May 23, 2004
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When
is it that you praise God? Do you offer your praise when life is all good, or do
you wait until things are difficult and it is hard to see God or light or
anything else at the end of the tunnel? Is it time to praise God when your
children do well? Do you have a prayer to offer when sleep is overwhelmed by
worry or when you keep vigil at the bedside of a loved one? Can you celebrate
and thank God for being present even then? I
am always moved when in the face of tragedy and grief, I hear people respond to
their most difficult moments by praising God for the good time spent with the
ones they have loved a while. They tell us that while it is certainly true that
we will miss and grieve the loss of those who have left us, but by faith we are
able to share the hymn written by Horatio G. Spafford in the face of the
unbearable loss of several members of his family. How could he bear it? He could
bear it because he had a relationship with God, and that relationship helped him
to know that God was present with him at his lowest moments. He prayed and
wrote, and we pray and sing, “When peace like a river
attendeth my way; when sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, thou has
taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.” We
are people of prayer and our prayer can lead us to praise. What makes it
possible to fulfill our mission and purpose is the power of praise and prayer.
Praise is celebrating the presence of God in our midst, no matter what. Prayer
is what we are doing when we talk and listen to God, no matter what.
We
offer our praise to God when we embody the good news of Jesus Christ and give
life and shape to our mission and purpose. We
have identified the mission and purpose of this church in this way: we
claim the mission of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) which is “to
do and to be the good news of Jesus Christ, witnessing, loving, and serving from
our doorsteps to the ends of the earth”, and that “as followers of Jesus
Christ who loves and cares for all creation, our purpose here at Broad Street
Christian Church is to be a safe and welcoming place for all people seeking a
spiritual home where their relationship with Christ can be nurtured and
strengthened”. How
does prayer and praise help us fulfill our mission?
We offer our praise to God when we embody the good news of Jesus Christ.
All that we do, all that we are, is a reflection of the hope and health we have
in him. When our choir and the soloists sing their hearts out to the glory of
God, they are being the good news of Jesus Christ. When
we are disciplined in prayer and worship, compassionate in our relationships
with strangers and friends, we are doing the good news. Every time we do what
Jesus did and go about the work of feeding the hungry, giving water to the
thirsty, visiting the sick and imprisoned, we are proclaiming the good news of
Jesus Christ. On those days when we hold each other accountable, speaking the
truth in love, and welcoming as brothers and sisters in Christ all who seek a
place with us, we are the good news of Jesus Christ. When we live our lives as
praying, praising people of God and as servants of Jesus Christ we testify to
the good news that is in us. Paul
and Silas are our models for how to live the good news of Jesus Christ in
whatever circumstance we find ourselves. Last week they prayed and praised God
when Lydia and her household received Christ and were baptized. But not every
encounter is easy. Rejection can come as quickly as acceptance. The evangelists
soon discovered that not everyone was eager to pray and praise with them. They
may not be ready to worship with us either. But we offer our prayer and praise
to God anyway, and it just may be that when we do, great things happen. That is
what Paul and Silas teach us. So why are they in jail? They
are there to remind us that we are called to prayer and
praise every day, even when, especially when God’s presence is all have.
There was a young woman in Philippi what had a fortune-telling spirit. The
spirit allowed her to use her highly intuitive skills to reveal things about
people. Some commentaries say she had a demonic spirit. The spirit that
possessed the young woman has characteristics common to the spirits that Jesus
dealt with along the way. “It so controls a person that the person says and
does things that would otherwise be out of character. When the demon speaks,
(through the possessed person) it recognizes the power of God for what it is
and, in the end, obeys that power” (Texts
for Preaching – Year C. Louisville. Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994,
p.332). It
may be that her gift was being used in un-wise ways. The truly demonic aspect of
the story is that the woman was a slave, she did not only did not own her
dubious gift, she did not even own herself. The people who did own her exploited
her gifts and her labor to make money for themselves. We
know about her because she has been following the visiting evangelists around
town since that day they were on their way to a prayer meeting.
Their contact helps us understand that the
practice of prayer helps us to stand up for the cause of Christ and it gives us
the courage to pay the price for standing in the face of opposition.
For
several days she went where they went yelling, “these men are slaves of the
Most High God who proclaim to you the way of salvation”. Eventually, Paul grew
tired of being followed and in the name of Jesus he ordered the spirit of
fortune telling to come out of her, and it did. It
may seem odd to us that Paul would dismiss a woman for saying who they were, but
in addition to being followed closely for a few days, what if her message,
“these men are slaves of the Most High God who proclaim to you the way of
salvation, was not just a statement of fact, but an accusation. Maybe you’ve
heard a similar message or accusation. “These
people are slaves of the Most High God who proclaim to you that orientation is
no barrier to loving and being loved by God.” “These people believe that
people of every age, race, marital status, education, and income really are
welcomed into their part of the body of Christ.” “They
believe in baptism by immersion, communion at least each Lord’s day and that
God’s grace and mercy are new, fresh, and available every day. They understand
that they can forgive those who hurt us because they have been forgiven by those
they have hurt.” We are “those people” and I believe we believe that who
we are and what we are about are good things, and we thank God that our life of
faith is shaped by such openness. “These
men are slaves of the Most High God who proclaim to you the way of salvation.”
