Disturbing the City
One of the realities of being home sick for a week is that there is plenty of time for what we refer to as “doom-scrolling” at our house.
You know, the mindless scrolling through the social media feeds where folks post their rants, share their latest conspiracy theories, and wring their hands about current events.
No surprise, but this week of doom scrolling felt more intense. Still processing the senseless racial violence in a grocery store in Buffalo alongside two other racially motivated violent attacks two weeks ago, we are also absorbing another school massacre in which an angry young man with a semi-automatic weapon opened fire on innocent children at school – a place once thought of as safe, but the growing list of school shootings suggests that is not true.
And as I doom-scrolled, I just kept seeing proclamations of “enough thoughts and prayers…now is the time to act.”
Maybe it was the Mucinex. Maybe it was sinus pressure. Maybe it was the slightly depressed state of recovering from a virus that we’ve talked about non-stop for more than two years.
I could only shake my head as I read post after post: “Enough thoughts and prayers …now is the time to act.”
Because, you see, we’ve been saying THAT for more than a decade now, too.
With that weight on my mind and heart, I noted that on Thursday, the western Christian church marked the Ascension – a feast day 40 days after Resurrection Sunday when the church commemorates Jesus’ ascension into heaven. I shared some of the Acts text about that moment earlier in the service. Like some of the versions of the story of the empty tomb, the narrative ends with something of a cliffhanger – two men in white robes near the disciples who have gathered and are gazing up toward heaven.
“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
It is a “don’t just stand there!” moment. It is a “Get busy because faith in action is what is needed” moment.
Perhaps we – Christians – have been saying something like “now is the time for action” for millennia. Enough thoughts and prayers. It is time to act. Do something! Yes. We say it with each threat to peace, each act of violence, each threat to God’s justice.
And yet, here we are. And if we don’t lean in as a community in this moment, we will likely find ourselves here again. And again. And again.
I want to try hold together the hard news of this week, the difficult work of doing something rather than offering thoughts and prayers or gazing up at a glittery Jesus, and today’s story about Paul and Silas and good trouble. Because these things don’t all show up together on accident.
I want to draw inspiration and strength so that we, individually and collectively, are not just waving at Jesus but instead are acting to make the world safer, kinder, more bearable for each person.
Lead us, Lord.
Lead us.
Today’s text from Acts recounts a key chapter in the stories that shape our image of the apostle Paul. Encountering a slave girl who had a spirit of divination, a girl who followed behind Paul and Silas as they wander through Philippi shouting about their being slaves of the Most High God, Paul, by the power of Jesus’ name, ordered the spirit to leave the girl.
On the surface, this seems like a kind and civil thing to do, release the slave girl of the spirit’s hold.
But we should not forget that the girl is a slave, and her value to her owners is her fortune telling ways. Now that the slave girl doesn’t have this spirit of divination, we don’t know exactly what will happen to her (the text doesn’t see fit to flesh that out for us…because she was merely a slave, a lesser human in the context of the day…but today, we ask that question because we believe slavery and oppression are real and wrong).
And it’s interesting and not accidental that what the girl was doing was naming Paul and Silas as slaves to God. Her shouting after them was drawing attention to them as “outsiders.”
In the Roman city of Philippi, Paul and Silas were marked by their Jewish ethnicity. And it is their status as outsiders that their accusers – the slave holders - name to get the local authorities to act. The girl’s owners don’t accuse Paul and Silas of stealing their source of income. No, they point out their Jewishness and the work they are doing to share different customs and unfamiliar laws to Roman citizens.
As often happens in such circumstances, the surrounding crowd piles on – so Paul and Silas are flogged and thrown in prison. The jailer makes sure they are well-secured, deep within the cell system and locked up in stocks or chains.
Paul and Silas spend the night praying and singing, while their fellow prisoners are tuned in and paying attention. I guess you could say they spent the evening in active thought and prayer.
Paul is no stranger to incarceration. He’s been in jail a few times – mostly in jail for being a Jewish man who is teaching some unconventional things in Roman occupied places.
From prison they pray and sing until there was an earthquake that shakes the prison so violently that the doors are opened and everyone’s chains are unfastened.
