Seventh Sunday Of Easter
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Object:
Theme For The Day
In Jesus Christ is found true freedom.
First Lesson
Acts 16:16-34
An Earthquake Frees Paul And Silas From Prison
Paul and Silas get themselves imprisoned for healing a slave-girl of some sort of mental illness, understood by Luke and his contemporaries as "a spirit of divination." The girl, using these unusual talents, has repeatedly called out that Paul and Silas are servants of God; to rid themselves of this annoyance, Paul has healed her. It so happens that the slave's owners have made a great deal of money passing her off as a fortune-teller, so they sue Paul and Silas for infringement of trade. While locked in an interior cell, with their feet in the stocks, Paul and Silas are singing hymns and praying, when an earthquake opens all the doors of the prison and casts off the prisoners' chains. Rather than fleeing, these two stay in their cell. When the jailer arrives, they convince him to become a follower of Jesus. He is baptized, along with his entire household.
New Testament Lesson
Revelation 22:1-14, 16-17, 20-21
Surely I Am Coming Soon
Today's selection concludes the series of passages from Revelation that began on the Second Sunday Of Easter. The lectionary editors have sanitized this reading by removing anything negative like the condemnation of evildoers in verse 15, and the curse against anyone who adds or takes away anything from this book (vv. 18-19). In doing so, they have created an abridged version whose language quickly soars to the heights of praise and stays there. Notable aspects are Jesus' words, "I am the Alpha and the Omega" (v. 13); the blessing of "all those who wash their robes" who "have the right to the tree of life" (v. 14); Jesus' identification of himself as "the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star" (v. 16); the invitation to come and drink the water of life (v. 17); and Jesus' promise, "Surely I am coming soon" (v. 20). These closing words are John's benediction to his troubled and fearful churches, that they may have hope.
The Gospel
John 17:20-26
Jesus' Prayer That They May All Be One
This is a section of Jesus' great prayer for the unity of the church, "that they may all be one" (v. 20). In intricate language, this prayer weaves together Jesus, God, and the church into a single unity. The result of this unity is effective witness: "that the world may believe that you have sent me" (v. 21). There is a recurring theme, here, of knowledge; the true knowledge imparted by Jesus to his disciples, which is over against the ignorance of the world.
Preaching Possibilities
Freedom. We Americans consider it our national birthright. Many of us assume it's better to live in poverty under a democratic political system, than in affluence under a dictatorship. People in some parts of the world may disagree with that assumption, but it's imprinted in our national DNA.
Today's First Lesson, Acts 16:16-34, is about freedom. It's a story set in one of the most godforsaken places on this earth, a place where freedom seems distant: a prison cell.
Paul and Silas -- and very likely the writer of Acts himself, the Apostle Luke -- find themselves in the city of Philippi. They've been doing some preaching and teaching. They've even gained a celebrity convert: the rich merchant Lydia, a dealer in imperial purple fabric. It is in the airy and spacious home of Lydia, in the finest neighborhood of Philippi, that the apostles have been staying. Her entire household, from the slaves right on up to the chief steward, have accepted Jesus Christ and have received baptism. Not a bad start for a troupe of itinerant evangelists who've only been in town a few days!
One day, though, as they are going to the synagogue to pray, things go suddenly and terribly wrong. There is a slave-girl in Philippi, who displays what the New Testament calls "a spirit of divination." What this probably means is that she's a little mad, "demon possessed," they would have said in those days. Through the clouded confusion of her mind, this slave-girl manages to string together words that make sense, words that sound to some like fortune-telling. For the past few days, she has been walking ahead of Paul and the others, shouting, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation."
A madwoman's recommendation is not exactly the best form of advertising. Feeling compassion for the girl, Paul turns to her and says to the evil spirit within her, "Come out!" And, Luke tells us, the spirit "came out that very hour." The slave-girl was in her right mind.
An impressive feat of healing -- but not so impressive to the owners of the slave-girl, who suddenly find themselves out a lot of money. It seems this slave-girl was their biggest income-producer. They haul the Christian preachers into court, suing them for obstruction of trade.
