“DISTURBING OUR CITY"
Acts 16:16-40
Rev. Gary Paterson
May 16, 2010
It’s a great story… juicy, with a lot of action; you at least have to give it that. Paul and Silas, preaching up a storm in Philippi; last week’s conversion of Lydia was just the beginning. Things get rolling when Paul heals a demon-possessed slave girl, and it turns out her owners are right ticked off. They complain mightily to the authorities, who offer a bit of flogging, and eventually Paul and Silas end up in jail. You can sense Luke’s growing excitement as the story swells into the miraculous, the legendary – there is a midnight earthquake; prison doors open, and chains drop to the ground. By the power of God they are free… and then, lo and behold, doesn’t the jailer up and convert – “What must I do to be saved?” he cries out … well yes, indeed.
Now, some parts of the Bible are just shimmering with the glory of God – the moment of creation… “Let there be light!” Moses’ burning bush… “Take off your shoes for you are standing on holy ground.” Elijah’s “still small voice”; Jesus’ baptism – “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” So many moments of wonder and holy presence … but today’s Scripture reading isn’t one of them. I mean, sure, it’s a good story, but what’s it got to do with anything? But we’re stuck with it; there it sits in the Bible, because the early Christian communities thought it was an important story, and they kept it – “Remember this story!” they said. And the Lectionary, that process of assigning Scripture readings for each week, well, it too decided that we needed to pay attention to this story. Sometimes I wonder if we really know what we’re saying when, the lector calls out, “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.” and we all reply, “Thanks be to God!” Really?
So there it is, a story about life in the early church, a story that those first Christians thought was important. So, as a result, all week long I have been turning it over and over, and finally began wondering if this story might offer some clues about what it means to be church. What are we to be doing? What’s important—back then, maybe now. Clues, insights. So let me walk you through the story once again.
The context of this story is one of preaching and building community; that’s what Paul and Silas have been doing in Philippi. Maybe we are being told, invited, to see these as the two essential tasks of being church – announcing the good news, and then figuring out what it looks like to live that way with other people. That’s the bass line, that holds the rest of the story together. You don’t focus on that, but you know it’s there. Grace and living it out; bmm, bmm goes the bass; freedom, and doing the work. Bmm; bmm.
The action of the story begins with the healing of the slave girl. Remember, she had been possessed with a spirit of divination, a power that controlled her; the spirit is sent away and she is healed. “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” – that’s what Paul said to the spirit. Whatever spirit was controlling that young woman – any compulsion, addiction, fear, anxiety -- it was overcome, and the young woman discovered a new freedom, a wholeness of being. The actual Greek is fascinating – a “python spirit” is what it literally means– a reference to the Greek God Apollo, and the Delphic Oracles, which probably only Bible nerds would be interested in. But phase ponder the phrase for a moment… “python spirit” -- and see if your imagination, a la Harry Potter perhaps, begins to picture whatever it is that binds any of us as a long, slithering serpent, that wraps itself around you, around that long-ago servant girl, holding you tight, confined, constricted, unable to breathe, slowly being crushed. Whatever or whoever is doing that in your life…. hear this word of healing”In thename of Jesus Christ, come out.” And church,. hear what the Spirit is saying to the you: you are called to the task of healing, of working towards liberation, of discovering, through the love of God – the God that wears the face of Jesus- discovering a new wholeness.
Interestingly enough, exactly the same pattern of what it means to be church is described in earlier chapters of the Book of Acts, this time with Peter, the other “giant” figure in Lyuke’s story of the early church. Once again, the bass line is established --preaching and building community; bmm, bmm. And then, first verse of chapter 3, Peter heals a crippled beggar: “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk.” Healing, freedom, wholeness, a new life.
Probably we shouldn’t be all that surprised about this, because it seems it’s very much like what Jesus did in his ministry: preaching, building community… and then, healing people. Announcing liberation; and then acting on it; going out to the community, to everyone who is feeling squeezed, saying, “Breathe; be healed; rise up and walk.”
But what might be good news for one person isn’t always good news for another. When the slave girl is healed, she can no longer tell fortunes, which means that she can no longer make a lot of money for her owners. And they don’t like it. It’s bad for business – which is about as bad as it can get. The bottom line, the profit margin, the status quo. As long as money is flowing in the right direction, they’re okay, and the church can do whatever it wants inside of its own beautiful four walls. Just don’t disrupt business. “Don’t disturb our city!” That’s the rallying cry.
