God is at Work in You

Scripture Lesson: Acts 16:16-34

A sermon by Deborah Rexrode

Associate for Stewardship, Presbytery of the James

We live in a world and a culture where we are bombarded with questions and concerns every day. What can I do to make sure my children succeed in school? How much will it cost to get my son/daughter into a good college? How much money do I need for retirement? What can I do to keep from getting cancer? Will our economy ever get any better? What do we have to do to be a strong nation? How will we choose the right leaders for our country and for the world? How can we maintain equality for all God’s people? What must we do to bring peace to conflicting nations? What must we do to be safe?

Well, now that I have burdened you with all those questions. Where is the message of hope for us as a congregation of believers? We are haunted by many questions in our lives, and the answers are not always easy. We often have to compromise on what we really want in order to live full lives in this world where God has placed us. We need to stop and consider what God’s plan might be for our lives.

In our text today, a sin-hardened, pagan jailer asks a very important question. What must I do to be saved? There are lots of other questions that man could have asked. He might have asked, How did the doors of my prison get opened? and Why haven’t all my prisoners escaped? or “Who am I going to blame for this mess? Instead he asks a question that gets to the heart of his own problem as an individual and to the heart of the problem for every person in the entire human race. What must I do to be saved?

As Presbyterians and frankly for most progressive mainline Protestants, we don’t talk much about salvation. It makes us uncomfortable, and we think that’s only something that Baptists talk about. So what question should we ask? Tony Jones is a theologician, he has a regular blog he calls, “Questions that Haunt Christians” Tony invites people to ask him anything - anything you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask. Every week he will pick a question that has been submitted and blog about on it his website. He’s tackled all kinds of questions like, “Do I believe God is good or just good to me?” “Is God unique?” “Did Jesus die for Satan?” “Is Christianity reforming itself?”…just to name a few.

Let’s get back to Paul and Silas in the jail, and the jailer asks, “What must I do to be saved?” Tony and others like John Vest at Union Seminary have tackled this passage of scripture from a slightly different perspective, sort of turned it on its head by asking instead, “From what are we being saved?”

Some might have a pretty straightforward answer to this question: we’re being saved from going to hell. This understanding of Christianity seems rather simple that every human being will one day be judged by God, with the righteous going to heaven and the wicked going to hell. Right? But we’re all sinners and we’re all pretty worthy of going to hell. So, one might say, this is where Jesus steps in with his death and resurrection to save us from the wrathful hands of an angry God. Okay, that’s one interpretation of salvation. I would like to present a couple of other approaches for you to ponder.

One approach begins pretty much the same. We are all sinners! But instead of jumping to the judgment part and the concept of a personal salvation from hell, think about the fact that we are part of a bigger global picture. The world we live in is full of sin and suffering from things like hatred, violence, greed, disease, poverty, and hunger. Jesus comes into the picture to present a different way of being, a way that is grounded in love for God and love for neighbor. Jesus teaches us this way and it has the  potential to radically transform the world in which we live by radically transforming each of us. That’s a much more comforting way of thinking about salvation, don’t you think?

Another approach might be to look at the Gospel of Mark where Jesus says, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom? Change your hearts and lives and trust the Good News!” When Jesus spoke those words, his people were subjects of the Roman Empire. The creed of the land was “Caesar is Lord.” Jesus provided a radical alternative. Instead of the kingdoms of the world, we are invited to participate in the emergence of God’s kingdom, right here, right now. Instead of proclaiming that Caesar or oppression or violence or fear is Lord, we proclaim that “Jesus is Lord.” Jesus invites us to trust in him and change our hearts and our lives.

From this perspective, we are saying that Jesus is saving us from ourselves. Jesus is saving us from our own self-destructive ways - both individually and collectively. So, the jailer asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul and Silas answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. From that point on he was a changed man, a true believer.

There is no magical formula that gives us entrance into Heaven. The truth is, salvation is a change in the human personality. There is much more to salvation than just being saved from some conceived notion of the wrath of God. God has in fact given us a new covenant to live under - one that offers grace and forgiveness for all our sins. The grace of God through Jesus Christ provides all the authority, wisdom and power we need to change from having a sinful personality to having a righteous one.

The changes takes place every day. Every moment of the day, our old nature can be submitted to crucifixion just as Christ is being formed within us. Every moment we spend allowing God to instruct us on the way to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, we are being transformed. God’s love becomes engraved on our hearts so that we might love to serve the Lord and do his will. Now that’s salvation!

As I studied this passage of scripture, I found a story about Saint Thomas Aquinas. While walking with a friend in the midst of the splendors of Rome the friend said, “We Christians certainly can no longer say silver and gold have we none.” Saint Thomas responded by saying, “But neither can we say to the lame man, in the name of Jesus Christ rise up and walk.”

On the surface these two events in Paul’s ministry seem problematic for the modern church. Think about this story - a slave girl with some very unique gifts, two advocates of the gospel locked in a prison cell with no hope of release, and a sin-hardened jailer - all of them were released from their different forms of imprisonment. This is nothing short of a miracle.

Where do we see such power emerging in and through the church? Like Saint Thomas, we may be painfully aware of the lack of life-transforming power in the modern church and its witness. That may be precisely the reason Luke shares these events with us. Luke calls us to attentiveness to God’s saving power. Perhaps Luke is inviting us to move beyond the church’s limitations to a deeper reflection on God’s activity. It is God who is at work in us that allows us to identify and recognize how we can be in ministry. It is not our doing.

