St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes
Seventh Sunday of Easter/Year C: May 29, 2022
Acts 16:16-34, Gospel: John 17:20-26
What A Friend We Have in Jesus. What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer! We should never be discouraged—Take it to the Lord in prayer. And, may we ever, Lord, be bringing All to Thee in earnest prayer. These are select verses from the Joseph Scriven’s Hymn, “What a friend we have in Jesus.”1 Our first lesson in Acts, and our gospel passage in John, lead us to this simple, but critical directive: Carry everything to God in prayer.
While on their way to the place of prayer, Paul and Silas were in the pagan, Roman colony of Philippi. While there, a slave girl, whose fortune-telling powers made a lot of money for her owners, followed them. The girl would cry out their identity—as slaves of the Most High God who proclaimed to the people a way of salvation. Apparently, the girl’s shouting went on for many days, and Paul had finally had enough. In the name of Jesus Christ, Paul exorcised the evil spirit from the girl and the slave owners were not happy. It seems their financial boom went bye-bye when the evil spirit came out of her.
Like their teacher, Jesus, Paul and Silas had upset the status quo, and they were beaten and jailed for it. With their feet fastened to prevent their escape, they were completely helpless to save themselves from physical imprisonment. What was their response? Prayer and the singing of hymns—all of which wafted into the listening spaces of the other prisoners. They carried everything to God in prayer, and God acted on their behalf with an earthquake that left all doors open and all chains of captivity unfastened. Paul and Silas had been liberated and so were all of the other prisoners.
Having been freed, they—and the other prisoners—did not escape the prison. Their inaction was a powerful act of evangelism. Paul and Silas’ prayers to God were not about freeing themselves. Their purposeful prayers and purposeful singing, in a seemingly helpless situation, witnessed to their trust in God’s faithfulness. God acted and the newly-freed prisoners’ inaction in refusing to escape, saved the life of the jailer. When the jailer moved to kill himself when he assumed that he had failed at securing the prisoners, a word from Paul saved his life, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”
By intentionally remaining in the jail after their chains had been broken, Paul and Silas witnessed to the good news of God in Christ. They trusted in the Lord’s liberating power, which no man-made prisons could ever hold. The jailer, the one who had enslaved others, had been exposed to the life-giving gospel message, and it mobilized him to seek salvation. “…Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household,” said Paul and Silas (v. 33).
Like the earthquake, which broke the prisoners’ chains, Paul and Silas’ unwavering witness shook the jailer; he was changed, and his entire household was transformed into believers, and all were unified in Christ through baptism.
What a friend we have in Jesus. We are reminded of this truth in our gospel passage today in John 17. From top to bottom the chapter is a prayer. In the first part of the prayer, Jesus prayed for his disciple’s unity, that they all may be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one. Jesus, then, extended his petition to include all who would come to believe in Him, in the future, through those who received the evangelists’ words. Jesus was praying to God about us. It is comforting to know that Jesus, who existed with God before all time, and who was God incarnate living amongst us; prayed for you and me before we ever existed in the flesh.
Even with the assurance of this good news, we, as a nation, still navigating the scourge of a deadly pandemic, find ourselves, returning again to the compound trauma of experiencing, or witnessing, the resurgence of gun violence in schools, workplaces, public spaces, homes and places of worship. This violent plague of domestic terrorism seemed to be dormant as the country focused on surviving the pandemic. The hope in such tragedy would be for a drastic change in how human beings cared for and loved one another—the hope that out of our affliction, there might be a healing of whatever is broken within humanity that keeps so many from empathizing (feeling with others).
Now, only five days away from the latest massacre in a classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which occurred 10 days after the racially-motivated mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, the offering of thoughts and prayers, from our those in power and well-meaning citizens, just sounds disconnected and feels empty.
This ongoing slaughter of the innocents, may lead people of faith, and many who claim no faith, to conclude that this two-part formula for thoughts and prayers does not work. Which begs the question, “To whom are these people praying? To whom are these prayers ascending?”
As people of faith, we may not know about the power of peoples’ thoughts, but we do know about the power of prayer and that prayer, to God, does work. Regardless of the actions of the world around us, we are to be like Paul and Silas, carrying everything to God in prayer and expect for God to act on our behalf, for we are helpless to save ourselves. We pray because we need God’s wisdom and guidance to form discerning hearts to take right actions and make right changes. When we go it on our own, we tend to harm, divide, belittle, devalue and hate, and even become instruments of evil and death. And, though many may be called upon as saviors, let us be clear that there is only one savior of the world—the risen and ascended, only son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord.
We must never take for granted the power of God that goes forth into the world through the Church—prayerful people who are the body of Christ—human vessels who are empowered, by virtue of their baptism, to bear the hope that is in Christ Jesus and to be bringers of Christ’s light to the traumatized, collective soul of this one nation under God, which is assaulted over and over again at the hands of unrestrained domestic terrorists.
In the midst of these compound crises, our earnestness in prayer to God and our enthusiasm in sharing the good news of God in Christ, actively witnesses to our trust in God who goes with us on this life’s journey, and who promises to neither leave nor forsake us. Whether it is verbalized or embodied, the gospel message saves lives.
What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer as we bring our horror, anguish, inconsolable grief, anger, disgust and sadness to the foot of the cross. Be of good courage and do not fear, for we have an awesome friend in Jesus who loved us and prayed for us then, and who loves us and prays for us still. Amen.
[1] What A Friend We Have in Jesus. https://reasonabletheology.org/hymn-story-friend-jesus/. Accessed June 1, 2019.
