Jesus reveals the evilest character of the world is its brutality. That true peace cannot come through fighting but through the triumph of good: the peace of Christ.
GOD revealed in Acts, culture, and mothers
Easter 7C | Acts 16:16-34
This morning, we get a story of revealing, of true revelation. A story of a jailer who is transformed and made new.
The substance of the story also reveals. It reveals to us the way GOD works and moves. It reveals how broken our systems are. This is a truly good story.
Remember last week, we heard about Lydia. Paul dreamed a man was calling for help, but a woman greets him. And she takes him to her prayer circle. She prevails upon Paul and his companions to join her. And soon she and her whole house are baptized. It was customary for the household to be baptized with the head of the household. In our story from last week, that would be a woman.
The author uses that same word prevail at the end of Luke on the walk to Emmaus when the two disciples prevail upon Jesus to come and eat with them. This same word was used in the Septuagint’s Greek translation of Genesis where Lot prevails upon the angels to stay with them.
This is urgent and brings with it a sense of danger. Lydia is urging them to stay – it is dangerous out there. They’ll be arrested. This is a Roman colony, Philippi; the kind of place inhospitable to the likes of Paul. The capture and arrest in this morning’s reading was foreshadowed last week.
And so again, Paul and his friends are prevailed upon by a woman. This one just a girl, enslaved. She is being used. They’re profiting from her disability – her sickness. They are taking advantage of her and making money off of her misfortune. Reading the Hebrew Scriptures, you can see this is about as far from GOD’s dream for humanity as we can get.
Demons as Messengers
A recurring element in the gospels is that nobody, even the disciples who are following Jesus, know him and who he really is. But all the demons recognize him. They plead with him (dare we say prevail him?) for mercy. But more importantly, they name him and know who he really is.
Then when Jesus casts demons out of people, there is an awakening, a revealing of who Jesus is. They beg to follow him. Or they go running into town to tell the world about Jesus.
They don’t revel in their freedom: they witness to revelation. No flights to Cancun to sip mojitos; they tell everybody about Jesus.
Here, in Acts, we have more of this. Remember that Acts is like the second half of Luke’s gospel, the what-happens-with-GOD’s-work-after-Jesus-leaves-town half. The half which deals with the living out of that whole “take up your cross and follow me” command.
So the struggle here is of the same character as in Luke – a demon which recognizes the Christ in Paul (like the demons recognizing the Christ in Jesus) and is shouting out to the people.
This is a bad demon, destructive, one who allows a child to be exploited, enslaved – both to this evil spirit and to the evil men making money off her, using her. This evil thing proclaims the presence of GOD.
A demon bears witness to GOD and the coming Kingdom. An unlikely messenger, isn’t it?
Should this be a problem? Is it bad that demons know GOD and profess the presence of the divine? And why is it that only demons seem to get it?
It seems the demon wants to get them in trouble. So the problem isn’t the demon. It’s the culture! The culture that will kill Paul and his friends.
This isn’t what many pass off for persecution today: like whether or not people say “Merry Christmas”. It is more like good people condemned for telling the truth. It is turning honesty into a weapon of hatred and brutality. And it is the fact that people then and now are in danger for being themselves or for being outed by someone else.
Brutality and Truth
This story reveals truth. It reveals who GOD is. And how the world is. {which is kind of scary}
It reveals how broken our culture is – how selfish, fearful, and mutually destructive we are. How much we prefer imperial peace to GOD’s peace: Pax Romana to Pax Christi. Just look at this election season to see where our hearts are.
It also reveals how GOD breaks through to be revealed to the world. Regardless of whether or not it is an apostle or a demon who bears that witness.
Last week, we had Lydia and her family baptized and this week, we have Paul being washed with a kind of Baptismal waters by the jailer – one who no doubt gave him some of those wounds.
We see the ugly brutality of Roman rule, of Empire’s desire for order and stability: that they would beat these pacifists who spread the good news of the risen Christ and more transgressively, the lordship of Christ. They are beaten and then imprisoned. Like Jesus, who was beaten and mocked throughout his Passion, only to be convicted and killed despite his innocence.
Jesus reveals the evilest character of the world is its brutality. That true peace cannot come through fighting but through the triumph of good: the peace of Christ.
It is an act of GOD which opens the door to the cell and it is an act of the Holy Spirit which prevails upon Paul and the others to stay. GOD prevails upon them to save the life of the jailer who knew what the brutal world would do to him in his innocence. The scapegoat to punish led out to die.
Paul saves his life. Not by staying his hand. Not by converting him. But by helping GOD love him.
A Vision of Peace
This is the gospel. It is not enough to know it; we are to be changed by what it reveals to us about GOD and all of creation.
The gospel gives us a story of transformation for transformation. It is a story which reveals and moves its hearer to be changed.
That’s why it reveals such nasty things about our society and us. And reveals such good and generous things about creation and us. It shows us what needs some changing and what it looks like when we do.
Brutality has not come to an end. Nor have we brought GOD’s great Shalom to all corners of our society.
This was the intention of Mother’s Day in the beginning: to bring justice and peace. First in Ann Jarvis’ call in 1858 to protect workers and again in 1870, when Julia Ward Howe called for a Mother’s Day of Peace with her Mother’s Day Proclamation: an appeal to the mothers of the world to honor motherhood by not supporting the killing of one another’s children. In it she shares a prophetic vision of peace:
Arise, then, Christian women of this day ! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears ! Say firmly : We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
May such a council (like the council with Paul in that jail cell) yet come, may our hearts be turned from brutal interests, and may our story turn the hearts of many toward peace. Amen.
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