God’s Intervention, Part 3: New Life in an Old Place

Luke 8:26-39     

In the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, Chapter 16, there is a ritual prescribed for the atonement of sins. Two goats are presented to the Lord. One is offered as a sacrifice. The other goat is taken before the priest, who lays his hands on the head of the goat and recites the whole litany of the sins of the people. Once all the sins have been spoken and transferred onto the head of the goat, it is driven out into the wilderness, far away from the community. It is called the scapegoat.

Other ancient cultures had similar rituals. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, although we don’t think much of it now. Of course, the practice of scapegoating is still quite common, although not usually by conscious intention.

The herd of swine in this story from Luke sort of took the role of the scapegoat, didn’t it? In this outrageous story about a man tormented by demons, bound in chains by his community, crying out for help from Jesus. The demons that afflicted him are sent into the swine which then throw themselves into the lake. But the story makes me wonder who was the real scapegoat – the swine or the man?

It’s a crazy story. The episode comes at the end of a boat trip on a very stormy sea, Jesus and his disciples hit land in the country of the Gerasenes and are met at the shore by this local madman. He has been in this condition for a long time. They find him wild and naked, kept in chains for fear of what he might do. It isn’t really clear if they are trying to keep the community safe from this man or keep this man safe from himself. Perhaps it is both.

Then Jesus heals him of his affliction, casting out the legion of demons. The man suddenly becomes calm. The people of the city rush out to see what’s going on and they find him clothed, quiet and relaxed. He has been, at last, exorcised of the demons; he is once again himself. Although, to the Gerasenes, he seemed not at all himself – not the man they have known him to be. The scene they encounter is not what they expected, and they are afraid.

It seems a funny reaction to have, doesn’t it? But the truth is, in healing this man, Jesus has upset the careful equilibrium this community has come to rely on.

That’s the way systems work. Everyone has a role to play in a system – whether it’s a family, an office, a congregation. Some of these are official roles that everyone is aware of. But in other ways, we create unofficial, unspoken roles that just make the system work. Everyone fills their roles, strange as they may be, and the system runs like a well-oiled machine. Sometimes, it’s comical, the way it works.

There are a lot of funny movies about families coming together for the holidays and acting out all their flakiness. We laugh at them because there is something of ourselves that we recognize in their quirks. In every plot, we watch them draw close to the brink of disaster, then avoid going over the cliff, and all is well. They are still as flaky as ever, but it’s okay. It’s going to be okay, because every family, every group, every system has certain roles that just make things work, provide the necessary equilibrium.

Maybe you have seen this in your family. Maybe you have a bossy sister or a trouble-making brother, and somehow that never changes, no matter how old you get. When grown children come back home together, like in those silly Christmas movies, everyone is still expected to play the same role. No matter how much you might have changed since you were a child, when you all get together, the family still expects you to be that child, for the sake of the equilibrium.

Maybe you have seen this in the church. There are those people who can be counted on to bring deviled eggs to the potluck. There are the people who can be counted on to speak first in a small group. There are the ones who will notice if the scheduled ushers didn’t show up, and they will jump right in to fill the need. Everyone does their part, for the sake of the equilibrium. We expect them to.

Usually these expectations are pretty harmless. But not always. Sometimes one person is expected to carry far more than their fair share of the weight, for the sake of the equilibrium. And this is dysfunctional.

It may be helpful to say that the word dysfunction does not mean what you might think it means. When we say something is dysfunctional it might sound like we’re saying it is not functional. But, actually, dysfunctional means something is functioning through its brokenness, in pain.

Every group has some dysfunction in it. Some more, some less. But it happens sometimes that the way a group finds its equilibrium is when one individual carries the burden of the dysfunction. One person has to be sick.

The black sheep of the family. Or the one individual who seems to suffer lots of chronic illnesses. The one who is prone to uncontrollable anger. Or mental illness, or addiction. Sometimes, one person carries a burden for the whole group. In family psychology, this one person is called the identified patient.

And when a patient has been identified, the problem feels like it’s been contained. It feels like it can be managed. In a certain way, life becomes predictable, and even if it’s predictable in bad ways … that is good.

But if the identified patient refuses to carry the burden any longer and decides to get well, then anything can happen. We have lost our scapegoat and the real problems might be exposed.

This, I am suggesting, is what happened with the Gerasenes, when they found the man sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.

