The Greatest Escape that Never Was

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace, from God our Father, and His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

So Paul and Silas were in prison. They had come across a young slave girl who had magical powers to tell the future, and she helped her owners make a boatload of money, but it was Paul who realized that the woman was possessed by an evil spirit. Right then and there, he conducts an impromptu exorcism and the woman is cleansed. But now she is worthless to her owners, and the Roman judge has Paul and Silas beaten and thrown into prison.

Have you ever spent a night in jail? Ever spent time in the slammer…in the whooscow…in the joint? I have. At 17, my best friend and I decided to hitchhike to California to visit his grandparents. Kids, don’t try this today, but we did it. We got stalled in Gila Bend Arizona one night, and the local police chief picked us up because hitchhiking was illegal inside the city limits. But kindly, he put us up for the night in the Gila Bend City jail. The sheets were clean, the beds were warm, and the cell doors were left open so we could go to the vending machines if we wanted to. Needless to say, we were the only guests that night. The next morning, the chief’s wife made us breakfast, and then he took us out to the city limits of his town where it was legal to hitch a ride.

Something tells me that Ben and Steve’s Excellent Big Adventure was quite different from the sentence that Paul and Silas received. First century prisons were brutal places. They were cold, hard, filthy, and void of compassion. Misdemeanor offenders like Paul and Silas might be mingled with felons, rapists, murderers and insurrectionists. Jailers had neither the mandate nor the desire to be kind to the inmates. In fact, their only responsibility was to keep the prisoners from escaping... dead or alive. Nope, this wasn’t the Gila Bend Arizona jail.

Sometime around midnight, Paul and Silas were singing Christian hymns, and the other prisoners were listening to them. They didn’t tell Paul and Silas to “shut up.” They didn’t ask them to keep their religious thoughts to themselves. They listened. Perhaps they, too, found consolation, and hope in the words of a Risen Savior, about whom Paul and Silas sung. Whatever the exact environment was, we’re not sure; but the image here seems to be a crude rendition of a worship service, not unlike what we are experiencing this morning. Think about it; today some are singing but some are silent; some are praying while others are just listening, but ALL are touched somehow by the warmth of the Holy Spirit – in this place and in that place.

But that night in Philippi, an amazing thing was about to happen. An earthquake shook the ground; and not just the ground, but the steel gates and the iron chains that kept the prisoners captive. The jailer naturally assumed that the prisoners would scatter and his life would be over, so he decided to take his own life. “Wait!” a voice cried. “We’re all still here; nobody has left.” It was Paul, assuring the guard that his job and his life were secure. When the lights came on, the jailer was surely astonished that not a single prisoner had escaped.

Don’t you wonder why? I mean, Paul and Silas were held for minor offenses, but the rapists and murderers were facing a life sentence or a death sentence; why didn’t they leave? And here, we are called to interpret because the text does not tell us why. Could it be that those prisoners were so rapt by the spirit of Paul and Silas, so captured by the message in their hymns and prayers that they wanted to hear more. Perhaps they had never experienced community like this; not in their families, nor their friendships. Here, there was acceptance and loving and caring, and they liked it…liked it more than the life out there, where fear and corruption and violence was the norm. So they stayed.
I suppose this sort of community is unheard of in our modern age. Nobody today chooses incarceration over freedom, anonymity over fame, a life of struggle over a life of ease. Or do they? A couple of years ago, Pastor Keith, in a sermon, told us of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and teacher in Germany who refused to serve in the Nazi regime. He fled to America, but then chose to go back to Germany; to return to his church, to his students, to his community of faith, and the result was his death.

And what about Henri Nouwen? As a Roman Catholic priest, gifted speaker, prolific writer, and distinguished professor at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard universities, Nouwen dedicated the final eleven years of his life to living in community with mentally disabled adults at the L’Arche Home in Toronto, Canada. When you find community that is like family, you choose to remain a part of it. When your community is “grounded in faith and gathered in love…” why would you ever leave? I want you to think about that question for a moment while I return to the story of the Philippian jailer.

