Monday, June 3, 2019

History of Brokenness Repeated

PROPERS:         7 EASTER, YEAR C    
TEXT:                 ACTS 16:16-34
PREACHED AT CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, MOBILE, ON SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2019.

ONE SENTENCE:        The inexorable movement of God through history                                                involves the repetition of sin and brokenness, but moves                                      toward the realization of a New Creation.     
                                    

           The world is moving toward a new creation.
            But, it seems slow in getting there.  It appears that history repeats itself.

            Consider the story from Acts today.

            Paul and Silas have traveled to Philippi in Macedonia.  This was an ancient city in modern-day Greece, just south of modern-day Bulgaria and just north of the Aegean Sea.  They were on Paul’s second missionary journey – an earnest effort to introduce the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the known world.

            I did not know Paul, of course.  Our lives were separated by 2,000 years of history.  But I suspect he was an intense man, not tolerant of distractions or frivolity. So, when the woman with a spirit of divination went about with him and loudly proclaimed who he was and what his mission was – he was irked.

            Tired of the woman’s shouts, Paul turned and proclaimed: “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” The spirit of divination immediately left her.

            Now, this would seem to be a good thing.  But not to her owners. Yes, she was owned.  And her owners received large amounts of cash from her fortune-telling.  No more.  And they were not pleased.

            Their profiting off this woman they ownedhad come to an end.  She was a free person – at least as free as a woman in that culture could be.

            Her owners complained to the authorities.  Paul and Silas were thrown in jail.  There they waited.

            It was there that God moved, we are told.  As Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns in their dungeon cell, an earthquake shook the city.  The locks of their cell were unfastened… but they remained.

            The jailer, fearing their escape, was about to kill himself when Paul called out to him: “Do not fear!  We are still here.”

            The grateful jailer took them to his home, bound their wounds, and fed them. Then Paul shared the Good News with the jailer’s household, and they were baptized.

+ + + 

            This is a microcosm of human history.

            We can see – with great clarity – how the brokenness of human history has been repeated again and again throughout history.  We see how human sin – with human will overwhelming God’s ways – has been manifested in our culture.  The last three hundred years are a good example.

            But in stories such as this one from the Book of Acts, we see the hand of God determining the outcome. We see hope.  We see that we are not alone. It shows us the accelerated history of God’s movement through time, from injustice to freedom, from bondage to release, and from sin into new life.

            It testifies to the truth of Dr. Martin Luther King’s words:  The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.

            We sowant it to move more quickly. Sometimes it seems that the clock and the calendar are moving backwards.  That is especially true these days.  But I take hope in two approaches to the brokenness and sin all around us. One is secular, the other is scriptural.

            Psychological theory notes this:  Regression precedes a consolidation of gains.  In other words, when things move backward, it is a means by which we, as individuals or as a culture, incorporate the hard-earned gains we have realized. They become a more firm part of who we are and how we live.

            As culture regresses to old behaviors, we are actually strengthening the gains of the immediate past.  We will be stronger when we emerge from the back-sliding.

            That is one observation – the secular one.  The other is scriptural – from the Book of Job.

            Job had been a righteous man.  He had been a follower of God throughout his life.  But he got caught in a wager between Satan and God – with Satan saying that Job’s faith would not survive severe testing.

            God gives Satan a free hand, and the result is devastating. Job loses everything– houses, family, herds, and crops.  He sits in ashes, scraping his sores with a pot sherd. 

            Job’s so-called comfortersurge him to curse God, but Job refuses.  He remains faithful.  But he finally gives-in, and he challenges God.  He questions God’s justice in the world.

            In one of the most beautiful passages in all of scripture, God responds to Job’s challenge:

        Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

 “Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?”                   (Job 38:1-7)

            As Christians, we wait for the fulfillment of God’s reign.  We see images of it in scripture.  We hear Jesus tell us what it will be like when we realize that new world in its fullness. But, like Job, we must wait, and we must be humble – trusting that though we cannot know God’s ways, we are confident in them.

            Hymn 534 in our hymnal expresses it well:

            God is working his purpose out,
            as year succeeds to year,
            God is working his purpose out,
            and the time is drawing near;
            nearer and near comes the time,
            the time that will surely be,
            when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God
            as the waters cover the seas.”

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