They were afraid – this is a telling response. It reveals health and wholeness is not their highest priority. It reveals that there is still some sickness in this community that has been ignored for a long time. It might have looked like all the demons were drowned in the lake, but I suspect that there were still lots of demons in this place.

The nature of the sin-sickness of the world is that we resist becoming well. We find it easier to be sick. You might have doubts about this, but let me ask you this:

Why is it that we develop bad habits so much more easily than good habits? And why do we find good habits so easy to slough off, while bad habits are so hard to break? Individuals and systems resist wellness. To be well, healthy, whole, requires work. And in spite of the transformative promises that this work offers, it is work that we sometimes say no to.

Jesus brought the possibility of wellness to the Gerasenes. But they refused it. They didn’t want to have to figure out how to live in this new transformed reality.

It is interesting that the former demoniac seems to recognize this right away. He takes one look at the mob who has been seized with fear at the sight of him. Then he looks back at Jesus and he says, “Take me with you.” He does not want to be left here in a community that is afraid of his wellness.

But Jesus insists that he stay there. He is now made whole, he has been given new life. And his new life is to be a witness to his community. He now must take his new life into this old place.

“Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you,” Jesus says to the man. He now has a new role to play. He is not the madman chained out by the tombs; he is the witness to new life. The community might put up a lot of resistance to his new role, but now it’s up to you, Jesus tells him. I’ve done my part, you do yours.

God intervenes in the world by bringing new life. But, like it or not, we are expected to be partners with God in this work of renewal. Here, in the land of the Gerasenes, Jesus set one person on a new course, and asked him to go and help his whole community get on course. It’s a tall order, but it’s the way things actually change – one person at a time. One person can have extraordinary effects. As he taught in his little parable of the yeast, when you change a tiny thing, it can permeate and change the whole in dramatic ways.

When I was younger, I read Dear Abby and Ann Landers columns every day, and there were so many letters from people who were suffering in hurtful relationships. They always said they tried to get their spouse or their children or their parents to go to counseling with them, but they refused. Abby and Ann would always tell them, “If they won’t go with you, you should go anyway.” There is wisdom in this, because if even one person in the system changes, that can start the whole system changing.

God does intervene to bring healing to a broken world. And then it is up to us, the ones who have experienced this healing, to share it with others, to be the light. The world will resist healing, but keep shining your light anyway. The world will want you to go back to your old ways, playing your part in a broken system, but keep shining your light anyway.

You do not need to try to change the whole world. But if you clothe yourself in this new life, the world will change.

Photo: The two Yom Kippur goats. Source: Chabad.org

God’s Intervention, Part 2: X-Ray Vision

1 Kings 21:1-21 

I don’t know if Elijah loved his job, but I have my doubts. Who could love a job where you have to constantly haul yourself over to the worst king in the history of Israel and confront him with bad news? He might not have loved his job, but he was good at it.

He had to be the best because he was dealing with the worst. Ahab was bad enough on his own, but everything was made worse by the fact of Jezebel, his foreign bride. She worshiped strange gods – the Baals, as they are sometimes called – and had strange ideas about the powers of royalty. In other lands in those days, including Jezebel’s homeland, kings had unlimited powers. They could take whatever they wanted to take. And so, it seemed mighty peculiar to Jezebel to find Ahab sulking on his bed like a moody teenager because he couldn’t get Naboth to sell him a vineyard.

Just for the sake of clarity, there was actually no law prohibiting Naboth from selling his vineyard. But clearly, there was a high value placed on keeping the land in the family from generation to generation. And, if some portion of land was sold outside the family, the scriptures specify that every 50^th year the land is supposed to be returned to its original owners. No one knows exactly how this worked, or how well it worked, but the intended effect is to keep wealth disparities from getting out of hand. You could acquire property, sure. But you could not pass it down from generation to generation; there would come a point when you would have to give it back.

So I think it is not terribly strange that Naboth has declined the king’s offer to buy his vineyard. If he was not in need of cash, why would he sell it? It seems evident from the scriptures that such a thing is not in keeping with God’s desires.

Naboth might not have figured in the opinions of Queen Jezebel, though. Because, although Ahab might go no further in pursuing his desires, Jezebel comes from a different ethical worldview.

She sets in motion a plan to get rid of Naboth so they might seize his property. Everything goes according to plan and she tells Ahab, “Now go get your vineyard,” and he gets up from his brooding couch and goes happily skipping down the road, like a birthday boy, to see his brand new vineyard.