It sounds today like a quirky legal argument but, in that day and age, in which people were bought and sold as property, it is a deadly serious business. The rabble of drifters, drunken sailors, and ne'er-do-wells that hang out down at the law courts join in the general condemnation. The magistrates buy the plaintiffs' argument, so Paul, Silas, and the others are whipped and thrown into the deepest, darkest prison. Their legs are bound in irons.
And there they sit, hungry, cold, even discouraged, but not so discouraged that they cannot sing. Luke tells us that, about midnight, they are "praying and singing hymns to God" when a tremendous earthquake shakes the prison to its very foundation. The doors are thrown open, and even the iron chains burst from their feet. The jailer wakes up in terror and runs over to the cells. To his horror, he sees the doors of his prison gaping wide open.
Surely the prisoners are long gone, and surely, he despairs, the Roman authorities will make him pay dearly for all those empty cells. There is just one thing to do so he draws his sword and holds it at arms' length, the point against his stomach. All he need do is fall to the ground, and honor will be satisfied.
It is only then that the jailer hears a voice. It is the voice of Paul, that follower of Jesus of Nazareth, who was brought in that very day. Strange, but he and his companions are still in their cell although the door is now open and their legs are unbound. Could it be that this God of theirs is somehow responsible for the earthquake? The jailer falls at their feet in terror, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" he asks.
"Believe on the Lord Jesus," they tell him, "and you will be saved, you and your household."
Then the jailer does an extraordinary thing, for a man who a few moments before was so fearful of the Romans. He takes the apostles to his very own home, washes their wounds, and allows himself to be baptized -- he and his whole family with him.
This, as we said at the beginning, is a story about freedom. Yet it's interesting to ask, after hearing this story, "Whose freedom?" Which characters are free, and which enslaved?
Quite simply, everyone in this story is imprisoned, in one way or another, except the ones who are in prison: the apostles themselves. There is the mad slave-girl who's imprisoned by the frightening symptoms of her illness .... the slave-girl's owners who are imprisoned by their fraudulent ways of earning a living, and by their lust for profits ... the crowd who is in bondage to their mob spirit that leads them to the brink of riot ... the magistrates who are imprisoned by a legal code that compels them to pronounce a harsh sentence (even upon defendants such as these, who are preaching love and kindness) ... and finally, there is the tragic figure of the jailer, who, though he wears at his waist a ring of keys that open any door in the prison, is just as confined as the prisoners. He's imprisoned by his fear: by a terror so great, that he would rather impale himself on his sword than face the wrath of his superior officers.
If these are all in bondage, then the only ones who are truly free are the prisoners: Paul and his companions. They are free because of the Spirit of Christ that dwells within them, the Spirit who gives them courage to sing and to pray, even with their legs bound in the stocks.
How free are we, really, here in "the land of the free and the home of the brave"? We live under the misapprehension, in this land, that we are born free. But that's an exaggeration. No one in America is born free: certainly not the crack-addicted baby, nor the child of the teenage mother (who barely knows how to care for herself), nor the teenager with a physical disability who must struggle to feed and dress himself. Yet, even a normal, healthy child of a "good family" -- showered with presents at Christmas and rewarded with all the material advantages of the American middle class -- may grow up marked by the foibles of a dysfunctional family, may act out her parents' neuroses, may come to believe that this country owes him a livelihood, regardless of whether or not he works for it.
Does anyone in this great land still believe something that used to be taken for granted by earlier generations; namely that liberty is a skill that must be learned, that there are virtues of citizenship that do not pump through us -- unperceived and unrealized, like the blood in our veins -- but must be acquired and nurtured in the school of democracy? Does anyone in this country still believe that the freedoms we enjoy today, the freedoms for which soldiers have died, are fragile and, like the essential tenets of our Christian faith, are always but one generation away from extinction?
In Jesus Christ, we are offered freedom such as the world can never know. In him is healing and wholeness and strength, for the living of these days. There is no prison on this earth strong enough to keep him out -- or to keep us in!
