BOUND BY GOLD CHAINS

 

5.

(To gain a further understanding of the meditation that follows, a reading of the suggested scriptures will be most helpful)
Acts 17: 26 – 28
LUKE 7: 1 – 10
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to Him: Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have You come under my roof.
Jesus said to the crowd following Him, ” I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” Luke 7: 7 & 9

The winds of God are blowing in this New Testament story. All  the characters here are like so many ships waiting for the wind to fill their sails, and carry them God knows where.

And now, some two thousand years afterward each one of us who considers that “it is in God we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) We wait and ponder, how can that mystery come to be our experience.

The Jews were waiting for the fierce winds of political change to rise again. The centurion was expecting the reactionary winds of the revolutionaries to rise again. The Centurion’s slave was waiting to see whether the temperamental wind of his master’s mood will bring him life or death. The vast majority were waiting, just waiting for they knew not what!

Suddenly the wind arrives from an entirely unanticipated direction, thereby rescuing the scene from being recorded in someone’s diary as just another dreary day. The wind carries several of these unsuspecting characters into the deeper waters of spiritual experience.
And if the truth be known now, this is the same irresistible longing that inspires many to search for the Spirits leading: ” For in God we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17: 28)

Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Break me, melt me,
Mold me, fill me,
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me. (2)

When God answers that request, no longer are people idly waiting ‘like painted ships upon a painted ocean.’ The winds of God will fill the sails of their souls, and embolden them to engage in the building of God’s Kingdom to promote His glory.

From the outset, it is of vital importance to pay close attention to the direction from whence the wind of the Spirit comes.The Jewish people had waited for generations in anticipation of God’s Messiah! They await the first traces of dignity and respect to herald the beginning of God’s reign! They await some mighty warrior to unleash the chains of oppression so that they might live as God’s chosen people.
It is incredulous that the first indication of a new day dawning for them comes from the same direction as their greatest torment and their despair – from a Roman Centurion’s barracks!

Consider how difficult the situation is in the hour of their awakening. The atmosphere is tense. Everywhere there is suspicion and fear that is almost palpable. Political and religious considerations electrify the air they breathe! The Jewish population, known among themselves to be ‘the Chosen of God,’ are now being considered no more than Roman subjects with potent anti – Roman sentiments. And to have a Roman centurion stand sentry over their community, monitoring their every activity, brings suspicion and hatred into their souls.

The Jewish people, much to their chagrin, discover that this centurion is uncharacteristically friendly, naturally compassionate, and sincerely considerate even towards the least and the last. This fact defies all logic, the people conclude. There must be some ulterior motive for this behavior! This fellow is a gentleman, besides being a centurion. And these are essential facts that one must consider. There is such  incongruence here.  How can there be a gentleman of Roman descent, and a Roman Centurion, at that? He is entirely outside the realm of possibility concerning the hopes and beliefs of the Jewish religion. Who  knows what kind of God  this fellow worships? He is different from them, and yet he possesses some qualities which they can only hope that one day will be theirs also. Perhaps the safest strategy will be to treat this fellow as ‘an island unto himself.’

The tenderness that the Centurion shows towards his sick servant cannot be ignored by anyone anywhere. His response breaks through all legal requirements of a master-servant relationship and demonstrates ‘love’ towards one of much lower rank.
Nothing affects relationships like observing one person giving to another the love and respect which makes that person as complete as God created him to be.

The frost begins to lose its grip and soon throughout the community, relationships start to change for the good.
The biting criticisms, the mistrust, the innuendoes begin to lose an active voice. The  one they were contemplating making an island unto himself is already constructing an indestructible bridge between his heart and theirs. On the building site of the new Jewish synagogue in Capernaum, where the busy Jewish laborers are hard at work, is the Centurion lending a helping hand A gentle wind from heaven is beginning to stir.

It is intriguing to consider how the beauty in one individual’s life can awaken a similar vision in the spirit of others. David, the ancestor of these Jews, experiences, many years before, that same mystery, and writes about it, ‘the  deep calls unto deep in the roar of Your waterfalls as Your waves sweep over me.” Only the deep will respond to the deep, anything that does not issue from the depth cannot touch the depths.’ A beauty lying so close to the surface of the Centurion’s life awakens the beauty in the lives of his Jewish acquaintances, which cruel political circumstances are threatening to destroy.
It is God’s Presence within each person that makes ONE all nations on earth. The deep things of God in one calls unto the deep things of God in another! We must learn how to distinguish the sounds of suspicion, and hatred and selfishness from the sound of the ‘still small voice of God’s approach.
The ways of coercion and force from the Romans to submit, and engage in the worship of the emperor, threatened to annihilate the experience of God’s chosen path for many of His people. It is imperative to give recognition to the patience, the gentleness and the loving way by which God enables this centurion, to bring the golden touch of kindness and beauty into the Gospel Narrative.
Threats and punishments are never acceptable means of bringing another into the presence of God. The centurion’s response when we trace it to its origin, reveals a spiritual source! The ability to show such empathy as he does originates deep within the person whose essence remains in the hands of his Creator!
It is God who chooses this Centurion, and prepares him to show to the world the relevance of the Gospel to change the way individuals see one another, and the way they see their world. It is God who sows the seed of belief in the Centurion  that Jesus can, and will bring healing to his beloved servant, and it is God who inscribes on this outsiders heart the message that love conquers all hate and division. It is God who gives to this prominent official the Grace to remain humble and to continue to be a tyro in the unfolding mystery of God’s plan for His creation.
All of this reveals that God reserves for Himself the right to choose the direction of the wind!
A sobering silence falls upon us as we consider how those who are waiting for a fuller demonstration of God, catch a glimpse of God’s will and purpose for the world, from one who is a foreigner, an outsider, an immigrant. ! Concerning this Centurion, Jesus said to the crowd following Him, ” I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” It is God’s Presence within each person that makes ONE, all nations on earth.’ (3)
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

“If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell”(4)

A Prayer To Follow This Meditation
Father, it thrills our souls, like when one hears the soaring crescendos of the Hallelujah Chorus bursting upon his ears for the first time : “God has made peoples of all nations to live together and to share the face of this planet as ONE. None can arrogate to themselves a higher and more excellent origin than another. Father, forgive that relic of arrogant blindness which still insists that ” there is something greater for the human race than being created in Your Image, O God. Some want to BE God!
Lord, teach us to beware of those whose minds can “make a Hell of Heaven and a Heaven of Hell’.
Father, forgive those who distort the message of Jesus with an obsessive care of self while condemning all others of different race and creed as being unworthy to receive minimal concern. In Your mercy, return to this world the heart of ‘the Good Shepherd, and provide more people for service, whose hearts are prepared to act in love as Jesus, did.
Let the Strains Of A Hallelujah Chorus burst upon Your world again to obliterate the noise and rumors of war. Let it mark the celebration of Your Kingdom Come and Your Will done here on earth  as it is  in Heaven. In Jesus Name. Amen

Hymn:               Blest Be The Tie That Binds

Editorial Notes
1. Here and throughout this meditation the quotations from The Holy Bible are from the New International Translation

2. Spirit Of The Living God    http://www.lyricsfreak.com/r/religious+music/spirit+of+the+living+god_20887570.htm

3. See 1. Above

4. Le Morte d’Arthur 
Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908).  A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895.  1895.

5. Photo: Robert’s Arm, NDB., Newfoundland. Taken  summer                    2017.