{"id":774,"date":"2012-05-06T11:48:07","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T15:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=774"},"modified":"2015-01-26T11:55:14","modified_gmt":"2015-01-26T16:55:14","slug":"abide-in-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=774","title":{"rendered":"Abide In Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<body><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-774-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Abide.In_.Me_.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Abide.In_.Me_.mp3\">http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Abide.In_.Me_.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Abide.In_.Me_.pdf\">Abide.In.Me<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Texts on Sunday, May 6, 2012<br>\n<em>Acts 16: 16-40; John 15: 4-8<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In more than half the books of the New Testament, someone is in prison. The word \u201cprison\u201d peppers the whole of <em>Acts<\/em>. Good people are being stopped, frisked, stripped, flogged, thrown into prison and charged with disturbing the peace. The peace! Not from the Bible did anyone fetch the notion that religion and politics don\u2019t mix. The Bible turns that can over: True religion is <em>always <\/em>messing with politics because true religion has one account of power and glory, and politics has another account of power and glory, and these two accounts of whose will will be done on earth\u2013they do not match and cannot merely co-exist. It\u2019s a pious platitude that the faithful are imprisoned for what they believe. Power doesn\u2019t give a rat\u2019s whisker what fantasies fill your head. Power is worried by what you\u2019re going to do on account of what you believe. If nobody much goes to jail on Jesus\u2019 account anymore, maybe the fear of the law has overmastered the fear of the Lord. And don\u2019t you know that power prefers it that way!<\/p>\n<p>Many of you know that I was numbered among the twenty defendants on trial last week for our action of last October to stop Stop+Frisk, the policy of the mayor of this town and of his police to strike fear into every non-white man in the city on the theory that guns and drugs will be easier to control if all people of color are afraid of being violated by the police every day everywhere\u2013fourth amendment be damned\u2013and also afraid of occasionally being shot to death in their bathrooms and bedrooms and backyards like Ramarley Graham and Trayvon Martin\u2013this, a stone-faced reminder that prison isn\u2019t power\u2019s only bullet. Stop+Frisk is city-sanctioned terrorism. To stop this, two dozen citizens stood in front of a Harlem police station last fall and shouted our hatred for this practice which degrades and destroys millions of men and degrades and destroys the law itself. For protesting and not moving\u2013 we shall not be moved\u2013we were arrested. We spent a few hours in jail then and forty on trial last week and were found guilty of disturbing the peace of this city with our disorderly conduct. For a small fee to cover some of the court\u2019s huge costs, we were sent off without more punishments.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s be clear: we did not suffer significantly; comforts not needed, except for those defendants who have often been stopped and frisked. We did not suffer significantly; rather, we aimed to signal significantly; to signal that our society is slipping down a steep slope of fear. The policies America is putting in place to protect us from the things we fear are unraveling the fabric of our society and rotting the framework of our best laws. The nation\u2019s president has signed into law a practice of the former president, making it now legal to declare any American citizen an \u201cenemy combatant,\u201d who therefore has no right to a defense and may be imprisoned for life without trial. This is the law of the land now, under this president. You think the other guy will lift that? Are you afraid\u2013of the right things? Leaning hard on the everlasting arms, lovers of God and of God\u2019s law now need to signal significantly that God is not mocked. Power and glory belong to God alone.<\/p>\n<p>See this with me. The system of human power looks at threats to its machinery through the smallest frames possible. Guilt is assigned for crimes which take place inside minutes and seconds, the littlest frames the law can construct. This leaves the system of power free to ignore whatever is set outside its frames. Crimes that unfold over months and years and generations are just not crimes. The mass incarceration of people of color. The failure to educate the poor. The destruction of topsoil, the ruin of the food supply, the heating up the globe, the bankrupting of households by the millions. Are these not crimes? No! These are not crimes because the actions that cause them do not fit inside the tiny time frame chosen by the system of power to serve its basic needs. On this understanding, the judge in the case of the Harlem 20 acted correctly; indeed, could not have done otherwise than convict the twenty if he would honor the system we have employed him to serve, which only has eyes for crimes inside tiny time frames.<\/p>\n<p>But now consider Paul and Silas. The slave girl was in a kind of prison, possessed by a demon that made her into a lucrative circus act. Paul freed her from her enslavement, her prison. But power does not appreciate it when workers are freed from their masters. Frustrated, the owners of the girl laid hands on Paul and Silas. The magistrates surrounded the owners with their power, and the mob surrounded the magistrates with its power. Does this sound familiar?