August 4, 2024
Open Doors
Acts 12:6-16
Rev. Shannon Jordan
We are in a summer sermon series called The Good Book: Meeting Our Ancestors in Faith. We are looking at various stories in scripture not as information, but as stories that have the power to transform us—helping us to live as disciples of Jesus.
I picked Rhoda’s story because I LOVE her story and I hadn’t thought about it in ages. As a matter of fact, I didn’t remember it until I re-read the passage. Maybe you will also be reminded of her story as I read it, or you will hear it for the first time.
Just before our passage, we find out that James, the brother of John, and a disciple in Jesus’s inner circle with Peter and John, had been killed by Herod. Herod realized the Jews appreciated this and arrested Peter. The verse just before I start reading states that the church is praying fervently for Peter. Peter is under heavy guard and the expectation is that he will also be executed like James.
Hear the word of the Lord:
The very night before Herod was going to bring him out, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while guards in front of the door were keeping watch over the prison. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists. The angel said to him, ‘Fasten your belt and put on your sandals.’ He did so. Then he said to him, ‘Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.’ Peter went out and followed him; he did not realize that what was happening with the angel’s help was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. After they had passed the first and the second guard, they came before the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went outside and walked along a lane, when suddenly the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself and said, ‘Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hands of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.’
As soon as he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose other name was Mark, where many had gathered and were praying. When he knocked at the outer gate, a maid named Rhoda came to answer. On recognizing Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that, instead of opening the gate, she ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gate. They said to her, ‘You are out of your mind!’ But she insisted that it was so. They said, ‘It is his angel.’ Meanwhile, Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the gate, they saw him and were amazed.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Many of us have been watching the Olympics. They have been really exciting and inspirational. It made me think of something I am really good at. I mean gold level good. I have earned medals in two different events—the first is locking my keys in my car. I was so good at it that we rejoiced when we bought a car that the manufacturer promised that I couldn’t lock my keys in them. I am a three time gold medal winner in locking my keys in a car that is impossible to lock my keys in.
I am just that good.
My other event is the pairs key losing event. Two different times I have had people come into my home or office and pick them up and take them thinking they were their keys. The first time was gold medal level as I didn’t get them back from my friend until after I had spent several hundred dollars replacing car keys. The second I only got a bronze as I quickly realized someone had them and I was able to call them and ask for them back.
Many of us laugh at this because we know what it is like to be locked out of somewhere we want to go in and not being able to.
Our story today has Peter miraculously breaking out of prison but being locked out of safety. The church is locked inside because Christians are being arrested and executed. Rhoda, a young slave woman, asks who is at the door, hears the familiar voice of Peter, and races to tell the rest of the people that their prayers have been answered, that Peter was freed from prison—without letting Peter in.
Members of the early church, probably the who’s who of Acts, are in the room praying, but when Rhoda tells them Peter is free, they don’t believe her. They told her she was crazy. They told her it was Peter’s ghost, with the assumption that he is already dead… they believe all of this instead of believing that God has answered their fervent prayers. We see echoes of the disciples not believing that Jesus is alive when Mary told them.
The church is praying that Peter doesn’t suffer the same fate as James. They have come together for prayer, as well as comfort and encouragement. While it might be easy to laugh that the church got it so wrong, they are just being pragmatic. These people have faith. They have seen miraculous things. They KNOW that God is at work. They know that prayer works. And they know prayer is not always answered the way we want. I assume they prayed for James and James wasn’t rescued. This is clear from their response to Rhoda that they didn’t really believe God would answer the prayer and free Peter. They thought they knew God’s answer.
So why pray? Why pray when you are in a situation where there seems to be no hope? Why were they together to pray? When we pray in dire situations, it is not as much about telling God what we want and expecting God to fix it like a genie gives a wish. It is aligning ourselves with God who is all powerful and loves us. I know for years I had the idea that if I prayed just the right way with just the right words then my prayers would be answered the way I wanted them to be. If I got enough people to pray with me. If I got the right spiritual people with me, then God would answer my prayers the way I want. John 15 says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
The reality is, that really, really good people pray and sometimes they get what they want and sometimes not. So why pray?
