Learning Who We Are (Luke 4:1-14)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on June 30, 2019, Proper 8)

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The False Self

Perhaps more than any other gospel, Luke shows us that life begins inside.   That is to say, everything has an inside, an inner life, although generally this remains invisible to the eye.  Over the next couple months, we’ll be reading through the gospel of Luke and paying close attention to this inner life.  In the world, we can easily become fixated on the exterior: size, speed, shape.  As we read Luke, we will leave these things behind and follow Jesus into the heart of life, into what really matters.

When Jesus follows the Spirit into the wilderness, he learns who he is.  If his experience is any indication, it’s difficult to learn who we really are.  It’s like living in a desert.  For Jesus, it takes forty days, a number that recalls the forty years that the Israelites wandered in the desert.  Forty years was a lifetime for that generation of Israelites.  The number suggests it may take a lifetime for us to learn who we really are. 

To learn who we really are means to let go of who we are not.  That’s what Jesus does.  He lets go of the bread of security and survival; he lets go of the deeds and accomplishments on which we pride ourselves; and he lets go of the esteem and affection of others. 

In other words, Jesus lets go of his false self.  The false self is a construct.  It is the way that we generally think about ourselves: what we have (or what we want to have), what we do (or what we want to do), how we look (or want to look), all our accomplishments (or what we would like to accomplish). In each temptation, the devil invites Jesus to identify with an aspect of the false self: what he has, what he does, or what other people think of him.  In each case Jesus responds by renouncing the false self.  He says in effect, “I am not what I have.  I am not what I do.  I am not what others think or say I am.  I am God’s beloved.  Life is not won.  It is received.”

The True Self

All of this is not to demonize the false self—that mental and social construct by which we live and interact in our world.  Perhaps it would be better to speak of it as the small self, the changing self.  For there is no guarantee that what we have today we will have tomorrow, or what we can do today we will be able to do tomorrow, or what people think of us today is what people will think of us tomorrow.  The false self, the small self, the changing self, is but a mask that obscures what matters most: the blessed and beloved self that belongs to God. I have to think it’s more than coincidence that I am reminded of this true self most when I am with our friends in the memory care unit or with the homeless whom Rhonda serves or with the community of the intellectually disabled at L’Arche.  Among these friends, in whom there is little pretense to strength or success, I draw near to the heart of God.

As Jesus’ life reveals, it makes a world of difference whether we live from our false selves or our true selves.  When we live from our small and false self, we are always incomplete, always one step away from the security or success or social status that we think will give us happiness.  But when we live from our belovedness in God, as does Jesus, we have nothing to fear or to achieve or to prove.  We are simply living our own selves out as fully and as faithfully as we can, trusting that God can provide what we cannot, hopeful that God will make possible what we cannot, liberated by God’s love that is with us even when others are not. 

Letting Go

Letting go of the false self is a lifelong journey.  Spiritual programs of recovery like AA sometimes call it non-attachment: letting go not only of hurtful habits but also of attachment to security or power or affection, which when frustrated leads to the search for a quick fix.  Paul sometimes calls it being crucified with Christ (cf. Gal 2:19; 5:24; 6:14).  Whatever we call it, it can feel like a wilderness but it also brings us into a fuller, deeper, richer, more authentic life in God.

This morning, I’d like to invite us to think about our own false self—about what is most important to our identity.  Maybe it’s what we see when we look in the mirror.  Maybe it’s the number in our bank account.  Maybe it’s the esteem and affection of others.  Or perhaps you would consider how our own church community has a false self—you might consider what is most important to our identity.  Perhaps it has to do with certain ideas of size or success or smiling faces and good moods.  Take a moment now and allow the Spirit of God to speak to you concerning your own false self or the false self of the church.  What element is most important to that sense of identity?

