The ideal and the real I had a conversation this week with a good friend. I'll confess that I maintain an active interest in how the mighty and powerful, those who seem to have it all going their way, can stumble and fall, sometimes spectacularly. How can this be? I think to myself. I'm curious about the details though I don't want to be voyeuristic.
It's the stuff of good drama. Countless books and plays work with this theme. Shakespeare is full of it.
Perhaps in my conversation I was coming off as a little sanctimonious and gave the impression that most people live in a bubble similar to the one I inhabit. But my friend tried to bring me down to earth. Look, he said, this untidy, messy stuff is a lot more common than you think. In other words, he said, wake up and recognize that there is a lot of manure out there.
We ended the conversation with me saying something like, well, you know, I want to live pointing towards the ideal. Yes, my friend said, we talk about the ideal but we live in the real.
And, of course, my friend is right. We live in the real. For me this was another reminder that maybe it's true, maybe I'm too naïve, far too insulated from life's rough and tumble. Now, I don't want to go around assuming the worst in everyone else, constantly being suspicious, subscribing to conspiracy theories left and right, assuming sinister motives in everyone around. But it is true that there are people who, yes, they are loved by God but it's confounding to unpack all their craziness to figure out what is going on. And there are certainly surly sorts out there who traffic children, and there are unscrupulous, violent men who deal in drugs and order hits on gang rivals.
And then there are greedy types sitting behind reputable desks or who find themselves enshrined with political power. And there are those who enforce it all, using all the power the authorities grant them. So, don't call me naïve, I know this stuff is out there.
What happened in Philippi Our story from the days of the early church, found in Acts 16, has a gritty, this-is-the-world-as-it-really-is quality to it. It doesn't take a whole lot of fleshing out, a whole lot of coloring between the lines, to imagine a modern cast for this old play.
There's the young girl, a ``slave-girl'' she's called, being used by men for their own advantage. She seems possessed, crazy perhaps, yet she's insightful. She can drive you mad. She followed Paul and company around for a couple days yelling out at the most inappropriate times. Ironically, she spoke a truth. ``These men are slaves of the most High God,'' she said. They proclaim ``the way to salvation.'' It was true but Paul knew that the words emerged from the mouth of a beaten down, damaged soul, a girl in need of the kind of salvation, the shalom, that he was preaching. The girl was incessantly yelling at the top of her lungs and after a couple days of it Paul was going mad himself. Finally he turns to her and says, ``In the name of Jesus Christ come out of her.'' And she found release, release from the domination of wickedness.
But this was not good news for her handlers, her pimp bosses who controlled her life and made good money off of her fortune telling. Now they saw just an ordinary girl with a calm spirit--there was no money in that. For Paul, it might have been a little bit intoxicating to have the girl throw compliments his way, but her health and well-being were far more important to him.
What do the slave-owners do, now that they face a huge loss in their profits? They bring Paul and Silas and company straight to the Roman civil authorities. In front of those who must decide they say nothing about the sudden turn downward in their business fortunes, but instead they dredge up the charge that Paul and Silas were advocating religious practices deemed illegal by the Romans. It's a trumped up accusation and, clearly, the pimps are out for revenge, out to get the evangelists who ruined one of their business enterprises. And somehow, they get a mob of people on their side, calling out for a pound of flesh.
The compliant magistrates, the Roman authorities, had them stripped and flogged and then dragged off to jail. There they are under the authority of the unnamed jailer. The jailer's job isn't to ask questions about the legitimacy of the charges against his subjects, he's just supposed to make sure that everyone stays in their cells. The rules and the punishment must be enforced.
So we have everything in place for an old or a modern tale of this is ``the way it really is.'' There is a crazy but strangely truthful girl whose life is controlled by greedy handlers. We've got a mob scene on the streets and we've got politicians without backbone. And finally we have willing civil servants ready to enforce the status quo.
God breaks in It was the experience of the early church to witness the strange, powerful in-breaking of God's Spirit into their world. The old had better move aside because a new day is dawning. The fixed ways, the seemingly entrenched patterns of life where people are controlled by forces beyond themselves, where self-interest, survival, and preserving the commonly accepted are agreed to be normalall this is stood on its head. The ideal has invaded the world of the real, though it wouldn't be necessarily easy or without pain.
