July
7th, 2019 “Bad
for Business” Rev. Heather Jepsen
Summer
Sermon Series: The Amazing Adventures of
Paul
Acts
19
This morning we continue our summer
sermon series, “The Amazing Adventures of Paul.” All summer long we have been working our way
through the book of Acts, focused on Paul’s missionary journeys. From great success in places like Athens and
Antioch, to near failure in Philippi and Lystra, Paul’s journey has had plenty
of highs and lows. The story is marked
by inspiring preaching and violent conflict and today’s reading is no
exception.
We are skipping a chapter this week,
chapter 18 of Acts. We can’t do it all
in one summer and so we are going to begin skipping a bit from here on
out. Acts Chapter 18 chronicles Paul’s
time in Corinth where he has a successful mission and ministry. He meets up with Priscilla and Aquila there and
they become surrogates for Paul, spreading his ministry and leading his
churches. The two sail with Paul to
Ephesus which is where we find him today in Acts Chapter 19.
(Read Acts 19:1-10)
Our reading for today begins with a
note about the Holy Spirit. Paul
encounters believers who have been educated or taught about the Way from other
teachers. There is some confusion as to
what the practice of baptism entails, and Paul re-baptizes the community into
the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We can
see here that Paul’s mission entails not only teaching about the Way of Jesus
but also helping to form some cohesive unity in the early church.
As usual Paul enters the synagogue in
Ephesus to preach but he is not well received.
Of course, we have seen this pattern before. Paul then takes his message to the Gentiles,
preaching in a school like setting instead, the lecture hall of Tyrannus. As I have said the Book of Acts is written as
an amazing adventure and we get one such claim here as the writer declares that
in two years Paul is able to preach the word to all the residents of Asia.
That’s a lot of preaching!
(Read Acts 19:11-20)
This is the good stuff as here our
adventures become amazing again! Like
Jesus, Paul has super healing powers. He
has stayed so long in Ephesus, nearly three years total, that his reputation
has grown mightily. At this point, even
garments that simply brush up against him take on a supernatural ability to
heal. While this sounds strange and
perhaps unbelievable to us, this would be common practice among magicians in
Ephesus. It was not uncommon to find folks
out on the street selling scarves and trinkets that had purported healing
powers.
The author of Acts wants to point out
that Paul’s power and authority come from God alone, he is no magician, and so
we also have the story of the sons of Sceva.
Seven sons of the Jewish high priest Sceva are traveling the land as
itinerant exorcists. They have heard of
Paul and the miracles he does in Jesus name, and so they seek to repeat the
magic themselves. The evil spirit they
attempt to control can see that they are only going through the motions, they
don’t really know Paul or Jesus, and the evil spirit is able to overpower them
and the whole crew runs screaming naked from the house. Oh my!
This excitement only increases Paul’s
fame and people begin to turn away from false religion and turn toward the God
that Paul preaches. Like the people of
Athens last week, the people of Ephesus have been searching everywhere for God
and so have collected lots of items of magic.
The author of Acts tells us that all these magic books are burned and
the value of this economic loss was great.
Now we know where all those modern day book burners got the idea, Acts
chapter 19!
(Read Acts 19:21-41)
Once again we find Paul and the message
he is preaching causing real conflict in the community, and we have another run
in with anti-Semitism. As I said, Paul
has been in Ephesus for several years and he has a successful ministry. This has begun to take a toll on the local religion,
the cult of Artemis. The temple of
Artemis in Ephesus was a sight to behold and it was one of the seven wonders of
the ancient world. It was also the
financial center for all of Roman Asia.
It was the Wall Street of the ancient world and the cult of Artemis was
a big deal. The whole community of
Ephesus revolved around the activities of the temple cult religiously and
financially. Not something to mess with.
But of course, Paul knows no bounds in
the spreading of the gospel and so he does not hesitate to bring the good news
of the Way here as well as everywhere else.
Demetrius, a silversmith who makes small Artemis shrines, has keenly
felt the economic hardship of the shrinking temple cult and so he gets the
local silversmiths union worked up into a frenzy and they all head down to city
hall to take down this Paul and his new religion.
This time, Paul is nowhere to be found
as the disciples hold him back to keep him safe. A prudent move as we have witnessed Paul be
the victim of mob violence in the past. Associates
of Paul are rounded up and brought before the mob. One man, Alexander, attempts to make a
defense but when the crowd realizes he is a Jew they shout him down. It is clear that anti-Semitism is feeding
into this group’s negative energy. In
one of the best ever descriptions of a mob the writer of Acts says that “some
were shouting one thing, some another, for the assembly was in confusion, and
most of them did not know why they had come together.” People are angry at this point, and they will
take it out on anyone.
