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The Book of Acts’ record
of Paul’s stay in Philippi would make a great movie:
Big Trouble in Little Philippi. It would be
an action-packed thriller, with at least two big stars playing the roles of
Paul and Silas; lots of special effects... for the
fights and the earthquake scene; a new starlet looking winsome and
vulnerable in the role of the demon-possessed fortune teller; and an aging
star on hand to play the part of the jailer.
Our screenplay would capture the various overlapping and intertwined levels
of the story. Maybe
there would be some use of split screens. Twists and turns just keep on
coming. It is like going
round and round on a NASCAR track! We meet the slave-girl, and yes, she has
green eyes! There is taunting – don’t think Holy Grail, think Hannibal
Lecter - persistent, chilling, personal, direct; then there is the dramatic
exorcism of the source of those green eyes – the “python spirit”; the loud,
angry accusations from the owners displeased that their “Ripleys: Believe it
or not” attraction, their Philippian Idol, their big earner has been
snatched from them. The quick, over-the-top response of the Roman police
indicates that more than a little bribery has been going on! It hasn’t only
been the owners who have been profiting from the poor girl. Then with a
scene lit by the angled sun shining through the bars, with dust a-plenty in
the air, we find ourselves in the dungeon. Huge, bearded, violent prisoners
glare from other cells at Paul and Silas who are in chains, as they sing.
But then, this movie really gets going as with blinding lights and crashing
music and we see God’s miraculous intervention which leads to the conversion
of the jailer. Oh yes this is a great movie – not too far fetched either-
and through all the shifts and turns, at all levels of the story God’s power
is seen.
The literal translation of the phrase rendered in the NRSV as “spirit of
divination is “python spirit.” The python was intimately connected with the
Oracle at Delphi as the guard or keeper of the oracle, until, according to
myth, Apollo killed this python. The Oracle at Delphi, which became the most
prominent Greek oracle, had many adherents, those who believed that it was
powerful enough to tame all the disorderly aspects of the cosmos. Some of
these followers lived in Philippi, explaining why the “snake” girl
immediately recognized the power of the Most High God in Paul & Silas.
As she follows the missionaries, she continues to cry out, “These men
are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”
She spoke the truth, of course, but Paul gets annoyed for two reasons.
First, he does not want to be perceived as working
in conjunction with other gods and powers. This
had previously landed him in a heap of trouble when he had stopped in Lystra.
Second, he has care and concern for the young woman being abused and
demeaned by her handlers.
The freeing of the girl led to the imprisonment of Paul and Silas. Their
later freedom, in the middle of the night, made the sleeping jailer face the
grim reality that he would find himself imprisoned for his dereliction of
duty. However, in reaching out to his two most
infamous prisoners, this jailer finds his complete
freedom as he asks, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” The jailer’s freedom
is emphasized and extended as he ministers to Paul and Silas, tending to
their wounds and breaking bread with them. Not the Good Samaritan of Jesus’
parable, but the good Philippian!
I ask you to notice the ways in which the elements of our inner, devotional,
so called “spiritual” life – like worship and prayer - inevitably lead us
into engagement with the world.
And in turn how that engagement with the world leads us back to
worship and prayer. Paul and Silas are minding their own business, walking
to the place of prayer, but their faith and love, their experience of God’s
grace compels them to help the young woman, even though they know trouble
will result. That night as they sit in jail as punishment for their ministry
of social care and justice, they return to prayer and worship. It is those
very prayers and hymns that in time lead to their release but when their
jail door swings open, instead of simply taking advantage of the opportunity
to escape, they find themselves confronted with still another opportunity
for social engagement by staying in jail, they prevent the jailer from being
imprisoned, and at the same time they are able to share the good news about
Jesus with the jailer.
The elements of the spiritual life, like worship and prayer, and the need to
seek social justice can never be separated in the Christian tradition. In
Jesus, we see both aspects lived and practiced,
each is dependant on the other.
And this is the model, we who trust in
Jesus, must follow. Sure,
it is a challenge to reclaim and retain this connection.
It can be difficult for us to talk together in church about “bread and
butter” issues, within the atmosphere of worship and prayer, because the
church is not a safe place for all of us, or because we fear bringing into
our congregation the partisan poison of the current political process. But,
it is also true that we shy away from the claims of justice and peace
because we get used to, and indeed we benefit from,
the status quo. Assessing that we are doing pretty good, thank you very
much, we are reluctant to put our own wealth, prosperity and power under the
microscope of our faith.
