Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Tuesday, September 2, 2014  

Acts 12: 1-17

Imagine this as a modern day movie or TV episode: I hear the music from Mission Impossible!! 

A prison cell, a man chained and likely beaten, all is dark.  Suddenly a rescuer appears, puts his finger to his lips, undoes the bonds and motions the man to dress quickly and follow him.  Up past the guards who are looking the other way for just long enough.  Outside, and instructions to get out of the place, the mysterious rescuer vanishing into the night as quietly and unexpectedly as he came.  The bewildered but thankful man makes his way to a safe house, where he is left standing on the step! This can’t be happening.  Finally, he slips away out of the area, but not before all his friends know he is safe!  The hapless guards face the frustration and wrath of the “bad guy” in the morning.

Now, what emotion are you left with?  Do you feel like shouting Hooray? Are there hoots of delighted laughter? Is there an exuberance, a sense of good triumphing over evil, a pleasure in the tricking of the guards and the mastermind who had plotted the evil?  Is our own faith and courage restored a bit?

Our modern stories are not so different from those 1st century stories, are they.  We still want to tell ways that good wins.  We still love the extraordinary, the sleight-of-hand.  We know the general experience of frustration as those in power abuse that power causing the innocent to suffer, and we need to tell stories of the tables being turned.  Our sense of morality, of justice, requires it.  Our trust in God is sometimes like that too.  We want to see that sometimes the miraculous happens.  God seems to know our need, and seems to sometimes break through in surprising ways to remind us that He is truly in control - even though it may not seem so to our time and space limited minds.

A side note:  when Rhoda went back to say that Peter was at the door and no one believed her, I am reminded of the disciples’ first reaction to the women’s strange tale of Jesus being risen!  Disbelief comes to us so much more readily than belief.  It takes a different point of view, a different lens, a different attitude to look for the miraculous: remembering that the word itself means something to be wondered at not something to be understood.

A final note to the story comes in the verses afterwards (18-19) when Peter cannot be found, and Herod is livid!  Off with their heads!! I hear the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland.  Again, the stories we tell are not so different, and they tell the same truths about human behaviour and personality if we don’t get too caught up with factuality.

Expect the miraculous. Be willing to believe the unbelievable. Believe in eternal justice.

Blessings

Ann Kelland