"An Earthquake Experience"
Acts 16:25-34
October 19, 2008
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Rev. John A. Fleming
When God made us, He thought it would be best for us if we got our start as a part of a family. In my case, God put me in the home of Jo and Mary Fleming and their two children, David and Emily. I grew up in their house and home and am a better person for it. I know that not everyone has the good family experience I had, but for the most part, there are no ties more tender than the ones of the family. There are also no vows more sacred than those that bind us together in one house.
As you know, the Bible is full of families and I challenge you to find a functional one. Joseph had trouble with his brothers. They threw him into a pit and when they thought better of it, decided to sell him into slavery instead. It was Abraham and Sarah, who had long ago given up on the idea of having a baby when an angel appeared and said that there would soon be a son. When Sarah heard the news she laughed and soon their son, Isaac, whose name means Son of Laughter was born. Jesus was nurtured in the home of Mary and Joseph who must have also taught him many things. And here in Acts we are introduced to a Philippian jailer and his family. This morning I would like for us to hear his story. His story is one of the greatest ones in the New Testament.
Let me begin by reminding you of how he came to be mentioned and the events leading up to his guarding of Paul and Silas in that Philippian jail.
The book of Acts tells the story of the beginning of the church and how she got up on her feet. We know Luke wrote the words that comprise the twenty-eight chapters. His gospel tells the story of the life and teachings of Jesus. Acts tells the story of the beginning of the church.
One of the great actors in the story, of course, is the apostle, Paul. His missionary journeys can be traced if you carefully read Acts. In our lesson for today, we catch up with Paul and Silas who traveled with him. Our story comes in the midst of a couple of conversion stories. One tells of Lydia's conversion and the other of a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and telling the future. Luke tells us that she made a lot of money for her owners.
Paul and Silas come into town looking for a place of prayer. On their way there, they encounter this slave girl. Because the spirit was inside her, she noticed things. When she saw Paul and Silas she cried out time and time again, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation." Hold on to that. We'll come back to it. Luke says she proclaimed this for several days. He also tells us that it annoyed Paul. One day he turned to her and in the name of Jesus ordered the spirit to come out of her. Of course it did and that is when Paul and Silas' trouble began.
It wasn't against the law to remove a spirit and so the slave owners upset that their income was suddenly gone, decided to charge Paul and Silas with throwing the city into confusion and practicing things that aren't lawful for Romans. The charges landed Paul and Silas in prison.
That is where this story shifts and heads to the prison cell itself. Luke says that it was about midnight when Paul and Silas were leading a worship service in their cell. It was then that an earthquake shook the cell. Notice what the quake does and does not do. It does open the shackles around the prisoner's feet and it did open the prison door. It didn't cause the walls to crumbling down. The walls were as strong as ever.
The sound and the shake woke the jailer and when he saw what had happened, he drew his sword to kill himself. That may sound severe, but in the days of the early church, this jailer would have been responsible for the prisoners. If they were missing, he would have been killed.
Just as he began to draw his sword, Paul calls out to him with the word that no one had escaped. The jailer called for the lights and rushed in to see what he was sure was not true. What he saw was smiles on prisoner's faces. He fell to his knees and asked this great question, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" The answer is simple. It's not a time for a theological debate. It is time to believe. He does and soon his entire family are baptized and members of the greatest movement ever. As it turns out, he believes in a God who opens prison doors and the prisons we all find ourselves in.
Now, with the time we have left in our sermon this morning, I'd like for us to look a little more closely at this jailer and hopefully find some meaning for our own lives. I'd like to start with the things I know this jailer had.
First, he had a job. Jobs aren't everything to everyone, but many of us find great meaning in what we do for a living. And unless you are independently wealthy (and if you are, I'd like to talk with you about your church pledge) jobs are necessary.
