| July 13, 2008
You are welcome to reflect on this message
The first church split in history came about over a dispute on missions. Hey, Christians can fight over anything! John Mark quit on Paul on his 1st journey and Paul wasn’t one of those second chance guys. Because he rightly believed how the gospel is presented is critical to its success. It fell to the more gentle-spirited Barnabas to rescue Mark and took him to Cyprus. And Paul picked Silas for his second missionary journey to“come over to Macedonia,” where Christianity was unknown. There they started a church, exorcised a slave girl, got tossed in the joint for it, sang songs at midnight in spite of it, and are liberated by a fortuitous earthquake. Then they converted the jailer and stared down the magistrates. That’s a lot of action to cram into the space of a few verses!
Most preaching I’ve heard on the story of the Philippian jailer, is his famous question that every evangelist worth-his-salt loves to hear: “What must I do to be saved?” It’s the most dramatic part of the story. But I’m focusing on another part of it because nobody ever does. There’s a timely message for us. (Vss 16-18). Luke, the master story-teller spins a good yarn beginning with the good news -- that the gospel had arrived for the 1st time on European soil. And initially the Macedonians hardly noticed the little troupe from Troas.
But it was a momentous occasion and Paul knew what was at stake: would Christianity remain a Jewish sect within Israel? Or would the faith of Jesus be for all people everywhere? From its inception there was a struggle between exclusivism and universalism. Paul’s success or failure in Gentile Europe would be determinative. So he preached to anybody who’d listen in the city named for Alexander’s father, Philip. There the missionaries laid the framework for the first European convert, and built a church around a woman of some means, named Lydia, who liked purple dresses! But soon after his first success, he got in trouble because the powers-that-be were upset at the changes brought on by the new gospel.
Another woman lived there who was driving the missionaries nuts! Following them around, making a scene: “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation!” Yeah, it was accurate, and free advertising too! But to Paul, she wasn’t just an embarrassment, but a detriment. He didn’t know her, yet she told the truth about him. So. The truth doesn’t always set you free. Sometimes it makes you mad! Luke says Paul was “very much annoyed.” My guess is that’s putting it mildly! A mentally imbalanced female-fortune-teller, is taken advantage of by greedy slave-owners, a bunch of low-lifes, making money off of her misery. And Paul didn’t want his message broadcast by by one who lacked credibility. Whether it’s quoting the Bible out of context or a flawed witness, he saw real danger in misleading others about Christianity. Jesus advised us to, “Be wise as serpents.” But gullibility is still a blight on the religious community, because people are so easily duped. Say the word “God” or “Bible” and you can get away with almost anything. But Jesus slammed those hyper-religious types whose approach to God “made others worse the children of hell than they themselves were!”
Luke contrasts a mad woman with a devout missionary, both saying the same thing. Except one didn’t know what she was saying. And the other one did. Even those closest to Jesus in the earliest church had to deal with the damage caused by people distorting the Christian faith. It’s still true to this day. To be effective, our witness ought to be winsome not worrisome; attractive not repulsive. How we present the gospel to outsiders matters. So Luke does something valuable for churches in every era by offering us a way to spot a fake. There’s plenty of them. So the next time you hear somebody lament, “We can’t pray in public schools anymore!” Or “Using the gospel to support violence.” Or somebody “blaming people for the way they’re born” under the guise of the gospel, there are two simple tests to determine the truth of any spurious religious claim: Does this lead to an increase in the love between God and neighbor? And even if it does, who gets hurt by it?
Surely inherent to being a Christian means increasing our ability to love and lessening our ability to hurt. That’s just basic stuff. Can it pass the loving test? Does it pass the who-gets-hurt test? And you know what? People have learned how to ace the loving test but bomb the who-gets-hurt test! If something increases love but also increases pain to somebody else, be very suspicious. Paul’s had-it with the woman’s mad raving, so he might as well cure her, right? Which he does. But he shouldn’t have done that. It just made her more worthless, because she’s still somebody’s property. Only now healed of her ability to be a cash cow. Her owners saw dollar signs not a person. So “When their hope for gain was gone, they dragged Paul and Silas into court.” Instead of being glad for the girl, the Macedonians were mad about losing their golden-egg. And religion got tangled with economics, and the vested ones reacted like they always do, when their business interests are threatened.
