Sermon 8th August 1999: Acts 14:8-20
Good Evening. They say that if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again; and if at first you havn’t bored the congregation totally rigid, then you get a second chance to come and practice preaching. So we come together in the name of the +Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The sweep of the Bible means that it is a work of many different parts and styles - part hymnbook, part rulebook, part poetic, part mystic, and particularly in the books of Mark and Acts, part Thriller: yes, a cracking story told at a ripping pace, packed with action, adventure and the touch of the divine. In tonight’s thrilling episode, we see Paul and Barnabus perform a miracle, a miracle just like one of their many miracles recorded in Acts and none the less miraculous for that, a miracle that was clearly impressive for the people of Lystria. There is much to be learnt from this short episode.
It is a miracle which is deliberately written to echo Peter’s first miracle outside the temple early on in Acts Chapter 3 and therefore to establish in the minds of early readers the parallels and the equality between these two early Fathers of the Church: one whose Ministry was based in Jerusalem and was primarily for the Jews, and one who was the itinerant missionary evangelising the Gentiles; both however, were key.
These are not ordinary miracles: they are special miracles: this was a personal encounter rather than an act of mechanical charity – the passage tells us that they looked directly at the lame man. They are a direct encounter with the Gospel of Christ: The healing itself echoes many of Christ’s own miracles, by which it is the faith of the lame man which makes him well: Paul and Barnabus are merely conduits for God’s grace, which is what makes the reaction of the locals even more disappointing.
The people of Lystria were distracted from the message Paul and Barnabus carried: more willing to fit the event into their own world view: in this case hellenic paganism. They concluded therefore in their little world, that Barnabus was Zeus and Paul was Hermes.
This fits with an ancient story about these same two gods visiting a town in the area. They were not recognized and received only a cool reception. In anger they destroyed the town that had been so inhospitable. With such a folk-tale circulating in this region, it is hardly any wonder that the crowd reacted in the way that they did, bringing forth a bull and wreathes and wanting to offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas after a simple healing. The legend also helps to explain why they assumed the visitors were those particular gods rather than a god of healing, as might have been expected from the events themselves. The crowd, when excited, spoke in their native language. The language barrier may in part explain why the people so easily misunderstood the apostles’ message and why the apostles had so much trouble discouraging the sacrifice. Once they realised through the fog of miscommunication what the locals were trying to do, they tore their clothes, which throughout the ancient world was understood as a gesture of deep sorrow or self-humiliation. I am therefore the not surprised that the people of Lystria got upset when Paul and Barnabus emphasised their human nature: the opportunity for a good party taken from them: no bull sacrifices tonight, I’m afraid, because the message of Christ has arrived in town.
How often do we find ourselves witnessing the goodness and the grace of our Lord, and how often do we ignore it, trivialise it, put it down to chance or even worse, try to fit it into some not-quite-secular, not-quite-pagan and certainly less than Christian world view. Mystic Meg and her kind holds far too centre-a-stage in current thinking. Too often, we neglect to see the impact that God has on our lives, taking credit ourselves for the blessings he rains down on us, preferring instead to take on the advice of Iago from probably my favourite play, Othello “’Tis within ourselves that we are thus or thus”.
Therein lies the contradiction of the “self-made” man, for man can create little for himself, except perhaps the misery of others (something which he has great skill in creating): but, as we say in thanksgiving for the Offertory “All things come from you”. Those that do seek, much like Iago, to be self-made, quickly find themselves in he depths of unhappiness; and increasingly this search is played out in the quasi-religious, the New Age, the Cult: much like the Lystraonians, the easy explanation and justification of self is sought away from God, however, in the words of one of the great Fathers of the Church, himself a former cult member, St Augustine: "Seek for yourself, O man; search for your true self. He who seeks shall find himself in God."
The Psalm appointed for this evening Psalm 86 echoes the goodness and the blessing of God: "But you, Lord, are God, compassionate and gracious, long suffering, ever-faithful and true." (Psalm 86:15)
This Psalm of praise recognises, probably in the depths of despair for the psalmist, the goodness of our God, a God who is appeased not by sacrifices of bulls or wreathes as presented by the people of Lystria, but by obedience, "you are kind and forgiving, full of love towards all who cry to you" (Psalm 86:5), recognise as the Palmist says that when goodness comes into your lives that it is God who blesses you, and do not force the saints to despair and rip their clothes by putting it down to matters of this world, or of a false world.
This is the first lesson I learn from Lystria.
There is more to learn from this passage:
Paul and Barnabus faced numerous trials and difficulties during their ministry: beatings, whippings, public humiliation and the ever-presence threat of violent death. They did not shy away from that, they proudly proclaimed the Gospel of Christ from the centre of Athens and from the gates of smaller places like Lystria: a place so heathen that it clearly didn’t even have a synagogue for them to start from.
They were brave enough not to get caught up in the proposed pagan festivities, not to go along with what was happening, to show deep shame and humility and to stand against their new titles. How much easier it might have been for them to say “Okay, I am Hermes, and I bring you a new message, a message about Jesus Christ…” No. It was a principle. They stood out and they got severely beaten for it.
This lesson becomes apparent to me as we face the end of this year: a date which is more of an accident of mathematics than a spiritually significant date. In common with the increasing secularisation of society, the millennium has become a secular, almost pagan festival: a multi-faith “Spirit Zone” rather than the call to repentance that the first Millennium was. I read a recent letter that asked the poignant question: the first Millennium kick-started the creation of the greatest Cathedrals in Europe. Has anyone even built an altar, let alone a Church anywhere in commemoration of the Second? Are we brave enough like Paul and Barnabus to rip our clothes and point out in embarrassment that Jesus is the reason for this season, that the year 2000 is an arbitrary event in relation to the message of Christ and perhaps pedantically, the Millennium doesn’t actually happen until January 2001 anyway.
This passage calls us to stand against the tide of public opinion. And that is not always comfortable. St. John Chrysostom in one of his homilies on the book of Acts (Homily 31) remarks on the vehemence of how they turn against Paul and Barnabus, how they turn their embarrassment at their mistake into an almost persecuting violence: beating Paul so badly that he was left for dead. How often, he comments, do we do the same: attacking the Church, or worse, the image of Christ itself when it shows up our shortcomings: because we are embarrassed by our failure we attack.
This short passage is a reminder of the threats against our faith from an increasingly secular society. Today the threats are not Baal or the pantheon of Hellenic gods, but money, politics, and greed: secularism gone wild. The passage calls us to resist the temptation to fit things into a more comfortable pattern: to take blessings from the Lord and write it off as chance, to put more faith in the Lottery than in the Liturgy. This passage also asks us to stand up against that World View: even at some personal risk. The life of a Christian can be, and in reality is in some parts of the world, quite dangerous: but Paul and Barnabus stood. The sick were healed and the message was preached, even if it took some time to get through.
