certainly that, but still no great feat. But that may be the point or at least part of it, in line with Paul’s own ironic-foolish “boast” in “all his weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me,” weaknesses that include a raft of endangerments and friend-aided escapes—including the Damascus basket drop “through a window in the wall” (2 Cor 11:23–33; 12:9–11). ²³ In a related seriocomic vein, Richard Pervo regards the Acts story as a “mock-heroic account that parodies the military exploit of being the first soldier to scale a fortified wall.” ²⁴ Saul-Paul’s strength rooted in the crucified-risen Christ is moral, not martial; other-serving, not domineering; opening a gateway to God’s paradoxical “weak” power and “foolish” wisdom on behalf of those belittled by high society (1 Cor 1:17–31). Touting the “cross of Christ” as the core instrument of divine prowess is laughable by worldly standards, “but to us who are being saved,” the cross marks the highpoint of God’s joyous amazing grace (1:17–18).

The redemptive humor of Saul’s Damascus wall caper comes into sharper relief alongside the famous biblical story of the fall of Jericho (Joshua 2, 6). The tumbling of Jericho’s mighty walls by Joshua’s marching band (special props to the trumpet section) is a riotous hoot (toot). Sadly, however, an awful aftershock ensues, as the Israelites turn their trumpets into swords and utterly annihilate Jericho’s population, including women, children, and animals (Josh 6:21). This may be the most terrible, least funny incident in sacred Scripture. Comedy and tragedy can turn on a dime. But I’m trying to find happier openings in this essay. And it turns out that Israel’s reconnaissance mission before the siege proves especially comical ²⁵ —and relevant to Saul’s Damascus exit.

Soon after entering the land of Canaan, Joshua sends two spies into Jericho to scout the city’s defenses. They first “went and entered the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and spent the night there” (2:1). This house is located in the “‘red lamp’ district” ²⁶ at the edge of town. Okay then, interesting first stop. Perhaps the spies think this is a good place to go unnoticed, get some good gossip on city affairs, and stay the night. Or that’s the story they’ll tell Joshua back in the camp. At any rate, these “two men” are probably soldiers and certainly not angels. Draw your own conclusions about their night plans.

As it happens, they never get beyond the brothel, because Jericho’s ruler gets wind of the infiltrators and demands that Rahab “bring out” the men she’s harboring. In a clever ruse, she admits that two foreigners came calling, but she claims to have no idea they were spies, and in any case, she says they’d already left, hoping to leave the city before the gates closed at dark. The police then set out on a wild goose chase through the countryside (2:2–7). Meanwhile, Rahab had hidden the two Israelites on the roof under a pile of flax stalks. “Before they went to sleep” (together) under these cozy linen covers (to push the flax image), Rahab professes her faith in Israel’s God and proceeds to orchestrate their escape by “let[ting] them down by a rope through a window [in] her house [which] was on the outer side of the city wall, and she resided within the wall itself” (2:8–15).

The Canaanite prostitute Rahab emerges as the story’s heroine (she’s never denigrated for her occupation), while the Israelite secret agents play the fools. Further, beyond demonstrating her prowess for clandestine service, Rahab’s risky operation to save the spies displays her bold faith in Israel’s God (2:11)—faith-in-action, ²⁷ in valorous deed not vacuous word—which secures salvation for her and her household (the only spared inhabitants of Jericho).

Absent the sexual innuendos of the Joshua story, the parallels between the spies’ escape from Jericho and Saul’s escape from Damascus in Acts are obvious. When in trouble, get thee to a hole in the wall, get someone to let you down by a rope—and run! The Israelite spies and Jewish spokesman for Christ need help from ordinary, even subordinary, people—a Canaanite prostitute and rank-in-file Damascene disciples, respectively—in nocturnal comic wall stunts.

For all his potential, Saul-Paul needs a lot of help finding his apostolic feet. He keeps getting into trouble. As walls keep shifting and closing around him, others must lead him in and out in what feels like a running farce. From his narrow escape in Damascus, Saul heads to Jerusalem hoping for a better reception, only to be disappointed. The disciples here remain skeptical and scared of Saul’s supposed conversion (a perfect undercover strategy?). Only when Barnabas vouches for him is Saul encouraged to go “in out among them in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord” (Acts 9:26–28) In turn, however, that stirs up some Greek-speaking Jews (“Hellenists”) who threaten to kill him, prompting some “brothers and sisters” in Christ to whisk him out of town (9:29–30). Sound familiar?

After narrating this whirlwind of events, Acts offers a happy summary: “Meanwhile, the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers” (9:31). Peace, awe, comfort, growth. Sounds nice, almost too nice, like a fairy tale ending. But Acts is no fairy tale. It sustains comic optimism not through facile endings but through agile openings to new challenges. Read on with an open mind.

