SERMON
by Reverend Judith Alltree, delivered on Sunday May 16, 2010,
at the Church of the Holy Spirit.
EASTER VII - “Enslavement”
Have you ever watched a television program called “Til Debt do us Part”? The focus is on couples, primarily, who are deeply, ridiculously in debt, and the financial “saviour” who swoops into their lives to save them – or at least that is the point of tension, and in some cases, contention, of the show.
Gail, the host of the program, offers the guests an opportunity to free themselves from their crippling debt but it comes with a price: each of the guests must complete three “challenges” as she calls them, to her satisfaction, in order to receive a reward of some money towards the payment of their debt. If they don’t complete the challenges, they lose the money. Most participants will lose some of their dignity during the course of the program, a small price to pay for the salvation she offers. In all cases, achieving financial freedom involves making the lives of the show’s guests as simple as possible. This is what John the Baptist called “repentance”, and in ‘repenting’ of their financial sins, each person on the program has accepted their role in their own financial difficulties, and is willing to make the changes necessary to free themselves from their debt. The basic premise of the program, then, is “what must we do to be saved?”
Most of us are faced in one way or another with some kind of “addiction” which, I realize, is a pretty harsh word, but it’s meant to be. We are addicted to everything from alcohol, food and drugs to strange television programs and computer games to greed, acquisition, conspicuous consumption, sex and power. Spending, or in the case of the folks on this tv program, overspending, gives some people a vicarious thrill; not so much what they buy but the act of spending the money, especially on credit cards as it seems so unreal: what someone I knew used to call the “never never pay plan”. Even jealousy or envy is a form of addiction because of what it can lead to, the desire to have what belongs to someone else merely because it doesn’t belong to you.
In the book of Acts, we read how Paul freed a young female slave from the spirit of divination (in Greek: Pneuma Puthona, or python spirit, one of the Oracles of Delphi) by which she is said to have predicted the future, and through which her owners made a very comfortable living. In their desire for revenge, they had Paul and Silas arrested, and found guilty of, “undermining Roman order with Jewish customs” (for this read: simply being Jewish), and for challenging an unjust economic system (that is, slavery – although Paul seems not to have freed the woman herself from being a possession, only from being possessed by this unclean spirit of divination).
As punishment for their so-called crimes, Paul and Silas are beaten and thrown into jail. While in jail, an earthquake of some magnitude shakes the cells, frees the men from the stocks which have imprisoned their legs, breaks the chains, flings the doors open and literally sets them free. In those days, the punishment for jailers whose prisoners escaped while under their watch was death – to the jailer – never mind that it was a nature disaster that precipitated the escape, someone had to be blamed. The jailer, presuming Paul and Silas have escaped during the earthquake, prepares to kill himself rather than submit to the torture and murder his Roman bosses will have waiting for him, when Paul suddenly cries out “wait, we’re still here”.
The jailer, trembling – partly from the aftershocks we might imagine, and partly because of the reprieve to his own life having so nearly ended it – rushes into the cell and asks Paul that famous question: “What must I do to be saved?” And Paul gives him his now-famous answer: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ”.
It is most likely that the jailer’s question refers to his present situation: what must I do to be saved from repercussions in case the other prisoners have escaped? Paul, on the other hand, takes the opportunity to talk about something that is far more profound: the jailer’s eternal life. Even though the two men might be talking at cross purposes with one another, the jailer is intrigued enough by this answer to take Paul home.
Paul and Silas teach the jailer and his household about Jesus. In two concurrent acts, the jailer washes Paul and Silas’ wounds with purifying water, then he and his entire family are baptized with the same purifying water. For the jailer, what began with a near suicide ended with eternal life for he and his whole family. Paul and Silas stayed the night with the jailer in his home, and returned to the jail the next day where, presumably, the jailer’s overlords were none the wiser about the whereabouts of their infamous prisoners and in fact freed them that morning.
“While the aftershocks still rattled the walls, the jailer knew he needed saving. The threat to his well-being was clear, tangible, looming. We, on the other hand, sometimes have only a vague sense that we are in trouble, that our lives are falling apart, or that we are losing our way. We learn to hide these thoughts, either with diversions or with shallow hopes that things will get better.” (p. 524, Theological Perspective, “Feasting on the Word”)
The folks on “Til Debt do us Part”, use their wild spending habits as a diversion to hide from the reality of their lives, in the hope that things will somehow, out of the blue, just get better. Some are looking for a quick fix; others for “someone else” to do the heavy lifting; still others for some kind of strategic plan or tested method for self-improvement. It’s always much more than that.
Paul’s is the ultimate response to the ultimate question: what must I do to be saved? “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” This is not a quick fix; it’s not a “strategic plan” and most definitely not a “self-improvement program”. Belief in Jesus Christ means taking life to its very foundations while at the same time it is “tuning in to the highest level of the story line (also known as the Word) of what God is doing in our world.”
It is also not about hiding from the reality of our lives. We make messes of some of the things we do. We struggle with decisions and the consequences of our actions. We fret over the future, what will our lives be like, our children’s lives; we try desperately to take control over the many aspects of our lives, while failing to address the reality of our situation, and to actively seek where the opportunities for salvation lie.
We do know we have choices, and we can choose to repent, to turn away from those things that separate us from our relationship from God, from those “addictions”, many and varied as they may be, and turn instead towards something more powerful: our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; belief in the salvation we received through the faith of Jesus Christ, who gave himself freely to us in death, who carried our sins to hell for three days before he rose again, alive and free, as promised for so long by God through the prophets. Belief that if we allow the Holy Spirit to invade our very souls with the truth of Jesus Christ we have been saved, because we have been made acceptable to God in Jesus Christ. AMEN.