<\/p>\n<p>Now, power always assumes it sets its threats upon the final frame. It thinks it has the last word, the \u201csentence,\u201d the judgment, rendered in pain, prison, even death. Always power assumes that if your body is bound by irons, you can\u2019t do anything; and that if you fear to have your body bound, you won\u2019t do anything. But here is the turning point. Since the system of human power is founded on fear, it is vulnerable to those whose faith causes them to fear God, not guns, not governments. People of faith are the awfulest enemies for those who bank on fear.<\/p>\n<p>The story from <em>Acts <\/em>tells it true. The jailer was instructed to put Paul and Silas in the innermost cell and fasten their feet in the stocks. Maximum security, it surely seemed. So what do the two do, \u2019round midnight? Sing!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In prison cell and dungeon vile<br>\nOur thoughts to them are winging<br>\nWhen friends by shame are undefiled<br>\nHow can I keep from singing?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Then came earthquake to spring open all the doors and shackles of city-sanctioned terror. The story doesn\u2019t say it\u2019s a miracle\u2013just that it\u2019s powerful; just that human powers are but a brass clasp on a daybook compared with the power of possibility coiled inside what faith in the Lord may ask be done.<\/p>\n<p>Now, in ordinary power struggles, victory over my opponent brings opportunity for me. What movie hero does not spring into action when his fetters fail? But watch Paul and Silas. Their confidence reveals a new paradigm for power, for though their bonds of iron are broken, they are not freed from the bonds of love, even love for the enemy. They are still \u201cslaves of the Most High God,\u201d as the slave-girl knew. Therefore, when these apostles swing into action, they do not move\u2013because they are already free. In the freedom of faith, they have all the time in the world to do what must be done. They are seeing through a frame infinite and eternal, a frame which renders pathetic the threats of those who can only bind and bury. The frame through which they look\u2013and through which they would be seen\u2013 completely surrounds them surrounding the jailer and the prison surrounding the crowds surrounding the judges and the money makers and the slave traders. Seeing in this way, they are able to save the jailer who was desperate to death with fear. It is as if an angel shouted, <em>Everybody, stay where you are and put your hands in the air: God\u2019s got you surrounded.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Do you believe it? Better: do you sometimes feel it, that God\u2019s got the whole world in those hands? If so, abide with me, says the Lord. When you are called to go where the trouble is, go faithful and fearing not, ready to trouble the waters and cause tyrants to tremble. And though you have liberty to leave the tight spot where you are bidden to serve, stay. Abide with me, says the Lord. \u201cIf you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not for one moment do I think myself one who has lived deep into this abiding mystery, trusting that whatever we ask for will be done for us. But I am ready to learn with the church what it can mean to abide in our Lord; to sing we shall, we shall not be moved; to say with the prophet Jeremiah (8:21ff), \u201cFor the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn\u2013and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?\u201d I am ready with you to proclaim with the apostle, \u201cFor God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control.\u201d (2 Tim 1:7) I want to remember that even after they were commanded to leave it, Paul and Silas stayed in that prison until finally their fortitude frightened the magistrates who came and apologized for the wrong they had done. (Acts 16: 35-40)<\/p>\n<p>When you break the bread of communion today, when you drink the cup, may these words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer join you; words sent from prison where he sang and prayed and suffered hanging by Hitler in order to bring evil to its knees and truth to light inside an abiding mystery:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[A Christian] has no last line of escape from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal, but must drink the earthly cup to the dregs\u2013and only in doing so is the crucified and risen Lord with that person, and that person crucified and risen with Christ.\u00a0 (<em>Letters and Papers from Prison<\/em>, p. 336)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Abide in me, says the Lord, and I will abide in you.<\/p>\n<p><em>Rev. Stephen H. Phelps The Riverside Church<\/em><br>\n\u00a9 2012 Stephen H. Phelps<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abide.In.Me Texts on Sunday, May 6, 2012 Acts 16: 16-40; John 15: 4-8 In more than half the books of the New Testament, someone is in prison. The word \u201cprison\u201d peppers the whole of Acts. Good people are being stopped, frisked, stripped, flogged, thrown into prison and charged with disturbing the peace. The peace! Not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[56,38,8,27],"tags":[64,65],"class_list":["post-774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communion","category-mass-incarceratiom","category-sermon-2012","category-social-justice","tag-communion","tag-mass-incarceration"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}