When God Disturbs: Acts 19:23-27
Second Sunday of Ordinary Time
23 At that time a great
disturbance erupted about the Way. 24 There was a
silversmith named Demetrius. He made silver models of Artemis’ temple, and his
business generated a lot of profit for the craftspeople. 25 He
called a meeting with these craftspeople and others working in related trades
and said, “Friends, you know that we make an easy living from this
business. 26 And you can see and hear that this
Paul has convinced and misled a lot of people, not only in Ephesus but also
throughout most of the province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands
aren’t really gods. 27 This poses a danger not only
by discrediting our trade but also by completely dishonoring the great goddess
Artemis. The whole province of Asia—indeed, the entire civilized world—worships
her, but her splendor will soon be extinguished.” (CEB)
“To me,” said a West Texas florist
who was part of the violent destruction at the Capitol building a week and a
half ago, “God and country are tied — to me they’re one and the same. We were founded as a Christian country. And
we see how far we have come from that. … We are a godly country, and we are
founded on godly principles. And if we do not have our country, nothing else
matters.”[1]
“Christian nationalism really tends
to draw on kind of an Old Testament narrative, a kind of blood purity and
violence where the Christian nation needs to be defended against the
outsiders,” said Andrew Whitehead, co-director of the Association of Religion
Data Archives. “It really is identity-based and tribal, where there’s an
us-versus-them.”[2]
It has been yet another week in which
historical events come faster than our textbooks can hold them with a second
impeachment of the American president, a warning from the outgoing CDC director
that we are about to have yet another record-breaking COVID surge,[3] an encouragement from the
FBI for high alert in all 50 state capitols after threats of violence on the
days surrounding the upcoming presidential inauguration,[4] a formal apology prepared
by the Irish government to the women and children harmed by Catholic policies
toward unmarried pregnant women who were shunted into group homes in the 20th
century,[5] and what may be the world’s
largest vaccination drive begun in India.[6]
As a friend of mine said to me, I am
quite ready to stop living in interesting times.
“These are the times that try men’s
souls,” wrote Thomas Paine in his 18th century pamphlet series “The
American Crisis.” He was talking about
the American Revolution, but the sentence has stuck around for its
applicability to far more than that. I
am not in possession of a man’s soul, per se, but after weeks—months,
years—like this, it is true that my soul is tried, that our souls are tried by
the unrelenting waves of more revelations, battles, worries. These are the times that are trying for human
souls and yet so many of the habits we have developed to comfort those souls
have had to be reinvented so that we protect these bodies, too. We have had to allow ourselves to be open to
finding comfort and strength in new places and new ways, we who are about to
hit the one-year anniversary of the first confirmed case of coronavirus here in
the United States.
As we continue to live into these
interesting times, these trying times; as we live into the space between
Epiphany’s realization that the gospel is for everyone and Lent’s awareness
that we so often fall short of that open welcome, I’m going to be going off
lectionary and staying for a while in the book of Acts. Last week, we read about Paul’s expansion of
what baptism included, not because he was smarter about the sacrament but
because he had newer information to share about the life of faith. This week we listen in on a conversation
between merchants about how this Way, this fledgling Christianity, was messing
with the order of things.
“Paul has convinced and misled a lot
of people,” says the silversmith Demetrius, and we in the 21st
century who cannot encounter the news without hearing at least one person disparage
another as a liar and a false prophet nod knowingly. We hear the silversmiths of our time telling
us that we must take care not to listen to the ones who would lead us astray.
But Demetrius’ objection to this
wandering preacher is not grounded in concern for the spiritual welfare of his
fellow merchants, for the souls that are tried in these interesting times. Professor Joel B. Green of Fuller Theological
Seminary writes that, “The concern with prosperity and business sounded in [verse]
27 should not be reduced to simple greed.
Rather, Demetrius speaks truthfully of how fully the temple and its
worship are integrated into the whole of the city’s life, so that Paul’s
message against idolatry (that is, against gods made with human hands) is a
genuine threat to a way of life…Luke thus demonstrates the inherently and
inextricably social-political-economics-religious character of the good news,
and thus the degree to which its opponents will go to keep the gospel from
upsetting conventional life.”[7]
“To me, God and country are tied”
said the woman who had been part of a symbolic attack on the country, and we
who claim the identity of both American and Christian must take a hard look at
what these things mean in relationship to each other. The silversmith Demetrius stirred up
resentment against this interloper Paul not because Paul was preaching
something harmful to the spiritual health of the followers of Artemis but
because he was preaching something against the whole structure of that faith
system. Followers of the Way could not
also be followers of Artemis, purchasers of sacrifices for her temple or silver
models for later worship. The Way set up
a separate and opposing religion in a time when one’s religion was the guiding
rule of one’s life—how time was spent, how money was spent, what held paramount
importance in daily lists of being. In
fact, Demetrius’ speech of how this preacher Paul is sullying the honor of the
great goddess Artemis uses the Greek word “kathaireo,” translated in the Common English Bible as “extinguished” but meaning also “to
put down by force, to dethrone, to destroy, to overpower.”[8]
The lectionary gospel text for today
is John 1:43–51, when Jesus calls Philip and Nathanael. “Follow Me,” Jesus says, and it is not a
light request. Jesus does not say
“follow when convenient” or “if you have a moment next Tuesday, I have this
really neat idea about the Kingdom I’d like to bounce off you.” Rather, Jesus says follow and He means now,
in this moment, knowing that life will never be the same. Paul is preaching that kind of Jesus and that
kind of faith life that follows, which is decidedly awkward for anyone who has
been making a decent living making silver models for a goddess that is not going
the same direction.
