8 February 2017 St. Athanasius Lutheran
Church
Commemoration of Silas Greenspring
Village, Springfield, VA
“A Greater Life”
Text:
Acts 16:19b-34; Mark 8:34-38
It was a jailer’s worst
nightmare. He was in charge of securing the prisoners. How long had he dozed
off for? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that while he slept, the
prisoners had escaped. The prison doors were open. Surely the prison was empty.
According to Roman law, there was only one punishment now for the jailer:
death. He would be killed, or he could honorably kill himself. The jailer chose
the latter. His sword was drawn, he was about to plunge it into his body.
But just as his muscles
were tightening for the fatal thrust, a voice came from inside the prison. A
prisoner who could perhaps see what the jailer was about to do. Don’t do it,
he said. Your prison is not empty, but full. We are all here. Do not harm
yourself.
The jailer was a hard
man; not much got to him. He had seen horrible things. He had seen the worst of the worst come through his prison. But this
he had never seen! He called for light and rushed into the prison. He went
right to where the Jewish prisoners were - the ones around whose feet he had
fastened the stocks just a few hours earlier. The stocks that
were now lying on the ground. He went to them because he recognized the
voice that had called out to him. It was the same voice he had heard praying
and singing earlier. Maybe it was the singing that had put him to sleep!
Anyway, he had heard a lot of sounds coming from his prison in all his years -
but until that night, singing had not been one of them.
Who were these men? Really? He knew the charges against them, but this
wasn’t normal! He was afraid of no man, yet he found himself trembling before
them. They were something he was not. They had something he did not have. He
didn’t know what it was, but this he knew: he wanted it. He needed it.
He wanted their joy. He wanted their confidence. He wanted their faithfulness.
He needed their life. So he knelt down before them and asked: Sirs, what
must I do to be saved?
It sounded funny even as
he spoke it. He, a free man, asking them, prisoners
who had been beaten and locked up, how to be saved! Yet he knew it was
the right question. They were really the ones who were free. He was the one
locked up in fear. Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you
and your household.
He had heard reports of
this Jesus, who had lived in Judea and had been crucified, but who some were
saying had come back to life. But here were men who said they had seen it with
their own eyes. And one of them, the one named Paul, was once like the jailer,
a man who imprisoned followers of Jesus, but who Jesus had changed and set
free. And Jesus, he said, wanted to do the same for him. And the more they
spoke, the more the jailer wanted to hear. He was like a thirsty man whose
thirst could not be quenched. He drank up every word. Words
that were like living water to his soul.
He got some water and
began washing the wounds they had received from the beating. And with every
wound he washed, it felt as if his own were also being cleansed. And so when
Paul mentioned baptism, he couldn’t wait. He didn’t even want clean water! He
wanted to use the water tinted pink with the blood of his
prisoners-turned-friends. Not that their blood added anything. But it reminded
him of whose blood would be washing him in this water. And then
when his wife and children were baptized too, he was so filled with joy.
This night that had begun
like a nightmare had turned into a dream come true. This night when he thought
he was going to lose his life, ended up with him gaining life. Paul and Silas
had their days of resurrection. This one was his.
And you too have your day
of resurrection, for you have been raised. You too have been given this life.
You too have been washed with blood - the blood of the Lamb of God - in
Baptism. You too believe in the Lord Jesus. This Jesus who is the Lord, the
great I AM, the God of creation in human flesh, who laid down His life that you
might live. This Jesus who sets prisoners free - and even the problems and
prisons of this world and life cannot lock up what Jesus has set free.
And Silas is a powerful
testimony of that to us tonight. We don’t know much about him. He didn’t get
his own verse in the hymn we sang tonight, and the church cannot even agree on
a day to commemorate him - he has five different days, depending on which
denomination you are! But this he knew and this he lived - the words we heard
from Jesus tonight: that whoever would save his life will lose it, but
whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s
will save it. That statement that seems exactly backwards to a world
which will do whatever it takes to keep and preserve our life here and now. But
Silas knew there was a life greater than this one. A life that not even death
can end. A life that only the one who rose to life from death could give.
He spoke of that life
while sitting in the stocks. He sang of that life in the darkness of prison. He
believed in that life as Roman rods came crashing down on him. He traveled with
Paul to proclaim that life. He would later sit as Peter’s secretary and write
about that life. But above all, he was living that life. It didn’t matter where
he was - in Judea, in Macedonia, in Rome, or any place in between. His life
wasn’t in a place, it was in a person. In Jesus. And
so where He was, Jesus was, and where Jesus is, He would be. And no one could
take that away from Him. Not Roman rods, Roman prison, or a Roman sword. He
could deny himself because he knew that Jesus never would.
And that is your life,
too. You don’t have to worry about Roman persecution - you have other worries. Maybe other persecutions. But the life given you by Jesus is
greater than all of it. His forgiveness and resurrection
giving you a life that nothing in this world can take away from you. For
you are baptized. You are in Jesus and Jesus is in you. And one day you’ll take
your place beside that Macedonian jailer, and Paul and Silas, too. Rejoicing in Jesus, and Jesus rejoicing in you.
In the Name of the Father, and of the (+) Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.