Now I’d like to invite us to follow Jesus, who leads the way, and Paul and other faithful persons who have followed him, relinquishing their false selves and welcoming instead their blessed and beloved selves that belong to God.  You might do this simply in your mind.  Or if you would like, you might leave your seat and proceed to one of the windows in the sanctuary.  At each window is a container of sand along with an unsharpened pencil that you can use to draw in it.  I’d invite you to draw a symbol of your false self—a symbol of whatever it is that is most important to your identity.  Then let it go.  Draw a cross over top of that symbol, signifying that it has been crucified with Christ.  For it is in dying to that which is false within us that what is truest in us can live.

At this time, you are invited to proceed to a container of sand.  Alternatively you might stay seated and contemplate an aspect of your false self.

Let us pray now for God’s help in letting go of the false self.

Prayer

Creator God,

Whose loving touch has shaped us,

Whose embrace is eternal:

We have striven and striven

For a life that we are already given.

Loosen our attachment

To our false selves—

To size, to success, to status—

So that we might instead

Live faithfully and fully

As we really are,

Your blessed and beloved children.

In Christ, with whom we are crucified and risen: Amen.

Whatever Doesn't Kill You... (Romans 5:1-5)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on June 16, 2019, Trinity Sunday)

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A Tap on the Shoulder

It was Kristin’s first day at her new school.  Her family had moved states in the middle of the year for her father’s job.  That day, when her teachers introduced her as a transfer student, she could sense the scrutiny of her fellow students—she could hear their whispers, she could feel the judgment in their eyes.  She hadn’t even spoken a word, and already rumors were being readied for distribution.  At least…that’s what she imagined.

When the lunch bell rang, she followed the herd of students into the hallway and to the cafeteria.  The cavernous lunchroom echoed loudly with students celebrating their temporary freedom.  But the sound was drowned out by the hammering of her heart within.  Where would she sit?   Some tables were already filled.  Others had backpacks strewn across them, claiming seats.  She could already detect the semblance of a caste system: the preps, the nerds, the athletic types, the rebels.  Slowly she wandered up and down each aisle.  With each passing table, her heart weighed heavier and heavier with dread.  Would she have to sit alone at the empty table?  That would be unbearable.

As she finished walking through the last aisle with no luck, she felt a tap on her shoulder.  “Hey, you wanna join us?”  Kristin turned around, and for the first time that day, she looked fully into another person’s eyes.  It was a friendly face.  The girl pointed back to a table with a couple of empty chairs and said, “Why don’t you throw your bag down and then follow me.  Today’s breakfast for lunch, but there are certain things you won’t want to get.  The sausage is basically rubber.  And the eggs are runny as all get out.  But the pancakes….”  As her new friend rambled on, she breathed deep with relief.  The hammer within her heart had ceased.  For the first time that day, she felt like she belonged.

God Is a Community

On Trinity Sunday, we celebrate God as three persons.  Or as orthodox theology would put it, three persons but one substance.  I’ll confess, that makes no sense.  Three does not equal one.  The analogy of the three states of water is sometimes used to explain the trinity.  But that analogy falls short, because the trinity insists that the three persons exist at the same time.  This is not God transforming from one state to the next and back again, but the one God somehow existing at the same time in three persons.

At times I am tempted to let go of the doctrine of the trinity.  After all, it’s nowhere in the Bible explicitly.  It doesn’t appear until nearly two centuries after the life of Jesus.  But I haven’t let go of it yet.  For as much confusion as it has wrought, the idea of the trinity attests to a holy intuition that followers of Christ have had for nearly two millennia.  And that intuition is this: God is not an individual.  God is a community.  The fundamental essence of life is not me alone.  It’s us together.

