May 8, 2016

Susan Adams

Easter 7     Acts 16:16-34     John17:20-26

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There are a lot of Grumpy people in this story! As Luke tells the story, the beginning of which we heard last week, Paul and Silas' visit to Philippi in Macedonia didn't get off to a very good start. Paul has an argument with Barnabas and John in Athens at the outset about who should travel with him. Paul might have been a bit grumpy following that, but, after the baptism of Lydia and her household in Philippi that we heard about last week, he could have thought things were improving. While the story of the woman Lydia seems nothing but success, today's story about another woman has all sorts of aspects that suggest things are not all that great – not going as well as they might have hoped. Their argumentative start has caught up with them!

The woman in today's story is a slave, we never learn her name.

Whereas Lydia was a business woman dealing in the most valued purple-cloth, this slave-woman was making 'something-out-of-nothing' for her owners by fortune-telling. She had obviously heard Paul and Silas speaking previously in the place of prayer where they had met Lydia, and she had heard something in what they said that convinced her that they could offer a way of healing and freedom – 'salvation' is the word in the text. She keeps calling this out and Paul becomes fed up with her (was it the use of a and not the that annoyed him). Whatever, he turns into a grumpy-man demanding she stop shouting out!

Enter Grumpy Man One.

• The second grump presents itself in the persons of the owners, angry that their source of income has been removed;

• then the third when the crowd turns and starts attacking Paul and Silas for threatening their economic and political security; then

• the fourth – the magistrates; and then

• the fifth – the jailer afraid that they would escape his custody when – with poetic license the writer says 'the earth shook and the chains fell off'!

So much grumpiness all because some insignificant slave-girl was exposed in her role in the money-making scheme of her owners. She had heard a message of hope and freedom that Paul and Silas were, seemingly, not even directing to her!

I can't help thinking there is quite a bit of uncomfortable exposing going on in this account of Luke's! Not least of which is the intentions of Paul and Silas at the time – they seem to be selective regarding who the message of hope was directed at. I can't help wondering how often we too (Church and congregation) proclaim healing, hope, love and freedom but direct our message selectively. (Witness the machinations of General Synod beginning this week over the marriage of people of the same gender).

So in our account we have multiple uncomfortable exposures of:

• the 'good news' message bearers,

• the insignificant worker who knows the inside story,

• the business owners who want something for nothing,

• the general public who see their way of life threatened if change happens and

• those charged with enacting the law on behalf of the government.

• and the ones who want to separate themselves from implication in whatever the outcome

• and the ones who want to be on the 'wining side'.

It is easy at this point to slip into analogy and explore where we locate ourselves in the story – and this could be a sobering exercise if we are honest and own up to the probability that we have enacted all the roles at one time or another or we could explore the metaphoric implications of 'chains falling off'. But, I want to shift gear a bit because this is the last week of the Easter Season when we focus on 'new life possibilities' for those who are prepared to proclaim the 'Risen Christ' in the face of death and destruction, and to struggle with the implications of that proclamation. Instead of pursuing the text further, this morning I want to invite you to take a big breath and step with me into that community of the Risen Christ. Remember the jailer and his family were baptised into it, becoming members before offering generous table hospitality to former prisoners and political trouble makers and thus risking his livelihood and perhaps even his life at the hand of his Roman employers. It is not a feel good community he has joined and he seems to know the risk.

In the shift I have just invited you to make, we have moved from being individual believers to being part of the Community of Christ: members of Christ's Body is how Paul often speaks of it. This is the community that the writer of John's gospel is focussing on in the prayer that puts into the mouth of Jesus – and probably composed with full awareness of impending danger for the Jewish-Christian community. The Roman powers had claimed Jerusalem and the surrounding territories, including Macedonia as the Act text makes clear. In this prayer Jesus prays for his disciples, and for 'all those who will believe in times to come through the word of the disciples' – that is us! The characteristics of this community of Christ are love and unity: being in right-relations with each other and with God for the sake of the world.

The relationship between the members of the Christ-community and with God is founded on love. Not love for the sake of being in love, not that nice warm confident feeling when someone special says I love you and gives you a cuddle, rather the tough love that desires right action for justice and leads to the same sort of generous hospitality Lydia offered and the jailer is reported as offering.

Rather it is love that will risk exposure and challenge and even marginalisation when it points to the places where people behave in an unloving and ungenerous way. It is love that, in its turn, is prepared to get grumpy enough to expose unjust situations where people are disrespected and discounted, to speak out when people want something for nothing and avoid their responsibilities by seeking tax havens; it is the love that will encourage people to limit possessions and profits so the earth can live and breathe and heal itself; it is love that will work to ensure people get a fair return for their labour even at the expense of their own increase in wealth; it is love that will share table hospitality with people from other cultures and other faiths when it is uncertain and a bit afraid.

This is what it means to be a member of the Body of Christ – the Christic-Community – a community at one with each other, with Jesus and with God – each 'dwelling in the other' as today's gospel puts it. This is the people challenged by John's Jesus to be one with him so that the world might come to know that there is a way that leads out of despair and pain and into to healing, to wholeness and to love.

I want to suggest that it is a community prepared to turn the tables on who gets to be grumpy and to get grumpy itself, very grumpy, on behalf of others: I want to invite you to dare to get grumpy enough to make your own exposures of those who are not living with generous and abundant love; not living justly.