Psalm 23; Acts 16:16-34
May 29, 2022
- How we enter experiences we do not expect
Here you go, friends. You are sitting at the traffic light waiting your turn and an armored car goes rumbling by. The back doors fly open and a giant box of money tumbles out. When the box hits the ground, it blows open and bills go everywhere in a storm of green currency. All the while, the truck rolls on its way without even a backward glance. Before you know it, the truck is around the corner never to be seen, again. Hundreds of hundreds are raining down from the sky. I wonder what we might do. I wonder what the others there might do. How many would jump out to begin collecting the money to return it to the currency transport service? How many would jump out to find a new retirement strategy?
Actually, I think a good number of you, if not all of you, would do the right thing if that means collecting the piles of money to somehow return, but I’m not so sure most people would. You all might be the exception. It is pretty straightforward and simple to expect people to act a certain way sometimes. We all probably have expectations for people sometimes. Now, here’s the thing: sometimes our expectations might be right, but there are certainly times when we are completely wrong.
When the jailer in Acts 16 awoke to find the cells in his prison wide open, he assumed the worst because that is human nature. Honestly, this is harder than the money example because if we ourselves had been publicly stripped, painfully beaten, and unjustly imprisoned AND THEN THE DOORS FLEW OPEN WIDE WHEN NO ONE WAS LOOKING…. It would be REALLY, REALLY hard to stay there, let alone convince anyone else there to stay, too. After all, this was already a miscarriage of justice. You should not have been there to begin with. Why not just slip out….
On the flip side, the jailer was personally responsible for those who were in jail. He had one job, and he thought it was really a pretty simple and easy. All he had to do was keep people locked up. It’s not like he had a bunch of Harry Houdinis in there escaping every other day. It was not that kind of a place, but if he DID lose people, then it was his neck on the line. That’s why he prepares to end his own life when he saw the open doors. No one in their right mind would stay in the cells. He knew they were gone, and his life was forfeit. Better to go on his terms rather than on anyone else’s. That is a hard story, and that is what made it all the more shocking when the prisoners were all still there – people who were justly and unjustly incarcerated. That blew his mind.
Something that truly surprised me this week was another school shooting but not just any school, another massacre at an elementary school, Robb Elementary in Uvalde TX. If you have not heard about this, you must have been living under a rock this week. It has been all over. What might not have been quite as often in the news reports (but I suspect you know) is just how bad our school shooting situation is in America. According to Everytown Research (a gun regulation lobbying group), there have been just over 87 school shootings every year in America since 2013. According to CNN with slightly different parameters, they found that there were 288 school shootings in America between 2009 and 2018. The next highest country in the world with school shootings figures on record is Mexico which had 8 shootings in the same period. We had at least 288 and Mexico had at least 8. No one else is close. To see and hear something so bizarre is enough to get your attention. Whatever it is that we think we are doing in America, we are not doing it very well. Yes, something must be done that is not already being done. One day it will be your children, your grandchildren, or your great grandchildren. I have a cousin who lived through a school shooting at a college in Illinois a number of years ago. None of us saw that coming.
When Paul and Silas began working in Philippi, I doubt they expected to end up brutally beaten and jailed without any real charge so quickly. Lydia had provided them a home base, and they began working for the gospel in that Roman, pagan town. That story with the possessed girl is a bit weird. It is not really clear what Paul’s motives are, but it is pretty safe to assume that they were not trying to get arrested and imprisoned. They were just doing their thing and going about their business with that voice calling them out again and again.
Just so, when they decided to stay in the prison with whomever else was there, their purpose was not to overcome the jailer with their faith. They were not trying to manipulate him with this show of faith and trust and courage. They were really doing the loving thing, what God would want them to do – overcome evil with good.
That brings me to the other experience I had this week with things that were unexpected – Joanne Stanley. What happened to her was not evil necessarily. The illness and her weakness and the infection are all evidence of a hurting and broken world. She loved her surgeon and had worked with him for many years and respected his work. Who knows what really happened or why? What matters is that when she was faced with something she never saw coming, when her family was faced with something they never saw coming, when we were confronted with something we never saw coming, there is a choice to make in that crisis. Retreat in fear or move forward in faith. The response for people in Christ Jesus is the same as it was for Paul and Silas – remain in an attitude of love. We are not motivated by hate, resentment, anger, or blame. We are motivated completely by love. We even need to love that police chief who held the officers back for an hour before entering the school. We even need to love the shooter. We even need to love the jailer, the Roman officials, and the possessed girl who all had a hand in the unfair practices of the world – then and now.
What this marvelous story of Paul and Silas in the Philippian prison says to me is that when we genuinely meet the ugliness of the world in the spirit of Jesus that bigger things can happen than we realize. Love grows in the face of the unexpected, if we give love in the face of the unexpected. It is so natural and expected that we react with fear and hate and anger and blame. That is what the world expects; that is how the world operates. But that is not how the world is changed. As children of God, the same God who has established his Kingdom in our midst with the Spirit of our Lord, we need a world that is changing. The unexpected is coming, friends. It always is. The real surprise will be how love can bring something beautiful even in the horrendous. People are working for good right now in Uvalde. People shared in the good here yesterday. People are working for God in Ukraine. We all need more good. To God be the glory. Amen.