Seventh Sunday in Easter, Year C, May 8, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of freedom, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will. Amen.

This past week, while I was attending a conference, our Tuesday morning Bible Study, went ahead as scheduled. My wife Joy facilitated the group and took some notes for me. At the bottom, in all caps, were the words, “SING THIS!” And so, because I am unusually obedient, I did.

Although it’s not something I would normally do on a regular Sunday, those of you who are here on Christmas Eve, have grown accustomed to hearing the mystical prologue to the Gospel of John chanted rather than read, because the words are a poem full of metaphors and not a polemic full of fundamental facts. The Gospel of John is a love song. Like any timeless, classic love song, John’s poetry blurs the lines between the lyricist and the singer and the hearers, between cosmic and eternal, between particular and temporal. John’s love song starts out being about before time, long ago and forever, and it ends up being about this very moment and about the future – about a way forward just when it looks like there is no way. I often say that it’s not a song about us loving God so much, as it is a song about God loving us so much, whether we believe it or not. In this part of John’s Gospel, Jesus is anticipating saying goodbye, and praying that his followers will remember that they have been loved by God since the beginning, from “before the foundation of the world” – that they can choose to be aware of that well-spring. He is reminding them (and us) of the covenant of Divine Love that is already present and available, no matter what. I love that in the Gospel of John, to “be one” is defined as being “in one another.” So, to “become completely one” would mean to become “completely in one another.”

In the Church calendar we have entered into the commemoration of the period of time, after Jesus’ death, when his friends stopped having powerful physical experiences of his presence and started feeling inspired to take up his work as their own. In the Church calendar, the commemoration is nine days – a novena – a period of special devotion, a period of waiting for the Spirit to deliver some grace in a circumstance of peril or need. Of course, nine is a symbolic number. In the Bible, nine has to do with discernment and judgment. (Think nine justices on the Supreme Court – well hopefully nine again soon.) There are nine fruits of the Spirit according to Paul’s letter to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, perseverance, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. Nine gifts of the Spirit according to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians are: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

One of the places that I regularly experience that kind of waiting for the Spirit to deliver some grace, in a circumstance of peril or need, is in prison. Many of you know that for the last 18 years, I’ve gone most Monday evenings to visit women who are incarcerated at Suffolk County House of Correction (the largest prison in Massachusetts). It is volunteer work for me – I don’t do it as part of my job and I don’t wear my priest uniform. I just go in kind of an anonymous way with other women. It’s volunteer work that really feeds my soul, and keeps me honest. I’ve always been drawn to Bible stories and passages about setting prisoners free.

I especially love this story from the Acts of the Apostles about Paul and Silas in Philippi because it’s all about captivity and freedom (and people who seem to be losers who turn out to not be losers). The setting is that Paul and Silas were on their way down to the river to pray, with the gathering – the congregation of women. They encountered a slave girl – she was not only enslaved by her owners but she was possessed by a demon and exploited by her owners. For many days she kept shouting out that Paul and Silas were slaves to the Most High God and finally Paul got so annoyed by her that he ordered the spirit possessing her to come out of her. He didn’t seem to care that she was possessed at first – but after a while, she started getting on his nerves. He freed her from the demon but she was still a slave – a piece of property.

Were her free owners free enough to celebrate her healing? No, not at all. The free owners responded to the slave girl’s freedom from possession by calling for imprisoning Paul and Silas. The charge had something to do with disturbing the peace and being aliens (foreigners), and not following Roman customs for religious reasons. In his reflections on this passage, theologian William Willimon points out that “Later, when Paul, Silas and the others are beaten, bloody, locked in the innermost cell of the jail and shackled besides, they are strangely free to sing. Is the jailer free? Not after the chains come off, at which point he decides that suicide will be the least objectionable way to die if his prisoners have escaped. …Having a key to someone else’s cell does not make you free…By the end of the story,” Willimon concludes, “everyone who at first appeared to be free—the girl’s owners, the judges, the jailer—is a slave. And everyone who first appeared to be enslaved—the poor girl, Paul, and Silas—is free” [1]

Must have been some powerfully fine singing that Paul and Silas were doing in the middle of the night, in the pitch darkness, in the most secure part of the prison. What a great scene. Paul and Silas were getting freer themselves and they were freeing all the prisoners who were listening to them. It reminds me of this great love ballad that is sung by Lucinda Williams about the walls that separate two lovers are only made of concrete and barbed wire. That’s all. In other words, the concrete and barbed wire might look formidable, but really they are flimsy compared with the power of love. When the Love of God shakes a prison, it is as if the walls crumble and the chains fall away. The concrete and barbed wire are merely an inconvenience.

My favorite part of the story might be the conversion of the guard and his family. I have come to believe that the prison ministry program that I coordinate is first, and foremost, about my own conversion and the conversion of the volunteers. It changes us to go to the prison where we meet and serve Christ in those who are incarcerated. But I’m also aware of how our steady and friendly and voluntary presence in prison – week in and week out, year in and year out – creates a condition that facilitates the conversion of jailers – of the prison guards. It’s not that any of them have asked me about baptism (yet). I don’t mean that kind of conversion. But over the years, it’s clear that many tough-guy prison guards look forward to seeing us and some quietly thank us for being there when we don’t have to be there. We’re not serving a sentence and we’re not trying to earn a living.

Being at the prison week after week gives me plenty of opportunities to wonder about what imprisons any of us. What things do we do or not do that keep others in prison? Fear, greed, prejudices, anger, resentment; illness, poverty, hunger, misuse of power. And what frees us? Paul’s answer was to follow Jesus’ own example of waiting on the Spirit (that is, praying for inspiration) and Jesus’ own example of demonstrating again and again that Love is more powerful than any walls – even the walls of death – and that God believes in us – and that we have what it takes to feed and free people who are hungry and stuck and that we will get fed and freed by the very acts of feeding and freeing others. John the Divine’s answer in our reading from Revelations today was a reprise of the prophet Isaiah’s invitation: “And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” Everyone! Anyone! Take it! It’s a gift! Share it! It’s a gift!

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