The possessed young girl actually gets it right. Paul and Silas are indeed announcing a new way of salvation, an alternative way to healing and wholeness. But it is a way that exposes a lot of folks for what they are, they are frauds.
The young girl is healed spiritually for the evil spirit departs. She's free of that spirit but she's not free yet because she is a slave in the hands of bad men. Her full and complete freedom has not yet arrived. These money-grubbers appeal to nationalism and anti-Semitism (these guys, Paul and Silas, are Jews!) and they appeal to good ol' religion (they are advocating customs that are not lawful for us) in order to punish both the girl and Paul and Silas. And for awhile they win. Paul and Silas are dragged off for a beating, then sent straight to jail.
In their cells, deep within the bowels of the jail, they sing and pray. And it is as though the heavens hear their entreaties and respond. A mighty earthquake shakes the prison doors open and loosens the shackles around the prisoners' hands and feet. Just like the young girl they move from enslavement and imprisonment to freedom.
But the story doesn't end there. The jailer, seeing what has happened, knows he has lost his control, and he knows that the one big thing he is supposed to dokeep the prisoners locked upis over. If the prisoners get away then he will be executed. So he knows too what it means he must do. To preempt the inevitable he will just take his own life.
That's what he's preparing to do when he hears a voice, Paul's voice. ``We are all here,'' says Paul. ``Don't do any harm to yourself!'' The earthquake would seem, at first blush, to signal that God is dramatically liberating all the prisoners. But this would mean the loss of a life, for the jailer would surely die as a result of the earth's trembling. Paul wouldn't stand for that.
As such, we witness a fundamental movement from a dramatic act of nature in the Old Testament to this incident in the New Testament. Remember the liberation of the people of Israel in the Old Testament from captivity in Egypt? Moses leads the great caravan of former slaves across the Red Sea en route to the Promised Land. It's the paradigm moment in the Old Testament, the signal that God is a liberating, slave-freeing God.
The uncomfortable part of the story is that Pharaoh's army all perishes in the Red Sea. The Israelites (the good guys) go free but the military forces of Pharaoh (the bad guys) all drown. In Acts 16 there is a tremendous act of nature. The earth shakes, the prisoners can go free. But the liberation of many means the death of one, the jailer. And Paul won't allow that to happen.
Just like the young girl is not to be sacrificed for the benefit of others, so the jailer is not to be shunted to the side for the expediency of others.
Receiving a reprieve the jailer asks for life in all its fullness. ``Believe in the Lord Jesus,'' is Paul's simple word. Just turn to Jesus, lean on him, and go where he takes you.
It's amazing what follows. There's a great scene of cleansing and healing. The jailer and all his household find wholeness, restoration, and salvation. They are all brought into the Christian camp, just like Lydia and her household earlier in the same chapter. They gather at the river and one by one absorb the cleansing baptismal waters.
And they aren't the only ones who get wet. The jailer has invited Paul and Silas to his home. There they are baptized and immediately they go to work. Paul and Silas had been flogged so the jailer tends to their wounds, lovingly cleaning them. Others in the household tend to matters of hospitality. They prepare a meal. Soon there is a spread. Everyone rejoices.
It's a new day and it happens right in the middle of the real world. The ideal, the possibility that the old cobwebs can be cleared out so that light can shine in, it actually happens. The new didn't come cheaply. No one is claiming that God will do a magical thing and that thenbingoeverything will be alright.
No, Paul and Silas pay a heavy price. The fresh winds blow into the young girl's life and though her soul is now cleansed, she still has to live with her memories and find her way forward. And Paul and Silas, upon witnessing God's good graces fall upon the girl, get beat up and imprisoned for their efforts. They live, after all, in the real world, and it's the price faithful people may have to pay for pointing to the light. We live in the real world, but may God help us to always keep our hearts and mind trained on the vision of God's will being done, on earth as it is in heaven, right smack in the middle of the chaos, the distortions, the greed, the violence, the mistrust of this very real world. Our calling is to live as people of hope right in the middle of the real, living out the crazy truth of it all, the crazy truth that God through Jesus Christ casts out fear so that the young girls and the jailers, the politicians and the mobs, the gangsters and the A students, the preachers and the homeless, the destitute and the prosperousso that we can all ``receive heaven's mercy for the new day that is just dawning.'' (J. Larson in Rejoice) Amen.