And the good news of this Sunday, the good news of the trinity, is that it is an open circle.  God the creator, redeemer, and sustainer is not a gated community, guarding the secret of salvation, but an open one, inviting us to take and eat and have life.  In today’s scripture, Paul twice declares that it is “through” our Lord Jesus Christ that we have life (Rom 5:1-2).  Paul is speaking from personal experience, attesting to the fact that it was Jesus Christ who welcomed him into the community of God.  Jesus Christ tapped him on the shoulder and said, “You wanna join us?”  And it’s not just Paul who attests to this experience.  The gospels are chock-full of stories where Jesus turns to the outcast, the sinner, the lowly, the forgotten, and says, “Hey, you wanna join us at the table?”  Perhaps more than any other symbol, the table represents the unconditional welcome of God.  That’s why celebrate at it every week.  We celebrate at the table to remember that we are welcomed into God’s community—and so are our neighbors and our enemies and the strangers we have yet to befriend.  We celebrate at the table to remember that the fundamental essence of life is not me alone, it’s us together with God.  (If you look at the back of your bulletin, you’ll see one of the most famous Christian icons, a depiction of the trinity by Andrei Rublev, a 15^th century Russian painter.  Notice how it’s three persons around the table, and how there’s an empty space on the fourth side—as if to say, we as viewers are invited to the table too.)

…Draws You Closer

The strange thing about today’s passage is that Paul celebrates not only the glory of being welcomed into God’s community.  He also celebrates suffering as an equally natural experience of living in God’s community.  I would be very quick to point out that he does not explicitly attribute suffering to God.  He does not say that God causes suffering.  But he does suggest that suffering is a sacred experience, that it somehow casts light on the depths of God’s love, and that it therefore draws us more deeply into the community of God. 

There’s a popular saying in our world today.  “Whatever doesn’t kill you…makes you stronger.”  It’s the idea of individual strength honed through trial and trouble.  It’s a fine idea, and within our individualist worldview it has a certain truth.  But today’s scripture proclaims a deeper truth, which Paul might have paraphrased this way: “Whatever doesn’t kill you…draws you closer.”  Which is to say, suffering can lead in two directions: death or life.  It can divide us, isolate us, draw us into deep loneliness, lead us into despair.  Or it can invite us into the community of God, draw us closer to one another, gather us in solidarity and hope around the table. 

I think of grief.  How tears shed alone can make us bitter, but tears shared with others can water our parched souls.  I think of addiction.  How the torment of loneliness can deepen our shame, but sharing the struggle with others can lift us with hope.  I think of great change.  How facing the change alone can weigh us down with despair, but finding companions in a similar situation of change can inspire us with courage.

In the story of our ancestors in faith, Abraham and his family, there is a recurring theme.  When the family enters into an unknown situation, or when it finds itself in the midst of hardship, it takes nearby stones and transforms them into an altar to God, consecrating that difficult moment, somehow making it sacred.  In one particular case, Jacob actually takes a stone in the wilderness that he used the night before as a pillow, and he pours oil on it and turns it into a pillar of worship.  For me, the image of a pillow of hardship transformed into a pillar of worship, of boulders transformed into altars, is a powerful and hopeful expression of what Paul says.  Our suffering can draw us more deeply into the community of God.  Our stumbling blocks can become stepping-stones into a richer life.

Of Boulders and Altars

We follow in the footsteps of our ancestors in faith.  Their story is ours.  Just as Abraham and his family transformed boulders into altars, just as Paul saw his suffering as an invitation into the loving community of God, so too we are invited in our own hardships to receive God’s welcome and to enter more deeply into God’s community. 

So I will invite us in just a moment into a time of silence to reflect on our own lives and the boulders that stand in our way.  How might we, like Paul, like Abraham, consecrate them?  How might we commit them to God in a way that draws us more deeply into the community and life of God?  Maybe there is a burden that needs to be shared with a trusted friend or mentor.  Maybe there is a challenge that you are facing alone, which needs to be faced together.  Maybe there is a concern that needs to pass from personal contemplation into communal conversation.  Maybe the boulder is a great change, or grief, or addiction; or maybe it’s something else entirely.  Pause now for a moment to consider the boulders in your life and how they might become an altar—how they might invite you more deeply into God’s community.