I am not sure why this man chose to be a jailer as his profession. Maybe he tried other things. Maybe he started out being a fisherman, but wasn't very good at catching fish. Maybe he didn't like getting up at the crack of dawn, hauling all his supplies to the boat, and sitting on the cold sea everyday. In his day, being a carpenter may have been an option for him, unless, he wasn't good at that sort of thing. When the doors wouldn't shut and the windows wouldn't close, and the bills mounted up, maybe his wife suggested something else. They were hungry. Maybe she suggested that he call her brother down at City Hall in hopes that he could get him a job at the jail. Maybe that happened and because he was the last hired, he worked the graveyard shift. It wasn't a great job, but it paid the bills.
A few years ago when I was flying back to Dallas from a trip to Little Rock, I sat next to a guy who immediately struck up a conversation. He looked down at the people driving the cart and hauling luggage to the plane and he said, "I think I'd like to have that job. It looks like a lot of fun. I really don't like my job!" The jailer had a job, that I know.
I also know this, he had a family. Luke tells us about the jailer's household. In the churches I have served, there have always been ministries for single and married people, for children and youth, for men and women. I wish there had been more ministries for families. Marriage and family were clearly important to Jesus. He taught about that and he wanted children to know they had a special place.
We want great houses, wonderful schools with great teachers in them. We want a community that has everything we could imagine in them. We will move to places to have all of those things. What will we do, friends, to strengthen our families?
This week I read that eighty-five percent of people believe that parenting is more difficult now than it used to be. That has to be correct. There are things our youth deal with today that I didn't a few short years ago. Still, our community is formed in such a way that it relies on us raising our children to make commitments and to have responsibilities to the community. We also raise them to understand that relationships are both important and complex.
I have just returned from three days up at the monastery at Subiaco, Arkansas. I was there with forty-five pastors who are being asked to help the church focus on leading the United Methodist Way. The devotional question that was asked the first night was this one, "Why are you a United Methodist?" The short and long answer is that I am because my dad was and his dad was. I am because my mom walked the block from the Presbyterian Church to the Methodist Church when her church didn't have a youth ministry. I love the church for many reasons, but I will have to admit that I love the church because my parents made the worship service each week the most important hour of my life and for that I am grateful.
This leads me to the third thing I want to say to you this morning. This jailer had a job and a family, but there was something missing in his life. My guess is that he didn't know it until the prison doors swung open. When they did, he asked Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Their answer was to believe. I would add the words trust, accept, lean on, rely on, put your confidence in Jesus. That is what is required. Action comes later. The first step to salvation is to believe.
Let me close with this. I recently heard Rev. Mackey Yokum, one of our District Superintendents tell a story that happened to him when he was six or seven years old. That year his father was in an accident. The word came by phone. His father's friends told Mackey's mom that everything was all right, that they were taking George to the hospital, and soon he'd be home.
When he got home, Mackey's dad sat on his bed in his room. Mackey looked in on him from a distance. Soon a man came and asked to speak with George and was led to the room. Mackey says that he had a box with him and when he came out of the room he said, "It's good news. Your daddy is going to be all right." Mackey wasn't sure who the man was. His family went to church, but Mackey didn't recognize the man as his pastor. The box he was carrying was a Bible.
Years later Mackey got a phone call in the middle of the night. The call was from a member of the church. Their daughter was suddenly very ill. They asked if he would pray for them. He said he would and hung up the phone. He wondered what he should do. After a few minutes of mulling that over, he got up, dressed, and drove the two hours to the hospital. He walked in with a Bible and the Spirit and ministered to the family.
The girl soon got better and the family's worship attendance improved. Soon they were very involved, taking Disciple Bible studies and things like that. Their lives changed and one day the father of the family said to his pastor, "Mackey, you will never know what your coming that night meant to me and my family." And Mackey said, "Yes, I think I do know."
Paul said it this way, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news." The good news today comes from the feet of Paul and Silas. Will you lead the way for your family, friends? Will God be a priority in your lives? Let us pray.
(Special thanks to Rev. Mackey Yokum for telling the above story at a preacher's retreat I attended this past week. It is a wonderfully powerful story. Special thanks to a preacher who helped me see what the jailer had and did not have).