You Know It's A Bad Day When...

"You Know It's A Bad Day When..."
Acts 16:16-40


If you’re not sure if you’re having a bad day, someone has compiled a list of you you can tell it’s a bad day:

You come to work and your boss tells you not to bother taking your coat off.
Your car horn goes off accidentally and sticks on the freeway behind a group of Hell's Angels.
You turn on the morning news and they are showing emergency routes out of the city.
Your twin sister forgets your birthday.
Your 4-year-old tells you that it's almost impossible to flush a grapefruit down the toilet.
Your blind date turns out to be your ex-wife/ex-husband.
You call your wife and tell her that you would like to eat out tonight and when you get home there is a peanut butter sandwich on the front porch.
Your doctor tells you that you are allergic to chocolate chip cookies.
You realize that the phone number on the bathroom wall in the bar is yours.
Your kid’s school calls and surrenders.
You look out the window of the airplane and the B.F. Goodrich Blimp is passing you.
The gypsy fortune teller offers to refund your money.
You have to hitch hike to the bank to make your car payment.
Your suggestion box starts ticking.
You're so bored you play hide-and-seek by yourself.

For Paul and Silas, they knew it was going to be a bad day when they started out for the place of prayer.  That woman was back again.  She was following them around and shouting.  She had been at it for days.  Paul and Silas may have realized it was going to be a bad day.  But little did they realize how much worse it can get, and how fast it can get that way.

It started out innocently enough, as most bad days do.  This the continuation of the story in Acts from last weeks message.  Their day was begun with high Christian aspirations.  Paul, Silas and Luke would go to the place where the few Jewish people prayed each morning, down by the river, just outside the city walls.

Paul needed to make contact with what Jews were there.  His desire was to share the Good News of the Gospel with them.  But Paul also needed them so he could keep doing what he was doing.  Each religion practiced in the Roman Empire needed permission from the government to do so.  The Christian faith hadn’t received such permission.  So Paul and Silas needed to get in with the Jews wherever they went to use the Jewish religion's governmental approval as an umbrella to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Lydia, an astute business woman who sold purple material was one of the early converts.  She later became pivotal to the spread of the Gospel in that area, her home a center for Christian worship.

But there was another woman.  This weird woman who kept following the men around, shouting.  There was a snake cult religion in Philippi that worshipped pythons.  This woman was caught up in that cult big time.  Her owners may have been priests in that cult, using her fortune-telling abilities to raise money for their religion.  Certainly you don’t want to start your day until you’ve heard your horoscope.

Now it wasn’t that what the woman was shouting was untrue.  She was speaking the truth:  Paul, Silas and Luke were servants of God, showing people the way of salvation.  But there are ways you can speak the truth, that nullify the truth you have just spoken.  It’s one thing to say:  (in a voice of awe) These men are servants of the Most High God!  They are telling you how to be saved!”  It’s another to say the same thing, like this: (in a high, screechy voice)  These men are servants of the Most High God!  They are telling you how to be saved!”

I think you can imagine how irritating that would get.  Day after day.  Her screeching would distract the crowds who listened to Paul and Silas preach.  She would have been enough to turn off the people who listened.  Which was probably the intention of the snake woman’s owners.  Paul and Silas preached a message of real power, competing for an audience awash in snake oil shysters.

Instead of having the woman kidnapped by a cult deprogrammer, or carried away by men in white coats to the nearest mental institution, Paul does what most of us do not feel equipped to do:  in the name of Jesus Christ, he jerked the evil spirit out of her.

That really irritated the venture capitalists who had made an investment buying this girl and keeping her in business.  Jesus can be bad for business, you know, if you’re in the wrong kind of business.

Up to this point, Paul and Silas probably weren’t sure if anyone was listening to his preaching or not.  So far, he had only made inroads with a few Jewish women.  But once the fortune-telling woman is relieved of her demon, Paul found out in a hurry that the ones behind this woman were listening intently.  And if Paul was going to play hardball with their little python cult business venture, then they were going to play hardball with Paul and Silas.

The day was just about to take a nose dive for the worse.

The snake oil people got Paul and Silas promptly arrested for propagating a religion unapproved by the Roman government.  The python cult leaders were able to create quite a backlash, literally for Paul and Silas.  Their clothes were ripped off, and their backs were beaten with the lash within inches of their lives.  Keep in mind, please, why it is that Paul and Silas were being treated so brutally.