Scattered under each window are little rocks.  In just a moment, I will invite all who feel led to get up and take a rock or two from under the window nearest you as symbols of the boulders in your life.  (If you are unable to go to the window, you might ask your neighbor to grab you a rock or two.)  And I would invite you to hold on to your rocks this week.  You might make them into an altar and place them somewhere visible in your home: on your dresser, on the bathroom counter, on the kitchen table, somewhere where you would see them and be reminded of the opportunities you have to enter more deeply into the community of God, into that open circle of three persons, around that table where we are all invited to find ourselves in God and one another.  If you feel so led, would you rise now and take a rock or two?

Let us pray together now and consecrate our boulders as altars that draw us closer to God and one another.

Prayer

God in three persons,

Whose abundant life is found

In the community of love:

We celebrate your table

And its reminder

That we are beloved,

That we belong.

We ask that in difficult times,

The stumbling-blocks before us

Would not isolate us and lead us into despair

But draw us closer to you and one another.

We commit our boulders to you

As altars and sacraments

Where your love might be made real.

In the name of Christ, who taps us on the shoulder:

Amen.

Bursting Old Wineskins (Acts 2:1-21)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on June 9, 2019, Pentecost)

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“New” Wine

Today’s scripture offers an excellent example of what it means to read the Bible as literature.  As you may know, I had the opportunity to teach a course this past semester called “The Bible as Literature.”  Naturally some folks have the concern that to read the Bible as literature means to disregard its religious value.  But I would vigorously argue the contrary.  To read the Bible as literature means to believe that every word, every letter, every jot and tittle means something.  Great literature does not result from someone sitting down and just writing whatever passes across the surface of his mind.  Dostoevsky didn’t just open a notebook and scribble down his thoughts to give us Crime and Punishment.  Great literature is an inexpressible mixture of heartfelt experience and patient reflection and deliberate design and getting the words just right.  Every word means something.

The hinge on which rests my interpretation of today’s scripture, is a single word: “new.”  When the Holy Spirit fills the gathered followers of Jesus and they began to speak in the languages of other peoples, some of the passers-by sneer and say, “They are filled with new wine” (Acts 2:13).  “New wine.”  In a casual reading, we might pass over this word without a second thought.  But if we take a closer look, the word “new” becomes rather puzzling.  It’s an unnecessary addition.  It would have made more sense for the cynical onlookers to say simply, “They are filled with wine.”  After all, they’re only attributing the spectacle to alcohol—not to a particular vintage.

But if we’re reading the Bible as literature, then this word “new” is significant.  It’s a clue to a deeper meaning.  It’s evidence that there’s more going on here.  If we flip back through the pages of this story, all the way back into the prequel to Acts, which is the gospel of Luke, we discover that the words “new wine” have already appeared once before.  When the religious authorities become upset with Jesus’ apparent disregard for some of their traditions and practices, he tells them a short parable: “No one,” he says, “puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled” (Luke 5:37). 

In other words, your old way of doing things is bursting at the seams.  Because what God is doing now is new.  It cannot be contained by the old way.

Of Wind and Fire

So in today’s scripture when the cynical onlookers sneer and say, “They are filled with new wine,” we as readers know that the joke is on them.  These followers of Christ are filled with new wine—which is to say, they are filled with the Holy Spirit, which is continuing the wineskin-bursting work of Christ, a work that is bursting the seams of the old world. 

According to Luke, the event of Pentecost begins with “wind,” a word which harkens back to the very beginning of the Bible, when “a wind from God [sweeps] over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2).  It’s almost as if Luke is saying that the Holy Spirit is kicking off a new creation, a new world.

Luke talks not only about “wind” but also about “fire.”  The Christ-followers’ conversation, their confabulation, is in fact a conflagration.  According to Luke, their words—spoken in every language under the sun—are like a fire.  It is a suggestive comparison.  In English, we might say of the Christ-followers who received the Holy Spirit that they were given a fire in their bellies.  They couldn’t not proclaim the good news about God.  We might say that their words spread like wildfire, that nothing could douse the Spirit, that nothing could contain it. 

As Jesus said, it’s like new wine in old wineskins.