Prayer For The Day
Liberating God,
so many times you have opened prison doors for us
and removed chains that bind us --
and we are grateful.
Yet there are other times when we must admit
that we choose bondage over freedom.
We come to you now to lay claim your promises of freedom.
Set us free from all that binds us,
confines us,
and keeps us from becoming
the strong and confident disciples
you would have us be.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
To Illustrate
"Liberty," wrote the French revolutionary Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "is a food easy to eat but hard to digest." If that is true, then maybe, as the preacher Will Willimon has quipped, "America is suffering from a bad case of indigestion."
***
There is much to be learned from the example of third-world Christians, many of whom do not possess the gift of freedom we take for granted. There are countless Christians in other lands who have no choice but to live out their faith in fear and trembling, day by day.
Will Willimon tells the story of a bishop from Angola (the former Portuguese colony in West Africa), who came to visit America a few years back.
The bishop was speaking to a group of Christians. "Is the new Marxist government supportive of the church?" the Americans asked.
"No," said the bishop, "but we don't ask it to be supportive." He then went on to tell how his country's government had banned many church meetings, but how the Christians stubbornly went on meeting, all the same.
"What will you do," the Americans asked, "when the government becomes stronger?"
"We shall keep meeting," the bishop replied. "The government does what it needs to do. The church does what it needs to do. If we go to jail for being the church, we shall go to jail. Jail is a wonderful place for Christian evangelism. Our church made some of its most dramatic gains during the revolution when so many of us were in jail. In jail, you have everyone there, in one place. You have time to preach and teach. Sure, twenty of our pastors were killed during the revolution, but we came out of jail a much larger and stronger church."
The bishop continued, "Don't worry about the church in Angola; God is doing fine by us. Frankly, I would find it much more difficult to be a pastor in [your country]. Here, there is so much. So many things. It must be hard to be the church here."
Hard, indeed, it is to be the church, in "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It's not hard for the church to be a community institution, a dispenser of certain social and educational services that are valued (for the most part) by the larger community; what is hard for this church of ours to do is to speak a prophetic voice, a voice of freedom.
***
Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale Of Two Cities, contains a famous character known as Dr. Manette. Imprisoned for twenty years by the king, the doctor is finally freed by the Revolution. Through his long imprisonment, the doctor has taken on a new trade, that of cobbler. In the gloom of his prison cell, he has lived out his days tapping shoes with a hammer.
Finally, the day comes when Dr. Manette is led out into the sunlight but the light of day terrifies him. The good doctor has lived too long in the shadowy recesses of his cell. The only way he is happy, it turns out, is for a servant to lock him at night in a tiny attic room. There he spends his time tap, tap, tapping on the shoes, just as he has done for lo, these many years.
Dr. Manette's story is pathetic, but it's not so uncommon. How many have been led, time and again, to an open door, through which can be glimpsed the bright sunlight of God's freedom? Yet how many of us, when faced by such a vista, have shielded our eyes from the light -- have turned back into the shadows of our cells, retreating into the same destructive habits, time and time again?
***
For many years the license plates of New Hampshire bore the slogan, made famous by Revolutionary War general John Stark, "Live Free or Die." Ironically, those words were stamped onto the license plates by inmates in the state prison. They were kept in their prison by high walls and barred windows, but many of us consent to stay in other sorts of prisons, when we have the power to leave all along. Something inside us wants to live free, but often we are unwilling to do what the gospel of Jesus Christ says we must do to be truly free.
-- Adapted from J. Michael Shannon, in Preaching, March/April 2004, p. 61
***
Jesus was truly free. His freedom was rooted in his spiritual awareness that he was the Beloved Child of God. He knew in the depth of his being that he belonged to God before he was born, that he was sent into the world to proclaim God's love, and that he would return to God after his mission was fulfilled. This knowledge gave him the freedom to speak and act without having to please the world and the power to respond to people's pains with the healing love of God.
That's why the gospels say: "Everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all" (Luke 6:19).
-- Henri J. M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
***
Robert Frost once said, "You have freedom when you're easy in your harness."
