Good Times and Bad March 26th, 2023
Life-giving God, steady us with your Spirit. Open our hearts and minds so that we may attend to the stories of your grace and promise, revealed through Christ, your Living Word. May these scriptures and our time together today build our strength and faith. Amen
New Testament Reading:
In last Sunday’s lesson from Acts we heard about our missionaries bringing the Gospel to the continent of Europe for the very first time. The apostle Paul and his travelling companions, Silas, Timothy, and the apostle Luke, who was the author of the book of Acts, had crossed the Aegean Sea and landed in what is modern day Greece. Once there they went to the major city in the area, Philippi, and went looking for a synagogue in which to preach. But, discovering that one didn’t exist, they went to a place of worship by the river where they found a group of women praying. One of these was a local businesswoman by the name of Lydia, and this is what took place, “A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’”
Now in this morning’s lesson our missionaries are going to meet a woman of a different nature and things are going to take a turn for the worse for Paul and Silas.
They had accepted the offer of Lydia to stay at her house and were using it as a base of operations as they travelled about the area preaching the Gospel. Here’s where Luke picks up the story, “One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’” So, Paul and his companions had left the house of Lydia, who was a woman of some independence, and while on their way to a place of prayer encounter another woman who had no freedom, in fact she was held captive by two different forces. First of all, she was a slave girl, forced to do the bidding of her masters, secondly, she was possessed by a demon which made her go about fortune telling and thereby making her owners rich.
Luke says that when she met Paul and his friends she cried out, “‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’” Now that wasn’t all bad as that was the message they were proclaiming to the people, the way to salvation was by God, through his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. No, the problem arose when she persisted in doing it. Luke says, “She kept doing this for many days.” Finally, Paul had had enough, it was one thing for the woman to announce who they were, after all, they didn’t want it kept a secret, but it was quite another when she kept on doing it for days on end. And so, we’re told, “But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour.” Through the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, Paul was able to cure that woman of her demon possession.
But this time, that was only going to make things worse for Paul and his friends. Luke tells us in the scripture, “But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.” What’s interesting about the owner’s reaction is that it shows that they didn’t care about the girl, they couldn’t have cared less about her. And they didn’t have any interest in what Paul had done. They didn’t ask themselves, “Oh, how did he do that? He got rid of her demon. Maybe we should find out more about these fellows and the message they are preaching.” No, all they cared about was their loss of income.
And this story reminds us of a similar one which appears in Mark’s Gospel, where he talks about the encounter Jesus had with a demon possessed man in one of the villages along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Here’s how Mark describes that man, “And when he (Jesus) had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him anymore, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.” (Mark 5:2-5)
Jesus has compassion for the man, and he sends the demons out of him and into a herd of pigs which were feeding in a nearby pasture. That caused them to run down a steep bank and into the water where they drowned. The men who were tending the pigs then went into the village and told the people there what had happened. This was the reaction of those villagers, “They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.” (Mark 5:15)
So, rather than rejoice that the man had been cured, they grew afraid and asked Jesus to leave the area. They didn’t care about the man, they didn’t care that he had been made well after a lifetime of anguish, all they cared about was that they had lost their source of income when the pigs drowned, and they were scared that Jesus might do something else that would affect them. Money was more important to them than God’s wish to cure the man.
And that was the same for the slave woman’s owners, they saw that Paul had cost them a fortune, literally. All they saw was their chance of profiting from her sickness vanish and so, they wanted revenge. Luke tells us, “But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, ‘These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.’” We are all aware of that old saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Her master’s hopes of wealth were now shattered, so they grabbed Paul and Silas and dragged them before the authorities at the marketplace.
They accused them of “‘advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.’” This charge had nothing to do with the fact that the demon had been driven out of the girl. It had everything to do with Paul and Silas preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, Paul and Silas were charged with teaching the people about the God of Israel and turning them away from the worship of the Roman emperor. Paul and Silas were accused of persuading people to oppose Roman law in Philippi. And this was to be their punishment, “The crowd joined in attacking them and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely.”
How quickly things had changed for Paul and Silas, one day they are welcomed into a community, invited by Lydia, a newly converted Christian, to stay in her nice comfortable home. They are enjoying their work in sharing the Good News of new life in Christ in the community… and the next moment they are beaten and jailed.
But then things are not always easy in our lives, are they? There always seem to be problems cropping up. And that’s the way it is in our faith journeys, as well. Many times, when we’re doing the things God wants us to do, it may be hard, but we have to understand that hardship and challenging circumstances are part of our work in being witnesses to the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ. God never promised us an easy life, but he did promise us in the Bible to never leave us or forsake us. Like we so often see in the scripture, God is with us and is at work in our lives as we too face trials and tribulation.
And certainly, the first disciples experienced this almost on a daily basis, the apostle James wrote these words in his epistle, “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-3) What James is telling us is that many times the circumstances of life and ministry are challenging, and God does not always intervene, because if God always intervened, we would never grow in character. And the fact of the matter is that God’s work and will is often accomplished in difficult circumstances.
Let us Pray:
Heavenly Father, you are faithful. You abound in steadfast love for us. And we know that your love endures forever. Help us to trust you. Help us to rely on you as our source of strength as we face the daily trials of our lives. Lord, it is so easy for us to falter in our faith, help us know that you are the one who gives us true strength through good times and bad times. No matter what happens in our lives, you will always be with us. Amen