There he encounters Elijah. One more encounter with the prophet of God, man of courage.

Once again, Elijah has to stand before him, look this corrupt leader in the eye and say, I see you. I see what you did. God sees what you did.

It is the job of a prophet to put his or her life on the line for the sake of what is right and good.

It is the job of the prophet to speak God’s truth in places where it has been forgotten, where it has been rejected, or where people have simply decided to avert their eyes.

In the days of King Ahab, Jezebel simply rejected God’s truth. It was not her truth. Jezebel’s ethical worldview was a narrow one that consisted of herself and the very small group of people she chose to be included in it. Hers was a black-white zero-sum value system in which everyone was entitled to get whatever they could get in whatever way they could get it.

Ahab may not have subscribed to Jezebel’s rules. It’s hard to say. But if he did not approve of her ways, he at least decided to avert his eyes. Because if you didn’t see it, you don’t have to do anything about it. And you can even benefit from it. And if there are a few people who act like Jezebel, there are many of us who act like Ahab at times.

But God sees when we do this. Make no mistake. Other people might not, but God sees. And sometimes when you become aware of that, it is as if you have been met on the road by the prophet Elijah, convicted of your sin. It is up to each one of us, then, to decide how to move forward.

This situation with Naboth’s vineyard puts me in mind of one of Wendell Berry’s short stories. There is a character named Wheeler Catlett, who is faced with a problem and trying to work it out for the best. The problem is this: his friend Jack Beechum has died and Jack’s will has just been read. Jack left his farm to his only child, his daughter Clara. But he knows that Clara cares nothing for the farm. So Jack has written down his wishes that Clara sell the farm to his tenant farmers, Elton and Mary Penn. The Penns love the farm and it will be in good hands with them. Jack suggested, in his note, what he deemed to be a fair price, one that the Penns could afford.

But this was just in a handwritten note, not a part of his will. So Wheeler explains all this to Clara and her husband, hoping that there will be enough trust among the three of them to carry this out and see that Jack’s real will be seen to. But Clara cares nothing for the farm. She says to Wheeler, “I don’t doubt you are telling the truth. I don’t doubt that this is what my father wanted. I don’t doubt that he loved the Penns. But my father’s loves are not mine.

So that’s how it will be. The farm will be sold at auction so Clara and her husband can get the highest possible price. Now there will be others competing with Elton and Mary – a neighboring farmer, a man who has been buying up small farms to maximize his holdings; and a town doctor, who wants to invest in property, and wants to keep Elton and Mary as his tenants, to make money for him. This is not what Old Jack wanted – for his farm to be swallowed up into a giant farm, or for it to become a profit-making machine, exploiting the labors of others. But it didn’t matter what Jack wanted because, as Clara said, “My father’s loves are not mine.”

When I hear Clara say this, I think about how many different ways we say it, in words or in our actions, with respect to our relationship with our creator. That what God desires is not what we desire. That what God holds to be true is not of any consequence to us.

If these matters present us with any kind of ethical dilemma, we might decide that what God desires is just not practical or convenient for us. That God’s wishes are simply unrealistic in this world we live in, and I suppose God’s will often does seem unrealistic. People want what they want, the law is the law. What more can anyone expect of us?

In Wendell Berry’s story, Wheeler Catlett could have washed his hands of the affair after Clara said, “My father’s loves are not mine.” He could have told himself that he held up his end of the bargain, he fulfilled his duty to his friend, and that was it. He could have averted his eyes when they organized the auction, and he could have taken a drive out in the country on the day the auction took place across the street from his office. But Wheeler had met the prophet on the road, and he couldn’t see his way clear to doing that.

Instead, he talked it through with Elton and Mary. He talked to the other prospective buyers. He stood behind Elton at the auction to lend him strength. He took on some responsibility for making things right. And even though he knew it might not come out right, he knew he could at least try and so he did.

In the end, the Penns got the farm. They had to pay a good bit more than Jack had intended for them to pay, so they were in deep. Wheeler went back to his office and got on the phone with the bank. He set aside an amount of money he could afford, just in case there came a time when the Penns needed help.

Perhaps you would say it is unrealistic to expect Wheeler to do that. Surely it was. But he expected it of himself, because, I would say, he believed God desired it of him. And because it was what God desired for him, Wheeler was pleased to do it.

When you meet the prophet on the road, you might run the other way and look for cover. But other times, when the prophet looks you in the eye, you might see through God’s eyes. And you’ll be pleased to do it.

