There’s an old Yiddish saying that goes “der mentsh trakht un Got lakht”.  Man plans, and God laughs.  We face unexpected/unforeseen turns and paths along the journey we are on together.  This doesn’t mean we don’t make plans or prepare.  From as back as I can remember, I have heard announcements in church followed by the words, “We make these announcements subject to God’s will.” This is a highly biblical posture.  Jesus’ brother James puts it like this – “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’  Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little while, and then vanishes.  Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.”  James 4:13-15

We often say “God willing” when we talk about future plans.  “I’ll speak to you on Thursday, God willing.”  I remember how a dear friend at Blythwood used to respond whenever I said: “God willing.”  She’d say, “The good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”  It’s actually a Johnny Cash song.

 There are two things going on in that statement which we’re going to look at this morning in light of the story in Acts 21.  The first has to do with God’s will.  Each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer we pray for God’s will to be done.  “Thy will be done” or “Your will be done.”  This, by default, of course, means not my will. We are entering a season at our church where we are seeking God’s will for us as a community of faith.  The goal of this season is to be able to say at the end of it “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” or “The Lord’s will be done.”  This means not my will or not what I think the best or easiest option is.  I’m talking about surrendering to God’s will that is not weakness or a forsaking of responsibility but a deep and abiding trust in God’s goodness and faithfulness to his promises.   The second thing that this phrase implies is that the creek will rise.  When the creek rises, it’s bad news (which reminds me of another Johnny Cash song called “How High’s the Water Mama?”).  In our lives, the creek will rise.  Life is difficult, as we heard last week.  We find ourselves saying “I didn’t think things would go this way.” Like the believers in our story today, we’re weeping and saying, “I don’t want you to go,” or maybe, “I don’t want to go.”  I don’t want to leave a person, or maybe a place.

You know what I’m talking about here, or you will know.  So we’re holding up these two things together today.  God’s good will and stepping into a difficult unknown.  Both of these things have already been introduced as we head into the final section of Acts.  Paul is heading toward Jerusalem where he will be arrested.  Paul will then be brought to Rome in Roman custody.

All of this will be happening according to the plan of God.  Remember the promise the God made to about Paul – “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings, and before the people of Israel:” (Acts 9:15)  Remember Jesus’ plan for his church “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The church has said “Sign me up,” and through the church God is enacting the plan.  Paul is playing a major role here in the final part of the plan, and Paul is modelling the two things we’re looking at today – placing himself in the will of God and resolutely facing suffering and the unknown.  In Acts 18, Paul is passing through Ephesus.  “When they asked him to stay longer, he declined; but on taking leave of them, he said, ‘I will return to you, if God wills.’  Then he set sail from Ephesus.”   (18:20-21)

God willing.

In other words, Paul is putting himself in the will of God.  Not only this, but Paul has been given an indication by the Holy Spirit as to what awaits him as he travels to Jerusalem (which reminds us of someone else who set his face to go to Jerusalem knowing what awaited him).  Look at what he says to the elders in Ephesus right before our passage – “And now, as a captive to the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and persecution are waiting for me.” (20:22-23)

Does this mean that the idea of self-preservation is a foreign one to the Christian?  I would say not.  Remember how all but the apostles fled Jerusalem and were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria after Stephen was killed and persecution ensued.  Paul’s actions are not a model necessarily, but they’re not unknown.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer felt that the Holy Spirit’s leading for him was to turn down the offer to stay in the United States before WW II and to return to his home country of Germany, not knowing what fate might befall him.

Paul is given a message by the Holy Spirit as to what awaits him.  Often we don’t get this kind of advanced notice.  The creek often rises quite suddenly.    There is a sadness that goes along with the creek rising.  I want us to note how these scenes are being described by Luke.  The Bible is nothing if not honest about human emotion.  There are no instructions here to maintain a stiff upper lip or to remain stoic or not show any emotions or just get over it or whatever we want to say or feel in the face of sadness.  Look at how the scene with the Ephesians ends.  “When he had finished speaking, he knelt down with them all and prayed.  There was much weeping among them all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, grieving especially because of what he had said, that they would not see him again.  Then they brought him to the ship.” (20:36-38)

Have you ever had to say goodbye to someone or someplace?  Final goodbyes are hard.  They’re like a tearing apart.  This is how Luke describes the departure.  The NRSV puts it “When we had parted from them,” but the meaning of the word in Greek for part here is tearing away.  “When we had torn ourselves away from them,” is how the NIV puts it.  When Paul and his travelling companions leave Tyre, the people of the city are telling Paul not to go.

How do we live in that kind of sadness?  The kind of sadness in which we’re saying things like “We don’t want you to go.  I don’t want you to go.” 

They face it together.  Note that as Paul and his companions are travelling, they are seeking out communities of faith no matter where they go – even in places they’d never been to before.  The church has become a network of communities who are willing to take one another in, welcome one another, support one another, grieve with one another.

