Some Of Them Sneered

She had said everything else and never that.

Two years of a book group, eleven women, most of whom she now considers friends, and she had managed the whole of it without ever once putting the actual claim into a sentence.

She had talked about forgiveness, and about her mother, and about the hard year, and about how she prays. All of it true and none of it the thing.

And in March somebody asked her, directly, and kindly, and in a way that could not be answered around: but you actually think a man came back from the dead, don't you? Like, physically?

And she said yes.

And the face of a woman she likes very much changed.

Not dramatically. She has gone over it about four hundred times since and she is aware she may be constructing it. But something happened around the mouth and something happened in the eyes, and there was a small pause of the kind that a room fills in for itself, and then somebody said something about the book.

That was two years ago. She has not raised it since.

She is still in that group. It is still warm. That woman rang her when her father was ill and drove her twice.

And she has spent two years saying everything except the thing, and she has started to understand that this is not tact any more. Tact was the first six weeks. What it is now is a woman who has quietly agreed to be liked on terms she has never negotiated out loud.

The record keeps the sneer and what came after it

Let me name the two years accurately before anything else, because it has been called cowardice in your own head and it is not.

You were protecting something real. Eleven women, most of whom you now love, in a group that has been good to you, and one face that changed. Nobody sensible goes back for a second helping of that quickly, and warmth is not nothing and it is not a small thing to risk. Nothing written condemns you for the two years, and the Holy Spirit has been in that group the whole of them.

What is true is that the protection has outlived the danger, and that you have known that since about the autumn.

Now hear this, and take it as settled rather than as a push: the account keeps the sneer, and it keeps it attached to this exact claim. That is not my kind reading of two years, it is what stands written at the end of Acts seventeen, and the same Holy Spirit who preserved it was at that table in March.

Read it, and read all the way to the end of the sentence, because the second half is the part nobody quotes.

He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead. When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, We want to hear you again on this subject.Acts 17:31-32

Some of them sneered.

That is on the page. Paul makes the claim in Athens, to a serious room, and the account does not report a triumph. It reports that some people laughed at him.

And then, in the same sentence, without a paragraph break: but others said, we want to hear you again on this subject.

Both. In one line. The sneer and the second invitation, from the same room, on the same afternoon.

So this is yours right now rather than pending a safer moment: a face changing is written into the first century as the ordinary response to this, because the written word puts the sneer on the page and keeps the rest of the room in the same sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one who saw to it that neither half was dropped.

And here is what the two years have actually cost, which is not your courage.

You have never found out what the other ten faces did, and what is written keeps a whole room in one sentence rather than one face, and the Holy Spirit has been watching all eleven.

You watched one. You have replayed one, four hundred times, and built two years of silence on a sample of one, and there were eleven women in that room and you have no idea what happened on the other ten faces because you were looking at the one that changed.