Change by the Language of the People

What I take away from this passage are three simple points.  (This is the first time in four years I’ve preached a three-point sermon, so if that’s your kind of thing—savor this moment!)  First, the Holy Spirit is a spirit of change.  It is like new wine in an old wineskin, like the world being recreated, like a fire that cannot be contained.  Whatever else it is, the Holy Spirit is a spirit of change.  Second, the power of the Holy Spirit is the power of the spoken word.  Speech is its currency.  Stories are its business.  Third, the Holy Spirit speaks the language of the people.  Everyone who has traveled to Jerusalem hears stories of God spoken in their own language.

The Holy Spirit is a spirit of change.  Conversation is its currency.  And it speaks the language of the people.

Today’s passage is little bit like a microcosm of the rest of the book.  The Holy Spirit spreads like wildfire and changes the world because old folks who dream dreams and young men who see visions and daughters who have a holy intuition of things do not keep quiet but speak.  The book of Acts is basically one conversation after another.  Peter has a vision and then shares his story.  Paul sees a blinding light and hears the voice of Jesus and cannot stop talking about it in synagogues and marketplaces.  To the Jews, he speaks with reference to their scripture.  To the Greeks, he speaks with reference to their philosophy and their poets.  Which is all to say, he speaks the language of the people.  (We see this, of course, in Jesus too, who spoke fish to fishermen, sheep to shepherds, and bookish theology to bookish theologians.[1])

Pentecost Today

After worship today, you are invited to stay at church a little bit longer and to join us in the fellowship hall for a congregational gathering where we will begin a conversation of planning for Gayton Road’s future.  There is no better day for us to begin this conversation than Pentecost. 

We will be talking about change.  Pentecost reminds us that change is in our religious DNA.  To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be part of change.  The early church, which was originally Jewish, changed dramatically: it relinquished certain ritual practices, like dietary laws and circumcision; it opened its doors to newcomers who did not share its heritage; and it gathered not at established meeting houses but inside individual homes and in open spaces, like beside a river.

Any change that happens here will only happen through conversation.  Pentecost reminds us that it has always been the spoken word through which the Holy Spirit moves.  The church began with a bold group of followers who shared their stories.  And their mode of conversation is instructive: they proposed instead of imposed, which is to say, they left room for the Spirit and waited for the unity of the Spirit.  The church has never had an exhaustive blueprint from God.  Rather its life is like a journey, never seeing more than a step ahead where the Spirit is leading.  And the Spirit leads through honest, heartfelt conversation. 

And the third point, for those of you keeping score, is that the Holy Spirit speaks the language of the people.  Which is perhaps another of way of saying that God meets people where they are.  The truth today is that people are leaving church—whether for reasons of disenchantment, or scheduling conflicts with sports and employment, or simply indifference.  It’s tempting for the church to bristle defensively at the droves who are departing.  But I wonder if this isn’t part of a larger movement, part of a greater change, part of the Spirit working in our world in a grand way that we cannot yet see.  Maybe the church has spent so much time trying to preserve its institution, that it no longer is meeting people where they are.  I wonder if this moment in history isn’t an invitation for the church to reflect on its calling.  After all, the church is not called to preserve the church, but to serve the world and to spread the Spirit that’s like a fire in our bellies.  

To clarify, serving the world does not necessarily mean giving people just what they want, whether that’s a grand show on Sunday or the promise of instant happiness or a network of connections that will oil their personal advancement in society.  There are plenty of churches out there whose “outreach” has little to do with the spread of the Spirit but a lot to do with attracting new members and securing its coffers and growing as an institution.  If the book of Acts is any indication, serving the world means going into places of need and sharing the hope we have.  When I look at the church in the book of Acts, it looks less like a worship service on Sunday and more like what we do when we visit the hospital with teddy bears and furry friends, when we break bread with the memory care residents across the street, when we gather around a table ourselves to share and marvel at sacred stories from scripture and from our own lives.  I wonder if practices as simple as these are how the Holy Spirit is meeting people where they are today.

