Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 1 June 2025.
Paul confronts a fortune teller (Source)
• First Reading: Acts 16: 16-34 (Paul and Silas in prison)
• Second Reading: Revelation 22: 12-17, 20-21 (‘I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.’)
• Gospel: John 17: 20-26 (Jesus prays for all believers)
I wonder how many of us have found ourselves living on the back foot? Living reactively, responding to things around us, rather than taking the initiative?
Was this a lack of confidence, maybe being a little slower in perceiving and responding to our surroundings? Not so much leading with the ball as waiting for it?
In my case, being completely useless with all ball games, and maybe happy to avoid the ball altogether?
Then in coming to faith, a new kind of perspective began to emerge. We did not have to strive because Jesus had already won; we did not have to prove anything because all the proof we ever needed was already there for the taking.
O taste and see that the Lord is good.
It is worth keeping this in mind when looking at today’s lessons.
In Acts, there is the story of Paul and Silas doing what they did best but being regaled by a fortune teller. The girl might have been telling the truth – but it was something coming from an alien and hostile source.
Much as Jesus had forbidden other deranged people from disrupting His ministry, Paul also discerned that this was from a demonic source and eventually he exorcised it.
The point was that even if the inspiration was speaking the truth in this instance, it might distort or completely undermine on another occasion. Maybe a subtle shift, maybe an outright denial, and even setting up a completely new narrative.
Anyway, this was not an authentic voice and Paul took authority over it – much to the annoyance of those who were profiting from it.
Hence their arrest, trial, beating, and then their imprisonment.
But Paul and Silas were still on top of things, despite all appearances. And so they committed their situation into the providence of God and worshipped Him anyway. The prison walls and the fetters were no problem whatever. God would be praised in all situations, even this one.
And that sense of victory in the purposes of God overruled all else. The earth shook, even their chains fell off, but they continued their singing anyway. God was in charge and He was being praised and worshipped for and in Himself.
Well, if the owners of the slave girl were upset at their loss of income through her, then the jailer was even more so. About to make the ultimate sacrifice before anyone else did it for him.
Abusive prisoners he could deal with – but earthquakes were definitely above his pay grade.
So: “What must I do to be saved?” He was evidently ready to repent of all sin in his life – he only needed to believe in Jesus Christ and this story could be told easily enough.
Whatever the situation, God was in control and Paul and Silas only had to believe and trust in Him.
But then there is also the sense that Jesus had already been praying for them. In the gospel, He had been praying for Himself, His disciples and those who would follow them.
He had been praying for those who would hear and follow the disciples’ message, and that included Paul and Silas.
But then Jesus’ prayer and vision was for more than the health and welfare of His disciples. He was asking for their unity in faith and their love for one another.
He was asking for the unity of the church, founded clearly on the authority of the gospel and nothing else, to be as close to one another as the love that prevailed between God the Father and Jesus Himself.
This was the unity of the purposes of God and the life of Jesus Christ. It would be realised by the presence and movement of the Holy Spirit – the direct and personal representative of Jesus Christ in the world.
Jesus was never looking at the church as an organization, with rules and structures and orders of ministry. What was needed would come to be so long as it served the needs of the gospel, rather than the personal ambitions of its members – or the state.
And so Jesus was committing the task of the next 2000 years or whatever, into the hands of His Father, completely confident in His purposes.
In its way, this prayer comes to its climax in the book of Revelation which does not centre on the end of the world so much as on the final victory of Jesus and His coming again upon the earth. Not one which is reduced to an irradiated, polluted, derelict and uninhabitable wreck, as some of our more excitable brethren may suggest.
This is there in the solemn promise: “I am coming soon.” It is repeated, in case anyone missed it.
It comes with a glorious blessing and a solemn warning.
Hold fast, do not manipulate or abuse the gospel message, do not get drawn into false religions or belief systems.
And yes: praise God, without ceasing, at all times and in seasons.
