7th Sunday of Easter

 

Acts 16:16-40; John 17:20-26

Now I must confess, I did sort of a mean thing to you all.  Last week we talked about the conversion of Lydia and start of Paul’s ministry in Philippi.  And I made it sound so fun and easy.  I told you all you have to do is show up and God will do the work, the Holy Spirit will change the world.  And that is absolutely true.  But what I didn’t tell you last week is that sometimes showing up is hard.  Sometimes showing up is dangerous.  Sometimes showing up can be deadly. Because Paul’s story in Philippi doesn’t end with Lydia’s conversion.  Her and her household are baptized and they invite Paul and Silas to stay with them.  And it was fine at first because Lydia wasn’t actually from Philippi and her household weren’t actually Romans and who really cares what a woman does.  But then before too long all hell breaks loose.  And that is our story today, what happens when Paul decides to keep showing up and as we can see it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.  Just like Peter, Paul’s moves toward radical inclusion and freedom are not always met with gratitude.  Then or now.

And before we start, just a quick aside, I kind of love that despite everything that has happened before this, Paul is still a massive jerk.  That’s not an illusion in the text.  Even after the resurrection, even after witnessing the risen Christ, Peter is still super stubborn, bullheaded and kind of slow on the uptake.  And Paul is still an egotistical jerk.  They are still exactly who they are.  And... God uses those very traits, often viewed as negative in service to the Gospel in highly effective ways.

And here is the other thing to remember in our story today, Paul is free to leave at any time.  Paul has enough privilege to simply turn his back and walk away at any moment in this whole ordeal.  And he chooses to stay.  He chooses to keep showing up.  And at considerable personal cost he chooses this path to his great credit.

So on to our story.  One day Paul goes and maybe somewhat accidentally, heals this woman possessed by a demon who could tell the future.  And in doing so he commits a cardinal sin in the Roman empire and diminishes the ability of the rich to exploit vulnerable people for their own personal gain.  And doing that goes about as well then as it does now, which is to say poorly.  And so a mob forms.  By the way, Paul is really good at getting mobs to form, maybe because he’s a jerk.  Pretty much all of Acts 17 is just mobs driving Paul out of successive cities all over Greece, it’s kind of his thing.  And then the Generals come, because it’s a Roman military colony, so of course there are Generals.  And they beat him senseless, and he lets them.  Then they throw him in jail, and he lets them.  So Paul and Silas go to jail and they are singing and preaching to the people in jail, willingly of their own accord.  Then an earthquake comes and whole jail falls apart, and they still won’t leave.  Because they have to wait for the jailer, because if they leave the jailer dies.  So they stay and they preach to the jailer, he and his whole household.  And these are real fancy Romans, city warden is a big important job, and all this big important household gets baptized.  And the generals start to realize something weird is going on with this Paul guy, so they send some policemen to sneak him out of the city.  And he still refuses to leave.

And then suddenly after all of this, Paul drops this massive bomb.  He is a not just a Jew, he is a Roman citizen and everything that has happened to him over the last 24 hours was massively illegal.  It is illegal to slander a citizen.  It is illegal to publicly beat a citizen.  It is illegal to jail a citizen without trial.  All these generals could be immediately striped of their position if this comes out.  And what’s more, all Paul had to do was declare his citizenship in the first place and they immediately would have protected him from the mob without ever laying a finger on him.  But, they almost certainly would have expelled him from the city before he had the chance to talk to anyone else, and he would have never been allowed back to even visit Lydia’s group.

So instead, Paul chooses to stay, he chooses to keep showing up.  Even when it hurt.  And it hurt, in a lot of ways, his pride, his freedom, his physical health and maybe more than just on that day.  Paul is sick later in his ministry and always in chronic pain quite possibly from the damage from his many public beatings.  But he keeps showing up.  Here and later in cities across Greece.  This chain of events actually becomes quite a pattern for his ministry, until eventually the law catches up to him even as a citizen, and he is legally jailed and likely finally executed in Rome.  But until his very last letter, written from a jail cell, no matter what the cost, Paul keeps showing up.

And this is what Jesus calls us to as well.  In our reading from the Gospel of John today, in his very last moments with his disciples before going to the cross, Jesus prays to Father for the disciples to be one.  He says “The glory that you have given me, I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.” 

And this is hard good news dear people, because John is perfectly clear, the glory that the Father gives to Jesus is in the cross.  So we are one dear church, we are one with each other and we are one with the Father when we like Jesus suffer alongside our brother and sisters who are in need.  As Jesus prays “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

And I get it.  It’s not easy to be like Paul, or like Jesus.  We are living in a time when it is hard and scary to stand up.  And many here have the privilege like Paul of being free to leave at any time, of being free to walk away, to stay above the fray, to tune out what is going on around us.  In reality, the plight of migrants, immigrants and refugees, government workers, Medicaid recipients, students, and government aid recipients at home and around the world probably doesn’t have that much of a direct effect on our daily lives.  Not even as much as the price of eggs.

Except the effect it has on the state of our souls, and on the roots of our faith.  Because we are called to so much more.  We care called to be one as Jesus and the Father are one.  Which means that none of us are free, until are all of us are free.  So we have to just keep showing up, even and especially when it is hard, when it would be easier to just walk away.  Because some of God’s children can’t walk away, so neither should we.  Each of us in our own ways, large and small are called to keep showing up, no matter what happens, and together, through Christ, God will keep changing the world for every one, no exceptions.  Amen.