Was she right? It depends on how we understand the word slave. If by slave she
means one who is as she is, owned and controlled and treated as property by
another, then no she is not right. However, if by slave she means a servant
truly loving and truly loved by the one God they serve; if she means one who
chooses to spend much of their life doing ministry on behalf of Christ, then yes
indeed they are slaves of God, and we are called to be slaves of God too. When the woman’s owners heard that Paul had called her fortune telling spirit out of her, they brought a lawsuit against Paul and Silas for their lost income. “Look at them they say. Their religion is wrong, their nationality is wrong, they way they do things are wrong. They are just wrong”. The people were so inflamed by the plaintiffs that they were severely beaten. Then Paul and Silas find themselves locked into the innermost chamber of the Philippi prison. Keeping
faith is not easy, but it is necessary for us and we can do it if we keep our
prayer and worship life strong. Remember God with us in the deepest, dankest
places, and because God is, we can bring the light of God even to people we
think of as our adversaries. Around
midnight, things in the prison usually are fairly well settled. But not this
midnight; this midnight, the prison guard is asleep, and the other prisoners are
spectators to the prayer and praise service conducted by Paul and Silas. They
are listening as they pray and sing. What hymns were they singing? They didn’t
have the Chalice Hymnal or the Gaithers or Kirk Franklin’ music. They did have
the Psalms. I believe they looked at Psalm 9 and sang, “I will give thanks to
the LORD with my whole heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds” (v.1).
They turned to Psalm 27: “the LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I
fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” (v.1).
Then they sang and prayed part of Psalm 139: “Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence. If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if
I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” (v.7-8). They
sang and prayed and praised God as we are called to sing and pray and praise God
because they knew that God would never abandon them, and God will not abandon
us. So they worshiped, and we worship. While they did, an earthquake shook the
foundation of the jail, breaking every chain and shackle. Imagine being chained
to a wall when all of a sudden the chains are off and the doors fly open. The
guard assumed what we might have assumed. Here is an opportunity to get out of
this awful place. Surely a chance for freedom would not go by without people who
were bound are suddenly unbound and running for their lives. The guard knows
that he is responsible for keeping the prisoners in their place; it is more than
he can bear and he draws his sword to kill himself. But
Paul lives the good news of Jesus Christ and he stops him with a word of grace.
He lets him know that there is no need for him to harm himself. Paul and the
other prisoners have stayed in this hard place and because they did the guard
knows they can be trusted. I believe our call is to stand and stay in difficult
places sometimes, having attended to what has been, looking to what will be, and
focusing on what is now. We want people to know that they can trust us to be
here, because we will be. We
want to go about our ministry here so that we develop a reputation for
trustworthiness. People will know that the love, grace, and compassion of God in
us and in this place, and if they come here looking for what we offer, we will
be here. Finally,
because the jailers trust in them was high, the guard asks Paul and Silas the
questions essential to our lives. “What must I do to be saved? What do I need
to do to have the calm and peace and spirit of God that I see in you?” Today
we might ask, “how can I cope with all the pressure and bad news and stress
and strain of just getting through this day and the next day and the day after
that?” The
answer to the jailer is the same for people of faith and for people seeking
faith today. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and like Lydia did a few days
ago, bring your whole household too. Learn what belief in Christ means.
Understand that faith is shown in mission and stewardship, in education and acts
of care. The
jailer learned well and he became to the glory of God, the embodiment of the
good news of Jesus Christ. The guard and his household are baptized. He tends to
the wounds of Paul and Silas, and like Lydia, he brings them into his house
where in a kind of communion, they break bread and share a meal with joy and
thanksgiving. In this time of prayer and praise, the one who was about to kill
himself found new and renewed life. The
good news for us today is this: here is the great good news for us today. That
new life found by the jailer, by Lydia, even by the young fortune telling woman
is offered to us and can be claimed by us. As we grab it, we cannot just keep it
to ourselves. We share the good news we know. That is why we start here at our
doorstep and move all the way to the end of the earth. Then whether we identify
with Paul and Silas or Lydia, or the possessed woman or the redeemed guard,
however we find ourselves in this story, we know this: we believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ and believing has made all the difference in the world for us. If
we are going to see the growth we pray for here become greater and greater we
will invite others to be made different too. And then we will pray and praise
God together, for the gifts of mission and purpose that are ours. Thanks
be to God.
Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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