I want to know what the angel looked like. I want to know what the angel in the story looked like. I’m betting that it wasn’t a chubby cheeked cherub. No, I’m thinking that this angel looked more like a truck driver because this was a divine being capable of carrying out a prison break. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Peter was in prison, set to be executed the next day. It was nighttime and somehow he had managed to fall asleep. He was awakened by a tap on his side. The text says it was an angel who woke him up. This truck-driver-like angel barked a series of orders at Peter.
“Get up.”
“Fasten your belt.”
“Put on your sandals.”
“Follow me.”
Before Peter was fully awake, his chains had disappeared and he was out of prison–walking the darkened streets a free man.
The angel disappears and Peter makes his way to the house where his friends, his fellow believers, are gathered. He knocks on the door–remember it’s the middle of the night. A maid named Rhoda is stuck responding to this late night knock. Rhoda is not going to open that door unless she knows who on the other side. When she realizes that it’s Peter–imprisoned-about-to-be-executed Peter–she runs back to tell the others, leaving Peter standing outside, cooling his heels. She is so excited, she can’t wait to tell the others. They don’t celebrate with her. They don’t believe her.
“You must be out of your mind,” the others tell her. Because there is no way that imprisoned-about-to-be-executed Peter is loitering outside the front door. I’m with the others. Rhoda has to be out of her mind because this story is impossible to believe. Angels busting people out of jail. You must be out of your mind to think that God is in the business of breaking people out of prison.
This is such a fun story, especially the part about Rhoda, that it’s easy to miss that it a serious story. This is how the passage begins: “About that time, King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church.” Herod had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. And then Herod went after Peter. One leader dead; another about to be executed. Hovering over it all is the figure of Herod. Herod is a tyrant. He’s a piece of work. And he is hell bent on destroying the church. And, at that time in its young life, the church was small, vulnerable, fragile. Let’s see: Young, fragile vulnerable church, vs. powerful, unstable tyrant. Hmm. You would have to be out of your mind to think that the church could survive that.
Another time. Another place. Another tyrant. Pharaoh was his name. He was making life miserable for the Hebrew slaves. Moses took on the job of representing the Hebrew slaves before Pharaoh. What a ridiculous idea. Slaves don’t get representation. You would have to be out of your mind to think that Moses stood a chance in those negotiations. Moses took on Pharaoh…well, actually God took on Pharaoh and, amazingly, miraculously, wonderfully, God won. God brought the people of Israel out of slavery, out of Egypt. The Exodus out of Egypt is remembered each year on Passover.
The story of Peter being rescued from jail takes place on Passover. I missed that the first few times I read through the passage. It’s Passover, the time when Peter and the early church would be remembering and celebrating the power of God to liberate and rescue and set free.
I bet Peter wasn’t thinking about the exodus story as he languished in prison. You would have to be out of your mind to think that God is in the business of freeing slaves.
But that is the claim of today’s story: God is in the business of setting people free, smashing chains, breaking prison walls. I love this story. It’s so strong. It’s so powerful. But it’s hard for me to believe that such things happened. No, that’s not right. I believe that such things happened. What I struggle to believe is that they can happen again.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s I was a member of a church made up primarily of Czechoslovakian immigrants. They were deeply connected to their homeland, and every year they had a special worship service in which they prayed for freedom in their native land. They had been doing that for over forty years and nothing had changed. The communist government appeared invincible. I attended the service every year but secretly I thought the people of the congregation were out of their minds. You must be out of your mind to think that God is in the business of toppling oppressive regimes.
I remember another worship service held in that church, in the summer of 1990, when we gave thanks to God for what had happened in Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European nations. We prayed our thanks to the God of liberation and freedom. We were out of our minds with joy and hope.
We have more recent examples of oppressive regimes coming to an end. I’m thinking about Egypt and Libya and Tunisia. Was God at work liberating the people of those nations the same way God liberated the slaves in Egypt? Did God help to break their chains the way God broke Peter’s chains? I’ve thought and thought about that and my answer is: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I have an undergraduate and master’s degree in politics and history. I know that things happen in nations because of the complicated interplay of economic forces, ideology, individual personalities, cultural shifts. You’d have to be out of your mind to think that tyrants are toppled because God makes a decision that their time is over.
And yet. And yet. This morning’s story suggests a different truth. It makes the claim that God has the power and the will to intervene in situations of fear and hopelessness. The story of the Exodus and the story of Peter’s prison break suggest that the future–my future, your future, our future–can be different than the past, perhaps radically so.
When God enters in this world, prison walls crumble, empires fall, tyrants weep, people are set free. That is what God does.
Do you need to be set free? We don’t live under Pharaoh or Herod or Assad. But still, I’m betting that all of us need to be set free from something. Some of us need to be set free from worries about our financial situation. Some of us long to be set free from feeling the need to please others with our lives.
I know a man who wants to be set free from the idea that his life has been wasted if he doesn’t achieve a certain level of success in his chosen field. I know a woman who would like to be set free from her addiction to alcohol. I know a teenage girl who longs to be set free from a fear of failure.
