Sermon 6.1.25 Erdbeben in Chile: Disruptions and Second Chances

Sermon Begins @ 17:37

What do the Acts of the Apostles and German high literature from the Romantic era have in common?

Earthquakes.

Published in 1807, Erdbeben in Chili (Earthquake in Chile) was a short story written by Heinrich von Kleist about the 1647 earthquake that destroyed most of Santiago, Chile.

The story centers around two characters, Jeronimo and Josephe.

He was a tutor from Spain serving a wealthy family in Santiago; she was the daughter of the family, who fell in love with him.

When the family found out about the relationship, they were separated.

He was fired from his position; she was sent to a convent.

But their relationship continued and soon she became pregnant.

The scandal reached a fevered pitch in Santiago; every person knew about it, every preacher preached about it, the two lovers were arrested; she was sentenced to death.

On the morning she was to be executed, Josephe is being marched out of her prison cell, and Jeronimo is preparing to take his own life in his.

At that moment, the earthquake hits.

In our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, which we just read a few minutes ago, Paul and Silas also end up in prison.

Though there is a young woman involved, the corruption is different in the biblical account.

Instead of an illicit affair, Paul and Silas disrupt the capital market that has kept this young woman captive.

And we all know that the gravest sin of all is to stop people from making money from the exploitation of the poor or enslaved.

Paul and Silas are singing songs and praying, when their earthquake hits.

Back in Chile, Jeronimo and Josephe find each other.  Josephe went to the convent, where she had left her baby with the nuns.

The baby was the only person still alive in the rubble.

It seems very clear to them that there has been some divine intervention on their behalf.

The irony for Kleist, the author, when considering what the destruction of so many lives for the sake of these three says about God’s righteousness.

Does God really destroy through natural disasters, and if so, could it be that God would let so many people die, including nuns in a convent, for the sake of two unjustly condemned lovers and their child?

Would God really choose those whom society calls sinners, and reject those who devote their lives to “saintly” living?

Those are great questions that the novella asks, but it’s not why I am ultimately interested in this story in comparison to our reading from Acts.

In the lesson from Acts, after the earthquake, Paul and Silas stay in prison.

We hear nothing of destruction outside of the prison.

The only life at risk is that of the jailer, who was about to take his own life before Paul stops him.

Back in Chile, Jeronimo and Josephe meet up with other survivors, who recognize them as the illicit couple, but to their surprise, their amiable fellow survivors want to help them get out of Chile and emigrate to Spain, where they can be free.

As they are about to head to another town, they hear a church bell ringing.

A single church survived the earthquake, and people are gathering together.

The small group of survivors decide to take a moment to thank God for their survival before leaving town.

At the church, instead of giving thanks to God and tending each other’s wounds, the preacher gets into the cracked and crumbling pulpit to preach about how Jeronimo and Josephe’s affair had caused the earthquake like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Suddenly, a bystander in the crowd recognizes Josephe.

Chaos ensues.

In the end, only their baby survives, because it was mistaken for another baby.

At the end of our earthquake narrative from Acts of the Apostles, there is a quite different outcome.

Being spared from a self-inflicted death, the jailer is offered a second life.

He and his whole family are saved through the waters of baptism,

But in truth, it was his willingness to change and to recognize a new opportunity for life that allowed Paul and Silas to usher him into a new life of faith.

There are so many things that these two stories share in common that would be worth exploring.

But, this final thing is what I feel moved to unpack.

What do we do with our second chances?

Both of these stories use an earthquake to give people a second chance at life.

Both have people living out their religious life the only way they know how.

Roman citizens, who have a corner on the prophecy market, whose religious conformities and economic profitability are endangered by renegade Jesus cultists.

Chilean high society, following the purity culture that protects their colonial caste system under the guise of church doctrine.

The people who profit from the status quo always have a lot to lose when disruption hits.

Both stories give a major disruption through an earthquake.

Both give that second chance to see a new way of moving forward.

In Kleist’s novella, there are two tragedies.

The first is the destruction of the city;

The second is that the people, who survived learn nothing from the disruption;

They double down.

As humans, we have the capacity for both responses to disruption.

When the global Covid pandemic hit in 2020, we were a very divided nation.

If anything was going to bring us together, it would have seemed like this devastating illness would do it.

Americans are great in a crisis, because we come together, we help each other, we put differences aside, and we succeed; it’s one of our virtues isn’t it?

Except for 9/11, except for the crack epidemic, except for George Floyd, except for the opioid epidemic, except for Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin, except for January 6th, except for school shootings.

And these are just in my lifetime.

Now, we could sit here and opine all of the missed opportunities,

(And of course it’s all too easy to look at the disruptions that should have taught other people to be better, in our humble opinion)

or we could ask the next question.

What are we going to do with our newest second chance?

These past few months have brought with them - in many respects - earth shattering changes to our status quo.

This disruption was not a natural disaster (though we’ve had a couple of those too), it is a systematically planned and less competently executed, intentional disruption.

Now, if we were purely worried about politics, we could talk about taking back power and elections, etc…

But political power is ephemeral, it’s a hot potato that bounces around, and actually it doesn’t do anything to help us become better people after disruption; it doesn’t create any permanent solutions to our problems.

If we were purely worried about money, we could talk about taking back our economic power…

But this feels like a Sisyphean task in a global system like ours where more and more money keeps getting pushed up higher and higher to a smaller and smaller number of people.

What do you do to convince mega corporations that disruption is bad, when they still make money in an economic downturn?

I would suggest that disruptions are times that call for spiritual revival and reawakening.

In this church, when pandemic hit in 2020, there was a real possibility that we wouldn’t survive, but we chose to be born again.

Despite the hardships, we found a new way to be church online, and after we came back in-person, we reawakened to the possibility of being fully integrated into our community rather than insulating ourselves within a building.

Now, at this new disruption, as safety nets are being undermined or taken away from our neighbors,

It is our spiritual strength that is needed again.

As we see grants that we have taken for granted taken away at the federal level for partners like Freestore Foodbank, as we see neighbors who may have their medicaid and SNAP benefits taken away.

How do we continue to serve them?

But also, how do we make sure that we haven’t become so reliant on outside sources of funding that our ministries become threatened?

Friends, instead of doubling down on political power, or economic power, instead of doubling down on purity like the survivors of Santiago in Heinrich Kleist’s fictional tale,

Our spirits call us to double down on Jesus and on resurrection.

Easter Day was the ultimate disruption to the status quo.

It ripped apart the fabric of the universal order by upending the most basic principle of life; that life always ends in death.

The disciples tried to go back to their regular life; they tried to go back to fishing, but Jesus sought them out and gave them a second chance to preach salvation and to heal the sick.

He didn’t give them money, he didn’t give them political power.

He promised them the Holy Spirit at his Ascension and reunified with God.

Our job then, is to wait on the Spirit, and to respond to our disruptions by doubling down on the faith that Jesus will still be with us, if we’re willing to make the most of our second chances.

The miracle of Paul and Silas’ release from captivity was not the earthquake.

There have always been disruptions and destructions in the history of humanity.

The real miracle is that the Holy Spirit was heard in the songs and prayers of Jesus’ followers and that one person, the Jailer, had his heart turned and his spirit revived.

May there be miracles like this in our day, and may you never neglect your second chances.

Amen.