"Where Does God Want Me to Be?"
Our New Testament Bible reading today presents us with a story that illustrates how Christians dealt with the powers of this world in Biblical times. A girl is used by powerful men. Legal process is then ignored in the interest of preserving the peace and protecting the powerful. God frees the girl, sends an earthquake to free the disciples, and then sends an even greater earthquake â€" an earthquake of the human spirit. The stories end with the message that only the Lord is in charge or as the Psalmist in Psalm 97 writes, "The Lord Reigns." This story has always been a strong message to leaders that no one but God speaks for God. It is clear that, as Paul would later write, "now we see through a glass darkly" and that we have a source of strength and healing to go to when the powers of this world batter us.
Several things must be understood if one wants to fully understand this otherwise puzzling story. Philippi was something of a retirement town in its day.. Like many retirement towns today, there were two communities: the locals whose families had lived there for many generations. The other, larger, dominant group was the retirees. Not just any retirees either, mind you. These retirees, this new majority, were military retirees â€" veterans of Caesar's armies. They were tough, worldly, men and their families were largely from the Italian peninsula; quite unlike the locals who were Macedonian Greeks, the majority of whom had never traveled far from home. The contrast could not have been greater. And, it must be assumed, everyone knew right away who was whom.
There are lots of places like Philippi in our modern world. I'm not talking about retirement communities; but rather towns where people are divided into two groups: those who are connected and those who are not. I'm making no comments about Red Bank per se. But I know that many of us have lived in places and have encountered this. In towns like those you are either in or out. You have connections or you don't. If you land in jail and you are "connected", you use your one phone call to call your uncle Charley, not your lawyer. Uncle Charley makes a phone call or two and you get to go home. It's not right. It's not the way things ought to be. But it's the way it is. It's the way it was in Philippi.
Philippi also dealt with outsiders the way most divided towns handle outsiders. Outsiders are assumed to be nobodies. And as long as an outsider doesn't stir things up they are invisible â€" and expected to stay that way.
In Philippi you were either Roman family or you were no one. Paul and Silas were family. They were Roman citizens. It was expected that they would make that fact known. But they didn't. Paul had once been a power oriented person.. He'd once been a persecutor of Christians, a man who had used power structures to kill others. After his conversion experience, he preached the Gospel to all people, the ins and the outs, the connected and the nobodies. He walked in both spheres and, apparently, no longer made it known that he was a Roman citizen. He didn't need to because he knew where true power comes from. He might also have known that his Roman citizenship might be a turn-off to the people to whom he was reaching out. Paul and Silas entered Philippi, by choice, as nobodies. The tough and worldly soldier retirees, if they were aware of Paul and Silas at all, expected them to be invisible. Paul and Silas, it will be seen, wanted to stay that way. Then came the problem with the girl.
She was an enslaved teenager. The Book of Acts describes her as being possessed with a spirit that gave her powers of divination. Maybe that's the way it happened. I once spent some time in a town in the mountains of North Africa and met a boy who everyone was convinced was possessed by a spirit like that. Everyone was scared of him and the boy virtually ruled the place. There was nothing supernatural going on with the boy. He was highly intuitive and knew how to ask questions and say things that terrified people. He made them think that he was using power. But I watched him. It was all intuition. I'm convinced that education and monotheism has reduced a lot of this kind of thing â€" something that seems once to have been quite common â€" in our world.)
Getting back to the enslaved teenager from the Book of Acts, what happened probably wasn't her fault anyway. She was being controlled by a couple of men who made money from the ignorance and superstition of the people in the town. It was an evil and wrong thing to do. The girl may have overheard people talk about what Paul and Silas were preaching [pause] , after all, news about strangers spreads rapidly in a small town. Maybe she was possessed. Either way, she singled out Paul and Silas and told the crowd what their message was. The next sequence of events only makes sense if you notice that Paul and Silas ignore her and she keeps repeating it.
