GPC Sermons
"Bad For Business"
Acts 16:16-40
Sunday, May 20, 2007
The Reverend Dr. Deborah K. Meinke
How
was your week? Good, bad,
so-so? Full of ups and downs like
mine? Do you remember when I read
the story Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad
Day?
I could have titled this weekÕs sermon as ÒPaul
and Silas and the
Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.Ó
This story from Acts is like a snowball rolling downhill gathering steam and more snow as it travels. The kickoff event involves the fortune-telling slave girl, who is a cash cow for her owners. I found it rather humorous that she tells the truth about Paul and company – Ôthese men are slaves of the most high GodÕ (the invisible God of the Jews) she calls out over and over, yet PaulÕs response to her is annoyance. You would think after his success with Lydia that he would be pleased to have this free publicity, but no, she is giving him a headache.
Sadly,
the girl disappears from the story plot once Paul removes her
Ôspirit.Õ The
plot shifts to her owners and their case against Paul.
I wish that this girl had not been a
disposable character, tossed aside in order to get to the important
conclusion
of a Roman jailer and his household being converted.
Thanks to her proclamation, she is freed from bondage to her
greedy owners, but how will she fare in her freedom?
I found myself hoping that she made her way to LydiaÕs
household and found refuge and true freedom in Christ there.
In
any case, she is the catalyst for the rest of the action.
The girlÕs keepers were probably paying
members of the Philippi Chamber of Commerce, which would have been
anxious to
build up the local businesses and to please the entrepreneurs who
became
outraged at their losses and complained that these Jews were bad for
business. Their allegations that
Paul and Silas were disturbing the peace became a real possibility when
a crowd
rose toward a frenzied riot. True
enough, Christianity was bad
for
business as usual, if that business was taking advantage of
peopleÕs meager
earnings to have their fortunes told (like the current Grove casino
controversy?).
Since the threat to civil order was real, Paul and Silas were beaten as
was
customary, and then shackled into the dungeon, to control their .
The
Tulsa County Jail which I have visited is gray and sterile, not a
welcoming
environment, but nonetheless, a vast improvement over Roman jail
conditions.
Ancient RomeÕs underground prison was dug in the 6th
century B.C.E.
and is located just outside the Forum. The room 6 ½ ft high, 30
ft.
long, and 22 ft. wide, was
described by CaesarÕs contemporary, the writer Sallust as
Òdisgusting and vile
by reason of the filth, the darkness, and the stenchÓ[1]
Prisoners awaited execution or starvation. Once
dead, the bodies were thrown into the Cloaca Maxima,
RomeÕs sewer that emptied into the Tiber River.
Prisons in other cities hardly would have been better,
perhaps worse.
We
expect to hear Paul and Silas complaining loudly about their false
arrest and
how it couldnÕt get much worse than what they were experiencing. But no, they were singing hymns of
praise, surely not a typical jail time activity. Yet
Paul and Silas under hideous conditions expressed their
confidence in God through worship.
The prisoners were not cursing them, but listening.
PaulÕs internal attitude of annoyance
with the slave girlÕs truthtelling had become an attitude of joy
under prison
conditions, even though his external circumstances had gone from merely
annoying (followed by the slave girl) to truly horrifying (tossed 6
feet
under).
There
is a universal principle at work here in PaulÕs story – we tend
to see
what weÕre looking for. If
we decide ahead of time that we donÕt like someone, then
everything wrong with
that person becomes magnified and ultra-annoying, and we complain about
all
their faults and bad habits. But
if you are madly in love with a person, then you only see what you love
about
them, the good stuff, and you worship them. We
see what weÕre looking for. Similarly,
when it comes to God, we decide ahead of time to
look for something to praise even in the worst of circumstances. Instead of sinking into the morass of
bad times, we can regain our spiritual equilibrium through worship.
Is
this easy? No way! It
is hard to praise God when
everything seems to be going wrong, to find a small glittering jewel of
living
joy in the muck and mud of our ordinary, sometimes pain-filled lives. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that
there are two kinds of simplicity: there is simplicity on the near side
of
complexity, we could call it naivete, and simplicity on the far side of
complexity,
we could call it wisdom. In the
same way, there is worship on the near side of suffering that is happy
and
comfortable, and then there is worship on the far side of suffering
that is
heightened, open and receptive to a word, an action, from God. Such
acts of
worship on the far side of suffering give us a different perspective on
our
lives.
Victor
Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who wrote about his experiences in a
Nazi
concentration camp. In ManÕs
Search for Meaning, he recalled
how
everyone was stripped of clothing, pictures and other personal
belongings. Even their names were replaced
by
numbers. Frankl was number
119,104. Yet, Frankl said,
ÒEverything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of
human freedoms
– to choose oneÕs attitude in any given set of
circumstances.Ó Probably, the most
important choice we
make each day is our attitude.
This is our response-ability as human beings made in the image
of
God. Every day, every moment, we
have the ability to
choose our response in
whatever life throws down before us.
RESPONSE-ABILITY.
Neither
the singing nor the earthquake appeared to have woken the jailer, which
I
thought was another humorous touch, but when he did awake, the prison
doors
were off their hinges and leg irons popped off. The
jailerÕs first response was to tremble with fear that
his prisoners were probably long gone. Remember the fearful soldiers
dispatched
to guard JesusÕ tomb who concocted a story to protect themselves
from certain
death when they discovered it empty. Likewise,
the jailerÕs death was a foregone conclusion had
the prisoners taken advantage of their freedom and escaped without
explanation.
We
know that Paul could have avoided this night in PhilippiÕs jail
because he was
a Roman citizen. Typically, a citizen
could expect to be placed under house arrest to await a hearing and
trial. PaulÕs submission to jail
without
taking advantage of his citizenship is an example of choosing the Jesus
way of
the cross, to share suffering with others who are in bondage. So, Paul and Silas keeping company with
each other as tangible members of the body of Christ, could worship –
sing and pray - in the midst of appalling conditions.
RESPONSE-ABILITY By submitting in this way, Paul opened an
opportunity for the conversion of the jailer and his household, for the
jailer
to exercise RESPONSE-ABILITY as well.
One never knows what the results of passionate witness and
worship will
be. Worship can set off a chain
reaction, where prison doors fly open, chains pop off, and people are
changed.
In
the foreword to William Sloane CoffinÕs book Credo, his friend recalls their night spent in
a
Washington, D.C. jail following arrest at an anti-war demonstration. Separated, exhausted, dirty, and
afraid, he heard CoffinÕs bass voice rumble through the jail,
singing hymns to
God, a fearless, faithful singing that got them through a long, dark,
lonely
night. RESPONSE-ABILITY
What gets you through a long, dark,
lonely night?
Paul finally did play his trump card of
citizenship at the end of their ordeal, heaping public shame upon the
authorities who had falsely imprisoned him and his partner Silas. He turned the tables on the town
leaders and made them look bad - the Christians are shown to be the
honorable
men, and the others a bunch of skunks, by the end of this story. Not all of us get the chance to be
vindicated so clearly in life. And
even though the authorities apologized for their mistake, they
couldnÕt get rid
of them fast enough, asking them to leave the city and cause no more
trouble. Well, Paul and Silas did
move on and caused plenty of trouble all through Macedonia.
Choosing
our attitude doesnÕt mean that we just paste on a happy smile
and pretend that
all is well. If we share one anotherÕs lives, we will know the
circumstances
and burdens that each person and family carries with them into worship. That despite the burdens we bear,
nevertheless, we are here enjoying the privilege of worshipping God who
is with
us in all times and places. We
have RESPONSE-ABILITY to God, Jesus, and to one another. Amen.