Acts 16:16-34 One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave
girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of
money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These
men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”
She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said
to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.”
And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of
making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the
marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the
magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and
are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or
observe.” The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them
stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they
had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the
jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the
innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and
Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening
to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of
the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and
everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison
doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he
supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do
not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and
rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them
outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe
on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke
the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour
of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire
family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set
food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a
believer in God.
John 17:20-26 ”I ask not
only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me
through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I
am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have
sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may
be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely
one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even
as you have loved me.
Father, I desire that those
also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which
you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know
that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it
known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in
them.”
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There
is probably no better example of the idea of two being made one than
marriage. The very word, marry, means
two coming together as one. In fact,
when I worked in restaurants I learned a new use of the word: at the end of the
day we would “marry the condiments.”
Take those two half-empty bottles of catsup, pour the remains of one
into the other, wipe up the mess you made on the label, and there you go – two
are made one.
Kim
and I had the joy of being at our daughter’s wedding last Sunday and witnessing
the ritual of two being made one. As
Kira and Shane made their solemn vows to each other and exchanged rings, they
were transformed from two independent individuals to one unit – a family.
The
two become one, and that extends to their respective families as well. Now our two families are connected. At the wedding reception, Shane’s young
nephew got out on the dance floor with my son Henry. And when the song ended he shook Henry’s hand
and introduced himself. He said, “You’re
my uncle-in-law.” The two families are
made one.
A wedding is a perfect example of the image presented
in this passage from John – an image of what was once separate becoming united
as one. “That they may all be one, as you and I are one,” Jesus says in his
prayer to the Father. “Let the love with
which you have loved me be also in them.”
These
are beautiful words … beautiful sentiments.
They fill us with good feelings, and then we go home. To actually live these words is something on
a different level. We know life isn’t
lived in perfect harmony, like the old Coke commercial song.
The
scene we read from Acts today gets right to the nub of it. The Apostles Paul and Silas are followed by a
slave girl with a spirit of divination.
Some may call it a gift; others would call it a curse. Whatever it is, she seems to have the ability
to tell the future, and her owners have made a happy profit from it. For reasons that are not made entirely clear,
Paul becomes annoyed. Perhaps it is
because she is like a droning mosquito following him around. Perhaps it is because she is drawing too much
attention to him. Perhaps, and quite
likely, I think, he is annoyed at the exploitation of this girl and the fact
that the culture seems to wholeheartedly accept it. Whatever it is, he is
annoyed enough to turn around and cast the spirit right out of the girl. It would seem that this is a good thing for
the girl, but a bad thing for her owners who have just lost a reliable source
of income. They are predictably angry,
and they charge Paul and Silas with disturbing the peace. The local authorities concur and have them
thrown in jail.
The
girl who was oppressed by a demon and by her fellow human beings has now been
freed, but the men who set her free are now imprisoned. They broke the rules. Such are the ways of the world. There is, you might think,
a finite amount of power and freedom to go around; if I gain some then someone
else must lose some. This may be the way
of the world – but it is not the way of the gospel. The Spirit of God brings an earthquake that
breaks down the walls that imprison Paul and Silas. Chains are broken; locks are opened. But Paul and Silas do not try to escape –
they simply wait in their former cell for the jailer to reach them. That night, those who had been separated were
made one in Jesus Christ.
The
gospel of Jesus Christ resists the ways of the world that create division. The power of the gospel gives us freedom to
break down barriers, to work together for the well-being of all. And it takes faithful effort on the part of
all Jesus’ disciples. What does it look
like for us to make this faithful effort?
What does it take in our world to show the oneness we have in
Christ? What might the Apostles of Christ
say about this to us, the church in Huber Heights, to help us be the church
that we were meant to be?
Perhaps
we can imagine such a message. Hear
these words from the fourth chapter of our letter to a resurrected people.
Chapter 4:
“Love one another as I have
loved you.” These are the words Jesus
said to us. Living this love requires
making some changes in our lives, including pulling down some barriers that
separate us from others. We would prefer
to remain separate from those who seem to make our lives difficult. We say things like, “life is too short to
spend it with people I don’t like.”
There is a phrase I have
been hearing a lot among church folks:
like-minded people. There is this
peculiar notion that it is our right to associate only with those we want to
associate with. There is the idea that
it is a good thing for churches to be made up of people who have the same
opinions about everything, and that anyone who disagrees should go find another
church where there might be other folks who think the same way.
The church has developed
this habit of splintering into smaller and smaller groups of people with whom
we feel comfortable. To say about a
church, “I feel comfortable there,” has become an entirely acceptable excuse
for joining a congregation. It is not
often that I hear someone say, “I am a member of this church because I feel
challenged there – challenged to grow.”
Of course, it is not only
the church that exhibits this characteristic.
You are living in an increasingly polarized culture, and nothing
exemplifies it more than your politics.
There are dedicated news stations for those who identify as conservative
or liberal, and they do not report the same news. Rather than growing in understanding toward
one another, the goal seems to be simply reinforcing your respective
pre-existing beliefs.
I have a great concern for
you and the culture in which you live, that you grow increasingly estranged
from one another. As your interests grow
farther apart and your views of the world grow farther apart, your ability to
care for one another will diminish.
Yet I remain hopeful that
the gospel of Jesus Christ is more powerful than any walls we might build
separating us one from another. I am
hopeful that the love of God is working in you, and the Spirit will stir you to
confess your own culpability in the challenges we are facing. We must resist the temptation to lay blame
for all problems at the feet of someone else and search our own souls for the
ways we have caused misunderstanding and alienation. We must be willing to say, “I was wrong and I
am sorry” or, “This is hard for me, and I need your patience.”
The love of God in Christ
Jesus brings us together, uniting us as one, as Jesus and the Father are one
with the Holy Spirit. Truly I say to you,
what affects you affects me; what hurts you hurts me; what blesses you blesses
me. We are in this together. That is our challenge and that is also our
strength.
As we
take this message with us today, and throughout this week, let us ask ourselves
what are the particular challenges we face.
How are we separated from others in our neighborhood – what are the
walls that separate us from the people who live in our neighborhood, right
around our church property? How well do
we know our neighbors – and if we do know them, do we love them? What separates us from one another even
within our congregation? Do we allow
barriers to grow between us, hiding behind them to avoid having to talk about
the hard things?
As we
take this message with us today and into this week, let us carry the knowledge
in our heads and our hearts that the gospel frees us from the things that
separate us; that the love we know through Christ Jesus has the power to break
down barriers and build up peace in even the toughest places. God loves us enough to do that. In the name of the one who is love.
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