I hope you’ll join us after worship today.  I hope we will all be open to the Spirit of change in our midst, to the conversation through which it moves, and to new ways of following a timeless calling.

Prayer

Holy Spirit,

Rush upon us

With the energy

Of a new creation;

Inspire us

With contagious and uncontainable

Dreams and visions;

Put a fire in our bellies

To share our honest stories

And your good news;

Change us

According to your will.

In the name of Christ,

Whose new wine fills us:  Amen.

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[1] Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces That Keep Us Apart (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2013), 20-22.

Freedom in Prison (Acts 16:16-34)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on June 2, 2019, Easter VII)

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Still Singing

One year ago, the Liverpool soccer team made it to the Champions League final—which is basically the Super Bowl of European soccer.  As some of you know, I am a fervent Liverpool supporter.  So I was thrilled.  This was the first time in over a decade that Liverpool were competing for a significant trophy.  The day of the final, I wore the team’s color, red; I exchanged hopeful messages with Stephen, a good friend and fellow Liverpool supporter in England; and I got together with my brother to watch the game. 

Liverpool lost 3-1.  We felt deflated.  It was yet another year without a trophy.

The next day, a strange video surfaced on the internet.  It was the Liverpool coach, Jurgen Klopp, dancing and singing defiantly with a small group of fans in the wee hours of the morning.  The public response was a mixture of confusion and criticism.  Did he not know that he just lost the final?  What kind of coach celebrates losing the biggest game of his life?

“Freedom” According to the World

I imagine that there were similar thoughts running through the minds of the prisoners in Philippi a couple thousand years ago.  It was nearly midnight when they heard the newcomers singing in the heart of the prison, in the innermost cell.  Hadn’t they been severely flogged only hours earlier?  Weren’t they unable to move, their feet fastened in stocks?  Did they not know that they were prisoners?  The inmates must have thought that Paul and Silas were crazy.

What Paul and Silas are doing flies in the face of our world’s understanding and obsession with freedom.  According to our world, freedom means having no restraints.  It means being able to go wherever you want.  It means having the time to do whatever you want.  It means having the money to buy whatever you want. 

A little bit earlier in today’s scripture, some of the Philippian merchants become upset when Paul casts out the demon of their fortune-telling slave-girl.  According to the scripture, they are distraught because “their hope of making money was gone” (16:19).  Much like us today, these merchants understood their freedom in terms of money, in terms of the power to acquire whatever they wanted.  The irony in this moment, however, is that their slave-girl is now freer than they are.  She is no longer captive to the unclean spirit that had troubled her.  But her owners are captive to the denarius, the dollar.  And not just her owners but all the town.  When others hear of what happen, a mob attacks Paul and Silas and the authorities throw them into prison.  Money rules this town more than the magistrates.  Everyone, it seems, is captive to wealth.

We might wonder how much has changed today in a world that still identifies freedom with money.  Is it really freedom to forfeit more and more of our time in order to earn an extra dollar or to gain a competitive edge over our rival?  Does freedom look like medicine cabinet full of prescriptions to treat the stress and anxiety that comes with our addiction to success?  Is it freedom to add wall upon wall of security—financial security, national security, home security—for fear of losing what we have? 

The Prisoners Who Were Already Free

In the picture painted by today’s scripture, it is the free citizens of Philippi who are imprisoned, and the imprisoned Paul and Silas who are free.  While the mob in the marketplace fights and shouts for fear of the trouble that might touch their money, Paul and Silas who are shackled to the floor in the heart of prison are singing hymns to God.  How can they who are deprived of every freedom sing?  Tertullian, one of the first theologians in the church, answered it this way: “The legs feel nothing in the stocks when the heart is in heaven.”  Which is to say, Paul and Silas know that God is with them.  Their heart is in heaven because they know that the Spirit of God is with them in the chains. 

