"God is in the Chaos"

Sermon 05.16.10
“God is in the Chaos”

The entire passage from the Acts of the Apostles is filled with the plot of a mini-series: there are riots, a demon possessed woman, people being thrown into prison, an earthquake, some singing, a mass altar call, a suicide attempt and a happy ending for everyone involved. It’s a bedlam at some points, confusion at others, and a wild and wooly Paul adventure, with Christ in the midst of the chaos. About the only thing missing is a character with amnesia.

Act one begins with Paul and Silas heading to the synagogue to pray, but they have to pass through the marketplace. Bad move on their part. They meet a slave girl, who by the power of a demon, has been given the gift of fortune telling. Her masters make a tidy profit from her abilities. She has taken a liking to Paul and understands his role as ambassador for Jesus Christ and keeps shouting her mantra. For some unexplained reason, Paul becomes exasperated (according to the New Living Translation) with this nonsense and exorcises the demon from her. This credits a cash flow problem for the woman’s owners, since she can no longer tell the future, and they haul Paul and Silas into the center of the marketplace. They begin to blame them for teaching the crowds ideas that were contrary to Roman customs. A mob scene follows and the situation quickly deteriorates into chaos.

Paul and Silas are thrown into prison, where they immediately begin to praise God and sing hymns, with no rational concern for their predicament. The other folks in the prison comprise their audience. Suddenly, around midnight, there is pandemonium as an earthquake shakes the prison and all of the chains fall off the prisoners and locked doors are thrown open.

The jailor is so upset by what appears to be a grand escape that he is ready to kill himself, rather than face dishonor at the hands of the Roman guards. But in a surprise last-minute gesture, Paul and Silas assure him that all the prisoners are still around. The guard is saved, along with his entire household and all the prisoners. It’s a mass conversion following a long, difficult evening. From start to finish it’s a wild ride, mainly because everything with Paul is large screen Panavision, and the final ending is wonderful, because everyone believed in God. They were probably all holding hands and singing Kumbaya before it was all over.

Most of us do not have that much adventure in a lifetime, much less on a weekly drive to go to church. But we still find ourselves in morning messes, with afternoons of bedlam, and evenings that are filled with disarray. We experience all of the chaos that this encounter describes, but in modern day interpretations, and we need to remember that God is still there in the midst of our disorder.

God is the top priority in the story of Paul and Silas in prison. Rather than wallow in pity, they pray. Rather than bemoaning their circumstances, they sing hymns. Rather than condemning their jailor, they praise God. Because God is ultimately the one in control, the one who provides the earthquake, the one who brings about a change of heart for all of the prisoners and the jailer. Underneath and behind all of the chaos, God has been working through it. This same mentality is what we need to focus on when our lives become enmeshed in turmoil. If God brings you to it, God will see you through it.

It is easy to blame God when life hands you lemons, when there’s commotion in the workplace, when there’s the threat of anarchy in a family with teenagers. Seeing God’s hand at work is our hardest challenge when moving through difficult times. Paul and Silas trusted God, understood God’s presence in trouble and continued to have faith in the midst of the chaos.

Our lives are no different from Paul’s. We are still struggling to get to the church door each and every week. We have co-workers who badmouth us, family members who remind us over and over again about our mistakes. We live in prisons of our own making, thinking that everyone else has a better life. We find that there are little earthquakes from time to time, and sometimes one big crisis that flattens us in our walk towards holiness. And we still find ourselves being asked “How to be saved” by those around us.

Remember that there was great rejoicing at the end of Paul’s story. Remember that chaos reigned until the songs of the Lord were sung. Remember that there was madness until Paul said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus.” God can be counted on to arrive just when it appears that all hope is lost. But we need to speak out God’s name when we are in trouble.

I rarely end a sermon with a joke, but this seemed like a golden opportunity for me to emphasize that we must call out to the right God, to the one who can bring a surprise ending to the melodramas of our daily living.

It seems that after church one Sunday, a father noticed his five-year old son writing something on the Sunday School paper that he had brought home with him. “Dad”, the boy said. “How do you spell God?”
The father was very pleased that his son was still thinking about the lesson that he had received from his teacher. The father spelled out G_O_D, and the young boy wrote that on his paper. Then he looked up at his father and asked, “Then how do you spell Zilla?’

Remember to summon the right person. Call upon the God of power to be with you during the pandemonium, when you, like Paul, are struggling with situations beyond your control. Call upon the God of order, who separated the light from the dark, when it feels like you can’t tread water any longer. Call upon the God who calms the waves when you feel your boat beginning to capsize. Call upon the God of compassion and direction, who brings us through the darkness and gives us back the meaning in our lives. Call upon God, and remember that God will always call you back, with a voice that can be heard, even above the chaos . Call upon God. Amen.