Seventh Sunday of Easter: May 23, 2004.

Acts 16:16-34

Psalm 97

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

John 17:20-26

On the Seventh Sunday of Easter, we are a people in waiting for the promised Holy Spirit. We pray "Come, Holy Spirit" the way we pray "Come, Lord Jesus" in Advent. We pray knowing that Jesus prays with us. We do what people of God do while waiting for God to act: pray and sing hymns. We do what Easter people do: see and proclaim Christ alive in the world and the church today.

First Reading

Our reading from Acts continues a pattern of twinned stories of healings and conversions of men and women. Here it comes in the form of freedom, a cracking open or hatching of new life that brings us full circle to Easter Sunday's quaking away of the stone. New life also affects widening circles: Paul is touched by the Spirit of the Living Christ, then the slave girl is, then the prisoners, then the jailer, then his whole family. Changes occurred in people's lives that became persuasive to the people who were around them.

Paul's exorcism of the slave girl's pythian spirit seems sparked more by annoyance than compassion for her plight. Much is made of Paul's concern for the jailer, for whom indeed a way of salvation was proclaimed, and his nurture in the community of faith. But we don't hear of any further concern for the slave girl whose way of life was disrupted, shaken loose in her healing in Jesus' name by an "earthquake" as violent as the one that struck the jail at midnight. Our group named contemporary "earthquakes" whose shock waves spread from an epicenter: September 11 and its consequences for individuals and for countries around the world, the war in Iraq shaking us up along with the world's attitude toward the U.S., sexual abuse and misconduct by clergy, an uncertain economy, and illnesses like cancer that strike not just individuals but whole families.

We saw evidence of the shadow sides of the joys and opportunities of new life. An occasion for new life often involves loss and a period of instability where a person or community might just as easily return to the old familiar life as embrace the new. While we don't know how the slave girl felt about her freedom from spirit-possession, we have to assume that the transition to new life held challenges. We know that the slave owners reacted to their loss of income and way of life by lashing out in violence and anger. The jailer responds in fear and despair. Whether his fear is motivated by his loss of honor and job, or by a spiritual conviction that this earthquake is an act of judgment on an unredeemable life, his despair is apparent. This jailer has taken every precaution, yet he is doomed in his failure. He is "afraid to go forward or back" and sees suicide as the only way out from the prison he has built around himself.

In contrast, Paul and Silas respond to all the upheaval by praying and singing. They move through the earthquake with a calm center that attracts all the prisoners. As Barbara Rossing describes it, "Paul's prayer brought such joy to his fellow prisoners that they were persuaded to stay in jail--in the freedom of Christ--rather than escape to freedom." Seeing this effect in the prisoners brings hope to the jailer: "Can your God free even me?" The jailer--along with his entire household, are drawn into this calm center. They take up the new-life ministry of hospitality and receive the grace of bath and meal. Our group notes: "If we can move through the anger, fear, and loss of the initial earthquake, there is even more New Life for us ahead!"

Our sense of anticipation for the Spirit's shaking was heightened by this same advent-like tone in Revelation. In the invitation of Jesus to hold fast through the shaking, our group felt a call to repentance, to turn from dead-end lives of sin and come to Jesus, through baptism and the meal and foretaste of life together in New Jerusalem that the gathered community of the faithful already shares. We pray for further new life in the Spirit: Amen, Come Lord Jesus.

The shaking power of the Spirit of the resurrection is anchored by a plan as old as the hills, rooted in God's love for Jesus and those made one in him since the foundations of the world. This is the rock-solid truth upon which we base our new life in Christ. We are invited to overhear Jesus' prayer for us, ending the farewell discourse in John. We are reminded that Jesus prays with us and for the church's witness out of a unity formed of the same "individuality within relationship" that we will rejoice in on Trinity Sunday. This is how the world comes to believe: through the effect our oneness in Christ through the Spirit produces in our witness to the world. We wondered, with Rossing, how our community could learn to "pray with oneness in the heart of God." Lois shared the richness of her prayers at her fire, as she washes herself in smoke in her Native American tradition and is reminded that "God is in everything."

Pastoral Reflection

Several members of our group had joined our congregation as part of their journey to recovery from addiction and abuse. No matter how attractive they found freedom, how eager they were for a new way of life, or even how persuasive they had found another's recovery, they all expressed difficulties in transition to new life. "What do you do with your time? What do you do for friends? Even if you knew friendship over barstools was false, it was something. I'm so lonely. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that life, those friends, but sober I just can't stand it. Or there's pressure to drink. My old friends are mad at me for changing and feel like it puts the pressure on them. I'm looking for a new group of friends with life-giving values. But it's hard to get to know new people and break into the groups. Sometimes I just long for the old easy way. And I worry about trying to fill all my time with Bible study or church. That sounds like just another addiction to me."

In the Acts story, the "jailer and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God." Some nodded their heads, not having to imagine what that household's life was like before the jailer's conversion. Some had that kind of experience of the family embracing their new life in Christ. "They saw before their eyes how good this change was." Others had families that ridiculed them or families that were simply angry that things around them had changed. "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know. Bad as it was, it was home. Since we left, it's been hard on the kids in a different way."

How does the community of faith draw in and support those in transition to the freedom of new life in Christ? Explicitly, by following the model in this story from Acts: "Gospel preaching/instruction/baptism/caring fellowship around a meal of rejoicing." Other suggestions included exhibiting generosity to those we don't know, being forgiving and non-judgmental, referrals to social services, and shepherding circles that have healthy boundaries for "being in your business."