That must have been some praise and worship, Amen?
How often does our praise and worship shake the ground on which we stand?
The jailer wakes up and sees the damage. In his despair, concerned that he will be blamed for the escape of a jail full of captives, he draws a sword to take his own life. In the pecking order, the jailer will be held responsible for their escape by the local government.
But Paul shouts out to stop him. When the jailer realizes that the prisoners, Paul, Silas and all the rest, are still there, he asks Paul what he must do to be saved…because surely this is a miracle.
Paul invites him to believe I the Lord Jesus – saving power for the jailer and his household. The jailer tends to Paul and Silas’ wounds, and because he has been spared, he has his entire family baptized. They then all break bread together.
A happy ending of sorts…
So let’s go back to my doom scrolling this week, my frustration with our tendency to talk about doing something but not actually seeing committing to the prolonged work it might take to see the thing through.
Of course, this week, I am referring to the work it takes to end the threat of school shootings. Common sense gun laws are at the heart of preventing further attacks. We can get bound up in a debate about the second amendment, policing, arming teachers.
Or we can move forward to make sure that there are not semi-automatic weapons available to destroy the lives of any more families.
We can offer thoughts and prayers.
Or we can be the helpers that children look for when life is scary or dangerous. We can be the helpers by doing the work to change the circumstances that allow these horrific things to happen.
You see – Mr. Roger’s counsel to look for the helpers, mentioned earlier in our children’s message, is not actually intended for you and I. It is intended for children. We are the adults.
We are the helpers. We are who they look to.
We’re actually called to be the helpers.
I am struck that Paul repeatedly pushes against the powers of empire to share the news of Jesus. As does Peter. The stories of Acts are the stories of ACTION.
I am struck that Paul and Silas, having worshiped until the walls around them broke and the chains fell away, spared their jailer. They stayed on to tell him about Jesus who was raised from the dead. They stopped him from taking his own life. They ACTED.
We simply must act too. What will you do this week to protect children from further gun violence? There are so many ways.
My hope: you will pick one. Or better yet, pick one each day. Be a helper.
Call your legislators. Ask them to put kids first.
Give to folks currently serving families in crisis in Buffalo or Uvalde. Did you know that the American Red Cross serves communities in the wake of mass casualty events? Or give to the Robb Elementary School Memorial Fund. Or give to Moms Demand Action.
Ask a teacher how they are doing.
Ask a child how they are doing.
Volunteer for a mental health hotline.
Give blood.
Learn about United Methodist efforts to end gun violence and identify ways you can participate.
Find out about how your local PTA is addressing security in schools.
This week, I commit to being in contact with my legislators and to give to an organization that supports mental health and gun control. Maybe you’ll choose another route. But choose one.
Alithia Ramirez, age 10, lost her life this week at Robb Elementary. Earlier in the school year, she won a poster contest with an anti-bullying poster that claimed boldly, “Kindness takes courage.”
She knew. She knew that action is hard. Her 10 year old heart knew.
While thoughts and prayers are part of our witness and how we relate to God, especially in times of crisis, we need to find ways to act.
Act with courage.
Because love is an action verb….
It is time to act.
I close with a poem written by Amanda Gorman, from the NYT on Friday:
Hymn for the Hurting
Everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed and strange,
Minds made muddied and mute.
We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.
And yet none of it is new;
We knew it as home,
As horror,
As heritage.
Even our children
Cannot be children,
Cannot be.
Everything hurts.
It’s a hard time to be alive,
And even harder to stay that way.
We’re burdened to live out these days,
While at the same time, blessed to outlive them.
This alarm is how we know
We must be altered —
That we must differ or die,
That we must triumph or try.
Thus while hate cannot be terminated,
It can be transformed
Into a love that lets us live.
May we not just grieve, but give:
May we not just ache, but act;
May our signed right to bear arms
Never blind our sight from shared harm;
May we choose our children over chaos.
May another innocent never be lost.
Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed & strange.
But only when everything hurts
May everything change.
From https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/opinion/amanda-gorman-uvalde-poem.html
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