Prisons and Prayers

Written by Marv Thiessen

Pastor Marv Thiessen

Calgary First Mennonite Church

April 18, 2010

 

PRISONS AND PRAYERS

Acts 12:1-19

 

I wonder if people are more likely to pray if they are imprisoned. I wonder if people are more likely to pray when people they care about are imprisoned. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were the case. That’s because people seem to be inclined to turn to prayer when their life circumstances become very negative and difficult for them. Imprisonment is a time like that.

If I’m correct in those thoughts, then the people during the time that the book of Acts was written were people very much like we are today. When life got really hard, as represented by imprisonment, they turned to prayer. Of course, that wasn’t the only time they prayed. But the record in Acts shows that when Christians were imprisoned, prayers occurred. Two stories in particular caught my attention in thinking about a theme of prisons and prayers. One is the story of Paul and Silas being thrown into a prison in Philippi. It sounds as if they might have spent a good portion of that night in prayer and song before God miraculously delivered them. The other is the story we’re looking at today, the story of Peter’s imprisonment and subsequent release. I want to suggest some potential lessons for us from this story and then turn our attention to prayers for Colombia with reference to the lessons of this story.

I wish to draw your attention to some of the details in the story and add some of my thoughts and comments about those details. The story tells us that King Herod had arrested some Christians with the intent of persecuting them. Among those was James, one of the twelve apostles and original followers of Jesus. Herod had James killed and found that this pleased some of the Jews. We can assume from the story that he found this approval to be appealing and thought that he would capitalize on the rise in popularity that this kind of action generated by also imprisoning Peter. It seems safe to assume that Herod had it in mind to have Peter killed just as he had James killed.

The story then tells us that while Peter was kept in prison, the church was earnestly praying to God for him. I think that verse 5, which gives us this information, stands as a key verse in the story. When the church was up against something terrible, they turned to prayer. They may have intervened with Herod in Peter’s behalf, but if they did the storywriter doesn’t mention it. The storywriter’s emphasis makes it clear that it is God who ultimately can do something about the terrible things that can happen to humans. We also note that the church was praying earnestly. I don’t think we need to conclude that a certain degree of effort or seriousness is required in our prayer in order to have God act. I think that prayer is prayer and that God doesn’t measure how seriously we’re taking prayer. But we can remind ourselves from this story that prayer is something to be taken seriously and something to be entered into with purpose.

And so it happened that God acted in this story. The storywriter tells us that an angel of the Lord came to Peter in his cell, his chains simply fell off, and the angel led Peter out of the prison into the streets of the city. It’s worth noting that Peter was well-guarded. He was chained up, soldiers were personally on each side of him, and sentries guarded the door. Four soldiers were assigned to be guarding Peter at all times. Herod was making sure that Peter would not be able to escape. He had his bases covered. I think we draw encouragement from the idea that this story inspires, the idea that God can intervene and interrupt the best plans of humans if He decides to do so.

I suppose we can assume that Peter wasn’t exactly expecting this release. When this happened, he thought he was dreaming until the angel left him on the streets of Jerusalem and Peter realized that this was real. When he realized that God had miraculously acted in his release, he headed to the house that people think must have been a sort of headquarters for Christians in Jerusalem. Although it was night, many Christians were at the house and were praying. I wonder what they were praying. I expect that our first impulse would be to assume that they were praying for Peter’s release. Likely, they were. But would that have been the only thing they were praying? If you think about how we respond when we gather to pray for someone in a difficult place, you’ll recognize that we’re not all inclined to pray the same way. Naturally, we pray that the person will escape the difficulty, but many of us also pray from a perspective that recognizes that escape may well not come. The Christians in this story in Acts could have been praying that Peter would remain faithful to God in this trouble. After all, he had a history that suggested some weakness in that area. They could have been praying that Peter would not suffer too much as Herod had him killed. After all, they had already seen Herod kill one of their leaders.

I wonder what their reaction to news that Peter was at the door says about their praying. When Rhoda, the servant girl, answered Peter’s knock at the door, she was so happy that she failed to open the door for Peter when she recognized who was at the door. Instead, she went in to tell the people that Peter was right there. They didn’t believe her and suggested that she was out of her mind. Eventually, after Peter kept banging on the door, they opened the door and were astonished that it was really Peter. I’m struck by how the Christians didn’t believe Rhoda’s news that Peter was right there and then the storyteller’s comment that they were astonished that Peter was there. While they had been praying earnestly, their reactions reveal that they didn’t really expect God to enable Peter’s escape.

What do we make of that? It seems like we could conclude that God doesn’t require us to believe that He will do something when we pray for him to take that action. It seems to me that it’s fairly common for Christians to think that the extent of faith they have will influence whether the prayers they make will be answered as they pray. Although there are stories where Jesus commends people for their faith when he heals them and although Jesus commends faith in prayer, I don’t believe we can make a correlation between the certainty of our belief that God will do something and God actually doing that thing. I believe we should pray with faith, meaning that we pray with a belief that God is all-powerful, faithful and caring and with a sense of trust in God, but that a prayer of faith doesn’t require us to believe that God will do precisely what we ask.

