Crying out
“And following after them, she kept crying out saying, “These men are bondservants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.”” Acts 16:17
Crying out – When is a public relations campaign for God an annoyance and a distraction? When do our pronouncements about God’s grace fall on deaf ears because they look like frauds? We might be tempted to answer, “Never!” We think that everything that proclaims the mighty work of God is good news. But Paul wouldn’t agree. In this story, a fortune-telling woman follows Paul and Silas around, shouting out what is quite true but wrongly motivated. The demon in her recognized what these men stood for and used the truth to slander their message.
What the demon said was true. Paul and Silas were slaves (that’s the right word) of the Most High God and they did proclaim the way of salvation. But sometimes the truth can be diminished in its delivery. And this demon used the technique of creating a public annoyance in order for people to dismiss the message as nothing more than raving. Imagine the spectacle. Everywhere they went, this woman shouted behind them, “Here come the men of God. They will tell you how to get right with God.” Do you suppose that people stopped to listen or did they just dismiss the whole thing as a scam? Sometimes what we want to say about God is just too blaring and too disruptive for the audience to hear.
The Greek verb krazo is a word that sounds like what it means. Krazo! Cry! Caw! It is verbal annoyance. Shrill disturbance and grating interruption. No wonder Paul got upset. Think about the application of this word to our versions of presenting the good news. How many times have you found the medium so grinding on your spirit that you never heard the word of the Lord it was supposed to communicate? If God is speaking peace into your life, can you hear him at 110 decibels or in the midst of placards and faceless tracts? Is God’s message immune to the medium? Or do we need to be a bit more theologically reflective in the way we deliver the good news?
Christmas is over. The celebration of the birth of the King has stopped. But the message is still “peace on earth”. There is power in the Hallelujah chorus. There is also power in the solitude of a silent night. How do you communicate the peace of the Christ? Does your medium fit the message or are you just making noise?