Luke invites us to a stronger sense of gratitude for our salvation and our freedom. Most of us as disciples of Christ have a story of “being saved.” While we may not have been in a physical prison, we do have our chains, things that keep us from being all that God has called us to be. At some point, if we are honest with ourselves, we are aware that we were once lost but now are found. In some way, God’s grace penetrated our solitary confinement and we were set free. Disciples are persons who, in the presence of hurt, guilt, and powerlessness, discover the love of a Savior reaching out to us at exactly the time when we are in need of being saved.

We are invited to be in touch with this portion of our personal faith history. Our stories can resonate with this story of Paul and Silas and the jailer. Luke is firmly convinced that God’s love seeks people out no matter who they are, no matter what their positions in society, no matter the circumstances in which they find themselves. The need for a Savior is a great equalizer. If we can be saved, then so can anyone else. If we can only renew our gratitude for God’s work in us, then we can be in touch, once again, with the power described in this story.

Where have you seen God at work? Where have you experienced God’s freedom lately? These questions move us away from conversations about the accuracy of our theological opinions, our pessimistic worries about the state of our lives, and our diagnosis of the state of other persons’ lives. Freed from idle chatter, from prejudices, and unquestioned assumptions, we can be open to experiences of redemption and freedom. We too can be released from the chains that bind us.

One other important component of this story is the presence of those who were not free. The slave girl and the jailer are prisoners in different cells in the same fortress of fear, oppression, and hopelessness. Paul and Silas, simply on the way to a prayer meeting find themselves in a prison singing hymns while chained to a wall. Their lives intersect with these two - the slave girl and the jailer - for whom Christ died and rose again. In their freedom they have the ability to offer the key to unlock the chains of bondage, and the slave girl and the jailer are receptive to hear what they have to say. The opportunity is provided and Paul and Silas do not miss the chance to make a difference in the lives of two who have not believed.

It happens to those who pray and worship. God provides people with whom our experiences will intersect in helpful and healing ways. Luke is not describing an event that lives only as the memory of the church. The event of God’s deliverance happens over and over again for the church and through the church. Luke is saying, “Wake up, church! This could be you!” You’ve probably heard the phrase, “That was a good wake-up call.”

In my new position as the Associate for Stewardship for the Presbytery of the James, one of my objectives is to help congregations know what to do when they get that wake-up call. That call that says, “Come on, wake up church, be the church that God has called you to be.” When the jailer awoke he asked, “What must I do to be saved?” If we believe that salvation is at work in us every minute of every day, the better question to consider is, “From what do we need to be saved?” What are the chains that bind us and keep us from being the church.

And I think we need to take it one step further. We need to ask the question, “What are we being saved to do?”  What is God calling us to do here - here at Cove Presbyterian Church - here in our communities of faith - here in this Presbytery? Should we trust that God will provide for us if we take this next important step of faith?

There is a saying that stewardship is everything we do after we say we believe. Stewardship is the management and care of everything we have been given. How do we use our time? Do we waste the precious time we have been given? On Palm Sunday a member of the church where I attend was taken to the emergency room with severe stomach pain. On the way to the hospital, he wanted his daughter to stop by his office so he could pick up some work that needed to be done. That man was diagnosed with liver cancer on Good Friday and died the day after Easter. Only one week left in his life, and his thought was on his work. Time is precious, and it’s something we should cherish and use wisely. Wake up, church, how are you using your time?

We are called to build and restore relationships with not only our family and friends, but the lost, the lonely, the broken, the sick, the disenfranchised, those who have harmed us in some way, those who would seek to harm us, those who are different, those who don’t believe the same as we do. It’s hard work and possible only when we build and maintain our relationship with God, the one who can provide the strength and energy we need to love the unlovable and touch the untouchable. Wake up church, and be disciples of Christ in this church, in this community, in the world.

We are called to give. Think about it. All that we have and all that we are is a gift from God that has been entrusted to us for a short time while we are on this earth. God has provided abundantly for us, and we are called to respond to the needs around us, to share that which God has given to us so that others can also experience the abundance of God’s love and generosity. We are simply the caretakers!

Stewardship is about generosity. It’s about gratitude. It’s about abundance. It’s about how we use our time and how we use our talents. Stewardship is about the management of our personal wealth and our church’s wealth. Cove Presbyterian Church has heard God’s call to wake up and do something new and exciting. You are being called to embrace the gift of a new pastor, to look with anticipation toward this season of change and transition. God is at work in you, stirring your hearts to become true disciples of Christ, nudging you to step out in faith, to show this community and the world what is means to be good stewards of the faith.

God is at work in you, just as God was at work in the life of the jailer. Every night the jailer heard Paul and Silas singing and praying. That did not go unnoticed by the jailer, and when confronted with a life and death situation, the jailer asked the question, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Rather than taking into account from what God saves a person, stewards are free to look on faith’s opportunities. Good stewards ask, For what did God save me?” God saves us to extend God’s realm on earth. For us salvation is a call to discipleship and stewardship. When you gather for worship to sing and pray, ask the most important question you can, What are we being saved to do?” Now that we have we have said we believe, what is God calling us to do?