The Foundations Shall Be Shaken
Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26
About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God in prison and, “suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.”
The first reading today is all about captivity and freedom. We use different forms of confession at the beginning of our Sunday worship every week, but lately we’ve been using one with a very typical Lutheran expression: We confess that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.
Some Christian traditions are confident that we can, if we try hard enough, make ourselves pleasing to God – and if we fall short that’s all on us. I grew up in one of those traditions, but it always struck me as a bit optimistic. Other Christian traditions are just as confident that in this fallen world all people are simply evil, that we’re all born deserving of hell, and only by God’s mercy do any of us have any hope of escaping judgment. Sometimes watching the news I almost believe it. But these traditions are, in the end, a bit too fatalistic and hopeless for me.
The Lutheran approach has been to say that our problem is neither that we don’t try hard enough nor that we’re doomed to utter depravity. Our problem is that we’re caught in a trap and we don’t know how to get out. We know that we aren’t fully alive as God made us to be alive. We know that we don’t love God and our neighbor, even though we’d much rather live in a world of mutual love and respect, we just don’t seem able to make it happen. What we need is not a lecture telling us to get it together and do better, and what we need is not to feel bad about how messed up we are. What we need is help to set us free from the traps we keep falling into.
This is the idea behind Alcoholics Anonymous – the way for an addict to stop drinking is not to try harder nor is it to beg for a free pass from all the harm alcoholics do to themselves and the people around them. The way out is (1) to confess being powerless over alcohol, to confess that we are captive and can’t free ourselves, (2) to trust that there is a higher power who does have power to set us free, and then (3) to begin the hard work of discovering how our captivity has harmed us and others and beginning to repair the damage. Even for those of us who aren’t alcoholics, I think we can all recognize this pattern: it’s basically Christianity. Confess that we are captive to powers that prevent us from being who God made us to be, that the death and resurrection of Jesus has the power to set us free from captivity, and then to begin the slow, life-long work of continually repenting and believing, dying with Jesus and rising again with him, as we slowly become more and more free as God made us to be.
The story from Acts today begins with a young girl who is captive in two ways. One, she is literally enslaved. Two, she has what the text calls a “spirit of divination” that her slave masters use for their own enrichment. Can you imagine people taking advantage of someone else’s problem to make money for themselves even if it means suffering and captivity for a child? Turn on the news sometime.
As Paul is beginning his ministry in Philippi, this girl begins to follow Paul and his group around and shouting, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” Which is factually true. Paul often calls himself a “slave” of God or of Jesus, and Paul was proclaiming a way of salvation – a way out of captivity. We read that this went on for many days, meaning that for a while Paul put up with it. And why not? She was doing his publicity for him.
But I think Paul came to realize that you can’t proclaim the message of salvation while you’re still in captivity. That if the message Paul has come to proclaim – that the age of resurrection has begun in the resurrection of Jesus, that trusting in the death and resurrection of Jesus is the way out of captivity – is in fact a message of salvation, a message of deliverance out of captivity, then Paul can’t rely on an enslaved child speaking out of her captivity to announce the message. Paul would be just one more customer taking advantage of this girl’s captivity. Paul doesn’t have the power to free her from slavery – but as an apostle he does have authority over unclean spirits, and one day Paul is exasperated enough to order the spirit to leave her – and it does.
Good news? Not for the girl’s owners, who have now lost a revenue stream. It was OK when Paul was just talking about religion, but now Paul’s idea of salvation is threatening something these men really care about – their wealth and status. They go to the authorities and start complaining – Paul’s an outsider, he’s a threat to the social fabric of the city and traditional Roman family values – you know, the usual complaints. And the crowd sides with the slave owners, as it often does.
Paul and Silas are arrested. Stripped of their clothes and beaten with rods, then thrown into the maximum security prison. Their feet bound in shackles. And at midnight, bruised and maybe worse from their beatings, literally chained hand and foot to the wall, what are Paul and Silas doing? Praying and singing and praising God. Maybe singing the first-century version of “We Shall Overcome.” Or maybe even our psalm today, Psalm 97: The Lord is king! Righteousness and justice are the foundations of his throne! Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the upright of heart!
In other words, in the middle of the prison, Paul and Silas are actually free. Free to trust in God, free to believe that God will vindicate them, free to set aside their fear and their shame because they have learned to die with Jesus and be raised to life with Jesus. And their freedom shakes the prison to its foundations. And the doors are opened and the shackles fall away.
But the jailer is still in captivity. He knows he’ll be held responsible for the escape of his prisoners, and he knows firsthand what kind of justice the city fathers of Philippi practice. Rather than face that, he chooses suicide. But Paul and Silas call out to him – Don’t! Don’t harm yourself. We are still here. Our freedom means nothing if you are still in captivity.
So what does the jailer do? The text says he personally leads Paul and Silas outside, then falls at their knees and asks, What must I do to be saved? Which at this moment doesn’t mean, what must I do to go to heaven when I die? It means, how can I be free from captivity the way you guys are free? And Paul says, Trust in Jesus. That’s it. And the man does put his trust in Jesus, is baptized – beginning his journey of dying and rising with Jesus, and he begins the long work of repenting and believing but welcoming his former prisoners into his home and giving them breakfast.
Stories of conversion are rarely this dramatic. But all stories of conversion are basically the same. We come to know people whose lives have been set free by Jesus – maybe our parents or grandparents, maybe a relative or friend, maybe someone we read or hear about who has been free enough to do amazing things and take astonishing risks for the sake of love of their neighbor. And we come to say, I want what they have. I want that kind of freedom. I want to be free of the lies that I’ve been told, I want to be free of the fear that keeps me from reaching out with love, I want their peace, their joy, their courage, their life.
There are a lot of lies being told in the world around us. Powerful people who make a lot of money and gain a lot of prestige when we believe those lies, when we are afraid, when we hunker down and think of ourselves first. Lies that would keep us in captivity if we didn’t know the way out. Believing in the Easter story, believing on the Lord Jesus is the first step. Joining Jesus in death and resurrection through baptism is the beginning of the process. Coming together with other disciples and sharing the Word and the table together gives us inspiration and courage. Learning every day to die and to rise again, to repent and to trust, is the path that leads to freedom. Freedom for ourselves and freedom for others who are still trapped in captivity; like Paul, we aren’t free until everyone else is free too, we aren’t completely free until the one who thinks he's our jailer is free too.
This is the promise of Easter: that Jesus is risen and has broken the power of death, so that all the captives can be free.