When The Church Prays: Earnest But Not Certain

Acts 12:1–18 ESV

About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him, “Dress yourself and put on your sandals.” And he did so. And he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. When Peter came to himself, he said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.” When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. Recognizing Peter’s voice, in her joy she did not open the gate but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. They said to her, “You are out of your mind.” But she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying, “It is his angel!” But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed. But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, “Tell these things to James and to the brothers.” Then he departed and went to another place. Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter.

The Church Prayed Earnestly

In the story that we're going to look at in , the wisdom of God in his church is revealed in at least two ways. The first is this: In the church, God's wisdom is shown, and our understanding of power is turned upside down.

Luke, the writer of the Book of Acts, begins his account with Herod, this evil king.

This present Herod, whose full name was Herod Julius Agrippa, was the son of Aristobulus, one of the many sons of Herod the Great, a half-brother of Herod Antipas, the brooding and malevolent figure of the gospels.

Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-12 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2008), 182.

Agrippa I was thought of by the Jewish population as ‘their man’, trusted (more or less) by the Romans but also popular with his people.

It was strongly in his interests both to show his Roman overlords that he would not tolerate dangerous movements developing under his nose and to show his own people that he was standing up, as they would have seen it, for their ancestral traditions.

Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-12 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2008), 182.

Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-12 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2008), 182.

Herod was a manipulative scoundrel, to put it nicely.

He connived his way into this role as king by sucking up to the authorities in Rome, and just look how he used his power: he killed James—one of the leaders of the church—with the sword; he arrested Peter; he used the courts, the jails, the soldiers.

That's how he used his power.

His motivation for his behavior is made clear in this passage: "When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also."

Verse 4 goes on to explain that Herod was going to wait to put Peter on trial until the Passover, when Jerusalem would be filled with all kinds of folks, to make a bigger spectacle of him in order to again win favor with the people.

Herod is the consummate politician. Do you think he really cared about the church and what they believed? No way.

He just saw the church as a useful tool with which to gain favor with people. He exploited the church.

Herod beautifully epitomizes the wisdom of the world—the wisdom of the powers and authorities in the heavenly realm, wisdom that says that real power comes through aggression and strength and armies and status and kings and palaces and jails and courts and anger.

But in the midst of this, the wisdom of God is displayed through the church.

Herod's power: "So Peter was kept in prison,...

Church’s prayer: “...but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church." Prayer.

Think about this: the king and all of his power, all of his courts, all of his jails, all of his armies are aligned against you. He's killed your leader; he's gone after the next leader.

All this aggression and power, everything the world can throw at you, is coming at you, and you decide you're going to pray.

You're not going to protest,

you're not going to run away,

you're not going to get your swords and go after them;

you're just going to pray? Really? Does that make a lot of sense by the world's wisdom?

One of the most dominant themes in Luke's writing, both in the Gospel of Luke and in Acts and, I would argue, throughout all of Scripture, is that God wants to reveal how silly the wisdom of the world is by using the foolish things of the world to disarm the things that look powerful. Think about Zechariah. In that prophetic book we're told that these things that are being predicted will be accomplished "not by strength, nor by power, but by my Spirit, declares the Lord." Look at Jeremiah who says, "Don't let the wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the rich man boast in his riches, and let not the strong man boast in his strength, but let the man who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows me, the Lord." Riches, strength, power—those things don't matter. What matters is God and his wisdom.

So consider the scene in Jerusalem: God has gathered all the heavenly hosts, they're looking at what's going on. Herod has his armies and his swords and his jails and his power and authority and he's coming hard against the church. And the powers and authorities in the heavenly realm go, "Wow, look at all that!" But God says, "Yeah, but consider my church. Because that's where you are going to see my wisdom." And do the powers see when they look upon the church? Not kings, but fishermen and widows. A ragtag group of the left behind and the forgotten gathered together in a little house. And what are they doing? They are praying. Is that really God's wisdom? Prayer? Yes. Because God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. And he has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong. And he has chosen the things that are low to make a mockery of the things that we think of as high.

Why do we pray? Some people think that the reason we pray as Christians is because we're trying to manipulate and control God to do what we want him to do—that prayer is sort of the Christian version of magical incantations. If we just pray enough, if we just pray the right words, God is obligated to do what we want him to do. That is not prayer. That is called divination, and that's not something we practice in the church. God is under no obligation to do what we ask or tell him to do. Believe it or not, he is a little more complicated than we are.

Some people think the reason we pray is because the outcomes when we pray are always better than when we don't pray. But is that really true? At the beginning of the story, James is imprisoned by Herod. Don't you think the church was praying for him? And he gets killed. Peter gets out of this one pretty well, but he ends up in Rome later on where he is crucified upside down. Do you think the church wasn't praying for him then? No, we don't pray because it always works out "better" if we do.

A lot of people think, especially in this day and age, that the reason we pray is to fuel the power of positive thinking. I'm referring to the self-actualization garbage that's all over our culture—Oprah, for example, and all she espouses. Do you view prayers as the Christian form of positive thinking? No, we don't pray because when we think positive thoughts we attract positive outcomes.

The reason we pray—through there are many—is because when we pray as the people of God, we are displaying the manifold wisdom of God to the powers and authorities in the heavenly realm. What we are declaring when we are on our knees is that we will not put our hope and trust in the things of this world. We will not put our trust and hope in our wealth, in our strength, in our wisdom, in our kings, in our politicians, in anything we possess, but we are putting our trust in God alone. And when the heavenly powers see that kind of foolish wisdom, they tremble because they do not comprehend it. When we are on our knees in prayer, we are revealing the counter-intuitive wisdom of the kingdom of God—the wisdom that says that power is not found in aggression or anger or war or swords or kings, but power is found in weakness. It was weakness that overcame the world to the Cross, and it is the weakness of the church in prayer that will make a mockery of the strength of the powers of this world.

The Church Prayed UN-Certainly

A church leader is in prison, the adults of the church gather dutifully to pray for his release, and when he stands there and knocks at the door, they don't believe it. But a little servant girl does. Why do children exemplify God's wisdom? In we get a clue. We adults have a very difficult time believing that God can do anything. We just don't see, it because the powers and authorities in this world have beaten the wonder and joy and miraculous nature of God's power out of us. We are enslaved to conventional thinking. Children haven't had it beaten out of them yet. They still see a cosmos of wonder and possibility, and one in which their God can do anything. This is why Jesus puts a child in the midst of his arrogant disciples and says, "You need to humble yourself and think more like this." Children have a sacred spot in the kingdom of God and in his church because they represent the manifold wisdom of God, which is the complete opposite of the wisdom of the world. Do we believe that? Does our practice reinforce that?

Luke is allowing us to see the early church for a moment not as a bunch of great heroes and heroines of the faith, but as the same kind of muddled, half-believing, faith-one-minute-and-doubt-the-next sort of people as most Christians we all know.

And partly I find it comforting, because it would be easy for sceptical thinkers to dismiss the story of Peter’s release from jail as a pious legend—except for the fact that nobody, constructing a pious legend out of thin air, would have made up this ridiculous little story of Rhoda and the praying-but-hopeless church. It has the ring of truth: ordinary truth, down-to-earth truth, at the very moment that it is telling us something truly extraordinary and heaven-on-earthish.