Wondering with the Word: disrupter
Prison where disrupters get put to shut them up - literally. However, even there the holy disrupter will find ways to break in, or should that be break people out.
Acts 16:16-34
Paul and Silas Are Thrown Into Prison
16 One day we were going to the place of prayer. On the way we were met by a female slave. She had a spirit that helped her tell people what was going to happen. She earned a lot of money for her owners by doing this. 17 She followed Paul and the rest of us around. She shouted, “These men serve the Most High God. They are telling you how to be saved.” 18 She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became upset. Turning around, he spoke to the spirit that was in her. “In the name of Jesus Christ,” he said, “I command you to come out of her!” At that very moment the spirit left the woman.
19 Her owners realised that their hope of making money was gone. So they grabbed Paul and Silas. They dragged them into the market place to face the authorities. 20 They brought them to the judges. “These men are Jews,” her owners said. “They are making trouble in our city. 21 They are suggesting practices that are against Roman law. These are practices we can’t accept or take part in.”
22 The crowd joined the attack against Paul and Silas. The judges ordered that Paul and Silas be stripped and beaten with rods. 23 They were whipped without mercy. Then they were thrown into prison. The jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24 When he received these orders, he put Paul and Silas deep inside the prison. He fastened their feet so they couldn’t get away.
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying. They were also singing hymns to God. The other prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was a powerful earthquake. It shook the prison from top to bottom. All at once the prison doors flew open. Everyone’s chains came loose. 27 The jailer woke up. He saw that the prison doors were open. He pulled out his sword and was going to kill himself. He thought the prisoners had escaped. 28 “Don’t harm yourself!” Paul shouted. “We are all here!”
29 The jailer called out for some lights. He rushed in, shaking with fear. He fell down in front of Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out. He asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
31 They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus. Then you and everyone living in your house will be saved.” 32 They spoke the word of the Lord to him. They also spoke to all the others in his house. 33 At that hour of the night, the jailer took Paul and Silas and washed their wounds. Right away he and everyone who lived with him were baptized. 34 The jailer brought them into his house. He set a meal in front of them. He and everyone who lived with him were filled with joy. They had become believers in God.
One of my strongest childhood memories is the school mornings when I would be dropped at my grandparents’ house to wait for the school bus.
They had a Rediffusion TV/radio set up with a control box on the window sill and, inevitably, BBC Radio Wales playing.
One morning the presenter played a new song by The Beatles. It was called Help! As you probably know, and can already hear as I type, there is a line in the song: ‘won’t you please, please, help me.’
As John Lennon’s voice, backed by Paul McCartneys harmonies, hit the high note in that line, Nanna said: ‘I really like that high note.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! How could my chapel-going, hymn-singing Nanna - who was really old (probably about 65 in reality) - possibly like a song I liked!??! It seemed all wrong.
Looking back, I can see how The Beatles were disrupters in those early 1960s days. Grandmas, uncles and primary school pupils all liked what they did but they were also disrupting fashion styles and societal attitudes … while their long-hair and rock’n’roll lifestyles were upsetting preachers.
Since then I’ve always liked a disrupter. I am one of those strange people who likes change and my attention is frequently captured by someone who can instigate change or break the mold.
For me, God is the ultimate disrupter: turning chaos and darkness into light; breaking a slave nation out from captivity under the very gaze of Pharaoh; sending prophets to rock the civic boat; disrupting the eternal cycle of life and death through the anguish of crucifixion; sending out an army of ordinary people to tell the greatest story of all time.
The reading this week gives us three examples of where God disrupts - using faithful people but also the thunder of Creation itself.
It begins with an intention to pray and ends in a household finding faith so in that sense it’s a nice rounded episode but it sits in a narrative that reminds us how under pressure the early apostles and evangelists were.
A few verses before this, in Acts 15, leaders in the early church, who included some Pharisees, insisted that circumcision had to be a mark of the new believers just as in Judaism. Peter spoke out about it as a burden too heavy for Gentile believers to carry and the demand was dropped.
Then, while Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch for a while, they eventually set out on a missionary journey which brought them to Philippi in answer to a vision of a man from Macedonia asking them to help bering the Gospel into the region.
Here things get tough as the disruption kicks in. They freed a slave woman from a spirit that gave her a prophetic ability but who was being exploited by her owners. She had recognised them as servants of the Most High God who needed to be listened to and told the city for days.
At the moment Paul commanded the spirit to come out of the woman, her owners set on Paul and Silas and had them thrown into prison.
God’s disruptive act through Paul was caricatured as anti-Roman when, in reality, it was the arrival of freedom through turning the accepted order upside down.
In this story, prison is the place where disrupters get put to shut them up - literally. However, Luke reminds us that even there the holy disrupter will find ways to break in, or should that be break people out.
Earthquakes in Bible lands are not at all unusual. The website biblereadingarcheology says: Minor earthquakes shake Israel and her neighbours several times a year. Statistically, a major earthquake hits Israel every 80 to 100 years. The border between Israel and neighbouring Jordan runs along an active fault line called the Syrian-African fault line. The Jordan river runs down from the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea, 400 metres below sea level which is the lowest point on dry land in the world. The Jordan valley was created by the Syrian-African fault line, which used to be more commonly known as the Great Rift Valley. The Great Rift Valley extends down from Lebanon, through Israel and all the way through east-Africa to Mozambique. Along this rift, two of the Earth’s tectonic plates are slowly, imperceptibly drifting apart.
So the story isn’t that an earthquake happened out of the blue but that God used a natural occurrence to disrupt the plans of Paul’s jailers. It’s an especially familiar image for Methodists because Charles Wesley used it as the core verse in his great hymn And Can It Be.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay Fast bound in sin and nature's night; Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray, I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose, went forth and followed Thee!
In Acts 16, Paul and Silas don’t rise and go forth. They sit, surrounded by broken walls and chains, and use the moment to bring the jailer to faith. It’s such a profound change that the evangelists are taken from the rubble and fed at the jailer’s own table while his household becomes part of this new movement of faith in the disrupter God.
Broken manipulative slavery; broken jails and the breaking of attempts to stop the Gospel doing its work. God is in the business of disrupting.
To go back to the beginning and The Beatles, John Lennon once wrote Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. I prefer the Jewish proverb: Man plans and God laughs.