Acts 16:16-34
Freed for Ministry Together
The Uprising of Partnership
James Sledge May
3, 2015
Imagine
for a moment that you are out for a walk on a nice spring day. As you walk down
the street you hear something up ahead and you begin to smell smoke. You pick
up your pace a bit and round the corner to see a house with flames lapping out
several of the windows. It looks pretty bad, but there are no firefighters. Then
you spot someone yelling from a window of the third floor. She sees you and
yells more frantically. “Please, help! Save me!” In such a situation do you,
a.
Grab
your cell phone and call 911?
b.
Take
the ladder you see lying there and try to reach the window with it?
c.
Tell
her about Jesus?
Now
imagine an entirely different scenario. (Or maybe you won’t need to imagine.
This has happened in real life to me a couple of times. ) Again you are out for
a walk, but this time someone comes up to you and asks, “Have you been saved?”
In this situation do you,
a.
Ignore
them and keep walking?
b.
Tell
them that you are already a Christian?
c.
Stop
and tell them about that time you were rescued from a burning building?
Language
is a strange thing. We like to think it provides us with a precise means of
communicating, but the reality is that even the best communicators get
misunderstood with regularity. Every pastor I have ever known has stories about
someone coming up following worship and expressing thanks for a word that spoke
directly to that person’s situation. But upon further conversation, it became clear
that the person heard something the pastor had no intention of saying.
I
know a pastoral counselor who is fond of saying that it’s a wonder that we
manage to communicate at all.
One of the problems with language is
that words pick up a lot of baggage over the years. Take that word “save” and
its companion, “salvation.” Both show up in our reading from Acts. The spirit
possessed slave-girl whom Paul cures had been going on and on about how Paul
and his companions “proclaim to you a message of salvation.” And when a jailor
realizes that his prisoners have not escaped after an earthquake opens the
doors, he cries out, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
And we hear these stories nearly 2000 years later and think we know what the
words mean.
In
one of his earlier books, not the one that’s been shaping our worship here in
recent months, Brian McLaren uses a phrase that has become a favorite of mine.
Speaking in part of his own, evangelical background, he says that very often
the church has proclaimed what he labels a “gospel of evacuation.” In this
gospel earth is not our true home. It is a terrible , “fallen” place that will
finally have to be destroyed, and our only hope is to be evacuated, to be taken
to heaven when we die.
Never
mind that you can’t really find it in the Bible, but when a lot of people hear
the words “save” or “salvation” in a religious context, this evacuation comes
to mind. Even those who don’t come from evangelical backgrounds often think of
evacuation when they hear these terms, one reason you so rarely hear
Presbyterians speak of being “saved.”
Perhaps
this explains why Brian McLaren decides to use a different word when he retells
our story from Acts in We Make the Road
by Walking. In his version, the slave-girl says of Paul and his companions,
“They proclaim to you the way of liberation!”[1]
And when the jailor cries out he says, “Gentlemen, what must I do to experience
the liberation you have?”[2] A
Greek scholar might quibble a little bit, but I suspect McLaren comes closer to
the meaning of the passage than what many American Christians imagine when they
hear “save” and “salvation.”
In
the American religious context, save
and salvation have also taken on
highly individualized meaning, a personal salvation or evacuation. But
biblically the image is more often corporate, speaking of deliverance or rescue for a people, of
healing and restoration that allows people to rejoin their community. And that seems to be the case in our story
today from Acts.
Those of us who are familiar with the
story may miss the dramatic relational shift that occurs in it. Paul and his
companions, who already know and experience liberation in Christ, stay in their
cells following the earthquake and go out of their way to preserve the life of
their jailor. The jailor in turn wants to share in this remarkable freedom they
have, and as he begins to experience it, the jailor, an instrument of Roman
oppression, transforms into a gracious host. He tends their wounds and invites
them to his table where he serves them. He welcomes as though they were close
friends, even family.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Are
you saved? But I’m not talking about whether your ticket has gotten punched for
some impending evacuation. I’m asking about the liberation Paul knew, the
freedom and life that God longs for each of us, a wonderful, new existence that
transforms not only our relationship with God but with others, where, in
Christ, the oppressed can seek the welfare of the oppressor, and the oppressor
can transform into gracious host and friend. Imagine that at work in Baltimore,
or in any of our communities.
That
is why the table is so central to our worship. It sometimes gets lost in the mechanics
of the ritual. It can get lost when we forget that this is supposed to be a
communal table and not an altar. It gets lost because we no longer actually
gather at table as the first believers did. But it is still here. In Christ, we
are liberated and healed of our hurts, and we are freed to forgive one another.
Experiencing the liberation that Paul knew and a jailor found, we discover the
possibility of true community, unity, and partnership with one another, even
with those we once saw as competitors, opponents, tormenters, or enemies.
Come
to the table of grace. Come to be nourished for our life together in this
strange partnership called the body of Christ. Come to be strengthened for our
shared ministry of liberation and reconciliation. Freed by love for love, we
continue the uprising of new life that began that first Easter morn.
We Make the
Road by Walking. The practice
begun in Advent continues through summer of 2015. Scripture and sermons will
connect to chapters in Brian McLaren’s book. This week’s chapter is 37, “The Uprising
of Partnership.”
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