Pray with one another.  Everyone together.  I love the detail that all of the people went from Tyre.  Men, women, and children.  Look at the line from 20:36.  When he had finished speaking, he knelt down with them all and prayed.  This group of people kneeling on the beach praying together in the midst of their uncertainty and sadness.  The usual posture for prayer was standing up.  Here we have entire groups of people kneeling together, symbolically signifying a humbleness before God – a need for God.  The importance of prayer posture as a kind of symbolic act.  Falling to our knees.  Falling on our faces.  The importance to the church of praying mothers.  Praying fathers.  Praying children.  Praying grandmothers and grandfathers.  Down on their knees until they’re physically unable to get down on their knees, and then falling on their faces in prayer. We’ve been talking about habits that leave us open to the Holy Spirit forming us in the image of Christ.  They continued in the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.  The significance of surrendering ourselves to God in prayer when the waters have risen or the waters are rising –not to ensure getting what our own wills ask for but to lead us to a greater understanding of God; of our need for God; of God with us; of Christ in us the hope of glory; of the Spirit’s comfort and peace; of the truth that God has us and that God is in control no matter our circumstances.

The importance of symbolic action.  Speaking of which, along comes Agabus from Jerusalem.  Paul and his companions have reached Caesarea.  The seat of Roman power in the region on the Mediterranean coast.  Peter had gone to Caesarea to meet Cornelius along with his family and friends.  Phillip had ended up in Caesarea too.  One of the seven deacons who were tasked with serving the Greek widows.  The one who told the Ethiopian eunuch about Jesus and baptized him.  We find out that Phillip has four daughters and they’re all prophets.  The words promised through the prophet Joel are happening – your sons and daughters will prophesy.  Here is Agabus, who takes some symbolic prophetic action.  Agabus takes Paul’s belt and ties up his own hands and feet with it and says in the same way Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns the belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles in Jerusalem.

Again I want us to note the sadness of this scene.  Once again the message is “We don’t want you to go!”

Then we hear from Paul.  “What are you doing weeping and breaking my heart?  For I am ready not only to be bound but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”  Since he would not be persuaded, we remained silent except to say, “The Lord’s will be done.”  Your will be done.  Not mine but yours.

Note that Paul doesn’t try to explain the reason for the suffering he knows is ahead of him.  His response in the face of it is “I’m not afraid to die.”  Our dear sister Dorothy was asked by the oncologist how she was feeling about things as she faced the end of her life.  Her response was “Well, I’m not afraid to die if that’s what you mean.”  “Why” questions can be very hard to answer in these kinds of cases.  Dean Pinter, in his commentary on Acts, tells a story of a parishioner in his middle age, a teacher, otherwise fit and hale, who receives a diagnosis of serious cancer that had spread through his body.  When posed the question “Why you?” this man responded “Why not me?”  There is no easy answer to either question, but this is what that response meant to this man – “Who knows what my testimony in walking through this crisis will mean for others and the gospel?  Maybe this will be the most important lesson I teach my students.”

Who knows?  The Lord’s will be done.  Paul could say this because he followed, identified with, belonged to, entrusted his life to Jesus, whose Father brought him through suffering and death and resurrection life and glory.  For the follower of Jesus, nothing is ever the end.  The one that we follow is the one who heard his Father say This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased; the one on whom the Holy Spirit descended like a dove; the one who gifts the Holy Spirit to us and walks with us.

The one in whom Paul could say “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Jesus Christ for you.” (1 Thess 5:18)   This is not to say give thanks for all circumstances, but that in any circumstance cause for thanks can be found.

A few years ago I came across a conversation between Anderson Cooper of CNN and Stephen Colbert.  Cooper was talking to Colbert about the death of his father, who was killed in a plane crash along with two of Colbert’s brothers when the comedian was 10.  This was part of their conversation:

“You told an interviewer that you have learned to – in your words – ‘love the thing that I most wish had not happened’… Do you really believe that?”

“It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering.  There’s no escaping that.  I don’t want it to have happened.  I want it not to have happened, but if you are grateful for your life – which I think is a positive thing to do, not everybody is, and I am not always, but it’s the most positive thing to do – then you have to be grateful for all of it.  You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for.”

Colbert goes on about how the common bonds of suffering bring people closer – “You get the awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being… At a young age, I suffered something so bad that by the time I was in serious relationships in my life, with friends, or with my wife, or with my children, I was understanding that everyone is suffering.”

Following the Way of Christ enables us to say with assurance that we are beloved by God and that God is indeed in control.  That God brings life even from death.  That in Jesus, nothing is ever the end.

And so we pray “Your will be done” and set our faces resolutely toward what lies ahead of us, just as Paul does. God grant that Christ continues to uphold us and the Spirit continues to guide us along our Way together.

Amen