Intended Consequences

Acts 16:16-34

Preached by Rev. Trina Zelle

May 16, 2010

How many of you all were fortunate enough to go to Sunday school when you were kids?  Do you remember your favorite teacher?  I sure do.  Mr. Hall, who taught my sixth grade Sunday School class.  What a year that was! We had been together as a class since kindergarten, a well-behaved bunch over all.  But something happened to us during that summer between fifth and sixth grade.  You Sunday school teachers out there might have noticed something similar happening with that age group.  So that fall, when we regrouped after vacation, we had become a pretty wild bunch. I was one of the worst – because there’s something addictive about laughing when you’re not supposed to.

There still is.

Anyway, as far as the class was concerned, things were going along great -- I’m not so sure about Mr. Hall, when, several weeks into the school year, my mother announced that the Halls would be joining us for Thanksgiving dinner.

I was stricken – and filled with dread.  What would Mr. Hall say to my parents? And then, what would my parents say to me.  My mother especially was known for her scathing dressings down. I would be grounded for the rest of my life, I just knew it.

Thanksgiving Day arrived and with it, the Halls. Dinner passed uneventfully.  They stayed and visited for a long time.  I lurked just around the corner from where the adults were talking but couldn’t hear much.

When the Halls finally said their goodbyes and left.  I braced myself for the storm that would surely come.

But it didn’t.  Nothing. Either that Thanksgiving afternoon or ever.

Evidently Mr. Hall hadn’t said a word about my raucous behavior during Sunday school. 

The relief from that reprieve was so great, that I can still feel it today.

I proceeded to mend my ways and learn a lot about the bible and the early church from Mr. Hall during the rest the year.  But his best lesson – about second chances and new beginnings, and forgiveness – came on that Thanksgiving day.

I’d be interested in hearing about your most memorable Sunday School lesson. Whether it was similar to mine or something completely different, they all have one thing in common.  The individuals who taught you weren’t in it for the glory or the ego boost.  They were there because of some combination of caring for young people, not knowing how to say no and a desire to pass on the Story.      

You know – the Story. God’s Story.  The Story of God’s people – from the beginning up to this moment.  The Church’s Story. 

What we call the New Testament.  

Its first four books -- what we call the gospels, or the good news -- tell us the stories of Jesus from several different angles. The rest of the New Testament tells the story of the Church.  That new community, the likes of which the world had never seen before.  We forget how different the world was before Jesus.  Before people started living out his teachings. People pretty much took care of their families and that was it. That’s why there’s so much talk about widows and orphans  –  with no family, there was no one to take care of them and more often than not, they ended up out on the street. 

And into that social order came Jesus saying “love one another”. Telling His followers: our loving God is our parent and we are extended family to one another. It is our obligation to provide for our sisters and brothers. Food. Care. Love.

And from this radical social reconfiguration in western society comes every orphanage, every senior care center, every soup kitchen, every recovery center, every half-way house, every clinic, every hospice, every hospital that exists--  because a small group of people took this phrase seriously, “Beloved, let us love one another,” and ministered to the deep needs of people.

It has become the conventional wisdom of a largely un-churched and cynical world, that Christianity mainly grew through coercion, conquest, and the Fourth Century back room wheeling and dealing by the Emperor Constantine.  Certainly there is more than a grain of truth in all of those charges.  But that’s not the main story about the church.  It grew best and most when Jesus core teachings were proclaimed:  love one another as I have loved you; the first shall be last; if someone takes your cloak, give them your coat as well.  Whatever you do to the least of these, you have done to me.

We have the actions of individual members of the early church – including Peter’s inclusively and Paul’s outreach to the Gentile world on their own terms --  to thank for the way the Church grew.  From the oldest part of the New Testament we learn about the trials and tribulations of that first post-resurrection community as they struggled to learn what it meant to organize their lives around the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. These letters, especially those written by Paul, give us a lot of insight about what that early church was like: the issues that threatened to divide it; how those issues were resolved; the processes by which they were resolved. 

For example, we learn about the early kerfuffle between the Jewish and Greek widows.  Each group felt that the other group was getting more attention from the Jerusalem apostles.  The solution?  The council of elders decided that, number one, the apostles themselves were spending far too much time in direct service and two, there needed to be a group of individuals specifically tasked with taking care of the widows and orphans in the community. And voila, the Deacons came into being. Quite a legacy.