He was impressed by what he saw in the jail cell that night. It was not the norm; it was not the typical groups of inmates that he had seen come and go over the years, and it astonished him. His conclusion was that God made a difference in the lives of Paul and Silas, and through that violent earthquake, also made a difference in the other prisoners as well. “How can I get in on this sort of living?” he asked. “How can I have this sort of joy and peace that I have seen here tonight?” And Paul and Silas provided the answer: “Believe in Jesus Christ, and you and your family will be changed.” And that very hour – that very hour! – his whole family was baptized and welcomed into the Kingdom of God. We don’t know what happened to the other prisoners; the bible doesn’t tell us. But how could their lives ever be the same after their experience that night…after they joined in the greatest escape that never was? Because once you find community where you are loved and accepted, nurtured and fed, taught and challenged…why would you ever leave if you could stay?

There is something I have been wanting to say to you for almost a year now, and I have decided to say it today. I’m leaving for Germany in a week, and I figure, if I cause a storm among you, it will blow over by the time I return, so here goes…

Last August at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly held in Minneapolis, the assembly passed a resolution that now allows practicing homosexuals who are in committed relationships to serve on our clergy roster. It was an action that had been debated at every Churchwide assembly since 1991. At issue was not whether we should minister to the gay persons in our midst; we already welcome them and treat them as fellow sinners, just like the rest of us. At issue was whether an actively gay person could serve in a congregation. I have found myself smack-dab in the middle of this divide. It would be so much easier if the situation was black or white for me, but it’s not.

What we have decided in this congregation is that we’re not leaving the ELCA, as some congregations have done. We’re not withholding our offerings from the ELCA, as some congregations have done. We have stated that we don’t believe a gay pastor is right for this congregation, so we don’t intend to consider calling one. We have decided that we don’t have to agree with the ELCA on this issue to be a part of the ELCA. For many of us – for most of us, in fact – that’s enough. This is our church, our family, our community of faith and we ain’t leaving! But you need to know that some have left. After that tumultuous earthquake that was the Churchwide Assembly, they felt that they needed to disassociate from the ELCA, and therefore, disassociate from Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. Please; I am not criticizing them, nor am I condemning them. For most of these families, I have either expressed in person or through a note to them, my respect for them, and my blessing as they seek a new church home. I’m sad about it. I’m disappointed. And yet I respect their decisions.

But I confess that I don’t understand it. This is my family; this is my community where I have found love and acceptance. The people here know my flaws; most of them anyway. And I know most of yours. When we have found a congregation that we love, why would we choose to escape it when this particular congregation continues to be “grounded in faith and gathered in love”? Do we agree on all things political? Do we agree on all things economic? Do we agree on all things environmental? Of course not! And we do not agree on all things spiritual. But we are the Body of Christ in this place. We do agree that God has chosen to forgive our sins, and we commit to forgiving the sins of one another. I know you can find this sort of embrace in other congregations, but I have never, ever found it to the degree that I have found it here. Some of our family has moved on; perhaps others will still choose to do so. But for those of us who have remained, I pray that we will continue to be the Body of Christ for one another. That we would continue to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness as our main priority. That is my wish for us today.

I do have one homework assignment for you to pursue while I am away. In the 1970’s, when the faces of missing children began to pop up on milk cartons, or shopping bags, or billboards, our society agreed that it was appropriate to seek out those who were missing or lost. But that passion never made its way into the church. People come and people go, and we don’t seem to notice, or care. I am reminded of the man who was marooned on an island for thirty years and when the rescuers finally came, they asked the man “What are those buildings over there?” “Oh” the man said, pointing. “That’s where I live, and that’s where I go to church, and that’s where I used to go to church.” Well there are a number of people who used to go to church here, and sadly, they’ve never heard that we have missed them. They might wonder if we’ve even noticed that they’re gone. So my request of you is that you would think about the people you used to see in this church, but see no more…and that you call them, or drop them a note, and simply say “We’ve missed you; hope you are well.” Don’t let them escape without them knowing that we are family, and time, and distance, and disagreement could never change that truth. Thanks be to God. Amen.

©2010 Steven Molin