Our oneness with the Triune God is known and seen in the love of the Triune God that we bear in the world.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, year C
Texts: Acts 16:16-34 (also including Acts 16:11-15 from last week); John 17:20-26
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
The Roman jailer in Philippi asks a critical question: “What must I do to be saved?”
Paul and Silas have been stirring up Philippi for a bit now, as we heard last week and now today. Meeting people at the river and baptizing them, casting out a spirit from a slave that ended up causing financial stress for her owner and got them beaten and put in jail. And now singing hymns and praying in their prison cell.
That’s where the jailer enters. Ready to end his life because he’s sure everyone’s escaped in the earthquake, he finds these two prisoners who kept all the rest together. And whose first words are care for his well being: “Don’t harm yourself, we’re all here.” And the jailer asks, “Can I have what you have?”
But what did Paul and Silas have? What did the jailer see?
They were illegally beaten and jailed without a trial, against their rights as Roman citizens. But Paul and Silas don’t protest or complain. They sit in their cell, bloodied, and pray. They sing hymns to God, and the other prisoners start to listen. These disciples embody the love of God. Their peaceful worship in an unjust and painful situation, their concern for the jailer’s well-being proves that.
Paul and Silas aren’t preaching to the prisoners or the jailer. The prisoners see them for who they are and don’t try to escape. The jailer sees who they are, how they are, how they handle this terrible situation, and wants that. He wants salvation the way Paul and Silas live it, not how they preach it. A peace of mind and heart in any circumstance, a love for others that flows from them. They saved his life with their love. And so he’s baptized, along with his entire family.
And this opens up the story of Lydia from last week.
We heard that Paul and Silas and the others went to the riverside to a group of women who gathered there to pray, including non-Jewish women who believed in the God of Israel. Like Lydia. Luke says God opened Lydia’s heart to listen to them. And then Luke says Lydia and her household were baptized.
Maybe their preaching was just so good it drew in Lydia and the others. But these are the two who will soon be singing hymns and praying in their prison cell, who will love a Roman jailer into God’s reign. The Spirit used their words to open up the love of God to these riverside women. Enough that Lydia returned their love and invited them to stay in her home.
What we see in Philippi is exactly what Jesus is hoping for when he prays.
This so-called “high priestly prayer” of Jesus on the night of his betrayal is hard to track by listening. Lots of twisting phrases about Jesus being one with the Father, and we’re one with the Father and the Son. It’s beautiful, but it’s complicated grammar.
Here’s the simple heart of the prayer:
Jesus claims he, as God’s Son, is one with the one he calls Father, and that the Spirit is also one with them. His prayer is that all who learn to trust in God’s love in Christ might also share that oneness that the Trinity knows within their own life together.
And that oneness has just one center, one focus: love. As Jesus says today, the point of the Trinity making us and all humanity one with God is so that the love that is the life-blood of the tender heart of the Trinity may be in us, too.
In other words, our oneness with the Triune God will be known to the world when we love as the Triune God. When God’s vulnerable love shapes us and flows from us and is unmistakeable in us.
And look at what the love of God in Paul and Silas created.
It’s clear from Acts 16 that this is the birth of the Philippian congregation. It’s highly likely that they worshipped in Lydia’s house, that she hosted and led the Christian congregation that also included a Roman jailer and his family.
And Paul’s letters suggest this Philippian church was the community most beloved to Paul, whose support he always felt, whose love held him in his imprisonment. This amazing community of faith started with the love of God Paul and Silas bore among them.
Maybe you and I won’t found any Christian communities when we’re one in the Triune God’s love, when we bear it. But that’s not the point. That was their job. Who knows how God’s love in us will make a difference? The point is that when we are one with God in God’s love, are shaped and live by that self-giving, sacrificial love that we first knew from God, it will bless the world.
And maybe this is how the two different commissions Jesus gives are the same.
In Matthew and Luke, Jesus commissions the disciples as witnesses to the ends of the earth, as we heard last Thursday when we celebrated the Ascension. To make disciples. But in John it’s different. Three times the risen Christ says to Peter if you love me, care for my sheep. That’s the commission: if you love Jesus, care for the ones Jesus cares for.
But maybe it’s the same commission. Paul and Silas, bearing God’s love, caring for the ones the Triune God cares for, was the witness. Love drew people toward the reign of God, toward Christ.
It’s not our carefully articulated doctrines, our points of argument, that witness. It’s the vulnerable love of God we bear. A love that just might lead someone to ask you the jailer’s question: “Can I have that, too?”
And when you answer that question with love, you’ll change the world. Just as Jesus hoped and prayed.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
