Easter: The Neverending Story
Acts 16:16-34 Revelation 22:12-14;16-17;20 John 17:20-26
Our granddaughter Katie, currently completing her sophomore year in high school, is a talented writer and storyteller, much to the delight of her Nana. As a toddler, she seldom allowed anyone to read to her. Instead, she would take books off to a secluded corner and “read” them aloud — making up the story as she went along.
In kindergarten, she was thrilled to discover that the alphabet letters she had learned could be combined to form words that she could actually read.
But in first grade she unlocked the biggest secret: she could use those words to create stories. The intensity with which she approached creative writing assignments amazed her teachers and her family. Where other students might write a few rudimentary sentences in response to a prompt, Katie would cover the back and front of a sheet of notebook paper — all in a nearly indecipherable scrawl.
During that time, we often worked on stories together. Two writers, colleagues, don't you know? She would capture her thoughts on paper, and then I would enter her masterpieces into the computer. She was, and is, quite a philosopher. One of those early efforts she entitled “Love Never Ends.”
This anecdote came to me as I was preparing for this sermon because I think six-year-old Katie's theology encapsulates the Easter story. In truth, love never ends, nor does Easter. The promise of Easter is present in every life, in every circumstance, in every day as God acts to transform human minds and hearts.
Today's story from Acts provides an illustration of one such small “e” easter. Paul and Silas, along with Luke and others, travel to Philippi, a Roman city in Macedonia. There, as we heard, Paul exorcises a demon from a fortune-telling slave girl, and infuriates her owners, who rely on her to make them money. They retaliate by bringing Paul and Silas before the magistrates, who have them stripped and beaten. The authorities throw the two men into prison, where they are confined in the excruciatingly uncomfortable stocks in an innermost cell. The jailer is given strict instructions to keep them secure.
This is a tough situation, worthy of a old-time Saturday movie matinee cliffhanger. Paul and Silas are Jews in a foreign city, accused of challenging the local customs and laws. Bruised and bloody, they are confined in darkness, unable to move. Their plight seems grim, indeed.
Suffering the throes of pain, alone, and anxious for what is to come, Paul and Silas begin praying and singing hymns to God, and, as Luke tells us, their fellow prisoners listen to them.
On the other side of the prison bars is the beleaguered jailer. Not only does his job depend upon guarding the prisoners, his very life is at stake. According to Roman custom, he was subject to death for dereliction of duty should any of the prisoners entrusted to his care escape.
When an earthquake of violent proportions shakes the foundations of the prison, miraculously the doors of the cells swing open and the binding chains are unfastened.
Now comes the puzzling part. The important details omitted from the story raise questions:
The jailer, reading into the earthquake the retribution of the gods and fearing death at the hands of the Romans, draws his sword to take his own life. In that moment, poised between this world and the next, he hears Paul shout, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” [Act 16:28]Why aren't the freed prisoners running for their lives?
Is the earthquake a coincidence or God's intervention?
Was it something Paul and Silas prayed or sang that changed despair and imprisonment to hope and freedom?
If so, exactly what were those transformative words?
And did those words root their fellow prisoners to the spot?
The jailer calls for lights (a nice symbolic touch) and, in acknowledgment of his miraculous delivery, asks what he must do to be saved. “Believe on the Lord Jesus,” Paul tells him. So affected is the jailer that he washes the Silas and Paul's wounds, and, along with his entire family, is baptized “without delay.” [Acts 16:31;33]
Much in the same way that Paul was struck down on the road to Damascus, the jailer, humbled by the power of God and the witness of Paul and Silas, undergoes a significant conversion experience.
That night in the heaving of the earth, the stones were both literally and figuratively rolled away. Yes, tangible chunks of hewn rock. But vastly more important, stones of self-interest, fear, helplessness, and unbelief.
The result? Physical deliverance for Paul and Silas. And spiritual deliverance for the jailer. And what of the other prisoners? I like to think that if this story had an epilogue, we would see God at work in their lives as well.
Deliverance. Conversion. New life. An Easter story.
And what of our Easter stories?
We, too, experience times when we are shackled by misery, abandonment, physical restraint, darkness, or despair. And times when we are confined by our own anger, pride, envy, fear, doubt, or vengefulness.
What frees us from these self-imposed cells we create? What forces crumble the stones of our egos?
For those huddled in the dark night of that Philippian prison, it was the prayers and songs of Paul and Silas that penetrated human hearts and freed souls. For the jailer, it was additionally Paul's forgiveness and generosity of spirit that spared the man from self-inflicted death.
Those same elements, present on that long ago night, have, even now, the power to set us free. In our darkest moments, we may somehow find a way to offer up prayer and song to God. Freedom from our chains may also come through the actions, prayers and witness of others who reach out to us in our isolation, hopelessness, and anxiety, and, by that act of faith and caring, restore us to community.
As John's Gospel relates, it is this communion with God and with one another for which Jesus prays on that desolate last night before he begins his journey to the cross. Speaking of the disciples, he says, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” [John 17:20-21]
We are the vessels through which God's love is made known in this day and age. We are the community of faith. And we are also those in need of Easter deliverance.
All around us God is acting, transforming lives by virtue of millions of small “e” easters, if we but recognize them.
At the end of his prayer, Jesus addresses his father with these words: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” [John 17:26]
Always.
With that special innocence and wisdom of the very young, Katie got it right. Love never ends. Happy Easter!
Amen.
Laura Shoffner
May 20, 2007
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