We learn about the struggles the early church had over the sharing of resources.  At one point, we read in Acts ‘everything was held in common.”  Well, sort of.  Some people pretended to give more than they really did.  The unhappy couple who tried to pull the wool over the eyes of their fellow church members ended up dropping dead when confronted with their dishonesty.

Embarrassment?  God striking them down as punishment?  The main point seems to be, you are free to give what you want, just don’t lie about it. 

The letters tell us about leadership standards – no more than one wife; the controversy over membership standards – no, Gentiles didn’t need to become Jews and be circumcised before they could become Christians.

So, to recap -- the stories of Jesus and those letters from the apostles to the early Christian communities scattered around the Roman empire constitute the bulk of the New Testament.  Leaving its other two books:  Revelation -- the most misunderstood book of the Bible which I am going nowhere near today -- and Acts – the narrative that pulls everything together. 

Acts – more formally known a the Acts of the Apostles – gives us the big picture that the letters later fill in:  The Church’s birth at Pentecost; the previously mentioned challenges it faced, the stunning leaps of insight and faith that moved it from being a small and controversial offshoot of Judaism into a global religion. 

There’s one more thing that we learn about the church here.  Perhaps the most important thing about it.  That when the church is really being church, it upsets the status quo.  It makes people mad.  Sometimes enough to get you thrown in jail.  It especially angers folks who are making money off of the  misery of others.   When the church is really being church.

Like in our reading today.  Paul and Silas are in still in Caesarea Philippi, staying at Lydia’s house and bringing the gospel to those who have not yet heard it. Then, a girl starts following them, proclaiming at the top of her lungs, with great accuracy, that they are servants of the Most High, bringing a new way to salvation.”  But she’s not doing this because she herself is a believer; she’s doing it because she is possessed by a spirit compulsion that forces her to blurt out the truth, welcome or not.   It also compels her to predict the future of people she doesn’t even know – tell fortunes that is – bringing a steady income in to her owners.      

Paul – who we already know is a little edgy – is so annoyed (although one version says, “disturbed”) that he frees her of the spirit that is possessing her.  That she was telling the truth about them was irrelevant to him.  Just that she was driving them crazy and was not doing it of her own free will.  And possibly driving away people who otherwise would have stopped to talk with them.

Like the owners of the pigs, into whom Jesus drove the demons that had possessed the man in another Roman town, the owners of the slave girl are furious.  Their source of easy income is gone!  Now they might have to actually work for a living.  Living off of the misery of someone else is no longer an option.

That’s what happens when the real church shows up.  The church whose membership embodies Christ. It changes things.  It shakes things up. It heals everyone it can get its hands on, including the wrong people. 

The wrong people?  I mean, the people without any power – who can’t pay you back.  You see, if Paul had been as calculating and astute as some of the religious professionals who have followed him over the centuries, he would have ignored the slave girl and instead figured out a way to “heal” her owner of a disease that the owner didn’t even have -- and then enjoyed the reward that would have come to him.

But Paul does the unpopular thing and heals the one with the greatest need. Thereby messing up the system that has been built on the backs of the most vulnerable. 

Of course, he pays for it.  The furious owners tell their neighbors who become as incensed as they are.  Paul might as well have been driving around with undocumented immigrants in the back seat, the crowd gets so mad.  So, Paul, along with Silas are beaten and thrown in jail. 

But this isn’t the end of the line for them – it never is for people like Paul.  He and Silas are not only freed by a timely earthquake, the jailer is so overwhelmed by Paul’s refusal to flee and leave him holding the bag, that he becomes a Christian.  Along with the rest of his household.

This two part story tells us exactly how to continue being church. Do the right thing, no matter what.  And what is the right thing?  The hard thing.  The counter-intuitive thing.  The generous and hospitable thing.  The thing that doesn’t increase the power and prestige of the already powerful, but ministers to those considered to be of less value. 

That’s the story that will last.  That’s a story worth passing on to the next generation.  It’s the story Jesus told.  It’s the story Paul told.  It’s the story Mr. Hall told.  Will it be the story we tell?  Amen.