May 20 , 2007 Seventh Sunday of Easter

See also: [2001]

Acts 16:16–34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12–14, 16–17, 20–21
John 17:20–26

Acts 16:16–34
The episode of Paul and Silas in Macedonian Philippi—with its comic elements and adventure-story plot twists—is a wonderful example of Luke the storyteller pulling out all his literary stops. Paul’s encounter with the spirit-possessed slave girl has undeniable comic overtones. The spirit of divination within the girl recognizes the spiritual importance of Paul’s message—which is more than most of the humans in the city do—and it cannot resist announcing that importance through the mouth of the young woman. Yet there is a sly humor in the image of the woman following Paul and Silas, proclaiming their message for them—or at least proclaiming that their proclamation is worth listening to. Paul is annoyed by this; and, while part of his annoyance may be, as is traditionally interpreted, that a child of God is being so abused by a spirit-being, it may also be that part of his annoyance is at being upstaged and distracted by his unwanted assistant. However that may be, Paul exorcises the spirit and makes enemies of the local population, inasmuch as he has been seen now to cut into their profits. The resulting story of Paul’s and Silas’s imprisonment, the earthquake, and the rattling of the doorframes and loosening of the chains, are adventure-story motifs which would today be portrayed with state-of-the-art special effects. Finally, there is another bit of a comic turn as the jailer is stayed from harming himself when Paul, though freed, announces that all the prisoners are still in their cells.  The entire episode is a richly textured and finely varied example of storytelling art. It is worthy of the romances and historical novels that were part of the popular literature of Luke’s time, and that may well have been staple entertainments of Luke’s audience. What is of course most remarkable about this passage is the way Luke uses these popular storytelling tools to convey the message of the gospel: that the news about Jesus is spiritually important; that the Spirit of Jesus gives strength to the disciples to heal and also to bear their own sufferings with grace; that God opens doors that had been shut and creates a way forward into novelty when it seems that all is constrained and blocked. Those same qualities, if not the same historical details, could be part of our proclamations of the faith in our time.

Psalm 97
The psalm presents a number of images which later became standard elements of apocalyptic writing: God’s presence coming in clouds and darkness, the mountains trembling and collapsing as God approaches, fire consuming God’s enemies, the judgment of those who worship idols and the vindication of Judah and Zion. In this respect the psalm ties in with the passage from Revelation and its images of the End. More significantly, the psalm also celebrates the promise of joy that attends God’s appearing: the righteous rejoice, the truehearted are glad, the chosen people celebrate, even “the multitude of the isles are glad.” The promise of universal joy at the coming of the Lord—an element often missing from much of today’s apocalypticism—is taken up and expanded in the Revelation reading.

Revelation 22:12–14, 16–17, 20–21
The dominant theme running through this catena of verses from the end of the Revelation to John is “coming,” the imminence of arrival, the invitation to be fully present to the divine in a renewed world. The opening announcement—"See, I am coming soon,” spoken by the Risen, Ascended, and Returning Jesus—is balanced by the invitation of the Spirit and the Bride, and all who hear the message, and the seer himself, to “come.” The passage ends with the invitation reversed, as it were, in the ancient church’s eschatological prayer, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” The whole passage is brimming with a sense of anticipation for the immediate presence of God, and that anticipation gives the poetry an energy, even an urgency, which impel the hearers to become active participants in the divine arrival. It is important to note here the universality of the invitation: “let everyone who is thirsty come”; not just the “righteous” who are thirsty, not just the “politically correct” who are thirsty, not just those who subscribe to the proper creeds who are thirsty, but everyone who is thirsty. Too often in Christianity today the expectation of an imminent End is coupled with a fierce exclusivism as to who is invited and who is not. A challenge for a process-oriented preacher would be to take this passage, with all its eager invitation to divine presence, and invite all who hear to participate in Christ’s arrival in each new-created actual occasion.

John 17:20–26
The gospel reading for the seventh and final Sunday of the Easter season is always taken from the seventeenth chapter of John’s gospel, the “High Priestly Prayer” in which Jesus prays for his church that is to be. In part this is because this Sunday falls between Ascension and Pentecost, between the definitive end of the resurrection appearances of Jesus, and the coming of the Holy Spirit to bestow the indwelling presence of Jesus in the disciples. In part it is because the “High Priestly Prayer” serves as an extended reflection on the defining characteristics to which the church aspires, the “forms of definiteness” embodied and exemplified in Jesus which are now, through the Holy Spirit, proposed to the church for its embodiment and exemplification as well. One such characteristic is named here as “glory”: the glory that Jesus received from God, he has given to the church; and the effect of this glory is to be “one,” united in divine presence as God is in Jesus and Jesus is in the church. This glory has both a this-worldly and an other-worldly dimension: Jesus prays that the disciples will share divine glory in union in lives of active ministry in their actual worlds, but also that they will “be with me where I am,” in the risen and ascended life, to see Jesus’ glory which has been from “before the foundation of the world.” Another defining characteristic is named as “love”: as disciples in the church are united in love, so they come to realize among them the actual presence of Jesus, in which is the living presence of God. “Knowing” God and knowing God’s “name” comes in and through this active love. Words like “glory,” “love,” “name,” and so on, are of course verbal abstractions, pointing beyond themselves to concrete apprehension of divine presence. The promise inherent in Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer” is that this constellation of forms of definiteness exemplified in Jesus may indeed come to characterize those who live intentionally into Jesus’ “field of force."

Paul S. Nancarrow is rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. and canon theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota. He is a co-author of The Call of the Spirit: Process Spirituality in a Relational World.

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