Acts 16:16-34, Psalm 97, Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-26, John 17:20-26
On the old state road between Holland, Michigan and Grand Rapids, as you drive by one of the few hills in that landscape, you pass a large billboard that, if you’re a Calvinist, you can’t help but notice. On the billboard in big letters it says: “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved,” and in smaller letters, “Acts 16:31.” When we drive by it we say, “And thy house.” We assume that the billboard was put there by a Baptist against infant baptism. We know that verse by memory from catechism: “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved and thy house—Acts 16:31.”
Why this emphasis on belief? It is not so in other religions. Is belief in Jesus like knowing the passcode to a computer? If you know the passcode, everything opens up to you. But if you don’t know it you can’t get in. The evangelical deal is that all you do is say that you believe in Jesus, and you’re in, you’re saved, but if you don’t, you’re out, no matter how good and loving you might be—it’s hell for you. So to be saved from eternal punishment, the password is “I believe in Jesus.”
Why do you believe? Both subjectively and objectively? Subjectively, why do you find this whole business convincing or compelling or attractive enough that you are here today? Do you believe thoughtfully, or out of crisis or desperation, like the jailer in our story? And objectively, what do you expect to get from your belief, what is the benefit that you desire, what are you saved from or saved for, what is the content of the salvation that your belief accrues? Why do you believe?
The jailer in our story is about to kill himself. When St. Paul stops him from doing that, he asks the apostle, “What must I do to be saved?” He doesn’t mean the saving of his soul, he means the saving of his neck, and the safety of his household from the retribution of the magistrates. We can tell how vengeful the magistrates were from how they treated Paul and Silas on minimal accusation. Philippi was a city of the army, and what is an army but the organization of violence. But violence can never fully be organized—it breaks out and feeds on itself. The jailer had cause to be terrified.
When he asked the question he was wanting an action plan, something to do to anticipate the magistrates and defend his household against the worst. So St. Paul’s answer will have been a puzzle. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, and your household.” What? So I should quick go to the shrine of your foreign deity and make a sacrifice? But no such shrines are allowed in Philippi, only the temples to Mars and Jupiter and Caesar. Or do you mean that some Jewish general will intervene for us tomorrow morning? Or some aristocrat will make a deal with the magistrates? Are you saying that all I have to do is depend on somebody I do not know to act on my behalf?
This invitation to believe was risky. It offered no action plan other than to believe in Jesus as the Lord who could save him from that very power of Rome that he had been serving till now. It was Caesar who was entitled “Lord and Savior,” especially among the army. The Caesars had saved the Roman Empire from self-destruction, at the Battle of Actium just up the road, and having saved the empire they claimed its lordship. St. Paul is inviting him to a different lordship and a different safety.
There is nothing to do but believe that this other Lord will save you. Of whom we have no proof. Only the ambiguous evidence of the earthquake, and the doors opened, and our chains unfastened, the signs and metaphors of Jesus’ resurrection, and we did already save you from your suicide. This other Lord has been saving you already. You can begin your belief with that.
Has he got a choice? How unlike with Lydia, in last week’s story, whose choice for Jesus was free and peaceful. The jailer’s choice is life and death. But if Lydia’s house became the church in Philippi, tonight the jailer’s apartment becomes a sanctuary—lamps lit, water poured, a space of welcome and safety in the violence, the light of Jesus shining in the dark, like in the stable at Bethlehem.
Inside that sanctuary unfolds a worship service. Already in their chains the apostles were praying and singing hymns, including Psalm 97, you’d have to think, by the correspondence of the imagery with what happened. Then the apostles spoke the word of the Lord to all in the house—the sermon. The jailer washed their wounds, which is an absolution, and then the baptism, and then Communion, the Eucharist, when, in the priesthood of believers, the jailer served the meal and they all rejoiced.
So what was the salvation here, how was he saved? Salvation here means that the jailer has been transferred to a different sovereignty. His household gets moved in place. He doesn’t cross a border but the border crosses over him, and in his baptism he gets naturalized, from the sovereignty of the Lord Caesar to the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus. We don’t know if he was a Roman citizen, but tonight he’s made a citizen of the City of God, the New Jerusalem. Salvation means a new sovereignty.
Lordship and salvation. The one goes with the other. The Caesars were lords of Rome as long they were saving Rome. And if the Lord Jesus cannot save you, why have him as your Lord? What salvation does he offer you, that you can believe he will deliver for you? There are many salvation stories in the Bible, and many aspects to salvation, like the salvation of your souls at death, and salvation from the fear of death, et cetera. But what’s the aspect of salvation offered in this story?
Salvation here is freedom, and first it’s freedom from your circumstances and then it’s freedom within your circumstances. For example, the circumstance of the slave girl was the exploitation of her spiritual gift, and the circumstance of the jailer was the dominion of violence and the power of death, demanding his suicide. We are not told what happened to the slave girl after her liberation, nor do we know whether the magistrates left the jailer alone or let him keep his job.
But that’s the message here. The jailer was saved from the bondage of death for the freedom of the resurrection. He entered a freedom from the compulsions of circumstance, the freedom that Paul and Silas evidenced even in their shackles as they sang and prayed. So no matter what the magistrates might do to him, the jailer was free from the shackles of fear. That’s a precious benefit of salvation, the freedom of your mind and your soul within your circumstances. And what that freedom results in is joy. The story ends with their rejoicing. Salvation gives you freedom and joy.
The second yield of salvation is service. Not servitude or subservience, but service freely chosen. The guy who had shackled them now washed their wounds and fed them. Their guard became their nurse, their keeper became their host. He exercised his freedom directly within his circumstance. He remained their keeper, they did not run away, but the circumstance of hostility became the circumstance of hospitality. Salvation is freedom for service precisely within and for your circumstances.
That’s important for Old First. It’s a circumstance of our congregation that we have inherited this building. No other Protestant congregation around here has been handed such a heavy gift. A variety of missions is available to congregations, and we choose our mission within and for our circumstance. Our community of Jesus is freely choosing to serve God in paint and plaster. No other Protestant congregation is choosing this, but we are—we are choosing into our circumstance.
We do this for hospitality, for sanctuary, a space of safety, a suggestion of transcendence, and a shelter for souls. And thus our Respite Shelter for Homeless Men this July and August. I invite you all to take turns serving there. I invite you to practice the sanctuary service that the jailer practiced. I invite you all to be Philippian jailers this summer, serving food and hosting rest. And the men who come to eat here and sleep here—you will find them as agreeable as St. Paul.
I like to end my sermons on the love of God. So I invite you to believe that when you freely choose for joy and the service of hospitality, you are yielding to a power that is greater than your own, which is the power and glory of the love of God. So I end with the words of the gospel: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, . . . so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you loved me.”
Copyright © 2019, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment