Our text for this morning is likely one you’ve
never heard a sermon preached about…or a Bible
study focus on…in fact, while it’s one that I
certainly must’ve read before, it never stuck out to
me before. After all, why would it, sandwiched
between the text where the great Apostle Paul and
his faithful sidekick Silas display their faith
by…singing hymns in prison….
(You remember this story, about how Paul
and Silas are locked up in prison after preaching
the gospel at the synagogue. They are accused of
causing trouble – political unrest – and so are
imprisoned. While the are in prison, there is an
earthquake, and the doors of prison swing open.
All the prisoners leave, something the guards will
certainly pay for. All the prisoners except Paul
and Silas. They are the only prisoners to stay,
singing Psalms and praising God for what has
happened. The guards are so stunned that they
become followers of the way.)
…and the story of Paul in Athens, preaching at
the Areopagus. (Again, if you’ll remember, while
Paul is in Athens, he preaches in the synagogue, to
Jews and Gentiles, but he also widens his audience
by going to the marketplace. Athens is a place of
philosophy and learning, and Paul is soon taken to
a large rock by the Acropolis called the Areopagus
(or Mars Hill), where his message is engaging to
those learned philosophers in Athens. In fact, it
stands out today as the “sermon to the unknown
God,” where Paul is forced to leave the “proof” of
scripture behind as a way of explaining the Gospel.
Instead, he must translate the importance of the
Gospel using the Greek “unknown God” to explain
who Jesus is.)
So, you see, this story has some pretty tough
competition for our attention! And yet, when I
was reading it, I was intrigued. And after
spending the week studying and exploring it, I’ve
decided it may be my choice for our now
completed summer series, “I can’t believe that’s in
the Bible!” Or, rather, maybe it’s part of a new
series, “I didn’t know that’s in the Bible!”
In fact, my very (very) informal poll this week
revealed that no one I polled knew that Jason was
in the Bible. And, after learning that fact, three out
of four made jokes about horror movies. And one
Gen-Xer made a reference to a musician I’ve never
heard of.
Perhaps a better title for this sermon than the
thesis title you’ve got is a tale of two cities. That’s
really what this is…Luke here is telling how the
Gospel was received in the two cities of
Thessalonica and Beroea. A super short summary
is that it didn’t go well in Thessalonica, and it went
extremely well in Beroea. On the surface it’s a
“good day at work vs. bad day at work” kind of
story.
In both cities, Paul uses the same preaching
methods that the disciples have used to spread the
Gospel – pretty successfully, I might add!
Remember, this is the way the early church spread
so quickly…in Acts 2 we’re told that thousands
were being added to the church daily. The
message was new, the time was right, the Holy
Spirit powerful, and the Gospel spread. But here,
the great missionary, the Apostle Paul, struggles
(that’s right) in Thessalonica. Or at least that’s
what Luke wants us to believe.
Willie James Jennings, the late leading African
American theologian makes the case that Luke tips
his hand here, shows his prejudice. In
Thessalonica, the Jews become jealous and easily
find thugs in the marketplace. They form a mob
and attack a house church, in Jason’s home,
searching for Paul and Silas. “When they didn’t
find them (they’re not there!) they dragged Jason
and some believers before city officials. They
were shouting…. This provoked the crowd and
the city officials even more.” Thessalonica, it
seems, according to Luke, was a tough town.
But Beroea! Oh, things were much easier for
Paul and Silas to Beroea! Luke tells us that the
“Beroean Jews were more honorable…evident in
the great eagerness with which they accepted the
word and examined the scriptures each day.”
Fortunately, Luke ties it all together by
pointing out that in both places, men and women
mostly Greek God worshippers and prominent
women.
It’s an odd accounting here…this tale of two
cities.
I understand here, that when we step back, we
can see the importance of the story overall. Here
is where the Book of Acts takes a swing from
Paul’s missionary activity with the Jews to his
quest to win the gentiles. It’s completely
understandable that he would leave the
synagogues and go instead to the Areopagus!
But a little bit of digging here, and we can also
understand just why it is that Paul finds it
necessary to write not one, but two letters, to the
church in Thessalonica. In fact, as scholar
Matthew Skinner aruges, these are not only the
earliest letters of Paul we have, they are the most
pastoral. Paul really cares about this church and
these people in Thessalonica. A fun little exercise
this week or this afternoon would be to go back
through Thessalonians and see what evidence or
trace you can find that Paul is writing to a church
whose people are struggling, who are dealing with
difficult real life issues, and yet whose faith is
commendable and strong.
