So it does not really surprise us that when Paul looked back at his ministry in Philippi, when he reflected on how he founded the church there and, when he thought about his life of faith and how he found the courage to hang on and hang in and not give up, how he was able to do what the spirit of Christ called him to do when giving up would have been easier that he wrote them a letter. It comes as no surprise to us that when he looked back at this church he would remind them again of the source of his hope and encouragement, and of theirs, and today, of ours.

"I know how to be abased and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4. 12-13 New King James Version). That was the work he was called to do.

Today’s sermon title, "worshipful work" comes from a concept developed a few years ago that it intended to prevent meetings from being monotonous to meaningful. A description of worshipful work defines it this way (from the United Methodist Church – General Board for Global Ministry):

The reading from Acts shows us what worshipful work looks like. Luke picks up the story right where he left off last week. After praying and talking with Lydia and her companions down by the riverside, after Lydia has received Jesus into her spirit and in response, offered herself and her household for baptism, after she has invited Paul and Silas to be guests in her home, while they are enjoying her hospitality that they continue to preach and teach in Philippi. They are doing worshipful work.

But of course, not all work is worshipful. It is while they are doing their work of talking about Jesus that they hear it. A young woman with the gift of fortune telling, a slave we are told has been following them. We are told that she is a slave and that her owners are making a profit from her gifts by as one writer says, "hiring her out to read palms and provide entertainment at business conventions" (Interpretation series. Acts. William Willimon. Atlanta. John Knox Press, 1988, p.138).

She was working too, but the spirit that allowed her such insight was considered in those days a form of demon possession. Today we might want to take her to the local mental health facility because we would want to know what kind of diagnosis would cause a woman to run around shouting things at strangers. We would be fascinated that she, in her way was describing them well – "these men are slaves of the most high God, who proclaim the way of salvation" (v.18). The fact is she was got it right, she perfectly echoed the message Paul was preaching. She was in fact telling the truth without knowing what she was saying.

The young woman is like those people I met whom I worked with at Saint Elizabeth’s hospital twenty five years ago. Some of the patients there were severely mentally ill, but they were also highly intuitive, they had a gift for seeing more than people wanted to show them. They were intelligent and could because some of the filters we use to check our speech and set boundaries weren’t available to them, they often spoke the truth clearly. Sometimes they could read our moods better than we chaplain interns could. Children have that same wonderful gift of honesty, and we can learn from them. They are capable of speaking with crystal clarity – until adults teach them otherwise. So they will be clear about the people they want talking to them and touching them, and those they don’t. They know what they want to wear and have to be persuaded to change their clothes. They will with those two words, "no" and "mine", let us know what they care about.

The young woman grasped the truth about Paul and Silas and followed them around screaming about them for days until Paul had enough and ordered the spirit out of her.

Here is when the trouble started. After all, she was considered someone’s property and when they could not longer exploit her, they were angry. They had Paul and Silas arrested, tried, and convicted for disturbing the peace and doing things much too differently than they were used to doing them. All of a sudden what they preached became a problem – now because there was no more money to be made, their religious practice became a problem, "talk about Jesus all you want, but don’t mess with my income, give my girl her power back, I need the money. Martin Luther King, Jr. preach about justice and dreams all you want, but don’t you dare try to change the way things are around here. Governor Strickland, it’s fine to say that all citizens of Ohio deserve respect, but do you really want to put these protections into an executive order, with no regard for orientation?

"Be people of faith, but keep it to yourself. "No!" Paul and every other person of prophetic and active faith says. "We believe we are called to worship and to work, to pray and to proclaim, and we must combine all of it wherever and whenever we can. So I will call out exploitive spirits wherever they are."

Paul and Silas, like others before and after them pay the price but they keep the faith. They keep faith when they are stripped naked in the street, beaten and thrown in jail. They are so deep in the jail that there is not natural light.

It was a low moment to be sure. This proud servant of Christ is now a prisoner, this man who ordered a spirit out of a young slave is now not free to do what God calls him to do. It was a low moment, but in that moment Paul and Silas got to work. Their work was worship and while they were locked up, they prayed and sang. I wonder what they sang, was it Psalm 23, as they thought about God as their guide and Jesus the good shepherd?

What is the hymn or song you play or hear in your mind when life gets tough? Imagine them singing that song. Many of you know that for me it is a song that says, "though the storms keep on raging in my life, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the night from day. Still, that hope that lies within is reassured as I keep my eye upon the distant shore I know he’ll lead me to that blessed place he has prepared. But if the storms don’t cease, if the storms keep blowing in my life, my soul has been anchored in the Lord" ("My Soul Is Anchored" words by Doug Miller).

Whatever it was, the whole jail heard them singing. In that dark place, they paused to call on the presence of God. They remind us that it cannot get too dark, too hard, or too scary for us to call on the name of God to help and guide us. The jail cell was holy ground because God was there, and Paul was faithful to his God.

He did the work of calling out the fortune telling spirit from the young slave, and he reminds us that we can call out the nasty spirits that impede our work and ministry. Those spirits might get the words right, "you are that church that claims to welcome everybody", but we know the Spirit behind the word, so we can answer back, "we don’t just claim it, we live it."

Paul and Silas lived their faith and when the earthquake unlocked his cell, Paul stayed put, reassured a frightened guard, kept him from killing himself, and led him by the integrity of Paul’s witness to name Jesus Christ as his Savior. How did that happen? It happened because they did the work of answering the jailer’s question, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" (v.30). "You want to know how to find salvation? I will tell you." And we hear the words that bring salvation to us too. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the one who can free us all." The jailer is now a brother in Christ who becomes Paul’s caregiver and host and they rejoiced together in his new found faith.

Paul did the worshipful work of prayer and song and word and deed by leading in different ways the young woman with the gift of fortune telling, and the jailer to new freedom and new lives.

Amanda Wright explains it this way: "The young woman may have had to say goodbye to being of some importance in society, but she also needed to welcome a new future. We don’t know if she acted on her insight into Paul and Silas’ mission and became a follower, but he jailer did. He threw all his eggs into one basket and brought his whole family into the family of the baptized. It was an immediate and complete rejection of the old life and an embrace of the new. There was great joy in that household, but also a release from fear, the fear of failure that would cause a family man to attempt to take his own life. The fear that would make people want someone else to tell them what was going to happen in their lives, and no doubt also to tell them what to do and who to pay to change any unpleasant predictions. The jailer’s fear was replaced by a trust in God" (www.christiancentury.org/article/lasso "Long Goodbye" by Amanda Wright in www.christiancentury.org).

Worshipful work.

How would we be different if all that we did in the church was considered an act of worshipful work? Our Sunday mornings would be the same, of course, but what would be the difference in our Sunday school classes and choir rehearsals, leadership team members, and our other ministry work? What if in all of it we paused every now and then to pray, to offer up a hymn, to treat every room in this building and every act in the church’s name outside of it holy ground? Worshipful work pays attention to everything that needs to be done and pays special attention to what is most important. One time it may be church budget. Another time it may how we can all work together to create a successful Vacation Bible School. At another time it is another issue, but in all of it we are praying, studying, celebrating, telling stories, and affirming one another.

That is worship and it is joy-filled work, and it is the work God is yet calling us to do. Let be so. Thanks be to God. Amen.