Paul and Silas wanted to remain invisible. They were in a foreign country and didn't want to make trouble. They ignored the girl. Maybe they shouldn't have, because her abuse was so wrong. But they ignored her nonetheless. She kept getting louder and louder. Have you ever gotten so fed up with being asked something over and over again that you lost your temper and told someone to shut up? That's what Paul did. And the girl shut up. And her career as a divinator was over. Her owners' source of income was also over. Paul and Silas were no longer invisible. The owners had Paul and Silas beat up and thrown in the slammer. We never find out what happened to the girl.
The owners trumped up charges against Paul and Silas of disturbing the peace and having foreign ideas in a way that reminds us of incidents and accusations during the Civil Rights era in Mississippi. All kinds of accusations were made against Freedom Riders, some of them from our part of New Jersey. (In a southern accent) "Outside agitators! Troublemakers.! Communists!
It must have been some prison where Paul and Silas were incarcerated. When you travel to Rome today the tour guides will tell you that most prisons were only holes in the ground covered by iron grates and guarded by a soldier or two. These places were just for holding a person for a day or so until they could be tried and sentenced. But in Philippi, they preferred something more permanent, a real prison that had a dark, windowless dungeon with chains, stocks and individual cells. Philippi was a mean place, not one in which you wanted to get on the wrong side of the law.
Philippi was so tough that the person who ran the jail was told to do his job or face a fate, not defined here, that was worse than death. There's an earthquake, something common in that part of the world, and the jailer starts to throw himself on his sword.
Now the story gets really interesting. Up until now this story has been a pretty good one anyway. You have two of the main characters of the Book of Acts quietly going deep into enemy territory, so to speak, and trying to be incognito. You have a couple of low-lifes and a girl who ruins Paul and Silas's cover. There's a kangaroo court, a beating, a dungeon, an earthquake, and a life saved at the last minute. Sounds like a Sunday Night Movie! Yet the best is about to come. The doors to the prison are blown open, the jailer investigates and Paul and Silas are still there.
Now most of us are amazed when we hear this story the first time. If it had been me, I would have made a break for it. First of all, everyone knows that the last place you want to be during an earthquake is inside a building. Second, who wouldn't have headed for the woods? That's what I would have done.
But Paul and Silas were still there. In fact, the jailer would later find out that the two had been singing all night. They had been brought up on false charges, were beat up, flogged within an inch of their lives, put in irons, and left in the dark with heaven knows what crawling around. But they'd been singing.
That kind of behavior can only happen when people have a larger perspective, one that is bigger than the troubles they are in. It is a perspective that all listeners to this story have been asked to share.
The story winds down with the jailer and his family learning about God and Jesus. There's a comical end-note about the justices of the kangaroo court becoming fearful when they learn that the "outside agitators" they'd had beat up were Roman Citizens. But most of us, when we think of the story afterwards, remember that moment when the jailer puts down his sword because he hears the sound of the singing men. The moment is high drama. A life is saved, a soul is about to be saved â€" all because Paul and Silas had faith, courage and hope.
We are reminded by this incredible story that we, too, can live better lives.. We too can be courageous when suddenly we find ourselves in the hands of evil men. We too can have hope in the darkness. And we, too, will find that our expressions of courage and hope are an effective form of evangelism. Actions speak louder than words.
Why not be hopeful? Is it foolish to focus on the light rather than the darkness? Is it foolish to be hopeful for the future when the world is the way it is? Some around us â€" some with whom we work or with whom we commute, claim that cynicism and despair are the only intelligent response to our world. They imply that one would have to be stupid not to be cynical. Cynicism and despair, as I mentioned last time when I preached on the Good Shepherd and the 23rd Psalm, only leave you waylaid in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a place that we are meant to travel through â€" not a destination. We all despair at times because we feel like we are chained in the darkness like Paul and Silas. But we choose to sing and have hope. We choose to travel through the darkness and rebuild with worn-out tools. We are not fools to choose singing over wailing. Much of what is good in our world is built through faith, courage and hope. Our own church's history teaches us that hopefulness is intelligent and effective - as well as a way that God wants us to be.