Lucky Strike (Acts 20:7–12)

Compared with Saul’s escape from Damascus, this dramatic incident set in Troas in northwest Asia Minor (Turkey) is more familiar to Christian audiences. So, a shorter discussion will suffice. The story features a Sunday gathering in an “upstairs room,” where Paul gets wound up preaching until midnight and puts a “young man named Eutychus” to sleep (20:8–9). The episode is tailor-made for lessons about longwinded preachers who put children to sleep, not to mention older men who nod off and merit a sharp elbow from their wives. But such humor owes more to our conceptions than Luke’s. At this point, Paul is on a farewell mission tour enroute to Jerusalem and Rome, with expectations of increasing conflict, perhaps even death (19:21; 20:23). He doesn’t expect to see the Troas congregation again and wants to pack in as much counsel as he can before departing. ²⁸ And the assembly aims to hang on every word, as long as Paul holds forth. They’ve brought “many lamps” to the room (20:8), expecting to go into the night.

But alas, one “young man” (neanias [20:9]) or “boy” (pais [20:12]) can’t hang on past midnight, and here’s where things get funny, sort of. But I dare you not to laugh. The youth has shoehorned himself into an open window ledge. Smart choice: he can keep cool in the hot crowded room, look out at the stars if he gets bored, even wish on them if he feels dreamy. But his name, Eutychus, meaning “Well-fortuned” or “Lucky,” betrays him as the clock strikes midnight, and he falls into a “deep sleep” and out the window “to the ground three floors below and was picked up dead” (20:9). If we slowly imagine the unfolding scene before its unfortunate finale, it feels like an amusing pratfall where we expect Lucky to awaken after dropping off (literally), dust himself off, and scramble back to his window seat red-faced and apologetic. That would be the Three Stooges or Wiley Coyote version (in these stunts, the length of fall is negligible). But this is not that. This is a tragic death fall from a third-floor window, a case of accidental self-defenestration. So much for comedy.

Except that Luke gives us no time to mourn but quickly shifts to Paul’s swift descent downstairs, where he picks up the fallen lad, no longer dead, but alive! Paul joins Jesus and Peter as resuscitators of dead persons (Luke 8:49–56; Acts 9:36–43). Well, that’s good news, promptly getting us back on the peace and comfort track (20:12; cf. 9:31). And the comedy track, too. No sooner does Paul bring Eutychus back to life than he scampers back upstairs, has a bite to eat (midnight snack) and “continue[s] to converse with them until dawn; then he left [town]” (20:11). It’s as if Paul takes Eutychus’s fatal accident as a mere interruption to his important preaching business, a little hiccup to be curtly dispensed with. ²⁹ All’s well that ends well, if you mix in enough fast, farcical comedy.

Yet surely there’s also a spiritual lesson here. Perhaps, “Pay attention to how you listen” (Luke 8:18) to God’s word, wake up, stay alert, don’t let Jesus catch you unprepared. ³⁰ I think the Eutychus episode broadly reinforces this call to spiritual watchfulness, but I’m not sure it’s the main point. Eutychus is not called out for his slumbering inattention, as are Peter and associates in Luke’s Gospel (9:32;12:35–40; 22:45–46). Paul’s too busy addressing the whole assembly to be much bothered by one lad’s lapse.

I’m more inclined to see a sacramental lesson. From the outset we learn that Paul meets with the Troas congregation on Sunday “to break bread” as well as address them (Acts 20:7). Interpreters commonly take Lukan references to “breaking bread” as allusions to eucharistic practice, modeled on Jesus’s Last Supper, remembering and participating in his broken body and outpoured blood until his return (Luke 22:14–20; cf. 1 Cor. 11:23–26). But for Luke, meaningful bread-breaking is not restricted to Sunday worship or special occasions. Sharing together “our daily bread” (Luke 11:3), “day by day . . . at home” (Acts 2:46) constitutes a significant ordinary act of open communion with Christ and one another.

As it happens, Paul doesn’t get around to “breaking bread” until after the midnight incident with Eutychus (20:11). To be sure, the young man’s death and resuscitation provides an apt time to remember “the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). Yet Paul doesn’t linger at the table, any more than Jesus did in Emmaus. Paul doesn’t disappear after breaking bread, but he’s more interested in table talk than formal liturgy, fueling himself to keep holding forth the rest of the night. But through it all—all the falling and rising, all the lucky and not-so-lucky events, all through the day and night until the breaking of a new day—Christ “is made known” (Luke 24:35) and breaks open the way of light and life amid darkness and death.

Punch Lines

These intriguing short stories in Acts, like Jesus’s parables, do not yield pithy moral maxims or single punch lines. Rather, they open our self-perceptions and worldviews to wider horizons, not least by breaking open our capacity to laugh, to crack us up. We laugh in crazy times to keep our sanity and keep from crying. We laugh to shake up the status quo, to boost our spirits, to let in fresh air. We laugh at our foolish selves in order to stay humble, to not take ourselves so seriously that we can’t seriously attend to others’ needs. We laugh at brutal bully power to subvert it and sustain hope that forces of justice and mercy will have the last laugh. We laugh at confining walls and dance on high-rise windowsills (best not to sleep there) to stay open to fresh, creative breakthroughs of God’s Spirit.