Photo Credit: By חדוה שנדרוביץ - Hedva Sanderovitz via the PikiWiki - Israel free image collection project, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15272824

God’s Intervention, Part 1: The Power of Love

Acts 2:1-21        

In my middle year of seminary, I participated in a required cross-cultural experience: a planned three-week trip to another country, someplace that is guaranteed to pull you out of your comfort zone; its primary purpose is to offer students a greater perspective on how faith intersects with culture.

The cross-cultural trip might be to India, South Africa, Israel, Guatemala – in my year it was Cuba. There we were kept busy for three weeks traveling around the island meeting with local government officials and church leaders, touring their big medical school and a farming cooperative, and visiting lots of churches.

We visited churches of all kinds – Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Pentecostal. From impressive cathedrals to tiny storefronts. One Sunday morning when we were in a city called Ciego de Avila, we managed a double-header.

Two congregations had invited us to worship, so our group split up and half of us attended worship at the Pentecostal church while the other half went to the Baptist church. At the Pentecostal church, we were greeted with kisses from perfect strangers – which seems to be the Pentecostal way, at least in Cuba. During the service we experienced what we hoped were minor communication problems that we tried to fumble our way through. Being a guest can be difficult when you don’t know for sure what is expected of you.

The Pentecostal service started earlier than the Baptist service, and so when our bus picked us up and returned to the Baptist church to collect the rest of our group, they were still in the middle of worship.  We were torn between wanting to join them in worship and not wanting to disturb their worship.

This Baptist church was one of the tiny storefront churches. The front windows were open, but covered with iron bars. This was often the case in Cuban stores and homes as well. The church was quite full, and to walk in and try to find a place to sit would have caused a disturbance, we were quite sure. So we remained outside. And it was behind iron bars that we stood on the sidewalk watching the worship going on inside.

Well, our efforts to be unobtrusive actually caused us to be somewhat obtrusive. Some of the Cubans began handing hymnals to us so we could sing with them. For reasons I don’t think I could explain, we did not pull the hymnals through the bars so we could hold them comfortably, but instead we reached our arms through the bars to hold the hymnals on the inside.

It was a strange experience of feeling together and yet separated. We were worshiping with our American and Cuban brothers and sisters inside the church and yet we were very aware of the bars that separated us. I suppose you could say those bars were symbolic of the barriers between our two countries, our two languages, our two cultures. It was just another aspect of the daily struggle we experienced during our time there.

We reached the point in the worship service where they began the celebration of communion. At this point, the bars felt even more like an unwanted obstruction. What would we do? Could we share communion with one another through a set of iron bars?

On the day of Pentecost, Jesus’ followers were still occupying that upper room, the place they had gathered with Jesus before his arrest, the place they had huddled in fear after the resurrection, the place they had returned to again and again during this in-between period. After he ascended, leaving his followers behind, they returned again to the upper room and devoted themselves to prayer. That is what they were doing when the feast of Pentecost arrived.

Pentecost was a religious festival, a reason for Jews from all over the diaspora to travel on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, bringing the first fruits of the harvest to the temple. While the disciples were cloistered in their room, the streets below them were crowded with a vibrant mix of people, cultures, languages.

There is no reason these men of Galilee should have been able to speak the native languages of all who were together in Jerusalem that day. But the Spirit gave them power to do so. God who knew their needs more completely that any of them did, gave them the ability to speak in a way that could be heard. And it really started something.

The good news began its travels across languages, across borders, across mountains and seas; across nationalities, across races, across religions and creeds. The word of the Lord, by the power of the Spirit had wings.

Jews and Christians, and Muslims, as well, are called the people of the word. Our faith is founded on our understanding of the word of God. Particularly for Jews and Christians, who share a common testament, and understand the very creation of the world as an act of divine speech. God said, “Let there be light;” then God said, “It is good.”

Later, God spoke to a man named Abram, and guided him to a place and a promise that would reach all the peoples of the world through all the generations of the world. God brought life to barren men and women, God sustained life in barren places, all for the sake of this promise.

Later still, God spoke through judges, priests, and prophets, mending what had been broken, healing what had been wounded, all for the sake of this promise.

And then God spoke through Jesus, whose words and actions, life, death and resurrection from the dead, transformed people and brought them together for a common purpose: to carry the good news of God’s redeeming love to every corner of the world.

