May 27, 2001
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But Jesus prayed that the disciples would have unity of purpose so that
they would have among themselves the same kind of bond with Jesus that Jesus had
with God. The language in these verses of John can sound convoluted and
confusing. Surely there is an easier way to record this long prayer of Jesus
than the way John has done it. But think of your own prayer life. If someone
were to record you praying in your most troubled hour, what would they record?
Perhaps like Jesus and John, there would be a lot of repetition, and a lot of
passion. That’s what we have here as Jesus prays. As the prayer becomes clear to us, we see that what Jesus is praying for
is that the disciples might carry on the ministry without him. It is a few hours
before the crucifixion. Jesus is praying that the disciples will be witnesses to
the good news that is in them. To witness is to see, hear or know by personal
presence or perception; it is to be a spectator or bystander when something
happens. In the church, to testify is to say to somebody what we have seen and
heard, and felt in response to the movement of God in our lives. Jesus is praying that the disciples will be able to testify that they
have received from Jesus what Jesus received from God.
Like Jesus, they have received glory – not ego stroking recognition,
but the very presence and power of God in their lives. Just like Jesus, they have the knowledge of God. They have a sense of the
love of God in their lives. Just like those disciples, we disciples have the
privilege of knowing God. I dare say that the church of Jesus Christ has so much
of what the world longs for. It provides a sense of meaning, mission, a sense of
community and a safe place for us to express what it means to be the daughters
and sons of God. We who know the love of Jesus Christ in our lives surely know
it really is too much for us to contain all by ourselves. It is a wonderful gift
meant to be shared graciously. How can we, who know the love of God, who learned
at camp and conference to sing about the joy, the love, “the peace that passes
understanding down in our hearts”, not know that we are loved by God to
witness to God’s love for the world? For 2000 years Christians have witnessed to their
faith by doing the work of teaching people what it means to be in community.
There are schools and hospitals, community organizations, shelters for the
homeless, food for the hungry, clothes for the naked, visits for the lonely, and
comfort for the sick and imprisoned because throughout the ages, people who are
bold to call themselves Christians have witnessed to the love of Jesus in them
by serving others. Now I know that to use the language of “witness” may cause some of to
recoil a bit. Witnessing seemed to be the exclusive work of TV evangelists with
bad theology and bad hair, and people handing out tracks on street corners with
bad biblical contexting. It was light on God’s grace and heavy on fear-based
conversions. So that the reason to love Jesus and to give yourself to him was
not because doing so frees us and empowers us to do great things in his name,
but rather the reason to love Jesus is to avoid the hellfire and brimstone of
Satan. I know that evangelism from fear represents too narrow a focus. When we
act from fear, we have no joy, no freedom, and little hope. But in the broadest
possible sense, our witness is simply that we are loved enough to share the good
news of Jesus Christ wherever we are. We are loved to witness. But what do we
say? God loves us unconditionally, Jesus laid down his life for us, the Holy
Spirit sustains us is a good place to start. When someone asks you why you are
in church, why you believe as you do, start with your own story. Maybe you had
one of those dramatic conversions, born out of tragedy or your own bad judgment.
Your song is, “I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, very
deeply stained within sinking to rise no more, but the captain of the sea heard
my despairing cry, from the waters lifted me, now safe am I. Love lifted me.” Or maybe your story is as we heard a few weeks ago,
the simple, gentle, lifelong affirmation of a children’s song that can serve
us our whole life long. “Jesus loves me this I know; for the Bible tells me
so. Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong. Yes, Jesus loves
me, yes, Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.” Either way, your story was formed, if it is true
for you, if it is authentic, it has integrity and it is worth sharing. We are
loved to witness. Paul knew that as so he shares the good news of who he is in
Jesus Christ by sharing part of his story. Last week we heard the story of Lydia in Philippi
and her encounter, conversion, and baptism as she encountered Paul and Silas at
the Philippian riverside. This week adventures of Paul and his associates
continue as they move about the town. Along the way they have the opportunity to
show that they are loved so that they can witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ,
wherever they are, and their opportunity comes as they encounter an interesting
collection of people. There are Paul and Silas themselves, two itinerant
evangelists. There is a young slave girl, who was possessed by a spirit that
allowed here to tell people’s fortunes. Maybe she was like the people on the
Psychic Friends Network, or the current darling of TV fortune tellers, the woman
with the Caribbean accent, Miss
Cleo. She represented pure profit to her owners. They were people who exploited
this girl and enriched themselves as people paid them when she told people’s
fortunes. She did the work, they got the money. Luke believes that she was
possessed by a spirit that tormented her. For him, she was doubly bound. She was
bound by the people who owned her, and she was bound by the spirit that
possessed her. Everything came together as Paul and Silas are on
their way to pray. The slave girl follows them for days, motivated by coercion,
she points at them saying: “These men are slaves of the most high God who
proclaim to you the way of salvation.” (v.17). We can’t know whether if she is actually
testifying about the good news in them or is she is making a mocking accusation.