And it all began with rioting by ruffians.
Unfortunately, an all too familiar scene to us.
I have these images, in my mind. I only have
to go back one hundred years to name
unspeakable pain and struggle, all summed up by
simple words. World War II, the Holocaust,
Hiroshima; Korea and Viet Nam; apartheid, South
Africa, We are the World; Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran,
9-11; Lybia, Egypt, Jerusalem, Lebanon, Syria;
Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, the Freedom
Rides, and Charlottesville.
Willie James Jennings wants to defend the
rioters a little bit here, offer a little bit of humanity
and understanding. It’s important for us to
remember who the Jews are, as God’s people – to
remember their history as a people who are
displaced, in diaspora, spread all over the world.
Paul and Silas go to the safest place for them, the
one place where they can be unapologetically
Jewish, to the synagogue, and tries to replace their
God, YHWH, with a new God, Jesus. Jennings says
this, “We understand that this opposition does not
spring from pure evil or hatred of God, but for
Diaspora people it is rooted in perceived
theological insult, disrespect, and fear.”1 Big idea
– new God competes with old God. For three
weeks, Paul and Silas preach in the
synagogue…three weeks before they are run out
of town.
It leads me to wonder if some of their success in
Beroea is because of their struggles in
Thessalonica. If they learned something about
presenting the Gospel to a people whose identity
is so embedded in who they are as God’s people
that they can’t imagine a new God. Maybe it really
is easier to preach to people who’ve never heard
1 Jennings, 170.
the Gospel before than to people who are
suffering, and whose only hope comes from their
faith.
Duke professor Will Willimon, in his
commentary of Acts brings us hope by pointing
out, “Here is a new possibility of faithful life in
Diaspora where the risk of loss can be
overwhelming. This new possibility is a form of
discipleship that welcomes the reality of a new
word from God and examines the Scripture as
inseparable actions of faithfulness to the God of
Israel.”
I have to tell you, one of the major topics of
conversation in the office has been the work of
Sharon and Lynn Kandel, missionaries to South
Sudan, and the horn of Africa. She brought to us, I
think, a message about the suffering of South
Sudan, and many other places in the world. She
brought to us the reality of new governments
placed over tribal lines. She brought with her a
new term I hadn’t heard before - ….Dependence
Syndrome. Displaced persons, refugees, those
living in places other than their homes, in camps
mostly, suffer from post traumatic stress
syndrome, move to places where basic food,
shelter, and safety is provided for them, and are
left with a sense of childlike dependence on those
who provide it. What can we do? We asked?
Because we, as a church, want to be a part of the
world neighborhood. We want to love our
neighbors as ourselves. Yes, of course, those next
door. But also those in the next state, country, and
continent.
And I think, in this text, there’s an intriguing
message for us, one that Sharon Kandel shared
with us, and I think can apply to every headline in
our newspapers today, from the front page to the
back page, the top of the screen to the bottom.
I think we need to be trained to listen instead
of speak. Whether it’s a story of abuse, or neglect,
or violence, or prejudice, or injustice. What
Sharon really said was that the South Sudan needs
trained trauma counselors. It’s a theme I heard
echoed when our dear Catholic friend, Joe
McKeown, was interviewed on the BBC about the
Papal visit to Ireland in the midst of scandal in the
church. Joe responded by sharing his suffering,
and saying that suffering is suffering. Perhaps it’s
time for us, as members of the Christian church, to
go back to those places of suffering, and sit with
those who suffer.
I have to be completely honest this morning,
and confess that this text really troubled me. For
much of the week I carried it around, praying, and
thinking, what is the message here? What can we
learn from this? How can we apply it to our lives
today? And then it occurred to me…Paul, not only
learned from his experience in Thessalonica…the
people of Thessalonica stuck with him. He
couldn’t let them go. He wrote letters to them.
Lovely, wonderful, inspiring letters, to a people
immersed in Diaspora politics, in the throes of
displacement and all that means.
And I wonder…no, I’m convinced…that we are
called to do the same thing. For the neighbors
who live next door to us, and the neighbors who
live on the other side of the world from us. Amen.
