There was a post on Facebook this week, which is the modern source for all good wisdom, but woman posted that she was driving behind someone who had a sign in their back window that said they were learning to drive a stick, and asked for patience in allowing them to make mistakes. For those who have driven a stick, you might remember how difficult it was to get right when you started. So, she said she was very patient in being stuck behind them, but them wondered if she would have been as patient if they sign hadn’t been there. The answer was for her, as it probably is for most of us, no. But, it reminded her that if everyone wore a sign saying what we are dealing with and asking for patience, that we would probably be more patient with everyone around us, and they with us as well. I have thought that same thing as I have been working through this series on resurrection stories as I hear, and you hear, the stories people have to tell, and remember that other people in the congregation, and in our lives are dealing with exactly the same thing, we just don’t know that’s happening. We all need to be a little more patient with each other.
But what we didn’t hear is that just before today’s passage, and what leads to Paul and Silas ending up in prison is actually a lack of patience on Paul’s part. As they enter the city of Philippi, a slave girl runs up and announces them as slaves of the most high God who proclaim the way of salvation. Now this slave girl is also a fortune teller, and apparently a pretty good one because we are told that she makes her owners lots of money. After following Paul and Silas around for a few days continuing to cry out who they were, we are told that Paul was very much annoyed, and turned to her and cast out the spirit that gave her the ability to tell fortunes. Now we might wonder why Paul was more concerned that she was possessed than that she was a possession, but that’s an issue for another day. But the girl’s owners get upset that she is now no longer able to make them money, and so bring Paul and Silas to the magistrates for disturbing the peace and trying to overturn Roman customs. The magistrates them have them flogged and thrown into prison, and the prison guard is ordered to keep them securely. Now I need three volunteers to help me for a moment. Two of you are going to be prison guards, and your job is to keep them secured, not to let them get out of prison… now who is imprisoned in this story? It turns out that you don’t need to be behind bars to be imprisoned, that we can live in prisons of our own creation, or creations that others would like to put us in. And so that is part of our story for today as we hear the stories of some being caught in prison….
Maya Angelou said that one of her grandmother’s sayings was that if you didn’t like something in your life, to change it, and if you couldn’t change it, then to change your attitude about it. And when you changed your attitude then you might find a way to change the situation. I’m sure that Paul and Silas were not thrilled with being arrested, but what do we find them doing while they are in prison? Are they moping, or complaining or bad-tempered? No, they are singing hymns and praying. I wonder if some of how Paul reacts is related to who he had been before. When he was persecuting Christians, he was locked into his own idea of who God was and how God interacts in the world, and what God could and couldn’t do, and in that view, Jesus could not be who Christians said that he was. There could be no new revelation from God, and you certainly could not read scripture in any way differently than how Paul read it, because that’s the only way right? No one else could be right if it differed from him. He was in a prison of his own making, until Jesus appeared before him and he saw a new way, ironically that he saw a new way through the blindness that came upon him. And yet it is not really that ironic. Because according to Luke, who is also the author of Acts, the first sermon that Jesus ever gives, he picks up a scroll containing the text of Isaiah and he reads "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because it has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19) What if the people who are being freed and released are not just those who are literally oppressed or imprisoned, but those who are oppressed and imprisoned by their own making?
Now you would think that I had planned these stories and put them together intentionally, but I had no idea that both of them would talk about the Walk to Emmaus. That’s just how the spirit works sometimes. After the earthquake comes and the doors of the prison are opened, and their shackles are also removed, Paul and Silas don’t flee from the prison, I think because they are already freed through Christ. Although they are also not freed, remembering that the slave girl has called them slaves of God, which is actually a common phrase we find in scripture for those who have turned their lives over to God, especially the prophets, that they have given up their freedom, their choices, their will, their lives, in order to follow God. In Paul’s letter to the Romans he says “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” (Rom 6:16-18) When the jailer realizes that he is in fact in a prison of his own making, after Paul yells at him not to harm himself because everyone is actually still in the real prison, the jailer asks, “What must I do to be saved?”
That is a question that might be seen at the heart of the entirety of scripture. And yet it doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter, because the follow up question probably should be “saved from what?” and “saved to what?” Is the jailer asking a salvation question, or is the question about being saved from the authorities who might still be mad that the jail was destroyed, even if they prisoners didn’t actually escape. As theologian Ronald Cole-Turner has said. “’What must I do to be saved?’ is a personal question in search of a personalized answer. What must I do to be saved from my particular bondage, my oppression, addiction, emptiness of boredom? There are countless ways to lose our way in this world or to be in bondage, just as there are many different threats from which we need to be saved.” And yet the answer is the same, and that is to believe in Jesus. And yet it’s also deeper than that, because it’s to open ourselves up to God’s saving action in our lives. It’s easy to say I believe, it’s entirely different to live it and to be open to transformation. Or even being open to being freed from what is enslaving us, because sometimes we get comfortable in our uncomfortableness and we cannot imagine what life looks like outside of our prison walls. What we have heard in many of the testimonies over the past few weeks is that we have to be willing to make a change in order to be changed. We cannot find freedom in Christ until we are ready and willing to let go of the chains that hold us, and that all too often we hold onto, and so I asked Donna what she would say to someone in an abusive relationship…
Paul and Silas are in prison, and yet they are the ones who are actually free. They are the ones praying and singing, while the jailer, who thinks he holds the keys to their freedom, is actually the one who is in jail. He is in a prison of his own making, bound by his duty and the things that control his life. We too live in prisons of our own making, even if we think it’s outside of our control. Perhaps it’s health issues, but there can be healing even where there is no cure. Perhaps its something that happened to us that we cannot forget or forgive, but unforgiveness can lock us in a prison. Perhaps it’s a job or a relationship, and perhaps it truly is something that we cannot change the reality of, but what we can do is change how we live with it, that we can immerse ourselves in prayers and songs to God, giving thanks for what we have, including the ability to be freed in Christ, to leave our burdens with Christ. Bud said that he has problems praying, he doesn’t feel like he can do it right, and so he uses hymns as his prayers, including remembering the moment when he gave his burden to Christ…
We begin by asking the question what must I do to be saved, but then specifying what we need to be saved from, and what we want to be saved to, because we, as Paul tells the church in Galatia, can cast off the yoke of slavery to one thing, only to become enslaved to something else, but our freedom is in Christ, because Christ has set us free. Christ has broken the chains of slavery to sin and death, to set us free in love, and mercy and grace, when we seek to turn our will, ourselves, our lives to Christ. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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