In Jesus Christ is found true freedom.
First Lesson
Acts 16:16-34
An Earthquake Frees Paul And Silas From Prison
Paul and Silas get themselves imprisoned for healing a slave-girl of some sort of mental illness, understood by Luke and his contemporaries as "a spirit of divination." The girl, using these unusual talents, has repeatedly called out that Paul and Silas are servants of God; to rid themselves of this annoyance, Paul has healed her. It so happens that the slave's owners have made a great deal of money passing her off as a fortune-teller, so they sue Paul and Silas for infringement of trade. While locked in an interior cell, with their feet in the stocks, Paul and Silas are singing hymns and praying, when an earthquake opens all the doors of the prison and casts off the prisoners' chains. Rather than fleeing, these two stay in their cell. When the jailer arrives, they convince him to become a follower of Jesus. He is baptized, along with his entire household.
New Testament Lesson
Revelation 22:1-14, 16-17, 20-21
Surely I Am Coming Soon
Today's selection concludes the series of passages from Revelation that began on the Second Sunday Of Easter. The lectionary editors have sanitized this reading by removing anything negative like the condemnation of evildoers in verse 15, and the curse against anyone who adds or takes away anything from this book (vv. 18-19). In doing so, they have created an abridged version whose language quickly soars to the heights of praise and stays there. Notable aspects are Jesus' words, "I am the Alpha and the Omega" (v. 13); the blessing of "all those who wash their robes" who "have the right to the tree of life" (v. 14); Jesus' identification of himself as "the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star" (v. 16); the invitation to come and drink the water of life (v. 17); and Jesus' promise, "Surely I am coming soon" (v. 20). These closing words are John's benediction to his troubled and fearful churches, that they may have hope.
The Gospel
John 17:20-26
Jesus' Prayer That They May All Be One
This is a section of Jesus' great prayer for the unity of the church, "that they may all be one" (v. 20). In intricate language, this prayer weaves together Jesus, God, and the church into a single unity. The result of this unity is effective witness: "that the world may believe that you have sent me" (v. 21). There is a recurring theme, here, of knowledge; the true knowledge imparted by Jesus to his disciples, which is over against the ignorance of the world.
Preaching Possibilities
Freedom. We Americans consider it our national birthright. Many of us assume it's better to live in poverty under a democratic political system, than in affluence under a dictatorship. People in some parts of the world may disagree with that assumption, but it's imprinted in our national DNA.
Today's First Lesson, Acts 16:16-34, is about freedom. It's a story set in one of the most godforsaken places on this earth, a place where freedom seems distant: a prison cell.
Paul and Silas -- and very likely the writer of Acts himself, the Apostle Luke -- find themselves in the city of Philippi. They've been doing some preaching and teaching. They've even gained a celebrity convert: the rich merchant Lydia, a dealer in imperial purple fabric. It is in the airy and spacious home of Lydia, in the finest neighborhood of Philippi, that the apostles have been staying. Her entire household, from the slaves right on up to the chief steward, have accepted Jesus Christ and have received baptism. Not a bad start for a troupe of itinerant evangelists who've only been in town a few days!
One day, though, as they are going to the synagogue to pray, things go suddenly and terribly wrong. There is a slave-girl in Philippi, who displays what the New Testament calls "a spirit of divination." What this probably means is that she's a little mad, "demon possessed," they would have said in those days. Through the clouded confusion of her mind, this slave-girl manages to string together words that make sense, words that sound to some like fortune-telling. For the past few days, she has been walking ahead of Paul and the others, shouting, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation."
A madwoman's recommendation is not exactly the best form of advertising. Feeling compassion for the girl, Paul turns to her and says to the evil spirit within her, "Come out!" And, Luke tells us, the spirit "came out that very hour." The slave-girl was in her right mind.
An impressive feat of healing -- but not so impressive to the owners of the slave-girl, who suddenly find themselves out a lot of money. It seems this slave-girl was their biggest income-producer. They haul the Christian preachers into court, suing them for obstruction of trade.