I also think that these Christians in Jerusalem had likely been gathered for prayer when James had been imprisoned earlier. On that occasion, God had not intervened to have James released from prison. These Christians had experienced the reality of praying seriously for God to act in their lives or in the lives of their loved ones and had not seen that prayer answered the way they had hoped. We identify with these people as Christians who have also prayed for God to intervene and have not seen what we have prayed for happen. What do we do when we experience that? I think the example of these Christians is helpful. They just got together again and prayed to God when another bad thing happened. We don’t ever give up on prayer because God has not done exactly what we asked in earlier prayers. We continue to believe that God is always capable of acting in response to our prayers and so we pray. We also never give up on prayer because we understand that God works in us when we pray, giving strength and commitment. While we live realistically, knowing that God often does not change the difficult circumstances of our lives, we still continue to trust in him in our difficult situations, asking for deliverance but accepting his strength to endure when we are not delivered.

This applies well to our prayers as a church for the country of Colombia. We have been praying for concerns in Colombia for about eight years because we are in a sister church relationship with Berna Mennonite Church in Bogotá. Over recent years, we have prayed publicly every month for our sister church and for God to work in Colombia by the Holy Spirit, inspiring peace and justice in that country. And what has been the result? I suppose we can’t measure the results of our prayers in Colombia very well. We know that during the time of our praying, there has been positive progress in demobilizing paramilitary forces that carried out violence and mayhem for their own gain. But we also know that violence and mayhem continue. It’s not hard to imagine that some of the Christians of Colombia feel like they live imprisoned lives. That’s another way to draw a parallel from this morning’s text to the situation in Colombia. Some Christians in Colombia live under threat of death. They can relate to Peter being held in prison by a political leader.

Recent communication from Justapaz, the peace and justice arm of Mencoldes, Colombia’s version of Mennonite Central Committee, indicates that paramilitary forces are re-mobilizing and gaining strength as they continue their violent ways. Janna Bowman, who works with Justapaz, writes of a pastor and community leader in Córdoba, who recently received a crudely written death threat from a paramilitary group, delivered to him a local teenager. The letter predicted rape, torture and death in order to frighten the civilian population. This kind of act is often intended to displace subsistence farmers and indigenous people who live on the land in more rural areas. It’s also intended to frighten community leaders like pastors often are so that they will stop speaking for human rights. It seems that it is often large, multi-national companies who are behind the paramilitary actions. These companies covet the land for their own purposes, perhaps mining or perhaps to plant large agricultural crops.

As I read some of the material about these issues over the last few weeks, I was struck by how something that seems good can be the stimulus for some awful things. It seems that palm oil is being researched for the purpose of creating combustible fuel from it. It seems environmentally sound to develop fuel for our cars that is completely renewable and fairly clean as I understand it. If our cars can run on something like palm oil, that could be a very good thing. But as the demand for such a product increases, large companies look for land to grow oil palms. And in Colombia, it seems, that desire can lead to people being displaced from their land by violent paramilitary forces that serve the multi-national companies.

I tell you those things so that we are reminded of the situation in Colombia and so that we are inspired to continue praying. Although our prayers over the last eight years have not brought about an end to violence in Colombia, we will continue praying. We know that the church in Colombia continues in this vein. They have been praying for peace for much longer than we have been joining them in prayers and they continue to pray when the results don’t seem to come. We simply keep on praying. We believe that God acts when we pray. We don’t assume that He acts precisely the way that we ask, but we believe that He responds to his people praying.

Today, April 18, is the day that the Colombian Mennonite Church has set aside as a Day of Prayer, so we’re going to take some time to pray after this sermon is complete. Tomorrow, April 19, is a day that the Colombian Mennonite Church calls its Day of Action. They may participate in some public acts of calling attention to injustice. While we can’t join them in those acts, I have put together several ideas for action for ourselves. I have written a letter to the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lawrence Cannon, in behalf of our church, asking the Canadian government to play a part in working for human rights in Colombia, specifically holding Canadian companies accountable for just practices as they do business in Colombia. I invite you to take time to read and sign the letter after the service. Then, I’ll mail the letter to Mr. Cannon. (There is one copy for signing and a number of other copies so that a number of you can read what you are signing at the same time.) The second idea is one requested by Justapaz. They invite concerned North Americans to write letters of support for threatened church communities in Colombia. You can write in English and they have people that will translate the letters into Spanish. I’ve placed twenty copies of an idea of how to do this on the library table. Take one home and write the letter tomorrow, then email it to Justapaz.

When we have an emphasis like this on a Sunday morning service, I understand that there may be some reaction that this seems too political. I suppose it is political when we address government but what I’ve said this morning stems from what I believe is one of God’s concerns and desires, that humans treat each other with love and justice. When that doesn’t happen, it is right and good to get involved in prayer to God as we ask him to transform people and it is right and good to share what we believe are God’s desires with our government.

As a result, even if we’re not convinced that God will suddenly cause all the evil acts of humans in Colombia to end, we stop to pray. Like the church in Jerusalem, we emphasize prayer in difficult times because we trust in God.