The Spirit Moving: Setting Us Free - Acts 12 - July 10, 2011- Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

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(Solo - He Touched Me (verse 1))

            On Pentecost Sunday, forty days after Easter, a great power came upon the disciples of Jesus. They had gathered to pray, and suddenly they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. That great Spirit has been moving ever since, transforming the world. Since Pentecost Sunday 2011, we have been reading the scriptures in the Bible's Book of Acts that describe the powerful ministries of the Holy Spirit on the early church. First there was the ministry of healing; then there was the ministry of bringing down dividing walls; then there was the ministry of building up the Church. Today we celebrate that when the Spirit is moving, the Spirit is setting people free. God does not intend for us to be shackled and trapped - but has sent the touch of the Spirit to set us free.

(He Touched Me (verse 1 and chorus)

            In today's scripture lesson from Acts, chapter 12, we read about how things began to get extremely dangerous for the Church. King Herod decided to try to score some points with the Jewish leaders, and found that violently attacking Christians was an easy way to do it. In the process, he killed the disciple James, and arrested the disciple Peter. No doubt intending to kill Peter also,. he made plans to bring him before the people, just as Jesus had been. But it was a religious holiday, so the trial had to wait, and Peter was placed in prison under heavy guard - shackled by heavy chains. In the middle of the night, an angel of the Lord appeared, and the chains fell from Peter's hands, and a light surrounded him. He walked right past the helpless guards. Then the city gate miraculously opened before him, and Peter found himself on the street. In amazement, he realized that it was no dream. It had actually happened; he had been set free. The rest of the chapter tells us how the followers of Christ, who had been praying
hard for Peter, had trouble believing that he was indeed rescued from prison; then we read how Herod was so angry that Peter had slipped away, that he had the guards executed, and left town for his home in Caesarea, where he was struck dead by the Spirit for trying to take the place of God.

            The images of freedom abound in this story. Light shines in the darkness; the chains fall away; the guards can't hold the prisoner; the gates open wide - images of a God who revels in setting His people free. Already the Bible has made this liberating God known. The most powerful moment of liberation in the Old Testament is the Exodus from Egypt, where God delivered His people through the Red Sea and out of slavery. That story of freedom is used to describe all kinds of moments of liberation -freedom from fear, freedom from death, freedom from dishonesty, from oppression and selfishness, But our New Testament faith tells us that the promise of true freedom was fulfilled when Jesus came into the world, and fulfilled the great prophecies of a liberating Messiah.

(Solo - 'Come Thou Long Expected Jesus')

            In one of his first public appearances, Jesus read these words from the prophet Isaiah: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.' Then, as all the eyes in the house were upon him, he declared, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.' Jesus is the one who has come to set us free.

Song - 'Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus' - first verse

            All around the world, near and far, people are shackled. For example, according to estimates of the U.S. State Department, about 12.5 million people live in slavery today. Most global organizations working on the problem say the actual numbers are closer to 30 million. 70% are women; 50 % are children. Many are involved in sex trades, but others are involved in forced labor on products that we use regularly - working long hours in factories or on farms. One growing industry of slavery is forced organ donation. It is estimated that in a given year, 14-18,000 slaves are trafficked into the United States. Worldwide, trafficking is a $30 billion industry.

            This is just one sign of a world with a shackled underground. Political prisoners - refugees - detained protesters - prisoners of war - millions of people worldwide are imprisoned for causes beyond their control. Could there be a movement of the Spirit that fulfills the promise of Jesus for liberation of captives? Millions more - perhaps billions -the victims of oppression beneath dictatorships or repressive regimes. Could there be hope that prisoners could be set free, and the day of oppression end? As followers of Christ and vessels of the Holy Spirit, we have to believe so, and then work and pray to bring about the possibility for more and more people. How we vote, how we shop, how we study and serve - these are all part of the liberation movement Jesus represented.

            Of course, in our faith we have a word for the force behind this worldwide enslavement: Sin. That force of evil that seems to permeate everywhere, that seems too pervasive and too powerful to be defeated. We shrink away from it; we deem it impossible that any wish for good in this world can actually overtake such widespread wickedness as the darkness of human sin that enslaves so many.

(Solo - ''O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing' - verse 3)

            But praise the Lord! our faith also tells us that God has an answer for the shackles of sin - it is Jesus, the name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease. His teachings announced new possibilities for human resistance to sin, but it is His death on the cross that broke the strongholds of sin in the human soul. Christian believers know that we are not helpless in our spiritual battles against evil. We have a higher power who battles with us against our addiction to sin. We can take heart and rejoice in the victory of Jesus. There is a force greater than evil in this world - it is love, and it is Jesus.

Song - 'O For a Thousand .. .' verse 4

            We celebrate today that in this world with so many shackles, by the power of God's Holy Spirit, we can choose to live without chains. In Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Secret Life of Bees, there is the legend of the Black Madonna statue that was continually taken away by the slave masters and wrapped in chains. But somehow, mysteriously, the statue escaped, and always made its way back to the house of prayer. So the slaves named the statue Our Lady of Chains - not because she wore them, but because she broke them. Those slaves thereby claimed the freedom of their spirits, even in the midst of chains.

            Victor Frankl, a Jewish doctor from Vienna, spent years of hardship in Nazi concentration camps, and wrote this: 'We who lived in the concentrations camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last pieces of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a person except one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's own attitude in any given circumstance, to choose one's own way.'

            We're here this morning because we believe in that freedom - and we believe there is a way to exercise it that breaks the shackles of sin and evil- and that is to choose to be' a follower of Jesus Christ. This morning we are invited to turn to the one who came to set the prisoner free - and whether our prison is anger or addiction or bitterness, fear or prejudice, an imprisoning or abusive relationship, doubts about God, sadness or regret for the past, habits that we've been unable to conquer, sickness or depression, fear of death or fear of life, or inner pain over the suffering and struggling in this world of so many - whatever our prison, Christ wants to set us free. Let us, this day, deliver into his loving hands the chains that hold us back. He breaks the power of cancelled sin;' he sets the prisoner free. Amazing grace. Unending love.

Song: My Chains are Gone