A man stood at the gates of heaven and St. Peter looked him up and down and said, "You know, you can’t get into heaven just by being good.  If I’m going to let you in here you have to have done something truly great.  So I ask, have you done anything in your life that you can say is really and truly great?"  The man thought for a minute and said, "Once I was in a road-stop café having lunch.  And while I was eating I looked out of the window and saw a gang of skinhead bikers pulling up into the parking lot.  They parked their bikes, took off their helmets, and swaggered arrogantly into the café.  In the booth next to me there was a little old lady.  The bikers, seeing the old lady came over to her and starting harassing her.  One knocked over her coffee.   Another picked up her doughnut and starting eating it.  Well, this made me really mad, so I got up, went over to the leader of the gang, and slapped in the face.  Then I went outside and pushed over their bikes, and kicked in their headlights."  St Peter looked astonished at this act of bravery and said "Well that certainly qualifies as a great act!  Tell me,” he continued, “when did you do that?"  And the man replied "about thirty seconds ago."

As someone once said, no good deed goes unpunished.  That is a truth, or at least a half-truth that we read about in the lesson from Acts just now.  It’s a half-truth that Paul and Silas knew all about.  Paul and Silas are, of course, two great missionaries of the early church (Paul obviously the more famous of the two).  And in chapter 16 of Acts they are preaching in the city of Philippi.  Now Philippi was a Roman colony in modern-day Turkey.  And the people of Philippi were very proud of being Roman citizens, even though most of them would never have actually been to Rome.  Philippi  was, if you like, like a piece of Rome cut and pasted into a remote place a long way from the imperial centre.  Rather like well-to-do people in India in the 19th century would think of themselves as British even though they’d never been out of India.  They’d have drank tea from a cup and saucer, worn British dress, live in British-style houses, watched cricket, read the Times, and worshiped in Gothic style Anglican parish churches.  That’s really quite strange to our way of thinking, but that’s how it was in ancient Philippi.

You see, as citizens of Rome the residents of Philippi enjoyed the same rights and privileges of real Romans, and, and here’s the important part, as good Roman citizens, they venerated the emperor as their lord and savior.   Emperor worship was a big thing.  Caesar was savior, messiah, and Lord.  Public opposition to the cult of the emperor was a risky thing.  But for Paul and Silas there was only one Lord - and it wasn’t Caesar.  It was Christ.  And, of course, the whole point of those missionary journeys was to proclaim the Lordship of Christ.  And so it was that on this particular day Paul and Silas in the town of Philippi heal a slave girl who was gripped by an evil spirit by which she was able to see into the future.  And in doing so they caused a major problem.  You see, the slave’s owners were on to a good thing here.  This girl earned them a nice little income as a fortune-teller. ‘Come and have your future revealed.  Only 1 denarius.  The amazing’ … you can make up the rest for yourselves.  So when Paul and Silas heal the girl and she can no longer predict people’s futures her owners stand to lose a lot of money.  So, like good businessmen, they exercise their rights as Roman citizens and they go to the magistrates.  And they protest that these Christians are spreading beliefs in the city that undermine worship of the emperor.  So the magistrates, not exactly in the spirit of the freedom of religion, have Paul and Silas flogged and thrown into prison.

No good deed goes unpunished.  And it makes me wonder how prepared we are to go through some kind of suffering for our faith.  It’s a question we don’t really think about, because we are never faced with the prospect of being sent to prison for our beliefs.  How keen would you be to talk to someone about your faith, and to invite them to church if you were threatened with physical abuse and imprisonment as a result?  Very hard for us to answer that because it is so unlikely.  So let’s bring it closer to home.  What about the prospect of being laughed at, or being dismissed as stupid for believing the Christian faith?  Or what about the prospect of people thinking you’re arrogant because you are a Christian.  Well, those things are possible.  In fact, not just possible, but, I think, almost inevitable at some point in our lives.  In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if we’re not being mildly persecuted for our faith then we’re probably not proclaiming it.  On the contrary, when our faith in God gets us into trouble or makes us unpopular then we’re probably getting something right. 

Methodist minister, Bob Kaylor says this, “when your concern for an addicted co-worker leads to an intervention, don't expect him to thank you.  Expect to be yelled at, kicked at and rejected.  When you lunge at your 2-year-old and bat her hand away from a hot stovetop, don't expect her to thank you. Expect to be yelled at, kicked at and rejected.  When you confront your best friend with evidence that she is cheating on her husband, don't expect her to thank you. Expect to be yelled at, kicked at and rejected.  When you point out illegal practices or immoral attitudes present within your company, don't expect your boss to thank you. Expect to be yelled at, kicked at and rejected.  When you call out "the emperor has no clothes," don't expect the emperor to thank you.