One of the messages I find here in Acts is that God is always coming to us
to shake our foundations, to change the way that things are. Whether we view
this as good news or bad news doesn’t matter.
It is coming.
This is God’s plan,
so be ready!
If our interest is in maintaining the status quo because we find ourselves
benefiting at the expense of others, this story will serve as a threat.
If instead our highest goal is to work for a world where all people have the
opportunity to enjoy the life that God intends, then we will eagerly
anticipate the eventual shaking of the incorrect foundations, and the growth
of God’s New Day, God’s Kingdom of Love and Peace.
The Christian faith can never be reduced to an entirely interior, spiritual
matter. Christianity must involve concern for the community, respect for all
of creation, a bias to the poor and the weak.
Such attitudes expressed in action are not
optional extras when we have done everything else, read every book, attended
every Sunday School Class, memorized passages from the Bible. As Christians,
in the name of Jesus Christ, we are to engage the corrupt, evil powers in
the society around us, not to destroy
but to redeem,
looking to free all held in the grip of fear or abuse or poverty or
injustice.
In 1965, just two weeks after Bloody Sunday, that extremely brutal and
deadly day in Selma, Alabama,
when many supporters of civil rights were brutally assaulted, the then
thirty-one-year-old pastor of a Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia,
preached a sermon he would come to regret. He told his congregation:
“Believing the Bible as I do, I would find it impossible to stop preaching
the pure saving gospel of Jesus Christ, and begin doing anything else
- including the fighting of communism, or participating in civil
rights reforms. As a God-called preacher, I find that there is no time left
after I give the proper time and attention to winning people to Christ.
Preachers are not called to be politicians, but to
be soul winners.” That preacher was and is, Reverend Jerry Falwell, horribly
reducing and wholly abandoning the true essence of
the Christian faith at a time when Christians across the land needed to band
together to stand against segregation and in support of equality for all
races.
Since our text took us to prison today, consider some of what we could be
doing in relation to those in and passing through the penal system. Ever
since the visit to Northminster last Fall by the Atlanta Transitional
Center’s Choir, several of you have shared with me things you could offer or
asked about how you can get more involved. In my sermon back on
March 4, I mentioned that 195 people across the USA had been released
from wrongful imprisonment thanks to the work of the Innocence project using
DNA evidence. As of today that number had already climbed to 200!
If the Innocence Project is mainly inspired by the
need for social justice, Prison Fellowship founded by Chuck Colson,
imprisoned for his part in the Watergate debacle, has its origin in a
different sector of the church.
But it has an important message about faith in action, justice as the
expression of the spiritual life. Currently Mark Earley,
president of Prison Fellowship, offered some very
powerful and challenging thoughts in these words: “What if instead of
spending billions of dollars building more prisons to warehouse offenders,
Christian men and women around the country rolled up their sleeves, moved
out of their comfort zones, and began going behind bars to teach and mentor
inmates? What if instead of seeing the revolving door herd hundreds of
thousands of re-offenders back to prison each year, the church opened its
arms to embrace the returning prisoner with the gospel and with life-on-life
discipleship? And what if Christians just like you began to have such an
impact on the culture around us that broken families, violence and poverty,
all of which fuel crime, began to disappear? Yes,
sin and crime will be with us until Christ returns, but what if we made such
an impact that prisons were forced to start shutting down?”
I like the vision and admire the commitment of the Innocence Project and
Prison Fellowship. I like the vision of seeing prisons closing down because
there aren’t enough inmates. Such talk is kingdom talk;
nurtured by prayer and worship and our relationship with Christ, expressed
in might acts of love and mercy!
My friends, it will never be easy or comfortable to live out all the
elements of our faith within our society. Our attention both, to God and to
the needs of those who are hurting, need to be
honored. And when we do
this, we will discover that we need to pray if we are to work to make a
difference; and we need to work to make a difference if we plan to keep
on praying and worshipping.
It won’t be easy,
but it will offer us a life challenge We will find
ourselves in some strange places and we will be
tested. But the
Kingdom of God, to which we must point and for which we devote our lives,
means and is worth so much more than anything else in this world. Big
trouble in little Philippi – Big trouble in North Fulton County – Big
Trouble for all that stands in the way of bringing God’s love and grace to
the world.
Big
trouble as we pray, as we worship, as we serve! Amen. |
