RESTRICITON AND LIBERATION!

EASTER VII, 2019

Restriction and Liberation! These are the themes we sit with this week. Last Thursday was forty days after Easter, when the church around the world celebrates the Ascension. Christ’s leave-taking of this world to the Father.

More than a missional proclamation and a long goodbye, the ascension is in itself an example for us of liberation from restriction. The great theologian William Temple, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942, until his death in 1944, described the Ascension of Our Lord as liberation in this way,

“The ascension of Christ is his liberation from all restrictions of time and space. It does not represent his removal from earth, but his constant presence everywhere.”

In leaving the confines of the temporal, and entering the space of the spiritual, Jesus is true with us, always and everywhere. There is perfect freedom.

Luke’s account in the Act’s of the Apostles gives us other accounts of restriction and liberation. They may not always be found in the obvious.

Paul, and his new mission companion, Silas, have answered God’s command through a dream, and traveled to Philippi of Macedonia, now a coastal Greek town on the Adriatic. It was a fairly large city in the first century. While on their way to the diaspora community of Hellenised Jewish families, they meet a girl with a spirit of divination, meaning she can see into the future. A fortune teller. This “gift” is being exploited. She is enslaved. And the way her master’s are treating her is a prostitution of the mind. Her powers are being sold and all the money is going to the men who oppress her. She is enprisoned by this spirit and more importantly by the system that uses her for the economic gain of others.  As they pass her by, she begins to follow them and shout out to the people I think by her words, she is the first evangelist to the Macedonians.

“These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

Notice the interplay of themes. “These men are SLAVES who proclaim SALVATION”

Well, this goes on for a while, many days in fact, and without being asked Paul does something radical. And I love how Luke puts it, Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit,  “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” In that very hour, this spirit left her and she was free. Not from any pain caused by the spirit, but from the chains of her master’s who were becoming rich through exploitation.  The slaves of the Most High God have set her free.

Now our themes continue. The businessmen of town do not like how Paul and Silas through there preaching have stirred up the establishment, changed the economy, and begun proclaiming liberation. 

What do we do to such liberators? We cast them in prison throw chains around them and clamp fetters of iron to their feet. These slaves of the Most High are now prisoners of the state. But this has little effect on Paul and Silas. Because they are slaves to God, they have perfect freedom. Their liberty is not bound by temporal restrictions but is free in the spirit because their freedom is in the Christ who died rose again, and ascended to the Father.  So while in the midst of prison, with chains and fetters and iron bars, Paul and Silas are still able to sing. Their bodies may be bound but their souls are free to soar.

It makes me think of that old hymn by Robert Lowry,

My life flows on in endless song;

above earth’s lamentation,

I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn

that hails a new creation.

Refrain: No storm can shake my inmost calm

while to that Rock I’m clinging.

Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,

how can I keep from singing?

Mr. Lowry is said to have written this text  because of the influence of another prolific hymn writer,  Fanny Crosby, who was famous for such well-known texts as  Blessed Assurance and To God be the Glory. You see, Fanny Crosby was blind. She never saw the beauty of creation but she could capture God’s Glory and works through her words. She was restricted by the temporal, but her spirit was always free.

So what happens while Paul and Silas are singing? For one, the chains mean nothing because their souls are free. But then while they are singing  the earthquakes, the chains fall off, and the prison doors are open. Through there song, the guard at the prison has also found freedom of the soul and brings the two to his own house, where they proclaim the good news of salvation and the guards entire family is baptized. For letting the prisoners escape, it is possible that the guard could be executed and his entire family sold into slavery. But that is only temporal, they have found perfect freedom through Jesus Christ. Even when things seemed at their bleakest, the storms rage and this world began closing in, it was in their song that Paul and Silas lifted others out of slavery and into the glory of God.

The last few days I was in Ohio attending a conference on Food and Faith, exploring the role of ministry in the time of climate change. The week had begun with me hiding with my cat beneath the stairwell as tornado sirens whirled throughout the county. There was destruction all around us in Delaware, Ohio. And on the last day, I sat in the humid morning air, waiting for the day to start, and seeking from God some type of hope in the days to come.

As I looked up, I noticed that there was no wind. The kinetic art piece was perfectly still  and the leaves on the trees lay flat as ever. And then I heard the birdsong and the Spirit filled my heart. Sometimes in life, there is no wind to rustle the leaves or turn the whirligigs. Sometimes there seems to be no evidence of the breath of God, no presence of the Creator, no hope in the thick heaviness of our current age. But still, the birds will sing. And on their notes the entrapped spirit is freed to take flight and all of Creation is lifted to the Glory of God.

We need not be bogged down by the changes and chances of this world. Because our God is Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end the Creator and Fulfiller of all things. We are slaves, given wholly over to the source of our salvation. And in our song and the song of creation, we are liberated from the restrictions of this world and free to move about proclaiming the good news of salvation. Go and listen to the bird song. Sing the notes that are in your heart. And proclaim freedom to all of creation. AMEN.