On Freedom - Acts 16:16-34

Good morning, friends. It’s good to be with you on this seventh Sunday of the Easter season. The seventh Sunday of Easter is distinct in the church year because it falls between Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost. Liturgically, we have already celebrated Christ rising up into heaven, but we have not yet celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit. In terms of our worship, we’re in a bit of a in-between time which highlights the “already but not yet” nature of our faith, similar to Advent. But the philosophical among us must ask: if the incarnate God has gone up, but the Spirit of God has not yet come down, where do we look for God in our midst?

We might ask this question in an intellectually curious, and even lighthearted way. But this week, we experienced our nation’s 212th mass shooting of the year at an elementary school in Texas. In response to this atrocity and the hundreds that came before it, millions of people are asking, in all seriousness, where is God? What happened in Uvalde is unimaginable, baffling, and agonizing. And when we search for a glimmer of the light of Christ among the rubble of our broken hearts, we may find that everything is covered in pain and fear and confusion. Nothing is orderly. Nothing is under control. 

In this morning’s passage from the book of Acts, we meet a man who comes to know this feeling well. The guard at the prison where Paul and Silas are being kept is a low ranking worker with a high stakes job. In the massive system of the Roman Empire, he is not a particularly valuable employee. If he makes an error, gets ill, or even dies, he is easily replaceable. And yet, his family likely depends on his income and his good standing.

The text tells us that in the middle of the night, an earthquake strikes, and the prison guard is knocked temporarily unconscious. When he wakes up among the rubble and sees the disorder and confusion around him, his very first thought is that the prisoners under his watch must surely have taken the opportunity to escape, which means that he has failed in his purpose. He will surely be dismissed and disgraced. In the overwhelming anxiety of this moment, he considers taking his own life. 

Can you imagine a pressure so intense that you feel responsible for a natural disaster? Thankfully, before our prison guard has a chance to act, he hears a voice calling out to him. The voice is calm and inviting. Paul, who is not rushed or anxious to escape, soothes and encourages the jailer in the midst of the chaos. “We are here, we are safe, you are safe, join us.” The jailer is stunned. “What is this miraculous life you seem to lead,” he asks. “And how can I be part of it?”

It is interesting that no one mentions everlasting life in this story. The jailer does not ask for bodily healing. No one has died and must be resurrected. When the jailer asks, what must I do to be saved?, I think perhaps he means saved from the emotional and spiritual agony he is experiencing; saved from the weight of the world on his shoulders. The jailer can see that while he may be free from incarceration, it is Paul and Silas who are truly free.

The kind of freedom that the jailer is witnessing is not like the freedom we talk about most often in our day to day lives. It is not simply about having rights as citizens. It is not even about physical agency, which Paul and Silas certainly did not have while they were incarcerated. Like the jailer before his fateful encounter, we cling to our civil rights, our status, and our agency, and lots of other earthly freedoms. But what Paul and Silas have discovered is freedom from fear, anxiety, loneliness, and most importantly, hopelessness.

Whenever we ask ourselves where God is, we are channeling the prison guard, we are seeking the peace of mind and presence of God that Paul and Silas so clearly display, even in while in prison, even in the aftermath of an earthquake. And what we learn from the jailer’s experience, and what we learn over and over again in the book of Acts, as tedious as it can get during Eastertide, is that in light of the Ascension and gift of the Holy Spirit, there is literally nowhere we could possibly find ourselves that God will not already be present, calling out to us calming, “I’m here, I’m safe, you’re safe, join me.”

This calm and gentle call must not be mistaken for an invitation into a life without physical danger or sorrow. God does not offer the magical eradication of earthquakes or gun violence, no matter how hard we pray. God does not eliminate pain or loss, and God does not, I have learned time and again, make the world make sense. What God does offer is freedom from despair, a peace which passes all understanding, and the eradication of hopelessness. What Paul and Silas have, and what our jailer seeks in order to free himself from shame and guilt, is a hope that cannot be found in earthly freedoms, because it comes only from the love of Christ.

This hope is accessible to Paul and Silas in prison and during an earthquake and it’s accessible to us any time, any place, in any conditions, if we are willing to pause and listen for the call. It is a living hope, a hope that moves and inspires, and stirs us into action, faith, and justice. It is a hope that transcends our inner lives and bursts out into our relationships and communities. When we stop clinging to the earthly freedoms we have so long cherished, and start clinging to the hope of Christ, then will we be able to find the presence of God wherever we are. Then will we be able to change the world, to end suffering and violence and senseless loss. 

This is a powerful in-between time we celebrate this morning. It’s a time to reflect and to pray and, yes, a time to take action for the health and safety of the most vulnerable in our communities. But I think that some of the best work we can do as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost, is to practice trusting that God is present among the rubble; to practice hope and faith in the peace that passes all understanding; to take stock of the small freedoms we tend to rely on, and start listening for the gentle call of Christ towards a freedom that will truly save us. Amen.