I wonder what they prayed, what hymns they sang.   Maybe they prayed for rescue.  Maybe they sang with gratitude for the slave girl whose spirit had been set free earlier in the day.  Maybe their prayer was the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done.”  Whatever they prayed and sang, we know what was in their hearts: trust.  A trust that God could transform even the worst of conditions into something good.

We know this because when the earthquake came and their chains were broken and the doors flew wide open, they did not run for their lives.  They stayed for an even greater good: to save another life.  Seeing the jailer prepare to kill himself, Paul shouts in a loud voice, “Don’t do it!  We’re still here” (cf. 16:28). 

What happens next is an event that no one could have foreseen, which is to say it is the work of the Holy Spirit, whose power is to make possible the impossible.  The jailer, who surely had heard Paul and Silas strangely singing in their cell, asks them how to be saved.  If anyone knows, surely it is they who had looked imprisonment and the possibility of execution in the face and nonetheless sang.  Their response, born of experience, is simple: trust in the Lord Jesus.  Trust in the one who died and yet lived.  Trust in the one who knows our deepest agony and yet knows also that good can come from it.  This trust, and nothing else, is what makes us free.  Free enough to sing in the heart of prison.

And so it is that the captives liberate their captor.  The scripture portrays a beautiful symmetry in the story’s resolution: first the jailer washes the wounds of Paul and Silas, and then they wash him and his family in the waters of baptism.  And then they gather around—guess what—a table.  For the writer of Acts, this is not a coincidence.  It was at tables where Jesus ate with outcasts, forgave sinners, lifted up the lowly.  In short, it was at tables where Jesus set people free.  And it would be at tables, he said, that we would see him again, that the kingdom would come.  

If this table-gathering between jailer and jailed isn’t a glimpse of Christ’s liberating love, a glimpse of the kingdom, I don’t know what is.

Freedom Despite the Conditions

Henry David Thoreau wrote that in our society, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  I see that in our world today, and occasionally in my own life.  When we become fixated with the conditions that limit us, that restrict our “freedom,” life feels more and more like an obstacle course or a chore.  Life is full of “I have to” moments.  I have to do this; I have to do that.  I’m not as free as I’d like to be.

But I am reminded by today’s scripture that in Christ I am free.  Paul and Silas model for us a different kind of freedom.  Instead of freedom from conditions, freedom from all that “I have to” moments of life, they show us freedom despite the conditions, a freedom that instead proclaims, “I get to.”  Paul, who stood chained to the ground, lived by a freedom that said, “I get to sing, to share my story, to be a light in this great darkness.”  Paul and Silas show us one of the major revolutions that following Christ accomplishes in our life: instead of living by the “I have to,” in Christ we live by the “I get to.”  We are not always free from.  But we are always free for.  Free for the person who needs a helping hand.  Free for the person who needs a listening ear.  Free for the enemy who stands in need of God’s love just as much as we do.

In just a little bit, when we gather around the Lord’s Table, we will perform a simple ritual symbolizing the freedom that we have in Christ.   To prepare for that ritual, I invite us now to consider our personal prisons.  They could be any condition beyond our control that limits us: aging, addiction, financial hardship, physical infirmity, or other major changes. 

When you have a personal prison in mind, write it down on the card in your bulletin.  We will have a moment of silence now for you to reflect and write down a word that signifies your personal prison—whatever it is that is beyond your control and that limits your life.

When we gather around the table, I will invite us to renew our trust in Jesus Christ, the one who died and yet lived, the one who has shared our deepest limitations and yet also knows the good that can come from them.  You will have the opportunity to bring your card forward and tear it in two before you receive communion, symbolizing that at the Table Christ has set you free.  And it is my hope that like Paul and Silas in stocks we might nonetheless rejoice, and that as we gather around the table we might like the jailer celebrate that we are free indeed.

Prayer

Christ with us,

Who knows the prisons in which we sit

And the prisons in which others sit too—

We trust in you.

We trust that nothing

Is beyond the power

Of your redeeming love.

In this trust,

We are set free—

Not free from difficulty,

But free for full and faithful life.

We get to live.

Thank you.

Amen.