Salvation [Easter 7C]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Acts 16:16-34

Salvation

Is this what salvation looks like?  As today’s story from Acts shifts and jumps, shakes and quakes, and the Holy Spirit of God working in the story does the same, it is this question that, repeatedly, at each twist, turn, pause, and break is begged.  Is this what salvation looks like?

The passage begins innocently enough – if one can ever call the work of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts innocent.  And the vast number of apostolic arrests in this book suggests that maybe one cannot.  But it is the case that when Paul and his companions enter into the Macedonian city of Phillipi, they decide, blinders on, halos firmly affixed, to head straight for the place of prayer. They were not looking for any trouble.

But trouble finds them.  In the guise of a slave girl – a slave girl who just happens to be possessed by a spirit – a spirit that takes a special interest in these men who are definitely, in no way, looking for trouble.

But, innocent or not, there was something here that attracted this girl to these pious visitors.  She saw something in these men, these strangers, that looked familiar to her.  See this slave says, as she tails them through the city, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”  This slave girl recognized these men as fellow slaves.  In some sense they shared an identity.  They had something in common.  She could tell immediately.  And that recognition drew her in.

At first they ignored her.  But it just kept happening.  Day after day, this girl followed them, shouting them out like a carnival barker, announcing their entrance into the place of prayer as if she were auditioning to be their little, female hype man.  Some people are a lot to take: this girl was one of those people. 

Paul wanted to ignore her, but as he always says, or at least as he said once in his letter to the Romans, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”  He tried to ignore her, that’s what he wanted to do, but instead he got very, very annoyed, and, his temper got the best of him, and in a fit of frustration, he cast out that spirit.  Is this what salvation looks like?  Because I guess I thought salvation would be less annoyed.

No matter the motivation, or the means, the spirit that possessed her, controlled her, left her.  The girl, she understood slavery; that, she lived; that was her life.  She was owned and she was possessed.  Her chains were both spiritual and physical.  She was a slave and so she could identify a fellow slave.  And so while, perhaps, that was the reason she approached the men, the reason she stayed, day after day, was because they were also different; there was something that they had that she did not recognize, something foreign to her life experience.  These men, they knew a way of salvation.  And this girl, she did not know what salvation looked like until these men arrived in her town.  And in the name of Jesus, she was set free.  The chains that bound and oppressed her fell off.  That hastily spoken prayer changed her life, gave her a new life in her old city, spoken in the name of a Savior who could not only save her soul but change her very circumstances.  Is this what salvation looks like?

That impulsive exorcism changed not only the girl’s life, it changed things for Paul and his companions as well.  That spontaneous salvation had financial implications for her owners, and probably for the local economy too.  And if you want to know how people feel about acts of liberation that affect their personal economic bottom line, just see the Civil War.  

God is moving in Phillipi, the Holy Spirit is introducing salvation to the folks in the neighborhood.  And that sounds like a good thing, like good news.  But, you see, that same salvation is shaking up the economy and the marketplace is not pleased.  Because while God is good, the people of Macedonia might remind us that God doesn’t pay the bills.  If you thought salvation was supposed to be a crowd pleaser, this angry mob would beg to differ.  And so again I wonder: Is this what salvation looks like?  Does salvation have something to say about the oppressive economic arrangements with which we have grown comfortable?  Is that sweet Holy Spirit, sweet heavenly Dove in the business of ruffling our financial feathers? 

Paul and friends are dragged before the authorities, because, as the text tells us, the owners of the girl saw that their hope of making money was gone.  But that is not the charge the infuriated owners bring before the courts.  Complaining that their slave girl has been freed from demon possession might not earn them the sympathy they desire.  And so they pull a play from a very old and successful playbook.  They tell the authorities, “These Jews are polluting our city with their strange customs – customs that just don’t belong around here.  Those people don’t share our values.”  Now we will find out, in the verses that follow today’s text, later in Acts, that Paul and his companions are actually Roman citizens – as Roman as their accusers.  But they fall victim to some timeless jingoistic propaganda: they just don’t look or act like real Romans.

And so the leaders of the city decide, for the crime of being different from us, they should be stripped of their clothing, which was a way people were, in those times, publicly shamed, they should be beaten, and finally thrown into prison.  That will teach them to be so Jewish.  In an ironic twist, the girl’s freedom cost Paul and his crew their freedom.   

At least temporarily.  Because the same God who shook up the city’s economy, shakes up the prison as well – this time with an actual earthquake.  And the doors burst open and the prisoners’ chains even fall off – which is quiet a trick for an earthquake.  And everyone who was held captive was set free.  Is this what salvation looks like?

It was a good day for the prisoners.  But it was not a good day for the jailer.  It seemed that their salvation meant his demise.  His extreme reaction to this act of God tells us that the prisoners are not the only ones in that prison who needed to be set free.  The earthquake was not his fault, and yet he bore the entire weight of responsibility.  He knew the Empire would show him no mercy.  He was no more than a cog in the machine; he was replaceable.  He did not matter to the empire.  But he did matter to the people in that prison.  To save his life, in that moment, the life of their jailer, all of the prisoners stay put.  Maybe, is this what salvation looks like?

I’m not sure exactly what the jailer meant by his question: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Whether he hoped to save his life or his soul.  But like the slave girl, this desperate jailer noticed something in these three followers of Jesus that looked, to him, like salvation.  He put down the sword and walked out of his prison.  Actually, they walked out of that prison together and walked into the waters of baptism together.  Is this what salvation looks like?

When all is said and done, this story proves to be a happy story.  The curtains close on a party that Paul and his friends could not have expected when they first arrived in Phillipi.  The unexpected work of the Holy Spirit: the same Spirit that freed a slave girl and shook a city and saved a jailer and troubled the waters of baptism and formed a family across dividing lines had something in mind that not even the great St. Paul could have imagined.  The Holy Spirit blew through the city and no one who encountered that divine presence would ever be the same.  Is this what salvation looks like? 

It was all very dramatic: the twists, the turns, the broken chains, and the bursting doors.  And then, finally, finally we come to the table.  Sometimes it is not in the earthquake that we find God but in a circle of bread and in a taste of wine, on a simple table visited by a divine presence, visited by the same Holy Spirit who shook up Phillipi.  That same Spirit shows up here in the beauty of simplicity.  Truthfully, it’s not much to see.  But I wonder: Is this, even this, what salvation looks like?