I cannot fault Demetrius for wanting
his life to stay the same, for wanting his business to stay the same, because
God knows I have had my fair share of frustration when this God we hail as
Christ comes knocking about my well-laid plans and my comfortable patterns,
inviting me into something that requires I find new business, new patterns, new
plans. And I cannot fault the West Texas
florist or all the other white Christian nationalists who want the convenience
of being able to roll their flags into one so that they don’t have to buy a
second flagpole to show that they fight for the Church and the country
alike. That kind of simplification is
easy. It’s familiar. It doesn’t require me to change the ideas and
actions that support my world as I know it.
It doesn’t have this exhausting level of historical epochs every three
days.
However, I can and absolutely must,
as a person of faith, fault Demetrius and the West Texan and the people
denouncing this week’s impeachment for their actions intended to ensure that
such easiness and familiarity remain undisturbed. There is nothing faithful about enacting violence
to protect the status quo simply because change is hard. Today’s text continues, “The city was thrown
into turmoil. They rushed as one into
the theater. They seized Gaius and
Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from the province of Macedonia. Paul wanted to appear before the assembly,
but the disciples wouldn’t allow him.
Even some officials of the province of Asia, who were Paul’s friends,
sent word to him, urging him not to risk going into the theater. Meanwhile the assembly was in a state of
confusion. Some shouted one thing,
others shouted something else, and most of the crowd didn’t know why they had
gathered.”[9]
Sound familiar? Demetrius and his compatriots decided that
they did not like the threat of this religion centered around a God you
couldn’t buy in the marketplace, a God Who advocated not for giving more money
to the temple but for giving it to the poor, a God Who showed by example that
faithfulness was not building an ostentatious home shrine but by listening to
the marginalized, refusing to ignore the orphaned and downtrodden, and living
into the reality that every single human being has value as a beloved creation. This was and is a God Who can never be
reduced to the patriotism of a single nation; Who blesses all who love in the
name of a Christ executed by the State and raised by the Spirit; Who abhors
violence enacted in the name of power; Who, as journalist Finley Peter Dunne
said, “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.”
Do you hear that call, Church? Do you hear the way we are invited to follow not
because our jobs and our parades and our beliefs will thus be protected but
precisely because there is more to the story than we yet know? Do you have space in your life where you can
say, “Hello, my name is Christian and I do not equate God with any of my
creations because God is infinitely more and is disturbing the calm waters of
what I understand every single day”?
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr.
Day here in the United States. Normally
it is a day of service, a day to take off from our everyday jobs and volunteer
to help the communities in which we live with our time and our labor. This year will be different because of the
distancing requirements; I encourage you to turn to donations as you can,
whether it be financial or food-based or clothing or whatever. St. Luke’s will have some suggestions of
places asking for specific kinds of donations on our Facebook page later today,
as well as listings of virtual events to commemorate the legacy of this man who
dreamed of equity.
In one of his most famous writings,
“A Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King wrote to the white religious leaders of
the South who had spoken out about King’s protests being uncomfortable, too
confrontational, as pushing too far away from familiar bases, completely
dishonoring the great god of the socially polite. “I must make two honest confessions to you,
my Christian and Jewish brothers,” pens King. “First, I must confess that over the last few
years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost
reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in
the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux
Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice;
who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive
peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you
in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action’;
who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s
freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to
wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of
good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill
will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”[10]
I who am a white religious leader
must read this and read it again and read it again because it is so, so easy
for me to say that the request for me to speak against white Christian
nationalism is disturbing my easy living, that the demand for me to push for
actual inclusion beyond printed banners over locked doors poses a danger by
discrediting my trade, that this God Who does not care about my propriety is threatening
to dethrone the much more manageable god I have created that does. But I call to you, fellow Christians, to hear
this call with me: there is a great
disturbance erupting about the Way. We
have no temple of Artemis in silver miniature to protect, but have we not built
our steeple-topped churches into Hallmark models we fight hard to keep while
the homeless fall to the wayside? There
is a battle amidst our faith right now of whether God and country are truly the
same, whether we are going to start a riot because our business is threatened,
whether we are going to humble ourselves before the Holy I Am and say that we
choose this day whom we will serve,[11] fully and completely,
even if it wrecks our plans and pushes us into very interesting times that try
our souls indeed.
If we do not have our country, God’s
call to love still matters. If we do not
have our silversmithing, God’s call to love still matters. If we do not have comfortable distance
between us and the injustices on the news, God’s call to love still matters. If we do not have any room to say that we are
not implicated by the racism, violence, and fear of this country, God’s call to
love still matters because above all else, God’s call to love still matters. The Spirit has tapped the waters and the ripples
are trying our souls but the good news, the good news is that our souls
are in very good hands. All you who are
weary of these interesting times, come to Christ and He will give you rest.
And then, renewed, we shall be set
loose once more to speak of the God Who is disturbing the comfortable and
refusing the box of human limitation.
May the Spirit’s strength infuse us to take up this call and claim a
Christianity that has no use for national boundaries or economic limitations,
here in the days after Epiphany where all are welcome, welcome to this
faith. Amen.
[1]
For
insurrectionists, a violent faith brewed from nationalism, conspiracies and
Jesus (religionnews.com)
[2]
Ibid.
[7]
Joel B. Green, “Acts,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible One Volume Commentary
(Nashville: Abingdon Press), 759.
[8]
kaqairew, p. 387 in Liddell and Scott’s
Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon.
[9]
Act, 19:29–32, CEB.
[11]
Joshua 24:15.
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