When it comes to the subject of living for God, the New Testament gives a disturbingly consistent message.  If we seek to live for God we will take the bullet.  It’s what happened to Jesus, after all.  Christians can expect persecution.  The real problem may be that we’re not being persecuted.  Why?  Because there’s no point.  We, the Christian Church in the West, are so insipid that we’re not rocking the boat.  We can often just be ignored.  We’re not calling those in authority to account for their actions.  We’re not working for change in our systems and so, we’re not provoking the hostility of those who benefit from those systems.  Why was the early church persecuted and the modern Western church is not?  Could it be that Christ meant so much to them that they were prepared to suffer for him?  Could it be that their love for God was so great that they were prepared to undergo hardship for his sake?  Could it possibly be that their faith was so important to them that they were willing to die rather than keep quiet about it?  The world around us is not going to pat us on the back for following Christ and declaring his love and his standards.  If we wait for a medal for being Christians we’ll wait a long time - until heaven, in fact, because it’s not going to happen in this life. 

Now, Paul and Silas make quite a journey in this short Bible reading.  The way they are treated at the end is the polar opposite of the way they were treated at the start.  After they have been thrown in prison there’s a miraculous earthquake, their chains fall off and the doors to all the prison cells swing open.  And the jailer, realizing that if the prisoners escape he is a dead-man walking, draws his sword and is about to fall on it, when Paul and Silas, say “whoa, hold on, hold on.  We’re still here.” And the jailer is so stunned by this that he falls at the feet of Paul and Silas trembling.  From being flogged and thrown in prison one minute to being worshipped by the jailer an hour or two later.  Now, how do Paul and Silas react to this extraordinary rags to riches turnaround?  Well, they are amazingly unaffected by it.  They’re certainly in no hurry to leave their cell.  Instead they see this miraculous prison break as just another opportunity to present the Good News of Jesus to someone, namely the jailer.  If this had been me I’d have been kicking and screaming and protesting at being thrown in jail.  And then, when released I’d have been running out of the door as fast as I could punching the air and hoping to make it home before the guards could tackle me.  But there’s more to Paul and Silas than there is to me.  They receive trials and unjust suffering as if it were a momentary disruption; and they receive glorious victory is the same way.  And as for someone falling on their face and praising me, well I think that would have very quickly gone to my head.  But not these two saints.  Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem called ‘If’, which has these two lines ‘If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same’.  That seems to be their attitude - triumph and disaster are nothing - easy come and easy go, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. 

Paul and Silas seem very unconcerned with their own popularity.  They don’t seem to mind if they are treated as scum or treated like royalty.  Every event and every fleeting moment are just opportunities to live for Christ and to proclaim his Lordship and love.  They didn’t seem too bothered about their reputations - they were convicts, but they didn’t seem to mind; then they were gods, and they didn’t seem to mind that either!  Does that approach to life sound good to you?  Would you like to be able to live like that?  I would.  To face each day with a deep assurance that nothing that happens today is going to destroy you and nothing that happens is going to turn us into a god.  To just go through all the changing seasons of life with peace and a knowledge that all is well.  I would like to know that secret.  I’d like to be able to keep everything in balance.  I’d like to be so focused on God and his call to follow Christ, so preoccupied with a vision of heaven, that I can truly understand that this material world, this deteriorating body, this frail mind, this three score years and ten, these things are not what it is all about. 

How is this possible? 

Well, let me mention the book Living Faith Day by Day by Debra Farrington.  She suggests five ways to cultivate this heavenly vision in life.

1          Prayer.  She suggests taking time for a long walk or going to a secluded place to simply talk with God, as you would with an old friend.

2          Cut back on work.  Apparently, in the 1990s Americans, on average, added one week of work per year to their schedules. 

3          Get enough sleep.  Getting enough rest so you can attend to God without the heaviness that lack of sleep produces.

4          Seek a spirit of detachment.  Most Westerners own more things than we need. Often our sense of self-worth and confidence is rooted in our possessions rather than on our relationship with God. Farrington suggests taking a break for a while from buying unnecessary things and giving the money you save to an organization that serves the impoverished and marginalized.

5          Take care of yourself.  St Paul writes that our bodies are God’s temple.  So take steps to care for God’s dwelling place. Exercise, eat better, take time for leisure and play.  Be aware than in doing so you are caring for one of God’s great gifts.

Will these disciplines make or lives free of pain and suffering?  No.  As I was saying, when we follow Christ we will take the bullet from time to time.  But what they will do is help us to cope with those sufferings, and to know that Jesus is Lord.  Not Caesar, not money, not happiness.  And if Jesus is Lord we can live secure in the knowledge that our lives are not meaningless.