Sermon by Revd Penny Jones, 16.05.2010

ACTS 16.16-34; JOHN 17.20-26 16.05.10
"The glory that you have given me, I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me".

It's quite a sentence! - and it tells us, at the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity both why we are to seek unity (so that the world may know that you have sent me); and how that unity is possible - because, we all have a common experience of God's love.

There is disunity and strife throughout our world. Human beings are capable of falling out over many things, small and great, and violence is never far away. But Christians know that there is unity in and with God; and that is our deepest, mystical connection with God, no matter what our particular religious affiliations, we will always find Divine love. And it is our Christian calling, to seek to bring all people and all things - the whole created order - into harmonious relationship with each other and with the Divine Love. For it is in that Love, and only in that Love, that we can find our true freedom.

Our reading today from Acts, explores the dimension of human freedom. It is a story of binding and loosing played out on many levels. It is told in the idiom of its day but can still speak to us.

Firstly there's the slave girl. She's bound both physically to the masters who exploit her apparent gift; and spiritually to an ability to foretell the future. She is able to see a certain spiritual truth, which is that Paul and Silas are "slaves of the most High God" - a very different king of slavery to her own.

We are told that Paul becomes "very much annoyed" - not with the girl herself: but because she is unable to leave them alone; she effectively binds herself, attaches herself, leech-like, to them with the same message over many days. Finally Paul loses patience and casts the spirit out - thus setting her spiritually "free". We are not told what happens to her - a slave-girl without a "special talent" was undoubtedly less valuable than one with an exploitable gift, so the worry is that her last condition would be worse than her first; and this may be why it takes Paul several days to address the matter. We can hope that perhaps he manages to make provision for her in the household of Lydia, where she could be cared for.

But meanwhile Paul has troubles of his own, as the owners of the girl furious at losing their source of income, have him beaten and thrown into jail. Deprived of physical freedom, Paul and Silas maintain their inner freedom, singing and praying. This is the part of the story most familiar to us. We know, don't we, of the wonderful power of divine love to transform places of human degradation and imprisonment. Usually however those so imprisoned face may days and years of suffering - think of Terry Waite, or Dietrich Bonheoffer, or Nelson Mandela. Often those so imprisoned meet their death, and it is only through the testimony of others that we hear of the transformative power of their love in such situations. Others are eventually restored to physical freedom - their spiritual stature deepened and enhanced by their ordeal.
But in the story, liberation comes within a few hours. And this is why we love this story - not only does it have everything - girl (probably pretty), vicious, oppressive baddies; prison cells - it even throws in liberation by earthquake and it all happens at break-neck speed; not time for the reader to get bored - and of course, a satisfying sense that not only do the "goodies" escape, they carry on being "good", and set their jailer free as well They set him free from the burden of guilt and fear, that was going to result in him taking his own life; and then they baptise him, thus setting him free from bondage to sin and death into the bargain.
In this story, the reader is invited to see God as liberator; setting us free from all kinds of slavery, from every prison, whether physical or spiritual. Just in case we haven't got the message, it's pointed out eg that Paul and Silas are placed in the innermost cell and their feet in the stocks - humanly there is no hope for them.
But just when everything is at its worst, there is an earthquake. There's a literary echo there that every second century Christian would I think have heard - an echo back to the story of Jesus' crucifixion and death in Matthew's gospel. At the point of His death - when there is no hope humanly speaking - we're told that 'the earth shook and the rocks were split.' The earth itself enters into the great work of liberation, that Jesus' dying and rising effects. And here again "suddenly there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened!"
What's going on here? This isn't just an escape story for Paul and Silas - that would only have required that the two of them somehow get out. No - at the theological level, this tells the reader that Paul and Silas - by their prayer and their singing, by their way of life and their choices - have entered into unity, into oneness with the Divine Love, "I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one." And by doing so, they participate in the act of total liberation of which the earthquake is the symbol - that getting free which is the gospel - the setting free of everyone (everyone's chains were unfastened) and everything (all the doors were opened) forever. The Divine Love, and the experience of that love, sets us all free, and makes us all one - the unity and the freedom are part and parcel of one another.
But, I hear you say, what about all the disunity, the war, the injustice? What about those who languish in physical prisons and emotional prisons and never get out? How do we live with the reality - the now but not yet of what some have called "the peaceable realm of God."? - the kingdom of God in Jesus words?
The answer is not easy to find; but lies I believe in choosing every day, in light; a little more of the love; till all is accomplished. And some are beacons of hope on this way. And I want to end by reading you an incredible true story, of one who did not escape his physical prison - but who by his prayer and example shows us how to live within and transcend our own prisons, for the sake of others.
Tom Fox, aged 54, was a peace activist and Quaker working for peace in Iraq - in November 2005 he was taken hostage along with 3 other members of a Christian Peacemaker Team: Norman Kember, James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden. Fox was eventually separated from the other 3, and his dead body was discovered in Baghdad on March 9 2006. The other hostages were rescued two weeks later. What I'm going to read you is an excerpt from James Lowey's account of the team's time in captivity, which he eventually published in July f 2007 - and the full article is available on the internet.

{During those first days of relentless, terrifying, excruciating uncertainty, Tom Fox dove into prayer the way a warrior might charge into battle. He turned his captivity into a sustained, unbroken meditation.
The chain that bound his wrist became a kind of rosary, or sebha (the beads Muslims use to count the names of God). He would picture someone: a member of his family, a member of the Iraq team or the CPT office, one of the captors - whoever he felt needed a prayer. Holding a link of the chain, he would breathe in and out , slowly, so that you could hear the air gushing in and out of his lungs, praying for the person he was holding in his mind. With the completion of each breath he would pass a chain link through his thumb and index finger. During his first breath he would say to himself, with the warmth of my heart. In the second, with the stillness of my mind. In the third, with the fluidity of my body. And in the fourth, with the light of my soul. At the end of each series of four breaths, he would pause and simply rest in the light with the person he was praying for.
On December 23, day 29 of captivity, we began the discipline of a daily check-in in which we talked about how we were doing physically, emotionally and spiritually. I led our first worship service, and Tom led our first de memoriam, Bible-less Bible study. The format was simple. The leader would recall as best he could a Bible passage, and we would reflect together on it according to a series of four questions : What is the main point of the passage to me? Is it true in my experience? What is difficult, challenging or confusing about the passage? How might this passage change my life?
Tom's prayers were profound. They brought our suffering into dialogue with the vast suffering of the world. Again and again his prayers brought to mind other prisoners - security detainees in Iraq, illegal combatants in Guantanamo, the lost and forgotten souls in American penitentiaries. And every time we heard a bomb explode, near or far, Tom would stop to pray for those whose lives had just been destroyed. Every time, without fail.
Why are we here? It's the ultimate question, really. Tom reflected on that question in something he wrote titled "Why Are We Here?" on November 25, 2005, the evening before we were kidnapped.
"We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls."}

Copyright (c) 2007 by the Christian Century. Reprinted by permission from the July 24,2007, issue of the Christian century. For more information about the Christian Century, please visit http://christiancentury.org
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