Sunday 29th May, Easter 7
Lectionary Readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter Acts 16.16–34
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.’ She kept doing this for many days. 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.
But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market-place 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.’ 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. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 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. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.’ The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ They answered, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’ They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
John 17: 20-26
‘I ask not only on behalf of these, 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, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 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. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’
Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter
I read The Church Times with great interest, each week. It keeps me informed about larger trends in the Church. Coming to my readership late, I always find news items that surprise me. This week’s issue presented me with a piece titled
The R Number Found A Threat to the Church of England. I had no idea what an R number was, not being a mathematical type.
This is how the article began: The Church of England faces extinction within 40 years because the faith it proclaims is not “contagious” enough, a new study reports. I read on.
The study was compiled by Dr. John Hayward, a mathematician at the University of South Wales…. He analysed data from 13 denominations to calculate their R-rate—a technique more usually associated with calculating the spread of disease. For a virus such as Covid-19, an R number of more than one indicates that the disease is spreading rapidly, while an R-rate of less than one points to its dying out. Dr. Hayward has now applied the same model to church attendance….he said, I call it the “Reproduction Potential.” I read on.
If this number is less than one, enthusiasts fail to reproduce themselves, conversions are too weak, and the Church dies out….If the reproduction potential is greater than one, conversions are strong enough to counter losses, and the Church may grow. He analysed attendance data from between 2000 and 2020, and found that Church of England and Roman Catholic Churches across the U. K. have R numbers of just over 0.9. Their congregations could vanish by 2062, he concludes.
I found this a bit depressing. Have I enlisted in the cause of a sinking ship?
But I then read the passage we are set today, from Acts, and I think it may offer us a ray of hope, and way of seeing the situation of the church today that is both reassuring and true.
Christians look at time in a different way than others. We mark time by events in the life of Jesus. The culmination of the year, our great festival day, Easter, fell 40 days ago. The Feast of the Ascension that we celebrated, (all nine of us!) on Thursday, ranks with Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost in the universality of its observance among Christians. The day of Ascension has been celebrated 40 days after Easter in both Eastern and Western Christianity since the 4th century. 40 days—-a significant number for the ancient Hebrews, as they commemorated their wandering in the desert for 40 years, a period of testing.
The early Christians also remembered this number—-it represents the time it takes for a generation to arise and come to the fore.
With the ascension of Jesus into heaven, a new chapter of the story begins. The narrative of Jesus’s life is completed; the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit is given; the circle of the disciples is left to live out the command to love one another, as I have loved you, and to enact that commandment in all the world.
A new chapter begins.
What is it going to mean for the disciples to communicate the unending love of God through Christ to all the world? How are they supposed to do that?
I love this narrative in Acts. It is a very good story—-full of detail, dramatic and fast-paced, with characters who make us care what happens to them.
It is a story about greed and retribution, about faith in hopeless circumstances, about the sharing of the Good News that Paul and Silas know to be true—-to one single family.
The economic investors in a slave-girl who is a fortune-teller have their livelihood destroyed by Paul. Paul, understandably irritated after the fiftieth time the slave-girl has followed them and correctly called out who they were, but by an evil spirit who was challenging them in this way, commands the spirit to come out of her, and it does. We do not learn what happens to the slave-girl after this, but her owners are furious, drag Paul and Silas to the centre of town, and denounce them there with false accusations. They are stripped of their clothes, and the crowd eagerly joins in the savage public beating with the cruel instrument of iron rods. Paul and Silas are then duly hauled off to prison, where we read how securely they are chained to the wall, in the innermost part of the jail. The jailer is given special instructions how carefully to watch them.
But they sing hymns and they pray there, despite their wounds, and in a nice phrase, Luke adds: the other prisoners were listening to them. They are not trying to win over the sympathies of the jailer to get out; they are expressing their heartfelt, overflowing love of God. They have been given the truth.
And then a supernatural event occurs. It breaks open the prison, and all the chains of all the prisoners are undone. In despair, the jailer draws his sword and is about to plunge it into his own side, as he will be killed, in any case, with the escape of the prisoners. But Paul calls out to him, and stops him, and the jailer, in a careful detail, calling for the lights so that he can truly see this miracle that
has happened—no prisoners seizing their chance—-rushes in and falls trembling at Paul’s feet. And he does see, and he asks.
Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
He knows that Paul and Silas have been entrusted with a truth greater than he has known, and now he must know it, also.
This is how this story ends:
At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that they had become believers in God.
This is a story about the conversion of one family, because one man, the jailer, came into contact with one pair of believers in the saving power of God. Philippi, the city in which this event happened, was also the place where they had met Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth who was one of the first to believe from their words, and they stayed with her and then took their leave of her as they went on to Thessalonica, The details of the story of Lydia, another individual who was transformed by their message, indicates that between her and the jailer there would be a growing number of witnesses to the truth of their proclamation of the Gospel in that place.
So, one story about one conversion.
I have never experienced an earthquake. Aside from an earthquake, popularly known as an act of God, perhaps we feel that there isn’t as much drama in our lives as we would like for there to be—no exciting, extraordinary happenings
that single us out and make us out as heroes. Our time is different from the time of Silas and Paul.
But this is what I find reassuring, and full of hope, in the story of the jailer. We are worried, now, about the declining numbers who come regularly to worship in our churches on Sunday morning. Who gather for the prayers, the singing of hymns, the preaching of the Word, the sacrament of communion. What a
beautiful regular gathering of the community of faith!
But I think that the story of Paul and Silas and the jailer is meant to say to us: do not worry about the numbers, those who are absent beside you in the pew; it is enough if you are faithful—you, yourself—and if you, in the way that you can, share your faith with one other person.
Christianity is not a private, esoteric faith. It is not practiced behind closed doors, but in community, in all places of the world. The great commandment that concludes the Gospel of Matthew is sweeping and awe-inspiring:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit….
But we are not to be overwhelmed and overburdened by the responsibility we might feel to transform the whole world by this sharing of the fullness of Christian community, and all that it offers.
It is enough to speak with one person—-to bring one person with you to this place. After his ascension, Jesus promised us the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit did come, it does come, it continues to fill us with faith, hope and love.
It is the Holy Spirit that will accomplish the great work of transforming the world, in ways we cannot know. Without the Holy Spirit, we can do nothing. And the world cannot be changed. But, filled with the Holy Spirit, we can be faithful, we can witness to the truth of what we ourselves have known, we can share the Good News of Christ’s unending, transforming love for us with perhaps only one other person whom we meet.
And that is enough.
Amen!
The Revd Dana English
The United Benefice of Holland Park
London
May 29, 2022