Verbs of Grace (Sermon)

“Verbs of Grace”

Acts 16:16-34

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

5/8/16

         Paul and Silas are in the Macedonian town of Philippi. Geographically, Philippi represents the halfway point of Paul’s second journey. And Paul develops a very close relationship with the Philippian church. Demonstrating genuine openness to the gospel, they go beyond adopting beliefs about Jesus. They truly follow him. They visit and care for Paul as a stranger, as a prisoner, and as one who is stripped, beaten and left for dead. Does that sound like a parable?

         Jesus, you see, is not always alive where people simply declare belief. But he does seem to be tangibly alive and active where people care for one another out of Gratitude and Love for the generous gift of the Creation itself, whether they use Jesus’ name or not. Such deliberate care for “the earth…and all that is in it,” (Psalm 24) can rattles cages, though. It can shake cultural foundations, especially in places like first-century Rome, cultures built on the entitlements of wealth and power.

         A slave girl who has a “spirit of divination” belongs to a couple of folks in Philippi. Under more gracious circumstances, the girl might have claimed her unique capacity for insight as a gift, and offered it for the sake of others. And even if thanked or compensated in some way, the transaction would have been one of mutual gifting. Instead, those who claim the girl as private property treat her spiritual intuition as a commodity, something to be monetized for their own self-interest.

         Like it or not, we must confess our own culture’s idolatrous bent toward monetizing not only spiritual gifts, but even the most agonizing brokenness of the human condition.

         One day a few years ago, I was idly channel-surfing and came across an episode of a show about the war in Iraq. It was neither a dramatization nor a documentary. A commercial interest had embedded itself with a medical unit. While one camera filmed men at some base camp gathered around a radio, another camera filmed a crew of medics in helicopter. They were hunched over the bleeding, semi-conscious body of a young man whose life had just been violently and permanently altered. The air bee-hived with bags, and tubes, and syringes, and bleeped-out expletives. The fuzzy oval covering the man’s face preserved as much dignity as a fishnet G-string. A grim-voiced narrator described in time-running-out language what anyone could see. As the tension reached a crescendo, the scene cut away to make time for advertisers to sell beer, pickup trucks, and breakfast cereal.

         How does humankind get to the place of monetizing not just the brutality of war, but the particular suffering of a particular individual whose body, mind, and spirit are in the very process of being wounded, perhaps even destroyed? How different are we from the crucifying fields of ancient Rome?

         I wonder what actually “annoys” Paul. Is it really the girl’s constant chatter about “slaves of the Most High God”? Or does his annoyance reflect a brokenhearted disgust with her owners who allow her to keep this up “for many days.” Because they use Paul’s presence to advertise the girl’s gift, they are monetizing both her and the gospel. This does not sit well with Paul

         Remember, in his letter to the Philippian church, Paul thanks his friends for some unspecified gift saying that he does not “seek the gift, but [rather] the profit that accumulates to [their] account.” He treasures what he receives, but even more so he treasures what the givers discover about giving freely and gratefully for the sake of others. In the free exchange of grace, a gift received becomes a gift given. In a similar way, perhaps, a gift removed can also become a gift given. When Paul releases the girl from that which had kept her objectified and monetized by her “owners,” he grants her the chance to live freely and gratefully in the world.

         Now, such an act threatens the cultural foundations. So, Paul and Silas are charged with public disturbance and heresy. They are arrested, humiliated, beaten, and thrown into prison. And yet more foundations shake. The earth itself shifts. Prison doors swing open. And the jailer, an expendable cog in the graceless Roman machine, prepares to fall on his sword.

         ‘Don’t do it!” says Paul. ‘We’re still here.’

         The terrified jailer rushes into Paul’s cell, falls to his knees, and says, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

         ‘Trust in Jesus,” says Paul.

I have to imagine the jailer looking up and thinking, ‘What are you talking about?’ He isn’t worried about that kind of salvation. He’s worried about being crucified, literally, for failing to keep the jail in proper order.

         The jailer listens to Paul, though. And his life changes. Paul cannot promise deliverance from the brutal impulses of the state’s political self-interest. He can only invite the man into a new way of being alive in the world – freely and gratefully alive, even in the face of violent fear.

Paul doesn’t ask the jailer for anything, either. He doesn’t try to monetize the gospel. He simply offers it. And this Gentile’s reception of the gospel and his thanksgiving act of healing and feeding Paul and Silas are inseparable. Does that sound like a parable?

         Love and Gratitude: They are all about action. In today’s bitterly divided, self-referential world, we seem to be all about nouns and adjectives. In the public square the most popular nouns and adjectives are things like idiot, liar, xenophobe, fraud, scary, ridiculous, embarrasment…I could go on, but the words quickly become things I won’t repeat in here. And many who wield these nouns and adjectives sit in pews on Sunday mornings less than a stone’s throw from people at whom we sling them. One of the new currencies by which many of us “monetize” fear and judgment is the “Likes” we get on Facebook. And I’m not claiming high ground here. I readily confess the nouns and adjectives I catapult with angry abandon, even when I do so in private or at least select company. I also remind myself that in a world of 6 billion people, 43 Facebook Likes does not constitute a revolution.

         Foundations are shaking in so many ways right now. It seems to me, though, that the faithful response to shaking foundations is to live as verbs of Grace, to live as ones through whom shaking foundations are transformed into the seismic rumblings of the Christ. God is calling us to open prison doors, to liberate captives. Isn’t this what it means to be saved? To Love as we are Loved. To give and receive, to thank, to embrace, to trust, to feed, to heal, to forgive, to sing, to hope. These are the means of grace and redemption. To try to profit from them is to deny them. They can only be shared in free, and generous, and well-spirited gratitude.

“The kingdom of God is among you,” says Jesus (Luke 17:21b) We enter it through shared relationship, through our actions, through the life we live together.