Luckily, before things get violent,
the town clerk settles everyone down. He
reminds them all how great the Artemis temple is, no one can argue with
that. And he counsels Demetrius to take
any financial complaints he has through the proper channels of the court
system. He warns the crowd that they are
in danger themselves if they are found guilty of rioting; something very much
frowned upon by the Roman government. And
amazingly the crowd takes his counsel, dismissing in peace and leaving Paul and
the believers alone for now.
This week I found all sorts of parallels
between our modern lives and the adventures of Paul in Acts chapter 19. From the self-serving nature of the
characters in Ephesus, to the description of the mob where folks aren’t exactly
sure why they have come together, I can imagine so many modern settings for
this story. One thing that is
particularly striking is that the complaint about Paul and the religion he
preaches is that it is bad for business.
Here I think we can find one of the biggest challenges for the
Christian, in Paul’s time as well as our own.
The whole nature of the Bible itself
is not really good for business. From
the command to bring your first fruits before the Lord in the temple, to Jesus
who encourages folks to drop everything and join the movement, there is really
not a lot of encouragement here for folks who want to make money. The writer of Acts tells us that the early Christian
community looked much more like a commune then a church, with folks sharing
everything they have together. No
personal property is allowed in the early church. Imagine preaching that to Christians in
modern America!
In fact, the church throughout the
ages has really struggled to address the issue of religion and business. When I was looking for a Declaration of Faith
for us to read today I scoured the Book of Confessions to see if I could find
any statements about money and business.
Surprisingly I came up empty handed.
There is really nothing in there about money at all. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? I know it doesn’t feel right to me.
Jesus makes it clear early on that we
can’t serve both God and money, you can’t love both, and yet the church has had
a long love affair with money. Sometimes
it seems like we have gone astray, like when we look at the great wealth of the
Vatican. And other times we clearly use
our money for God’s mission, like when we share what we have with our friends
in Africa. Money in the church is
sometimes good and sometimes bad but it is always taboo.
The reason we tend to tip toe around
the subject is the same reason Paul got into trouble in Ephesus, the real
message of the gospel isn’t good for business.
Telling people that all they really need is the love of God isn’t going
to help the bottom line of those who want us to believe that all we really need
is everything we can get our hands on and that our value in this world is
determined only by how much we can buy. An
alternative economy of swapping and sharing is not good news to Christians who
have invested in the industry of the global markets. Religion is all well and good, as long as it stays
out of my wallet and out of my bank account.
Just like the seven sons of Sceva,
those confused exorcists who got themselves in big trouble, we often just pay
lip service to our faith. Those guys
thought they could perform a few miracles and make a few bucks off the name of
Jesus and they were sorely mistaken. How
often do we treat religion like that? Do
we say our prayers like a magic incantation, asking God to bless us but not
really believing in the God we are talking to?
The evil spirit in the story today could see that God was not really in
the hearts of the Sceva sons, and I wonder if we might say the same about ourselves.
For God to be truly in our hearts is
costly. Our faith demands that we work
for the causes of justice in our world.
That means taking risks, not only with our money but in our
relationships as well. Financially we
are called to share with those in need.
The Bible is clear that a tithe is 10% and profiting off the weak or
poor is a sin. Those who refuse to help
the stranger and orphan, the needy widow and the traveling immigrant will be
judged by the God we pay lip service to.
True faith costs us, in the pocketbook and in our relationships. In many ways the church of America looks a
lot more like the temple cult of Artemis then like the Way that Paul
preached. How wedded are we to the
economic system that governs our nation?
I can think of plenty of examples of pastoral leaders who sure look like
the serve the temple cult, rather than the Lord Jesus.
In our reading for today, Paul
reminds us that the cost of discipleship is high. We can’t serve both the temple cult of Wall
Street economics and the God of Jesus Christ.
We can’t simply say we love Jesus; we actually have to have a change of
heart. And that means we might not end
up with as much money in our pockets.
Like always, we have to choose which God we will serve. Paul, of course, is loyal to a fault, and as
we will soon find out, the cost for him is very high. Come back next week to see what happens next
in “The Amazing Adventures of Paul”.
Amen.
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