And yet – we continue to divide ourselves, to erect barriers that separate us, to shut people out, away from the promise. In our efforts to separate ourselves from others, we try to put limits on God’s redeeming love.

For God, of course, there are no language or cultural barriers. As the creator of all that is, God understands us intimately, completely. God speaks our language fluently, whatever language it might be. And it is only through God, and the amazing power of the Spirit, that the promise truly lives, moves and grows.

For us, it is a matter of letting God. The first followers didn’t need to open the window to let the Spirit in, she burst in on her own. Yet, looked at another way, they did let the Spirit in – in the way they devoted themselves, together, to prayer.

Do we invite the Spirit in and let the Spirit take hold? Or do we erect barriers, like those bars across the windows of the Baptist Church in Ciego de Avila? How can we share together in the body of Christ when we allow barriers to separate us?

On that day in Ciego de Avila, we didn’t. As we stood outside those iron bars listening to the great thanksgiving prayer of communion, we began to see how absurd it was. The Cubans inside looked at us outside, and we knew they weren’t going to pass the bread and the cup through a set of bars. The time had come to be a disruption. We all began to pour through the door, just as the Spirit blew through the walls of that upper room in Jerusalem. We had no common language, but we shared an understanding that the presence of Christ in the sacrament, the work of the Holy Spirit, eliminates barriers.

There is no barrier that can keep out the power of God’s Spirit. There is no wall that can stop the power of God’s word in action, communicating the good news of our salvation. There is no thing – no hate, no fear, no doubt that can stop the power of God’s love. Let it in, let the Spirit move in us and around us. Let the power that is God’s love fill the world.

Photo Credit: Ciego De Avila. By Leon Petrosyan - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25287658

Free

Acts 16:16-34    

Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who serves the people of Los Angeles. He works in the poorest neighborhoods with the highest gang activity in a city that is considered the capital of gang activity. His parish is the epicenter of hopelessness. To be born in such a place is not really any different than to be born in prison.

The likelihood that a boy born in these neighborhoods will spend time in prison is almost certain – if he lives long enough. Father Greg spends a lot of time visiting the jails, the detention centers, handing out his business cards. He tells them all to look him up when they get out. He knows they will need his help when they get out.

He has been doing this for more than 30 years. He started a tattoo removal service early on because of a young man he met, recently out of prison. Ramiro had an obscene phrase tattooed across his forehead, covering every square centimeter of real estate. He told the priest he was having trouble finding a job. No wonder.

Father Greg learned early on that one of the best things he could do for these guys was to help them get jobs. So, among other things, he did just that. This was the beginning of Homeboy Industries.

He has accomplished an incredible amount in his ministry there. Into the hopelessness he brings hope – no small thing. Father Greg wants these guys to stay out of prison, but he wants much more than that for them. He wants them to be free.

He wants them to be free.

These two back-to-back stories in Acts 16 highlight the idea of freedom, in different ways. The girl with a spirit of divination that Paul and the other apostles meet in Macedonia is a slave. Afflicted with a spirit that gives her power to tell fortunes, she is held by this spirit. She is in the chains of this spirit; she is a slave to this evil spirit.

And, of course, she has owners – people who have, apparently, paid for her as if she were a piece of property, so they could profit from her affliction. She tells fortunes, they make money. This girl is a slave twice over.

When she encounters the Apostles, she seems to immediately perceive the Spirit of God in them – spirit recognizes spirit – and she begins following them, announcing to all within hearing range, who they are and who they serve and what they are there for.

By the power of this spirit that is within her, she is speaking the truth. And she continues following them around, speaking this truth at the top of her voice for several days. Understandably, it becomes an irritation. Eventually Paul snaps. He stops, turns, and orders the spirit to leave her.

Which is good for the girl –she has been freed from one master. But not good for her owners, who see their source of revenue instantly dry up. They take the apostles to court. Paul and Silas are jailed and chained – not the first or last time for Paul.

We know from Paul’s letters and other writings that he spent a good deal of time in jail. He was often pushing the boundaries of what is customary and acceptable in the places where he traveled, and as a result, sometimes landing in jail as he did here. Here in Macedonia, he was charged with disturbing the peace by bringing new and unlawful ideas and habits – namely, this: Paul wants to show the Macedonians how to live in the freedom of Christ.

It is not easy for us to understand this idea – freedom in Christ. In this world, freedom often means simply being able to do whatever we want. You are free to come to church – or not. You are free to choose. You are free to choose how you spend your time, how you spend your money, how you use your voice, and so on. Freedom means do what you want.