We all want to be set free from something, but how often does that kind of liberation actually take place? Does anyone really change that much? Sure, we can make small changes, minor alterations, but it’s pretty hard to make big dramatic changes in who we are and how we live. You’d have to be out of your minds to think that people can really fundamentally change.
Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who, for over twenty years, has served in a Los Angeles neighborhood with a high concentration of gang activity. In his book, Tattoos on the Heart, he tells stories about the mostly Hispanic young men and women he has encountered in his ministry. A big part of his work is helping ex-gang members find jobs. “Nothing stops a bullet like a job” is the motto of Homeboy Industries, a collection of small businesses that Boyle created that includes a bakery, a café, and a silkscreen shop.
Boyle tells the story of Luis, in his mid-twenties, who had been among the biggest, savviest drug dealers that his community had ever known. He and Father Boyle, called “G” by his parishioners, knew each other for more than a decade, and any offer of a job was always graciously declined. But when his daughter, Tiffany, was born, things changed. Luis wanted to work at the bakery, and his natural leadership abilities soon moved him up to foreman.
It was part of Luis’s job description to give tours to visitors to the bakery. After one tour with a group of farmers, Boyle recounts the following conversation with Luis.
I ask him, “How’d the tour go?”
“Damn, G,” [Luis] shakes his head, “What’s up with white people anyway?”
I was actually curious as to what was up with us.
“I don’t know, what is up with us?”
“I mean, damn,” he says, “They always be using the word ‘GREAT.'”
“We do?”
“Oh yeah….This buncha [farmers] stroll in here and see the place, and it’s all…clean and machines workin’ proper, and they say, ‘This place is GREAT.’ And then they see … enemies working together…, and they say, ‘You fellas are GREAT.’ Then they taste our bread and they go, ‘This bread … it’s GREAT.’ I mean, G, why white people always be usin’ the word ‘GREAT’?”
I tell him I don’t know. But, trust me, every opportunity I could find after that, I tell him how ‘GREAT’ he is, just to mess with him a little.
Boyle writes about an incident that happens some four months later.
It is nearly closing time, and I arrive at the bakery in the evening. Luis sees me … and rushes outside.
“Hey, G,” he says…”You not gonna BELIEVE what happened to me yesterday after my shift.”
[Luis] proceeds to tell me that, after work, he goes to pick up his four-year-old daughter, Tiffany, at the babysitter’s. He puts her in the car, and they drive to their tiny apartment, where, for the first time, Luis is paying rent with honestly earned, clean money. He unlocks the front door, and Tiffany scurries in, down the hallway…. She plants her feet in the living room and extends her arms and takes in the whole room with her eyes. She then declares, with an untethered smile, “This … is GREAT.” …”What’s great, [Tiffany]?” (Luis asks) [She] clutches her heart and gushes, “MY HOOOME!”
Luis seems to be unable to speak at exactly this moment. Our eyes find each other, and our souls well up, along with our eyee. I point at him. “You . . . did . . . this. You’ve never had a home in your life–now you have one. You did this. You were the biggest drug dealer in town, and you stopped and baked bread instead. You did this. You’ve never had a father in your life–and now you are one . . . and I hate to have to tell you . . . but . . . you’re great.”[1]
You have to be out of our mind to think that anyone could change that much. You have to be out of your mind to think that God is in the business of smashing the chains that bind us, that God is in the business of setting people free. Father Boyle is out of his mind. Luis is out of his mind. I want to be out of my mind too.
This breaking of chains, it’s complicated, hard work. The people of Israel wandered around in the desert for forty years before they reached the Promised Land, and then they found the Promised Land had its share of problems. The Egyptians and the Libyans and the Tunisians have discovered what so many have learned before them: creating a nation after years of tyranny is hard, one step forward two steps back kind of work. Anyone brave enough to embrace a new future, to take hold of a second chance, to do what Luis did, discovers that it is long hard road.
There’s another chapter to Luis’ story. It happened a few months after the “great” conversation on a Wednesday afternoon. He was loading the trunk of his car, in the projects, readying himself for a camping trip with friends. Two gang members, with their faces covered, entered their “enemy’s” territory, looking for someone to take out. They saw Luis and must have thought to themselves, “He’ll do.” They walked up to him and executed him.
This world we live in, it is messy and complicated and even with God’s good work; this side of heaven, things are incomplete, justice is imperfect, things are not the way they are supposed to be. But that doesn’t stop God and that shouldn’t stop us from throwing the weight of our lives towards smashing the chains that bind God’s people.
Today’s story makes the claim that God is at work in our world and in our lives. When God enters in this world, prison walls crumble, empires fall, tyrants weep, people are set free.
That is what God does. To believe that–well you have to be a little bit out of your mind. To live into that truth–well you have to be a little bit out of your mind.
May we be out of our minds as we follow this God who wants nothing more than to set us all free.
AMEN
———- [1] Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, p. 13-16.