Paul and Silas learned a hard lesson in Philippi, that’s still true to this day: culture is Christianity’s greatest rival. That, and messing with the profits of avaricious business men can get you killed! “Look judge, we’re not against a little religion. But these Jews are turning our city upside down. They advocate unlawful customs that we Romans can’t accept.” Pilate appealed to “custom” on Good Friday, and Barabbas got released. The business community in Philippi deferred to the authority of “custom.” Because when push comes to shove, shove usually wins. Watch it unfold ... as nation, race, and tradition join in lock-step behind the drachma. The whole town falls in line behind the “business interests.” They pounce on the missionaries and lock them in stocks (the wooden kind). Paul and Silas paid a high price for delivering the gospel and performing a compassionate act of healing. All of which is to say, the gospel will get you in trouble--depending, of course, upon the degree to which it is practiced. Jesus preached “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free...” Yeah and it’ll also make you mad and put you behind bars!
To hear Luke tell it, adversity is an opportunity! Most people trapped in the belly of a jailhouse would’ve rattled their cups, whined and quit. Not these two. “At midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns to God and the prisoners listened...” Bound in chains, and singing freedom-hymns in jail! When God’s young church was hanging by a thread, that’s when the earth convulses, the walls shake, the doors fly open and the stocks fall off! The snoring jailer woke up, horrified! He is very aware of what happens to guards whose prisoners escape on their watch. He knows he’s a goner and prepares to fall on his sword. But wait! Just having the key to somebody’s cell doesn’t make you free, any more than iron bars make a prison. Paul feels for the guy and shouts, “Don’t do it. We’re still here. Just one more verse of ‘Just as I am.’” And an earthquake becomes evangelistic creativity. A life was saved and a jailer is stunned that they weren’t trying to escape. “Why aren’t ya’ll running like the rest of them?” “We may be in jail, but we belong to Jesus. And the good news is, you can too!” And that got his attention! “What must I do to be saved?” The $64,000 question...not to be taken out of context. Did he mean salvation as we think of it? I doubt it. He probably meant, how can I save my job, or my neck for letting prisoners escape? Here-and-now stuff.
But Paul and Silas had bigger things in mind. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” The $64,000 answer! And he bound up their wounds that he somehow hadn’t noticed before. And a pagan jailer ends up “baptizing the missionaries” with kindness. And they reciprocated with a “baptism of sacrament.” Luke says the jailer believed. And not just him but “his whole house.” I don’t know what God wanted with his house, but it bothers everybody except the Presbyterians! We aren’t told why they believed. A safe guess is, the earthquake had something to do with it. Or that they didn’t run when they could have. Or maybe he went to sleep with those good ol’ gospel songs ringing in his ears. Unusually caring deeds have that kind of effect on people. We still don’t know why people believe. But surveys indicate that they come to church for the 1st time because somebody in the church was gracious and invited them. And we also know that they won’t be back unless our words and our life are cut from the same cloth.
That’s why the best witness there is, is Christian character. Can there be any sermon more powerful than a hymn at midnight or not running off to save your own hide in order to spare the jailer’s? Unusual human nature gets our attention. Especially if we’re the beneficiaries of it. Sometimes even Mother Nature gets in on it. Evangelistic earthquake opportunities abound , that every church has to show unexpected kindness. Can we pass not just the love-test? (The easy one) But (the hard one), the who-gets-hurt-test? I know a lot of churches that can’t.
In this story, Luke describes one of his favorite themes: the great reversal of the Gospel. It turns everything upside down! The irony that everybody who appears to be free in the story -- the slave-girl’s owners, the adjudicators, the jailer -- all these turn out to be enslaved. And everyone who appears to be enslaved -- the poor girl, Paul, Silas -- they’re the ones who are free. I just wanted ya’ll to see that Jesus does things like this to people.
Pastoral Prayer:
We make time in our prayers for all who are living on the edge, some barely hanging by a thread; others recuperating from time in the hospital, some facing surgery, others facing death. We remember all who are suffering and confined by the forces of aging that narrows their world more and more. May the faithfulness of our lives in this church and the genuineness of our love for its people, proclaim to the world that none of God’s creatures is ever alone.
Steady us when the inevitable earthquakes and tsunamis crash into our lives, and fill us with joy in this worship, like the Philippian jailer, whose life changed drastically the moment he cast his lot with the church. Set us all free that we might live lives that show forth your glory. Amen. Back |
