Bad for Business

July 7^th, 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.