The Way of Salvation

Acts 16: 16-34

St. Andrews Church of Scotland

May 12, 2013

     The epiphanies of Easter are drawing to a close.  Jesus has ascended and we have now only one week before we celebrate the birth of the church on Pentecost Sunday, when tongues of fire will dance on our heads. Our lectionary text from the Book of Acts invites us once again to explore what exactly is this call to follow the Way of Jesus, this call to discipleship. It invites us to examine what happens when you disturb the financial status quo of the 1%, when you question the dominant principalities and powers of profit and greed. It invites us to risk imprisonment so we can be free.

     The invitation comes with strings attached because the cost of grace is high. Yet in the midst of the struggle there is singing and praising for above earth’s lamentation we can hear “the reel of a far off hymn that hails a new creation,” a creation whose bedrock is peace with justice, freedom for all. This is our story; this is the invitation. There is subversion, violence, salvation, and singing. This is the Way.

Let us review then our story to see what this invitation entails and at what cost. Our story begins with a slave-girl whose divination gifts are used to help her owners earn a great deal of money. In addition to helping her owners she could also, ironically, see that Paul and Silas were “slaves of the most high God, who proclaim a new way of salvation (Acts 16: 17). Her gift of clairvoyance allowed her a window into the future; it could be used for evil or good. So even though she spoke the truth about Paul and Silas’ mission, Paul was irritated and cast her demon out. The casting out upset her owners who brought Paul and Silas before the magistrates because Paul was sabotaging the economic base of the slaveholders concealed under the political rhetoric of persevering the peace and security of the city. Foreigners were disturbing the peace, introducing contaminants into the customs of exploitation; they were subverting the dominant way of life.

     

Anti-Nato March 2012

Doesn’t this sound familiar? Weren’t we just here a few weeks ago, last week if you are an Orthodox Christian, when a certain young man from Galilee, a foreigner to the Temple Imperial system, was also brought before the rulers for overturning the tables of the moneychangers? Aren’t we there now when people around the world are demanding an end to a system that allows 1% of the population to own 42% of the nation’s wealth, that allows subsidies and tax cuts for the rich while the shrinking middle class and poor have to tighten their belts?

     Aren’t’ we there now when organized greed and inequality intensifies “security measures” like phone tapping, restricted visas, permits, IDs and residency cards? Aren’t we there now when the only way we can think of to protect ourselves is to build bigger walls of concrete? To restrict people’s movement? To restrict people’s access to their holy sites and places of worship?  Aren’t we there now when we send drones to murder people we don’t like or we call “terrorists?” Aren’t we there now when people in the United States are demanding that their tax dollars fund social programs and not war, when they demand that military aid be dependent upon following international law?

     The Magistrates issue by decree and the mob by violence in an attempt to stop this subversive way from getting a foothold. They flog and beat up Paul and Silas even though Paul is a Roman citizen and legally protected as a Jew. Yet God’s power is greater than all these attempts to restrain, to prohibit, and to imprison. God’s power is like an earthquake it shatters all the structures of the dominant system. Their crashing down opens the way for freedom. Our prison houses of fear cannot contain the human spirit that keeps on singing even through the darkest night. Our prison houses of fear cannot keep this God from breathing new life into all things.

     In the midst of the turmoil of the earthquake, the jailer tries to kill himself worried that his captives could now turn on him or walk free or both. But this isn’t what happened. This isn’t how God’s Way of Salvation works. Instead the prisoners and Paul and Silas stayed in the now open prison. They washed the wounds of the other prisoners and the jailer. They “spoke the word of the Lord.”  In response, the jailer brought Paul and Silas and all the other prisoners upstairs into his house and fed them and they all became believers. Paul’s action saves the life of the jailer and provides the way for new believers. This is an act of sacred reconciliation. It happened between the jailer and the prisoners, between the persecuted and the persecutor.

     

This act reminds me of the relationship that developed between Nelson Mandela and his jailer, the 18-year-old white South African, Christo Brand. You will recall that Mandela spent over 27 years in prison and many of those years under the watch of Christo his jailer of 14 years. The persecuted and the persecutor broke the rules. Brand brought Mandela sweets and let him hold his grandson. Mandela encouraged Brand to continue his studies and later upon his release, Mandela found a way to provide a scholarship for Brand’s son to study.

     Freedom is not just the release from prison but from all the structures, thought patterns, and behaviors that blind us to being human, that bind us to relationships of exploitation and bondage.

This act of reconciliation reminds me of the letter that Samer Issawi wrote to the Israeli society, which is imprisoning now as we speak. The letter was written on what many thought would be his deathbed. In it he says, “Listen to my voice, the voice of our time and yours! Liberate yourselves of the excess of greedy power! Do not remain prisoners of military camps and the iron doors that have shut your minds! I am not waiting for a jailer to release me. I’m waiting for you to be released from my memory.” Hunger strikers throughout the world are waiting to not only be released from their physical prisons but the memories of what it means to be imprisoned, to be released from the relationship of persecuted and persecutor.

     To break the cycle of violence, we all must begin by bandaging the wounds that have been inflicted whether we are the ones who have inflicted them or the ones inflicted. However, this is not enough says prisoner and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was jailed and eventually killed for joining a plot to murder Hitler. Bonhoeffer says, “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of the victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”  

     To drive a spoke into the wheel you have to also then address the powers and principalities--- the magistrates. You need to expose their evil and illegal practices to the light of day. You need to provide them away to make amends, a way to change the system.

     When the Magistrates came in the morning to discharge Paul and Silas, men who are Roman citizens and who had been tortured and imprisoned, the magistrates wanted to discharge them in secret. But Paul insisted that they come and escort them out in front of everyone. Humiliating though this might be, it is also provided a way for the magistrates, the powers, to make public their acts of wrongdoing and to make public their act of reconciliation. It provided them no cover and it provided them the stage to create something new and life sustaining.

     Only when the truth is exposed in all its raw pain and sorrow in the light of day can the process of reconciliation and healing begin. This process begins by us not losing hope, by us singing through the night, praying that the dawn will come, freedom will come. It comes when we break the bonds of injustice that imprison us, that privilege the few over the many, that keep us locked into power relationships that lead to persecution and exploitation.

     So come let us sing for our Lord lives not just in the clouds of heaven but here on earth with us, in us. Come let us bandage up the wounded beginning with our own broken hearts. Come let us put a spoke into the wheel of injustice by not being afraid to accept the invitation to follow the Way of the cross which is also the Way of our salvation. Come let us follow the Way that leads to the death of systems of dominance and which opens our spirits and lives to God’s reconciling love and peace. Come let us sing. Come let us pray and work to make it so.