It sounds today like a quirky legal argument but, in that day and age, in which people were bought and sold as property, it is a deadly serious business. The rabble of drifters, drunken sailors, and ne'er-do-wells that hang out down at the law courts join in the general condemnation. The magistrates buy the plaintiffs' argument, so Paul, Silas, and the others are whipped and thrown into the deepest, darkest prison. Their legs are bound in irons.
And there they sit, hungry, cold, even discouraged, but not so discouraged that they cannot sing. Luke tells us that, about midnight, they are "praying and singing hymns to God" when a tremendous earthquake shakes the prison to its very foundation. The doors are thrown open, and even the iron chains burst from their feet. The jailer wakes up in terror and runs over to the cells. To his horror, he sees the doors of his prison gaping wide open.
Surely the prisoners are long gone, and surely, he despairs, the Roman authorities will make him pay dearly for all those empty cells. There is just one thing to do so he draws his sword and holds it at arms' length, the point against his stomach. All he need do is fall to the ground, and honor will be satisfied.
It is only then that the jailer hears a voice. It is the voice of Paul, that follower of Jesus of Nazareth, who was brought in that very day. Strange, but he and his companions are still in their cell although the door is now open and their legs are unbound. Could it be that this God of theirs is somehow responsible for the earthquake? The jailer falls at their feet in terror, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" he asks.
"Believe on the Lord Jesus," they tell him, "and you will be saved, you and your household."
Then the jailer does an extraordinary thing, for a man who a few moments before was so fearful of the Romans. He takes the apostles to his very own home, washes their wounds, and allows himself to be baptized -- he and his whole family with him.
This, as we said at the beginning, is a story about freedom. Yet it's interesting to ask, after hearing this story, "Whose freedom?" Which characters are free, and which enslaved?
Quite simply, everyone in this story is imprisoned, in one way or another, except the ones who are in prison: the apostles themselves. There is the mad slave-girl who's imprisoned by the frightening symptoms of her illness .... the slave-girl's owners who are imprisoned by their fraudulent ways of earning a living, and by their lust for profits ... the crowd who is in bondage to their mob spirit that leads them to the brink of riot ... the magistrates who are imprisoned by a legal code that compels them to pronounce a harsh sentence (even upon defendants such as these, who are preaching love and kindness) ... and finally, there is the tragic figure of the jailer, who, though he wears at his waist a ring of keys that open any door in the prison, is just as confined as the prisoners. He's imprisoned by his fear: by a terror so great, that he would rather impale himself on his sword than face the wrath of his superior officers.
If these are all in bondage, then the only ones who are truly free are the prisoners: Paul and his companions. They are free because of the Spirit of Christ that dwells within them, the Spirit who gives them courage to sing and to pray, even with their legs bound in the stocks.
How free are we, really, here in "the land of the free and the home of the brave"? We live under the misapprehension, in this land, that we are born free. But that's an exaggeration. No one in America is born free: certainly not the crack-addicted baby, nor the child of the teenage mother (who barely knows how to care for herself), nor the teenager with a physical disability who must struggle to feed and dress himself. Yet, even a normal, healthy child of a "good family" -- showered with presents at Christmas and rewarded with all the material advantages of the American middle class -- may grow up marked by the foibles of a dysfunctional family, may act out her parents' neuroses, may come to believe that this country owes him a livelihood, regardless of whether or not he works for it.
Does anyone in this great land still believe something that used to be taken for granted by earlier generations; namely that liberty is a skill that must be learned, that there are virtues of citizenship that do not pump through us -- unperceived and unrealized, like the blood in our veins -- but must be acquired and nurtured in the school of democracy? Does anyone in this country still believe that the freedoms we enjoy today, the freedoms for which soldiers have died, are fragile and, like the essential tenets of our Christian faith, are always but one generation away from extinction?
In Jesus Christ, we are offered freedom such as the world can never know. In him is healing and wholeness and strength, for the living of these days. There is no prison on this earth strong enough to keep him out -- or to keep us in!