Romans 8:28 is another verse used to support this, 28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
But many of those people leave off verse 29… 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.
God’s good may not be our good… God’s good is that we will be conformed to the image of Jesus. That we will be better disciples. These verses aren’t promising that we get what we want, but let us know that God uses what happens so that we can be more like Christ. God doesn’t waste the hard stuff.
As the news this week unfolded about the major prisoner swap, I wondered about the prayers of all of the families and did they believe that it would really happen?
I read some Dietrich Bonhoeffer this week as I thought about people being in prison and praying and miracles not happening. He wrote in Cost of Discipleship, “It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. This is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty.”
It is about the act of going to God, knowing the power of God and knowing that God loves us. God knows our needs before we even ask.
In a podcast recently I heard the speaker quote Lesslie Newbigin, theologian, pastor, missionary to India, on hope and faith. He was asked if he was an optimist or a pessimist. His answer was “Neither. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.”
We have a God who loves us, who has the power to raise Jesus from the dead. If we can really grasp that; if we can really meditate on that and let it sink in, our lives can be forever changed.
As I thought about open and closed doors, I thought of the Jewish practice of putting up at Mezuzah—a tube on a doorpost where they would have scripture as a reminder that God loves them and to follow God. To let people know they are God-followers, as a reminder to love God with their whole beings.
I saw a video this week with Michael Phelps. He was sharing something he did to help him think positive thoughts and not get sucked into negative thinking as he was competing. He would think positive thoughts every time he walked through a door. It got me to thinking about how we can use doorways to remind us of things!
First, open doors. There are open doors in front of us. Some are for us to go through and some are not. Some we need to poke our heads in and think to ourselves that we have no business going in there. It may be having just one more glass of wine at night. It may be a video on your news feed. It may be a co-worker flirting. It could be spending more money than we had budgeted. There may be news reports that we watch or read that leave us angry and bitter—leaning into hatred. It could be losing our cool with a loved one. Those are doors we need not go through.
There are the doors that take us where God wants us to go. Some doors give us to opportunity to love our neighbors, listen well, or practice keeping our mouths shut. To practice generosity.
Second, some doors are closed. Sometimes life is about trying to open God’s next door for us and learning to trust God in what doors open for us.
I want to circle back to Rhoda. A first pass at this passage has her being the one to open the gate for Peter. However, further reflection points out that she is also locked behind gates of slavery, poverty, and likely her gender. We need to learn to not skip over that. Our translators want to put a pretty spin on a harsh reality. She was locked behind doors of slavery, poverty, and probably her gender.
I encourage you to reflect on for whom do you need to open a door? Who is trapped behind a door of poverty, mental health struggles, racial, or gender biases? Who needs you to open the door for them or to stand with them while they wait for the door to open?
Finally, the third. I was talking about this passage and the door motif this week in the office and someone brought up that for most of us it is easier to open the door for others than to let others open doors for us.
It is hard to accept help. It is hard to admit we can’t do things on our own.
But for some reason, life is largely about learning to let go of everything. It is about letting go of anything that we hold on to more tightly than we hold on to God. If life was about all that we can accomplish, if life from God’s perspective were about being the best, having the most, being the strongest, healthiest, then why didn’t God have life end at the peak? Or at least the peak from our culture’s perspective? What is God’s purpose in aging?
I think God’s purpose in aging is to learn that it isn’t about what we can do, but what God can do. It is that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. It is about learning what Solomon learned when he wrote there is nothing new under the sun. It is about what Paul said when he said in Philippians 1 For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. What if we learned that life isn’t about collecting as much as it is about letting go?
Our story this morning, rarely heard and often skipped over, is a wonderful reminder of the transformative power of Scripture.
It demonstrates the power of prayer. Of the power of God. How much God loves us and that God wants to help us go through all of the doors of our lives.
It is also a reminder of the power of both open and locked doors.
We can boldly go through doors that God opens for us and we can trust the closed doors, knowing we have a God who loves us and provides for us. We can’t see it all clearly, but we do have an all-powerful God who can see all things, who has the power to make miracles happen, who loves us dearly, who wants the best for us.
We don’t need to be optimists… Jesus Christ has indeed risen from the grave.