Once again, it sounds a lot like what happened to Jesus. The more he preached about freedom and God’s love for everything, and challenged people to love neighbour and enemy, well, the more he riled up the people with the money and the power. When Jesus went around saying, “Don’t worry about what you’re going to eat or what you’re going to wear” the restaurant owners and fashion stores were not thrilled. “We cannot live by bread alone; you can’t serve God and wealth; sell all that you have and give it to the poor.” -- none of this endeared him to the rich and famous.
Made me think of a minister I heard a couple of weeks ago when I was at the Preaching Festival in Seattle. He said that if you weren’t preaching your congregation into a storm, then you probably had left Jesus behind. Which made me wonder what it means for a church to be prophetic. How do we do that? Are we called to disturb our city in the name of Jesus Christ, which is to say, in the name of love and justice and compassion? And if that troubles the waters, if there is a reaction… well, we keep following the Master. Mind you, when I heard that this minister had been asked to leave his congregation, I had different questions. Still, I wondered if anything I had ever done as a Christian, as a minister, would land me in jail, like Paul and Silas? Not so sure.
I found myself thinking about people whose faith and conviction leads them to stand for the well-being of the environment, “tree-huggers,” the powers that be might call them, but maybe that’s where the church should be, standing with God’s beautiful creation. And if you get into trouble, well, so be it… being church, being counter-cultural, so to speak, may indeed get you into trouble. Just like it did Jesus.
I also was reminded of the evening some of folk from our End Homeless Ministry attended a public hearing about social housing going into the neighbourhood; a Westside neighbourhood. They spoke in favour of this happening – and although they didn’t say it perhaps, surely they were speaking out of their faith convictions, being church. And when a swarm of other folk started crying out about falling property values, and NIMBY, Not In My Back Yard, saying don’t disturb our city… well, you think to yourself, “I’ve seen this before.” I found myself wondering what it might be like if thirty or fifty of us St. A/W types were to attend such a meeting and spoke up, saying something like, “Our faith, our belief that God loves all people, and works for the liberation and wholeness of everyone, of all creation, in fact... this is what brings us to speak on behalf of homes for the poor, the mentally ill, the disabled, the marginalized; because that’s what it means to be church.” Now that would be some kind of meeting!
For Paul and Silas, the end result was predictable. They were arrested, tried in a kangaroo court, convicted on trumped up evidence that included a lot of name-calling and a good dose of anti-Semitism. Paul and Silas were stripped, beaten and flogged, then led away. Not to crucifixion mind you, but to prison; though not to just any old cell, but the innermost one, with no windows, no light, a place of darkness; and they had their feet clamped into the stocks, --so a place of no movement. Sure sounds like a tomb to me. Surely we are meant to hear echoes of Jesus saying “If anyone wants to be my disciple, then let them pick up their cross and follow me.” There never was a promise that it would be easy. That we would avoid crucifixion; prison; suffering.
Luke seems to be saying that the life of the church needs to be modeled on the life of Jesus, even when there’s a cost. You want to know how to be church? – take a look at the one who started the whole thing; and look to him for further inspiration. Then, to complete the story, Luke takes us once again, in a different way, he takes us to a resurrection moment. At the midnight hour, in that in-between time, moving from one day to the next, just then, there is an earthquake… and don’t get caught up in any literal wondering about how an earthquake could be focussed and strong enough to open the prison doors and unsnap the chains, while basically leaving everything else intact. This is miracle; this is metaphor. What we are seeing here is the opening of the tomb; it is God’s power of light, life and love, breaking through every tomb, prison, darkness, sin; every python-squeezing, demon, dark-spirit possession. This is the Good News moment – “I have heard my people crying, says the Lord, and I have come to deliver them from their taskmasters in Egypt” “Take up your bed and walk!” “Lazarus, come out!” And death shall have no dominion. The church is about resurrection – believing it, experiencing it; and then, sharing the gift with others. When the church is truly embodying Jesus Christ in the world, then others around can’t help but notice – like the jailer in this story, the one who ends up being baptized. You ask yourself, “What did he mean when he cried out, ‘What must I do to be saved?’” Or maybe the real question is our own, jailers, every one of us – “What must I do to be saved?” And maybe, sometimes, we sense, recognize, trust, believe… that the Way of Jesus Christ is a grace-filled path to the Holy One. And maybe that’s why, when the lector, the Scripture reader, calls out, “Listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church, to this church!” we respond, “Thanks be to God.” So again I say, “Listen to what the Spirit is saying to this church.” And the people respond …. “Thanks be to God.”