Prayer For The Day
Liberating God,
so many times you have opened prison doors for us
and removed chains that bind us --
and we are grateful.
Yet there are other times when we must admit
that we choose bondage over freedom.
We come to you now to lay claim your promises of freedom.
Set us free from all that binds us,
confines us,
and keeps us from becoming
the strong and confident disciples
you would have us be.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
To Illustrate
"Liberty," wrote the French revolutionary Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "is a food easy to eat but hard to digest." If that is true, then maybe, as the preacher Will Willimon has quipped, "America is suffering from a bad case of indigestion."
***
There is much to be learned from the example of third-world Christians, many of whom do not possess the gift of freedom we take for granted. There are countless Christians in other lands who have no choice but to live out their faith in fear and trembling, day by day.
Will Willimon tells the story of a bishop from Angola (the former Portuguese colony in West Africa), who came to visit America a few years back.
The bishop was speaking to a group of Christians. "Is the new Marxist government supportive of the church?" the Americans asked.
"No," said the bishop, "but we don't ask it to be supportive." He then went on to tell how his country's government had banned many church meetings, but how the Christians stubbornly went on meeting, all the same.
"What will you do," the Americans asked, "when the government becomes stronger?"
"We shall keep meeting," the bishop replied. "The government does what it needs to do. The church does what it needs to do. If we go to jail for being the church, we shall go to jail. Jail is a wonderful place for Christian evangelism. Our church made some of its most dramatic gains during the revolution when so many of us were in jail. In jail, you have everyone there, in one place. You have time to preach and teach. Sure, twenty of our pastors were killed during the revolution, but we came out of jail a much larger and stronger church."
The bishop continued, "Don't worry about the church in Angola; God is doing fine by us. Frankly, I would find it much more difficult to be a pastor in [your country]. Here, there is so much. So many things. It must be hard to be the church here."
Hard, indeed, it is to be the church, in "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It's not hard for the church to be a community institution, a dispenser of certain social and educational services that are valued (for the most part) by the larger community; what is hard for this church of ours to do is to speak a prophetic voice, a voice of freedom.
***
Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale Of Two Cities, contains a famous character known as Dr. Manette. Imprisoned for twenty years by the king, the doctor is finally freed by the Revolution. Through his long imprisonment, the doctor has taken on a new trade, that of cobbler. In the gloom of his prison cell, he has lived out his days tapping shoes with a hammer.
Finally, the day comes when Dr. Manette is led out into the sunlight but the light of day terrifies him. The good doctor has lived too long in the shadowy recesses of his cell. The only way he is happy, it turns out, is for a servant to lock him at night in a tiny attic room. There he spends his time tap, tap, tapping on the shoes, just as he has done for lo, these many years.
Dr. Manette's story is pathetic, but it's not so uncommon. How many have been led, time and again, to an open door, through which can be glimpsed the bright sunlight of God's freedom? Yet how many of us, when faced by such a vista, have shielded our eyes from the light -- have turned back into the shadows of our cells, retreating into the same destructive habits, time and time again?
***
For many years the license plates of New Hampshire bore the slogan, made famous by Revolutionary War general John Stark, "Live Free or Die." Ironically, those words were stamped onto the license plates by inmates in the state prison. They were kept in their prison by high walls and barred windows, but many of us consent to stay in other sorts of prisons, when we have the power to leave all along. Something inside us wants to live free, but often we are unwilling to do what the gospel of Jesus Christ says we must do to be truly free.
-- Adapted from J. Michael Shannon, in Preaching, March/April 2004, p. 61
***
Jesus was truly free. His freedom was rooted in his spiritual awareness that he was the Beloved Child of God. He knew in the depth of his being that he belonged to God before he was born, that he was sent into the world to proclaim God's love, and that he would return to God after his mission was fulfilled. This knowledge gave him the freedom to speak and act without having to please the world and the power to respond to people's pains with the healing love of God.
That's why the gospels say: "Everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all" (Luke 6:19).
-- Henri J. M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
***
Robert Frost once said, "You have freedom when you're easy in your harness."