Eight years ago, before I was your Associate Pastor, I gave a history speech that some of you may remember titled, "Why the Members of the Church Applauded When It Burned Down." The members of our church, back in 1882, were glad when it burned down. No, they were not happy because of the insurance money.. They loved their church. The fire was not a bright light in the darkness. The light in the darkness was what was in the hearts of the people that day.
Have you noticed that historical markers on our downtown buildings tend to be after 1882? That's because the downtown, and our beautiful church, burned down that year.
[As an aside]
You can see a drawing of the church in the narthex. It's the one with the tall steeple. The steeple was the pride of the church. It was the pride of Red Bank. It stood 100' tall, the highest point in the town. The church was located near where Starbucks is today.
The fire began in a barn behind a bakery at the west side of the intersection of Broad and Front Streets on a day when the wind was blowing from the north. Fire brigades were called out and soon every man, woman and able child was in the streets fighting the blaze as it marched south taking out one store after another. There were no fire hydrants in those days, just horse-drawn hand and coal-fired pumping wagons which were attached to hoses thrown into the Navesink River. Red Bank firemen and residents at first fought to contain the fire, so water was sprayed on the businesses on the east side of Front street. The fire raged uncontested south down the west side of the street. Then reinforcements arrived. Fire wagons and volunteers from Long Branch, together with the people of Red Bank, lined up at Broad and White Street to make a stand. By this time only a brick bank building, where Starbucks is today, and our church remained. The men worked the pumps. Smoke choked the volunteers as our church caught fire.
News accounts say that our church was completely engulfed in flames within minutes. The steeple raised the height of the fire to where it towered over the townspeople, threatening to kill them if it fell their way. They didn't run, but rather kept pouring water on the fire.
Which way would the steeple fall? If it fell south, the firemen and volunteers, many of them members of the congregation would be burned. If the steeple fell to the east or west, the fire would jump out of containment and burn countless homes. There was nothing to do but keep pouring water and pray.
This was no place for cynicism and despair. It wasn't important to the congregation that it was losing its home. All that mattered was whether people could save their lives and their homes.
The steeple fell and the people praised God. Somehow all the foundation supports of the steeple gave way at the same moment and the steeple fell down upon itself â€" straight down. There was a moment given for amazement, another moment for praise to God for deliverance, and then the townspeople moved in with their hoses to surround and extinguish the fire.
The fire was reduced to smoke and ashes by the time that night fell. It was a time before streetlights in Red Bank, so downtown was a dark and smoky place. But there was light, plenty of it, in the hearts of the men and women of our congregation. The same courage and hope, and a faith in Jesus, sustained them as they rebuilt their church and town.
It is a miracle when the human heart can sing in the darkness. Courage and hope come from the heart that knows a larger perspective, one that tells us that the darkness is not all there is. In the case of our spiritual forbears, faith and hope in God in Christ provided that perspective, provided the hymns to sing and the hearts to give voice to song. We who hear the story of Paul and Silas share that perspective and can be as courageous and hopeful as they were on that day. God lives! Jesus is His Son. As a babe on Christmas, His cry shattered the darkness. The evil powers cannot build prisons dark enough to extinguish that light. The strutting cynicism of the evil powers cannot rob us of hope. The opening words of Psalm 97, our Call to Worship this morning, proclaims "The Lord Reigns." The evil powers only act within stunted perspective. The cynical strut upon a small stage full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Who am I?
I am someone who is sometimes in darkness, at the hands of powerful, perhaps evil people and forces greater than my own.
Who is God?
I can't know everything about God, but I know this: God rules! And God is greater than any darkness.
Where is the Church?
The church enables me to see beyond the darkness to a larger perspective..
Where does God want me to be?
God wants me to be courageous and hopeful. And God wants my heart to sing.