By our Love

Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-17; John 17:20-26.

In our story from the Christian Traditions today we drop in upon Paul, Luke and Silas in Philippi as they go to the place of prayer. Last week we heard how this was near the river, with Lydia and the sisters, but this week the apostles get caught up in a situation on the way and they pause to proclaim freedom to a captive of sin. The work of Christ’s ministry was being undermined in Philippi by spiritual forces of opposition, and The Holy Spirit’s compassion for the girl with the spirit overwhelms the apostles. “Shut up exploitative boasting python,” Paul says, quietly but firm in his irritation, “and release this daughter of God.” As with many things, financial concerns get in the way of charity, and those who cared deepest for the afflicted girl cared most deeply for their capacity to exploit her affliction for reliable income, than for her liberation from this tiring spirit, and they complain to the Chamber of Commerce and the Town Progress Association. They use religious and cultural words to level their charges – they know their audience – but it’s more about the money for them, it has always been more about the money for them. Justice is not served, the judges and aldermen go with the mob rather than the law, and the law is broken (trampled really). Later, Paul and Silas who had been heading out to worship before the interruption, continue onto worship together in gaol. God intervenes, justice is retorted by the earthquake, and Paul and Silas act with righteousness and not with retribution. In God’s grace the gaoler is saved, he and his whole household, not only from the consequences of escaped prisoners (a capital crime against him) but from the tyranny of a life outside Christ. Everyone in the household is baptised immediately, including the children, (Baptists and Churches of Christ folk take note), and a party ensues. This is a great story of God’s compassion in action, even if it all occurs through a tired man with a harsh case of the irrits.

The gaoler’s question is one we will return to next week, at Pentecost. What must I do to be saved is asked in Acts 16:30 and is addressed in Acts 16:31 with the promise and instruction believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (and you will be saved), you and your household. In plainer words, salvation comes from Christ and is received by trust demonstrated (you have to reach for what is offered, or at least look at what was dropped in your lap). As I say, more of that next week when Peter says the same thing in Acts 2.

In our story from the Jesus Traditions today, Jesus says, “I have told them the Truth, that they may be One in the way that we (God) are One”. In the three years of his ministry (according to John’s calendar) Jesus told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to his disciples, his students. Here in his final hour with the earliest of his students, men who have now become his closest mates, Jesus wraps it all up and says “Amen” before heading out to the Garden of Gethsemane. That is a place from which he will return only in custody, and to be crucified within twelve hours. “They’re completed, Father,” says Jesus, “job done, it’s over to you now, and over to them. I hand them up.” You will hear more of the Oneness of God in a fortnight’s time as you consider God the Trinity, (good luck Ps. Irene explaining that inside fifteen minutes); but for now hold one thought. That thought is that the Church will be One even as The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit, are One. In the same way that The Godhead coexists as unity and diversity, in that exact way so does the Church. Perhaps Irene can explain that one too, or I can return to it in July as we explore more of the changing into growth I forthtold at our Congregational Meeting a fortnight ago. Sufficient for now please file the thought that we, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, are “One” just as God is “One”. We are in each other, God is in us, and we are in God (John 17:21).

Today’s story is not that, today we hear about love. Love motivated Paul and Silas to act to seek the release of the afflicted girl; a girl cursed into telling the truth but never receiving the blessings of her prolific truth-telling. She is not honoured as a prophet, she is damned as a sorceress. Jesus said that the evidence of God’s sending Jesus would be seen foremost in the compassionate actions of the church (John 17:21b). We sow and show love to friends, neighbours and strangers so that the world may believe that the Father has loved them even as The Father has loved The Son. (John 17:23b alt.)

We as Church are shaped by the glory of Jesus, glory fully displayed in who he is, who he was, and who we are (and how we act) in response to all of that. Christ, God The Son, is love; Jesus, the Son of Man, was loving. How well are we doing, and if we are doing well how are we actually going about the doing? What is it that we do to glorify God before the world’s watching? We have read one example of what Paul and Silas did; can anyone here offer an example of what we have done? That’s a rhetorical question for Selah; please pause later and consider, please don’t call out now.

This next paragraph has the same topic: we as Church are shaped by the glory of Jesus, glory fully displayed in who he is. But let’s narrow that thought and focus on the circumstances of John 17, which leads for Jesus and The Twelve into John 18-20, and the words we have heard so much of over these past seven weeks of the Easter season. The gloriest glory of Jesus was seen in the cross; so will it be that our gloriest glorifying of Jesus will be seen in our crosses? Paul did something kind for a girl with a spiritual health issue, and it cost him a caning and a night in gaol. We should not seek pain, or pick fights to ensure our martyrdom, Christianity is not Masochism, but are we prepared to be Christian regardless of the cost, knowing that sometimes no good deed goes unpunished, and that our self-evident compassion will come up against the majority’s obvious economic and political self-interest? How dare we show practical and transformative kindness; who do we think we are? Sing: “they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love…” and they may come to hate us for it. They may throw us in gaol as cultural terrorists and do-gooding troublemakers, even in Australia. When all Christians are like that our oneness if fully revealed: one with God (who is love) and one with the Church (who is holy, catholic, and apostolic) (in other words distinct, pure, and historically consistent).

In Revelation 22 and on the final page of the Christian Bible (and had we read the complete lection today we’d have read the final verse), belongingness and love are again in Christ’s meaning. Jesus the glorified one is also the embodied completion of Creation. Inside his statement of alpha and omega, aie and zed, what Jesus is saying is “I am the everything”. Even that, Jesus doesn’t say “I am everything”, he says “I am the everything”: he is the completion and the fullness, not only the sum-total up to 100% and four decimal places, but the more-and-overflowing. Blessed, he says in Revelation 22:14, are those who have the right to enter the city by its gates; in other words, those who belong and are coming inside. Outside, Jesus goes on to say in Revelation 22:15, are the sorcerers and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. Do we know anyone like that, someone involved in sorcery or the practice of falsehood? Paul and Silas did, the girl in the market in Philippi. And how did they respond? In love they got her out of false prophecy and (presumably) into the fellowship of the Philippian church as a sister in Christ. She’s now in, entering the city by its gates, because Paul and Silas took the time to turn her ears upon Jesus so that she was able to hear the Spirit and the bride say “come”,  and come she now has. Do you love the people in your world enough to do that for them? Jesus loves them that much, and so does the Church. We are the Church, this local congregation, and we are not and we have never been people who withhold living water from the thirsty. On the contrary, we are The Church, this local congregation, and we are the bride of Christ, and we say “come”.

And so, may the love with which The Father has loved The Son be in the Church as Christ is in The Church (John 17:25 alt.), and may this reality be communal. In his last words before the Garden, Christ prayed for us as us, not for each of us as individuals. Let us remember that we belong to the light, we belong to the Father; whatever we deny or embrace for worse or for better, we belong, we belong together.

Amen.