Acts 16:16-34
7th Sunday of Easter May 8, 2016
“I put my FitBit on my dog, because I have a friend who is too competitive, and I can’t let her win.”[1] This is not my confession, nor is it a confession from any of us who walked to Jerusalem. This is one of the secrets posted on the web site Postsecret.com. As an experiment, this web site was founded in 2005. People were invited to send in postcards divulging a secret, with the qualifications that it was true and had never previously been revealed to anyone. Some of the cards people send in are simply written and some are lavishly decorated. Postcards are posted weekly to the web site, and some submissions have been published in books.
Secrets that we keep can hold us captive. We can become slaves trying to keep people from finding out. Then, too, whatever it is that we are hiding can imprison us. Listen to a few secrets that people have lived with, concealing this part of themselves even from their best friends and partners. These quotes are taken from one of Frank Warren’s PostSecret’s books.[2]
“Life is more fun with my work spouse” (31).
“I always kept my phone unlisted so my unknown father couldn’t find me. I know he wasn’t looking but I could pretend I didn’t know” (218).
”I keep meaning to tell you it wasn’t cancer. She died by suicide. I’m so ashamed” (210).
“I tell everyone I take the stairs to be environmentally friendly, but I’m really just afraid of elevators” (211).
“When my students’ parents ask me if I have any children of my own, I have to remind myself not to blurt out ‘God no! I hate kids!’” (118).
The things that we dare not tell anyone confine us. Sometimes we are our own jailer.
Our reading from Acts this morning is full of people held captive. Paul and Silas encounter a slave girl while they were on their way to the place of prayer. She had a “spirit of divination,” a spirit so active and convincing that she earned her owners a great deal of money. How did this girl come to be owned? Was her family’s financial situation so desperate that they sold her? Did her mother miss her, or were both her parents dead and this was the only way this unnamed girl knew to survive? What was it that held her captive?
She, on the other hand, declared Paul and Silas “slaves”. She followed them day after day, shouting, “’These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’”[3] Was she looking for salvation? Did she want to be saved? Is that why she hounded Paul and Silas day after day?
Out of sheer aggravation, Paul commanded the spirit to leave the young woman. This in turn annoyed the slave girl’s owners, and they had Paul, Silas and the others beaten, arrested and put in jail. Not only were they in jail, their feet also were bound in shackles. Despite their circumstances, Paul and the other disciples were singing and praying. Suddenly, in the darkness of the night, the ground beneath their feet began to shift. As the earth quaked, the prison doors flung open and the chains loosened. We have to wonder how they viewed prison because Paul and the others stayed right there. Their source of freedom was in the one to whom they were praying.
We have to wonder, too, about the jailer, the one who was on the other side of confinement, the one who was free to come and go. Despite the fact that he was free, this man was so bound up in his job that he was ready to kill himself when he realized the earthquake had opened the cell doors. Although that was not the jailer’s fault, it seems his whole being, his identity was wrapped up in his job performance. He felt his honor turn into shame. His voice piercing the darkness, Paul shouted to the jailer not to hurt himself.
Falling to the ground, and trembling the jailer asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” It is a good question, one that we ask every day. What must I do to be saved from that which grips me so tightly it imprisons me? What must I do to not be bound by shame, or pride, or fear, or pain or grief? What must I do to be saved?
The answer is not a self-improvement program. The answer isn’t even writing your confession on a postcard and sending it to be shared with the public. The answer is Jesus. In the words of Paul and Silas, “’Believe in the Lord Jesus.” The Lord Jesus, not the lord career, the lord money, the lord perfectionism, the lord alcohol, or the lord appearances. “What must I do to be saved?” The answer is the Lord Jesus. Jesus saves us. Jesus redeems us through love strong enough to die for us. Through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, we are liberated from that which holds us captive. We are set free.
After the jailer heard of Jesus’ love from Paul and Silas and the others, he took them to his home. There, the jailer gently washed their wounds, and they in turn washed his with God’s mercy and love. The jailer gave them nourishment with food, and they gave him nourishment with the Word. He and his whole family were washed clean in the waters of baptism.
The good news of Jesus Christ, who was beaten and hanged on a cross in public, cannot remain a secret. In a world that yearns for freedom, the love of Jesus Christ that sets us free is to be shared. Just as Paul shared God’s love for us through Christ with those who were enslaved, so are we to share this good news. We, as a community, are called to walk alongside each other and with those whom the world enslaves. And maybe even share your FitBit with someone.
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin
[1] http://postsecret.com accessed on May 4, 2016.
[2] Warren, Frank. PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.
[3] Acts 16:17.