Seventh Sunday of Easter – Year C – Katharine Armentrout
Revealing God and Our Lord Jesus Christ
One of the gifts of working on a sermon is an “aha” moment that can come…not always but sometimes.
And this past week, as I have been reading, studying, thinking and praying about the scripture we have, I had such an “aha” moment.
Like many of you, for years I have studied Jesus, his parables, his miracles, his intellectual skirmishes with the Pharisees, His prayer times.
And it has been about “Jesus” and what He was doing, and is doing for us. It was clear to me that Jesus was faithful to what He believed God was calling Him to do and to be.
But this week, it became clear to me that all this time in Jesus’ ministry it was much more: He was revealing to those he was with, and to us, the very nature of our God!! Who our God is, what our God desires, what our God wants.
Now… for many of you that might not be a revelation but it was to me.
Jesus, when he fed the 5,000, when He healed the paralytic, confronted the authorities, comforted the widow, raised the daughter of Jairius, He was not only being Jesus, Son of God, not only showing us the priorities of our God
but He was revealing the very nature of our God…
the very nature of our God.
Jesus, by His actions, showed us a loving, compassionate and, at times, righteous, God who was always, always desirous of a relationship with the disciples and with us.
The God Jesus reveals is not a remote, austere, ready-to-punish God…as some grew hearing about.
But our God is desirous of being in relationship, desirous of health, wholeness for all God’s people. Think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son
And it is clear that Jesus’ relationship with God and God’s relationship with us is a priority. We see that clearly when we examine the prayer Jesus prayed at the time of the Last Supper, which is our gospel reading today from John.
First, Jesus prayed about His relationship with God, saying: “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do, so now Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in Your presence before the world existed.”
Then he prayed that God would protect His disciples:
“ And now I am no longer in the world but they are in the world. And I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in Your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
And then, in the final portion of the prayer which is our Gospel text this morning, Jesus prays to God for us- for those who will come to believe through the word and example of the Disciples.
“I ask not only on behalf of these, (the disciples) but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word…that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…”
And so, as we know from the stories of the disciples after Pentecost, and those faithful who came after them and from our own personal stories, we are in a continuing, loving relationship
a continuing, loving, intertwined community of God, Jesus, and the faithful down the generations.
All are very much part of the plan of the ongoing witness to God and God’s love and the saving power of life in Jesus Christ.
And that was what Paul was driven, driven, to tell the world – that in our God and in Jesus Christ is life, life abundantly.
We heard about his ministry last week with Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth. His words of teaching and prayer opened her heart to our Lord and to God’s kingdom. And she, with, all her family were baptized.
Paul and Silas remained in Phillipi, teaching and preaching and praying after his conversion of Lydia and her family. Unfortunately his presence caught the attention of a slave girl, a fortune teller with “a spirit of divination.” She was an important source of money and profit for her owners.
The slave girl would follow Paul and Silas, and because she could see the nature of their ministry, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”
Eventually Paul became so irritated by her stalking of them that he called the spirit out from her. Thus she could no longer prophesy and that angered her owners, who saw their profits evaporate!
Then, as one writer put it, things got ugly! The owners wanted Paul and Silas punished. So, not mentioning their anger at the loss of revenue… instead cleverly accused Paul and Silas of disturbing the peace and of being Jews – a bit of Roman anti-Semitism, something we recognize today, something sure to rouse the people.
The crowd rioted and the Magistrates then ordered beaten with rods.
After a severe beating, they were thrown in prison and the magistrates ordered the jailer to keep them securely. So the jailer, following the orders put them into the very deepest cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
Paul and Silas are a reminder, I think, that the way of discipleship is not always easy.
So about midnight, the very darkest hour both literally and figuratively, we might think that that Paul and Silas would be anxious about what would come next for them,
but no, what are they doing? They are singing hymns so that the other prisoners can hear. I can almost hear them singing “Let’s go down to the river to pray!
And scripture tells us “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.”
Note that Paul and Silas are in Phillipi, which is in northern Greece, and that is an earthquake zone. Now I don’t know whether God called down that earthquake or whether the earthquake was one of those, random “odd of God” moments.
Regardless of its origin, Paul and Silas remain on their benches singing hymns after the earthquake, despite being freed of their shackles. They don’t take off like some sensible folks might.
The jailer came running out with his sword, terrified and about to kill himself because he was sure they had escaped and he would be held responsible for the jail break. That could mean death for him at the hands of the authorities. But Paul yelled out, “It’s OK, we’re all still here.”
The jailer, I think overcome, called for lights and saw that they were still there, and he took them outside and asked, “What must I do to be saved.”
Now to us, this sounds like a religious question. It is a faith question, but he may have merely been asking “how do I get out of this mess?”
But Paul and Silas heard it as we do, as a religious question and answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” And that is what happened.
The jailer, overcome by their faith in our God and in the saving power of Jesus…overcome by their faithfulness,
brought them up into his house and set food before them; Paul and Silas spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in the house. And he and his entire family were baptized, rejoicing that the jailer had become a believer in God.
How contagious is faith like that of Paul and Silas. Certainly that is what the jailer saw and felt. That is what Lydia saw and felt. Phillipi grew into a powerful Christian community, thanks to their witness.
Too soon, though, the original disciples who had followed the living Jesus, and those who were instrumental in drawing others to believe in the saving power of Jesus, died out.
And thus the witnessing to the our loving God and to the risen Christ, became the special privilege and responsibility of the community of believers they had taught.
The early Christians, who believed without actually witnessing our Lord, showed their love and commitment to our faith by their mutual caring, sharing, and by their willingness to forgive. They helped build the church of believers as we now know it.
But these early witnesses should not be seen as “the good old days or a bygone era”. Instead, as one writer put it,
“Their witness should challenge us. Their idealism begs to be reflected in us. Their courage urges us not allow our tentative efforts to falter…or to hold us back.” Patricia Sanchez, The National Catholic Reporter (April 3, 2009)
We are all very much part of the plan of the ongoing witness to God and God’s love which was made clear in the life and ministry of Jesus.
We are in a direct line with the Disciples and the earliest followers; and we need to proclaim our faith as loudly as they did…
continuing to reveal the loving nature of our God and the saving power of life in Jesus Christ.
That is our call and our commitment.
In fact, the Vision Statement for Holy Family makes clear that this is our mission. It says our mission is:
“Revealing Jesus through our actions by extending His love for us through our service to others.”
I might suggest that we could amend that vision statement to say “Revealing our God and our Lord Jesus Christ by extending their love through our service to others”…
My prayer is that we, you and I, can see ourselves as part of God’s life and the saving ministry of Jesus Christ. Don’t forget that we are who Jesus was praying for on the night before he was crucified. And his prayer reminds us that our unity, our “oneness”, with God and with Him is to be a sign to the world of God’s love for all people in Jesus Christ. Amen