Surrender?

The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." [Acts 16:29-31, NRSV].

In The Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s sacred historical and theological account of the early church, we encounter three miracle prison escape stories. In the first, [Acts 5:17-21], the apostles are arrested and locked in the public prison after performing many miracles of healing. Yet, during their first night of confinement, an angel of the Lord opens the prison doors, releases the apostles, and tells them to return to the temple to preach “the whole life” of Jesus.

The second [Acts 12:1-11], takes place just after Herod’s minions have killed James, the brother of John, “with the sword.” Herod causes Peter to be arrested, bound with two chains, and guarded by four squads of soldiers. Peter is even made to sleep between two soldiers. Again, however, an angel comes to Peter and causes the chains to fall from his wrists. On their way out of the prison, they pass unseen by guards and make their way through gates and barriers, which open for Peter on their own accord.

The third prison scene is described in the first reading for this upcoming Sunday, the Seventh Sunday of Easter [Acts 16:16-34, RCL, Year C]. Paul and Silas have traveled to Philippi, the leading city of Macedonia. Alas, they are jailed after they exorcise an unnamed slave girl who has made her masters rich through her fortune telling. It’s one thing, of course, to preach the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. It is quite another to interfere with the money interests of powerful people. That problem continues to this day.

Paul and Silas are beaten with rods and thrown into prison. An unnamed jailer is ordered to keep them securely [Acts 16:23]. In keeping with these instructions, he places them in the innermost part of the stockade and secures their feet in stocks.

It’s midnight. In spite of their circumstances, Paul and Silas are praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners are listening [16:25]. With the two earlier jail breaks fresh in our minds, we expect some sort of miracle to spring the evangelists from their prison. And, as if on cue, there’s an earthquake. The foundations are shaken. All the prison doors are opened, and everyone’s chains are unfastened.

The jailer awakens, sees the doors wide open and, knowing the fate that awaits him after this sort of failure, draws his sword to kill himself. You see, just because one holds the keys to the cell doors of others does not mean that you yourself are free! But Paul quickly shouts from the darkness, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here” [Acts 16:28].

The jailer, overwhelmed by the power displayed by these seemingly powerless evangelists, calls for lights—there are no windows in the innermost cell—rushes in, and falls down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brings them “outside,” saying, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” [16:30b]. They answer:

Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household [16:31]

Through the Grace of God, the Love of Christ, and the Power of the Holy Spirit, the one in charge of the keys to the cells has had his own imprisonment obliterated.

Within our own world, there are lots of prisons, many of our own making. Sharon—not her real name—looks at her life and observes that when it comes to erecting barriers to fend off others, she’s a skilled “mason.” In her early years of marriage, she had rationalized that her husband was outgoing, a real “people guy”; they both didn’t need to be “that way.” She liked her books and her homemaking. Groups of people—even friendly people—made her nervous and self-conscious. Her husband seemed to draw an extra ration of nourishment from the attention of friends and work colleagues. She always worried that she didn’t measure up.

Over time, she had become more and more withdrawn. In keeping with her mindset, she erected the beginning layers of a wall of sorts behind which she could retreat. Later, there were other reasons to add to the walls—a wrinkle here, a few pounds there, the natural graying of her hair—her transformation into what she saw as a dowdy frump had been so gradual. Folks outside the wall couldn’t see her, she imagined.

She countered her feelings of inadequacy by doing the one thing at which she excelled—adding layers and more layers to her walls. She noticed that if she was slow to respond to invitations from friends, the number of requests slowed down. She stopped initiating lunches and teas with her friends. She ceased going to church. She sometimes thought to herself, “God just doesn’t understand my inadequacies.”

Now, after years of her steady masonry activity, she is only bothered by a trickle of inquiries from stubborn friends who likely will never give up trying to crack through her wall. She even came to see COVID-19 almost as a blessing. It provided one more excuse to retreat within her sanctuary, one more layer of thickness to her walls. And this sort of hunkering down, of avoiding the world outside her fortress, was even socially accepted.

Yet now, her heart is heavy. The children had married and moved to cities far away. Had her carefully constructed walls been a factor in their decisions? To be sure, she could “FaceTime” or “Zoom” with the grandchildren. But electronic contact did not supply the warmth of a hug. She lamented that her husband now seemed altogether comfortable with her coolness toward him. She hadn’t meant to shut him out; it was just that her walls had been so carefully constructed. If she had let him in, then surely others would have followed.

Indeed, her heart is heavy. Only now does she recognize that she has become both the jailer and the jailed. If only she could turn back the clock. If only her walls weren’t so impervious. If only she had allowed for doors within her carefully constructed fortress. Doors, however, would have threatened her safe house. Yet now, she senses that the world is opening up again. There is new activity around her. Does she dare peer around her walls? If only there was someone to whom she might turn, someone to whom she might cry out.

Sharon, of course, isn’t the only prison mason. Many of us have erected our own walls to “protect” us from the outside world. All too many of us have constructed veritable castles, complete with keep, walls, and deep moat. The irony, of course, is that our castles usually turn out to be prisons. We think we hold the keys to our world, but those keys do not unlock happiness. Because of our careful masonry, others can’t peer through our walls to see who we really are. Conversely, those same walls don’t allow us to see clearly the love that exists just outside.

What must Sharon—no, what must we do to be saved from our prisons? Paul has some straightforward words, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

We quickly say, “We already believe, we already believe.” And yet, do we? If we believe, then how do we explain the prison within which we may find ourselves? Who were we fooling when we constructed the thick walls? Were we fooling God? No, we’ve only been fooling ourselves.

True belief in our Lord Jesus Christ almost always requires something of which most of us are afraid. True belief requires surrender. As Paul will later remind the church in Galatia, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to His cross and crucified them there” [Galatians 5:24-25].

We must give up the fiction that we hold the keys to the cells. We must rid our hearts of the conviction that we are in control of our destiny, that we can find happiness within the carefully crafted dungeons that we rationalize are our sanctuaries. We must die to ourselves.

Surrender, for many of us, isn’t our strong suit. How can we manage? How can we be vulnerable again? Let us all begin by refusing to pick up another block or brick. Believe on the Lord Jesus, and we will be saved!

Go ahead, drop the shovel; stop erecting walls. Instead, surrender to the Lord who breaks down all walls, all barriers, all points of separation. Pray to our Lord and throw down the trowel!