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I was 16 when I tore my ACL for the
first time. I was playing a high school
soccer game when someone hit the side of my knee with their knee and made my
knee bend in a way that the good Lord did not design my knee to bend. As a result, I was soon writhing on the
ground using words that they would have preferred we not use in the small
Catholic high school I attended. The
intensity of the pain was at a level I had never before experienced.
That, however, was nothing compared
to the pain I would experience the day after the surgery. See, for the month before the surgery,
everything had settled in. It was
comfortable. I could even walk on
it. Just when everything had calmed
down, a doctor cut it open with the knife.
That evening, when I slept longer than the duration of the pain
medications, I woke up feeling like someone had screwed a new ligament into my
bones. Which, curiously enough, is
exactly what had happened. I have never
had pain like that, and when I had knee surgery twice more, I was sure to wake
up in the middle of the night to take pain medication.
It doesn’t really make sense, does
it? Why does it hurt more when we try
and fix things? My knee should have
realized that the doctor was setting things up for the best, right? My body should have been happy that I would
once again have lateral stability.
Instead, my body reacted like someone was trying to cut off my leg.
It’s not only surgery that causes
this reaction. Think about what happens
when you’re standing in a dark room and someone flips on a very bright
light. You’re blinded, right? You can’t see a thing, and it can be so
bright that you have to shield your eyes from the very light that’s helping you
see. At first, the things sent to help
can actually hurt us.
I could go on and on listing
examples of how the things that are here to help actually end up hurting us at
first. The point is that change is
difficult, even change for the good.
What happens is a system has hardened—it knows its limits and has
routines in place. After an injury, a
body adapts to a new way of being. In
the dark, your pupils dilate and seek out as much light as possible. To change this system, there is enormous
resistance that must be overcome. To
alter the direction, it takes great effort, and there is no guarantee that what
is currently there will not resist.
So when we view the response of the
city of Ephesus to Paul’s arrival and his time spent preaching the Gospel, we
shouldn’t be so surprised at some of the reactions he received.
First of all, notice the time Paul
spends in Ephesus. So often, when we
think of the Biblical narratives, we picture instant conversion, moments in
which the light switch flips on and the Gospel is suddenly made real in someone’s
life, and then we imagine that they never struggle again. When we look at our own lives and don’t see
something similar, we feel inferior.
Here, Paul spends three months
preaching in Ephesus. During those three
months, he does his best to make the Kingdom of God real. He was introducing the people to the way God
works in the world, and the people, we understand, began to change.
But just as the people were
changing, resistance was forming. Evil
rumors began to spread, because Paul was challenging the status quo. To follow the Gospel with our whole hearts
implies that there are certain societal practices that we’ll have to give up,
and when enough people start to do that, those with interest in keeping things
the way they are begin to get upset.
So what does Paul do? Give up?
No—he spends the next two years preaching the Gospel in Ephesus. He invests two years in spreading the
message. It’s not necessarily one big
dramatic movement—it’s showing up, day after day, and trusting God to work
through his efforts.
What we see is amazing change that
goes on in the city. Pieces of clothing
that touch Paul are able to heal the sick.
Witches and warlocks willingly burn books full of incantations. Lives are changed. The city begins to change.
See, when the church is at work in
the world, it affects more than just ourselves.
If our faith is kept bottled up within us, within these walls of the church,
then we’re missing the point. Faith in
the New Testament always leads the church out into the world, and the two often
end up in conflict because the world doesn’t care much for the change.
The same is true in Ephesus. The silversmiths, the ones who make models of
Artemis to sell, see the change taking place, and they’re worried about losing
their economic place in the city. They’re
worried that if the folks in the city stop worshiping Artemis, they won’t keep
buying silver models, and then they’ll start losing money.
So they riot.
Paul narrowly avoids getting caught
up in this, but the important thing to note is that when change threatens the economic
model in the city, people get angry.
This isn’t a theological battle—it’s an economic one. But the church can’t be afraid to make
waves. The church can’t keep itself
squirreled away where it is safe just to avoid conflict. The word leads us out into the world, and we
cannot be afraid of conflict—the world will resist the change, but that doesn’t
mean we are wrong.
It’s easy to stay inside, where it’s
safe, to practice spirituality that avoids the conflict. The world will resist the change the church
seeks. Systems don’t like to change, and
when you threaten people’s income, you’re treading on dangerous ground.
But think about this—how does a
light bulb work? Light bulbs, at least
the old fashioned ones that are supposedly going to be illegal at some point,
have a filament, and when the current passes through it, the resistance causes
the wire to glow, giving off light.
In the same way, the Word of God
can only spread when it goes out into the world. If we keep it bottled up inside the church,
it never meets the world, will never engage with the resistance, will never
spread light to the world. If we try and
keep it bottled up to keep ourselves safe, we miss the point.
But if we follow the Word into the
world, we’ll meet resistance—but in that resistance, Christ’s light will shine
even brighter.
After all, it was on the cross, the
moment of the world’s greatest resistance to the Gospel, where God’s love was
most magnified, and it paved the way for God’s greatest victory.
So may we go and engage with the
world, trusting that our witness will help the light shine.
Let us pray
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