Night Vision

Acts 16:16-34, Revelation 22:12-21, Matthew 28:16-20

May 20, 2007, Confirmation Sunday

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

 

I’m going to talk to the Confirmation Class this morning. You all can listen in if you like.

 

Think with me for a few minutes about this story concerning an unnamed jailer from the book of Acts, a story of coming to faith that is dramatically different from anything any of you in the class have experienced. Imagine what his life might have been like before the earthquake. He wasn’t the boss, he was the one who drew the short straw and got night duty watching prisoners in the jail. It was a job, not a job he particularly liked, since a lot of the people he dealt with were, as he would say, scum. But he didn’t concern himself with why they were there; his job was just to make sure they didn’t get out. And his boss let him know that if anyone did get out, not only his job but his life might be on the line. He had a wife and some kids; they lived in the house attached to the jail so he never escaped the noise, the smell, the sadness and loss of that place. He drank a bit to try to deaden the sheer boredom and tragedy of it all.

 

            The night they brought Paul and Silas to him, he’d already been into the bottle a bit. But he was sober enough to understand these two were considered dangerous and needed special attention, so he put them far back in the jail and manacled their feet with chains to the floor. Assured they were going nowhere, he retreated to his little room and promptly fell asleep….

 

            ….only to be jolted awake at the darkest part of the night by the ground beneath him shaking and the walls around him crumbling. Anyone here been through an earthquake? I have, and I’d just as soon it was my only earthquake. There’s something that cuts right to the core of your sense of security in the world when the very ground beneath you can’t be depended upon to be still. Not only did the jailer have to deal with that basic fear, even in the dark he could tell that prisoners could now escape from the damaged building. It was so dark and the debris around him made running impossible, so he despaired of ever catching any escaped prisoner. Knowing his life was forfeit if even one of them was missing, he took up the sword that stood in the corner of his room and prepared to end it all.

 

            Then he heard a voice, not a still small voice at all, but a loud one, shouting over the clamor of stone and frightened people. “Don’t hurt yourself; we’re all here!” the voice shouted.

And at that moment, Luke writes in the book of Acts, the jailer called for light.

 

            Light, light. In the light of a torch, he could see that what Paul had shouted was true. But he could also see something else. Maybe those hymns and prayers Paul and Silas had been singing had broken through his stupor into his dreams. Maybe the earthquake shook him up enough to take a new look at his life. Maybe the Holy Spirit blew into that jail with such force that no one could escape it. Who knows what made him ready to hear the gospel, but he was. He heard Paul and Silas tell stories of Jesus. He heard them tell about God’s love and forgiveness, God’s desire that we all have life and have it abundantly. He heard them say that he had great value to the world, that there was indeed more to his life than locking up prisoners day after day.

 

            As he listened to them, he took a cloth and some water and some oil and began to wash the wounds the prisoners had received from beatings and from the stone falling in the quake. Without knowing that he was doing exactly what Jesus had done to his disciples the night before he died, this jailer began living the gospel even as he heard it. And after the water of baptism touched his head, he brought his whole family to hear the good news and receive the water of life, and then they all had a great Holy Communion feast of joy.

 

            It would almost be easier, wouldn’t it, for faith to come to us in this dramatic kind of way. Earthquakes and midnight gospel stories and baptism in the ruins of an old jail. It would be clear, then, this move into discipleship, clear that the Spirit was speaking just to you, calling you to new life.

 

            But your experience, and probably that of most of the folk here today, is a bit different. You have inhaled the gospel since you were small. Even if you don’t know the Bible as well as some might hope, you have lived in Christian communities and seen and heard people talking about God and Jesus from before you can remember. Stories like yours don’t make the Bible or even Hollywood versions of it, because they are not dramatic enough.

 

            Not yet, anyway. But they might be. And here’s where I want you to look away from this jailer and his fabulous conversion story a minute and look at another character in this tale, a character seemingly so minor that we might miss him altogether. Silas is his name. We don’t know a lot about him, except that he was from Jerusalem, was a Roman citizen, and had traveled as an assistant with both Peter and Paul, ending up as a leader in the church in Corinth, in Greece. We don’t have a dramatic conversion story for Silas, like we do for Paul or this jailer, so he may have been young and heard the gospel early and decided to work with the early preachers and teachers.

 

            What we do know is that as Silas grew in faith and as a companion to Paul, he did something I want you to remember. He took risks for his faith. Now he didn’t take risks like mountain climbing in the Himalayas or riding a bike without a helmet or taking dares from “friends.” And he didn’t take risks just to draw attention to himself.

 

            He and Paul did risky things like freeing a young girl who had been enslaved not only by human masters, but by a demonic spirit that made her life hell, and they freed her knowing it would make her owners, who made a lot of money off of her possession, very angry indeed. He and Paul did risky things like speaking truth to power and lifting up those who had been downtrodden in their societies. He and Paul did risky things like talking about Jesus and his love to people full of hate. He and Paul took risks for truth, for justice, for love, for and with all people: wealthy business people like Priscilla and Aquila, unnamed grunts like this jailer, slave girls and Greek philosophers. Silas may not have gotten all the press that Paul did, but he was there, right beside him, not the star of the show, but an agitator with the Spirit’s help all the same, not just preaching the gospel, but living it, taking risks to love as Jesus loved.

 

            You are here today because you have chosen to publically say that you have heard the good news, you have been baptized, and, like the jailer, you have spent some time ministering to the wounds of the world in service. Now you are ready to take the next step and embrace the Silas within you. That’s what that jailer needed to do the day after the earthquake. For we are not simply calling you today to become regular churchgoers, to add religion to your to-do list along with sports or music or skating or school or tae kwon do. We are calling you to be disciples of Jesus, and therefore living your faith so that it impacts everything you do, and understanding that it might, just might, from time to time call you to take a few risks in the world to bring about the kind of healing, loving, caring, and justice that God deeply desires to see. Being a disciple of Jesus doesn’t end with the meal after the baptism for the jailer, any more than your faith journey ends after the Silver Tea today. At some point in your life, maybe soon, maybe years from now, there will be a Paul looking for a Silas, and you will be the one the Spirit taps on the shoulder. That’s when you will need a little courage.

 

            That’s when I want you to remember not only the jailer and Silas, but Simon Cowell, American Idol’s most cantankerous judge. (For any of you who have escaped this pop cultural phenomenon, American Idol is a singing contest that is on TV where young people compete and are eliminated one by one by 3 judges and then telephone voting by viewers- and by the way I can’t believe Melinda was eliminated this week; she was clearly the best singer all season – anyway…). Simon. The really good singers know they have lost Simon’s support, at least temporarily, when he says to them, “You played it safe tonight; I’m disappointed.” The times in my life as a disciple and a pastor about which I have the most regrets are the times I imagine Jesus saying, “You played it safe today; I’m disappointed.”

 

            If Silas had played it safe, he would have been nowhere near that jail in Philippi, and look what he would have missed. Sooner or later, the Spirit will call you. What you are saying today is that you will answer that call. I think you are ready. Amen.