Is she saying, “I am a slave to people who exploit me – but they are slaves
to their God. Pay attention to them? Or is she saying, “look at them. They
think they are doing good, but they are fools and slaves, of a god only they and
some other odd people seem to follow?” We
don’t know. Finally after several days of this, Paul has had enough. Acts says
he is annoyed. He is impatient, gruff, he feels strongly enough that he performs
a quick, verbal exorcism. “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out
of her.” (v.18) She was telling the truth. But they know that
proclaiming people believers in Jesus Christ is not about the money it brings in
from someone who is being exploited, but about lives being changed. Her
proclamation was that they were in fact who they said they were. Paul and Silas
were there in Philippi to lead people to the one who would lead them to
salvation and things were fine while she made money. Once the means for others
to enrich themselves for her was gone, her owners became upset. We talk a lot about money here, perhaps more than some would like. But the conversations are necessary, because if we do not have the resources, we cannot do the ministry we are called to do. We do not talk about it to enrich ourselves, but so that we will have enough to make the truest possible proclamation of who we are. Like Paul and Silas, we serve the most high God and through our love and service to each other and to others, and help people find their way to salvation. If we are just in it for the money, we will not care what happens to the people we encounter. The owners of the young woman were just in it for
the money and now instead of one woman following them, her owners are angered
because the source of their income is gone. They seize Paul and Silas and take
them to a kind of open air people’s court.
Think of them before a panel of all the TV judges, Judy, Lane, Mathis,
etc. The owners of the young girl spare nothing, they pull out every accusation
they think will have maximum effect and stir up the crowd effect. “These men
are troublemakers (Roman’s loved order); they are Jews (a clear appeal to
nasty anti-Semitism); and they are advocating customs that we Roman’s would
never do (they are foreigners with strange ideas and customs).” In other
words, they are so different than we are, so outside our cultural norm, that
they do not care that we are now losing money. They are not our kind, they are
not from around here, they are a drain on our economy, they must go. Their rabble rousing works and in short order Paul
and Silas were stripped of their clothes, beaten with rods, and thrown into the
deepest, darkest jail cell, and put in irons. How would you feel if you were
accused of anarchy, beaten, and put in a dark prison cell? It would first raise
up every claustrophobic, no privacy, fear of bad food and water, and unsanitary
conditions fear I have. It raises up something else for Paul and Silas. Now they
are martyrs – they are suffering for their faith. But remember the Greek word
for martyr is witness and for Paul and Silas, their jail cell presented them
with another opportunity to witness to their faith. They witness to the power of worship. They loved to
witness so much that while they were in the deepest, darkest, most damp part of
the prison, they did not whine or swear, or cry. They worshiped God. They prayed
and sang. They remind us that being in a place we do not want to be, when there
is nothing we can do about it, can bring out the best of who we are. It can also
bring out the worst, but that is not the case here. There they were praying and singing when an earthquake occurs so powerfully that it opens their cell doors and shakes loose their chains. Surely this is God’s way of arranging for their escape. Act of God? We are free. But that is not what happens. They do not leave, they do not make any effort to escape. They stay. The jailer certainly expected them to leave as quickly as they could. That they stayed was a surprise to him that he ran down to the prison and assuming the prisoners had escaped, drew his own sword to take his life. His life is changed forever when Paul calls out to him that there is not need for him to do anything drastic. He and Silas are still there. “Paul and Silas”, we hear him ask, “why did you stay?” We might answer that question by agreeing that some
people might stay in prison because we like the prison we are in. There is that
sense of prison being where there is no responsibility, where food and shelter
are provided, where you just go through the days, letting life happen to you. But there are others who see prison as an
opportunity to bear witness to what God is calling us to do. We see examples in
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison and Martin Luther
King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. They were proof that if you
are in prison as a matter of conscience, then the poet is correct, “stone
walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. Prison was for Paul and Silas a place of prayer and a place
for conversion and forgiveness. It was a place where they could witness to the
saving grace of Jesus Christ. I can hear the jailer saying to them, “you are
in prison because you love to witness to Jesus Christ. In his name you exorcised
a spirit from a young woman and angered those who made money off her. When you
were thrown into this nasty place, you worshiped your Christ. When you could
have escaped, you did not. I heard you singing, “I feel like going on, I feel
like going on. Though trials come on every hand, I feel like going on.” Then he says to them, “Gentlemen, what must I do to be saved?” “Simply this”, Paul says. “Believe in the Lord Jesus
and you will be saved.” Then he taught him, he answered his questions, and
told him about the strengthening love of Jesus. The jailer and his household
were baptized that night, and then in an act symbolic of his new life, the
jailer himself loves enough to witness to Paul and Silas. He cleans their wounds, and he brings them into his house he breaks bread
with them while his family rejoices. They are all part of each other now.
What must we do to be saved? We can continue to commit ourselves to all
that we have said we will do. We can provide the resources to do it, we can pray
for a sense of unity as we do so that the world will know that God loved the
world enough to send Jesus to it. And that we love to witness to that love so
much that we cannot keep it to ourselves. This Christian family rejoices as we are brought into the light of
God’s love, with our wounds cleansed, and with an invitation to the table of
God. We can rejoice that here in this place, we can thank God that there are
faithful ministries being performed here, through our study and worship and
prayer, and nurture, we practice the disciplines of the faith, and every now and
then we act in fearlessness and bold courage. When we witness to the good news in us, a church full of children and
youth, we embody the kind of multi-racial, multi-cultural congregation so many
are looking for as they look for a church, they see in us God’s rainbow of
caring and welcoming people. We can
witness to a sense of oneness with other Christians and solidarity with people
of other faiths whom we join with common purpose, BREAD is an excellent example.
We are liberated to proclaim that we really are servants and slaves of
the most high God, we really are servants of one another and we serve by
fulfilling our mission of celebration, sharing, supporting, and service. We
really are freed to remember of that word about Jesus that led us to believe and
to be here. We are freed to remember that when we are loved to witness, we are
free indeed. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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