But we also know that being a Christian means you can’t just do whatever you want; that some things are just not okay. It matters how you spend your money, how you spend your time. It matters what you say, it matters what you do.

There is certainly a paradox on display here. The slave girl announced that Paul and the others were slaves of the most high God – slaves! In one sense, they were not free – they were servants, even slaves, of the one true God. Yet, in Christ, they were free.

Free of the burden of sin, free of death, free for this new life, a life that leads to life. Paul traveled to Macedonia and everywhere else he could go, to share the good news, to offer freedom – but that message of freedom was not always welcome.

It really isn’t any different today. Even for those of us who have accepted this message of freedom in Christ, we sometimes choose to live as though we are not free. We allow ourselves to become slaves to all kinds of things – jobs, possessions, unhealthy relationships or addictions. But we might also become slaves to fear. To hate. To anger. There are so many ways we may become slaves to sin.

In the neighborhoods of Los Angeles where Father Greg works, there is a particular kind of slavery that tends to afflict the people. People are slaves to vengeance. They are slaves to anger and hatred that demands revenge. They talk about their own death as though it is almost inevitable. But they say to their brothers, their closest friends, “I know if anything happens to me, you’ll take care of it.” Meaning, you will avenge me.

To bring a message of freedom, a message of hope, into such a place as this is a holy and radical thing.

Father Greg tells a story about George, who was serving time in juvenile detention. While in there, George made the decision to be baptized. Father Greg had known George on the outside, he knew George and his brother Cisco as gang members in the neighborhood. But now, in prison, Greg watched George become transformed. During the months of his imprisonment, something happened. He gradually turned away from his gang persona – which always needed to project a kind of hardness, dangerousness – to becoming a man in possession of himself and his gifts. He developed a degree of thoughtfulness and self-control and real confidence that he could never afford to have before. George was becoming free to be himself.

The night before George’s baptism, his brother Cisco was walking home. Rival gang members were waiting for him. They snuck up on him with their guns and they shot him as he was walking down the street, half a block from his apartment. Cisco died instantly, leaving behind a girlfriend, eight months pregnant with his child.

The next morning, Father Greg arrived at the detention center and saw George, positively beaming. This was the day he was going to be baptized and there was joy in his heart. Greg decided he would not tell George about Cisco – yet. Let him get through his baptism before telling him what happened the night before.

After mass was over, he put his arm around George and walked outside with him so they could be alone. He held him and said to him gently, “George, your brother Cisco was killed last night.”

George was transfigured by grief. He fell onto a bench – sobbing, rocking, heartbroken. His grief was there for all to see. But what was not there is just as important. There was no anger, rage, vows to avenge Cisco’s death. The old life has gone. The new life in Christ is his. George is free. Even while he is imprisoned, he is free.

And this is the freedom we see in the second story of this passage of Acts. Paul and Silas are chained in their cell when an earthquake hits, shaking the foundation, opening the cell doors, breaking the chains. It happens while they are praying and singing hymns – you could almost think that the earthquake was the divine answer to their prayers. A true act of God.

But now the jailer is overcome with despair and hopelessness. He knows that all the prisoners will escape, and it will somehow be his fault that they do. In his hopelessness, he is ready to take his own life. Until he becomes aware that no one has moved.

Not one prisoner has left their cell. Paul shouts loud enough for the jailer to hear, “We are all here.”

Paul does not need to run, because he knows what freedom is. He knows the freedom he has in Christ is a freedom that must be shared, and that even though he would prefer not to be in a jail cell, he will be less free should his escape lead to his jailer’s death. Paul knows that he is a little bit less free when others are enslaved. He knows that freedom in Christ is less about living for oneself and more about living for others.

The jailer and his family are baptized that very night. Then all of them, with Paul and Silas, sit at table and break bread together. Friends. Family.

In Christ we are offered freedom. Freedom to end cycles of vengeance and patterns of violence. Freedom to break out of old habits that might bring harm to others. Freedom to choose to respond in a new way – with love, with patience, with generosity.

In Christ we are offered freedom to make our swords into plowshares, to tear down walls instead of building them up, to reach across aisles and across borders and seek to know one another, because as Father Greg says again and again, you can’t demonize someone once you know them. In Christ we are offered the freedom to love one another and live for one another, to live in Christ by the grace of God.

Thanks be to God.