Through grimacing tears, with each land of the lash, Paul saw at the front of the crowd, a girl.  Tears in her own eyes.  Her own now clear eyes, no longer fogged in by the presence of her demon.  She was the reason Paul and Silas were being beaten.  Once held captive, she was now free thanks to them.  Once free, Paul and Silas were now captive, thanks to her.

The terrible juxtaposition of grace.  The irony of grace, of the whole spectacle, was not lost on her.  Or Paul.

Paul watched her.  She watched him.  In his look, in his face, she saw the vision of what she was now free to be.  As she looked into his eyes, she saw that he, better than anyone, knew how powerful a vision of freedom in Christ can be.

No longer a gold mine, stripped of her demon, she was worthless to anyone--except God.  She didn’t understand any of it.  Yet.  Paul watched her, as the last lash landed across his shredded back, as she turned, and was swallowed by the crowd.  Another soul embraced by Christ, he hoped.

Paul and Silas, energy and blood drained, were dragged to the innermost cell in the prison.  A mixture of urine, dried blood, and defecation from so many prisoners before them, slapped them in the face.

Their wrists and ankles were blocked to the stocks.  Their hamburgered backs rubbing against the rough, cold, stone wall.

When the thick wooden door slammed shut, so went all light.  In the utter darkness, emasculated, neither Paul or Silas could ask each other, “Are you all right?” Or, “How’s your day going?”  In the darkness, the answer was clear.

Locked down, in the innermost, darkest, scummiest part of the prison, with the tormenting stinging, the throbbing pain of the wounds on their backs.  For what?  Being a Christian?  Following Christ?  Freeing a girl from demon possession?  You’d think someone would understand.

Apparently not.

Understanding may not be the response you get when you stand up for Christ.  When you witness for Christ.  When you make a demonstration of your Christian faith.

How many of you have been arrested because you stood up for Christ?  How many of you have been whipped, publicly because you spoke out for Christ?  How many of you have been imprisoned because you attested to your faith in Christ?  How many of you have been locked in stocks, and forced to stand in human waste, because you witnessed to the power of Jesus Christ to change lives?

None of that would happen to you, anyway.  Not in this country.  I mean, what’s the worst that could happen if you stood up for your faith in Christ?  Really?  Probably be ignored.  Maybe misunderstood.  Maybe someone wouldn’t like you.  May even make fun of you.

But that’s about it.  Certainly not even close to what Paul and Silas endured.  Does it make you wonder why we’re so timid in expressing our faith in Christ in the face of nothing, while Paul and Silas were so fearless with their faith in the face of real danger and bodily harm.

But that’s not all.  It was midnight.  Midnight, when half the night is gone, and half the night is yet to come.  Midnight--the longest part of the night.  Midnight, when life is totally bereft of light.  When things look bleakest, darkest, and most hopeless.

At midnight, Paul and Silas prayed.  At midnight, they sang praises to God.  In the stench, chained to the blocks, with oozing whip wounds, at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing praises to God.

For people, in Paul and Silas’ condition, most would ask God, “Why?”  Why me?  Why all this?  What did I do to deserve this?  Why does life have to be so hard?  This is too much.  This is more than I can bear.  Why are you doing this, God?

Not Paul and Silas.  There were no bellyaching “why’s” coming from their lips. For much lesser things, people have asked God, “Why?”  For Paul and Silas there were only praises sung to God.  Imagine Paul and Silas, in their condition, singing:
Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise God, all creatures here below
Praise God above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!

Remarkable!

Not on their own selves, or on their own condition, did they concentrate; but on God, on praise to God, singing praises to God.

The great people in the Christian faith are not the egotistical.  They are not like movie or sports stars who are always in some way saying, “Look at me!”  No, the great people of the faith all have one thing in common:  they keep their focus and our vision on Christ.  Not themselves.  No matter how bad their personal condition might be.

What those faithful people have discovered is that praiseful attention on Christ, rather than narcissistic attention on the self--even if your self has a back that has been blistered by the cane--praise-full attention on Christ is where the healing is found, and where the miracles happen.

Singing to God through pain, Singing to God in wretched surroundings, Singing to God in the most confining captivity, is what makes doors open.  And others, because of your singing, ask you what you’ve got, and how they can get it.