Russ Dean, May 27, 2001

My Grandfather’s face was somber and hard. I remember that thin, dark line of snuff juice that always ran down the deep crease from his to his chin. I can smell that house, and see him rising from his chair and moving across the den to the front door, where he would open the door and spit into the bushes. I can see Granny Dean, the slowest woman God ever made, quiet and kind, moving about that house with her apron on, and I can hear her soothing, alto voice humming quietly. She always worked, singing the songs of salvation.

In the sandy dirt of that yard, I can hear the sound of cousins at play, in and under the pecan trees. My cousin Debbie was a beautiful, dark-haired, dark-skinned girl, several years older than I. She had a childhood crush on me, and would follow me around the yard, talking incessantly. I remember complaining to my mother, “Why won’t she leave me alone!?” I did not understand that Debbie suffered from Cerebral Palsy; that this was why she walked as she did; why she held her hands in that awkward manner; why the expressions of her love for me were so annoying.

When I read in today’s text that Paul, “very much annoyed [ at the girl], turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Christ to come out of her,” I think I know what he felt. I wish I could have cured my beautiful cousin that easily. This slave girl who annoyed Paul, was afflicted with a demon, the “spirit of Python.” This was the spirit of the god “Pythia Apollo,” who, it was said, was “embodied in a snake at Delphi” (The Broadman Commentary, “Acts,” T.C. Smith, p.98). Those who had her spirit were said to have the power to speak oracles, by ventriloquism – they channeled her voice – telling fortunes, speaking words from another world. So, this slave girl, was twice-bound: possessed by this spirit which controlled her from within, and by her owners, who used her possession as a means of profiteering. Like a carnival side-show, they paraded her around town so she could tell fortunes for a small price.

The most obvious lesson of this text is the ethical one that should be preached. For there are those who still profit from the enslavement of the possessed and the oppressed. There are those who still manipulate the poor and the weak for personal gain. The owners of the girl had no concern for her well-being, only for their own way-of-life, which came directly at the expense of the girl’s spiritual and emotional health. These slave owners knew of their own hypocrisy, because they tried to hide their selfish motives when they brought charges against Paul and Silas. The true charge was that these missionaries of God had interfered with their business, but instead they brought religion into it, and charged Paul and Silas with stirring up the crowds because they “[advocated] customs that are not lawful for us as Romans” (verse 21). Religion and economics are always contentious bed-fellows, but Paul and Silas were in the good company of Jesus who never missed an opportunity to speak for the rights of the oppressed.

But in looking at this text in light of our Eastertide theme, tracing the movement of the Spirit of God, which gave birth to the early church, economic justice is not the message. As I struggled with the passage this week, the girl’s annoying mantra caught my ears. Daily, as Paul and Silas passed by, and as she shadowed their footsteps, she cried out, “These men are slaves [too]! Slaves of the Most High God. They proclaim to you a way of salvation. They proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

I was washing my hands in the restroom of the hospital one day when an older gentleman came in. I smiled, and he greeted me with the question that no-doubt burdened his heart for everyone that he would meet that day: “Brother, are you saved?” I knew what he meant, of course, so standing there in the Men’s Room I simply nodded, “Yes, Sir.”

I wanted to say more. I wanted to challenge his evangelism, which seems to me to turn a way of living, a way of seeing, a way of being into an inexpensive commodity to be offered like a trinket at the wash stand. I wanted to ask him if it was “saved from?” or “saved for?” I wanted to know if this “salvation” had changed his living, or if it had only changed his dying. But I had neither enough courage nor enough contentiousness for that conversation, so I moved on.

Like many of you, I’m bothered by this whole business of offering salvation so easily, as if it were ours to possess in the first place. I’m bothered by reducing it to a simple A-B-C process that some churches teach to their children. Of making salvation a defining mark of pride, a wall of exclusion rather than God’s offer of inclusion. Of experiencing salvation as that which makes us finally at ease before God, instead of that which marks the beginning point and the on-going reason for a life of service and mission, for a life of perpetual discomfort with what we have and how we live. (I have suggested with a smirk that perhaps being “lost” in Christ is really a better metaphor for Christian living than being “saved” in him.)

But with all of my discomfort with efforts of personal evangelism, and with all of the abuse and misuse of the word “salvation,” I find that I cannot give it up. At least, at this point in my life, I am not willing to give it up.

Last week’s sermon didn’t sit well with all of you. And I have been in conversation with myself about it all week. I want to say a word of public apology if my words “excluded” anyone, as someone suggested at the door. This was not the intent. I e-mailed the sermon to a few trusted friends, one of whom wrote back to say, “I probably feel excluded, too!” Three rather lengthy correspondences later, he said:

I guess it is this one sentence [from the sermon, in which you said] "...even some of you who have ventured into the broad waters of an inclusive and appropriately liberal theology, need to be brought in faith, without apology, to the God who was revealed in Jesus Christ." That is the thorn for me. The language "brought in faith...to the God who was revealed in Christ" says something to me that does not feel right. If I need to be brought in faith to God then am I out of faith? It goes through my filters and comes out reading like, "I need to get right with God.”

I am grateful for friends who offer careful words of correction. My conversation with Drew helped me to identify, again, what I already knew – that I am still working out my own salvation, by working out my own theology – and that you are simply hearing the conversation that is always going on in my head! Yet I won’t retreat from the intent of that sentence in last week’s sermon, though I would probably restate it before I preached it again.

The reason I hold to the intent of that sentence is because the conversation that is going on in my head at this point has to do with the language of faith. I believe it is a conversation we all need to have. And “salvation” is one of the words in the language of our faith. It is a word that I still want to claim. It is a word, using the words of last week’s sermon, that I want you to be “brought [to] in faith” – or “brought [back] to,” if it is a word which you have abandoned.

“Salvation,” you see, is a good word. I don’t know what it means, but I know it is a good word! Maybe I should say, I don’t know what it means completely, and if I did, it would not be such a good word. “Salvation” is the good word that the Church used in speaking of its experience with a Risen Christ. There was something about their experience with the Jesus they had known in person, that they continued to experience, even more fully in his resurrection, that they called “salvation.”

“Salvation” meant courage in persecution and joy in celebration. “Salvation” meant peace for this world and a blessed hope for the next. “Salvation” meant life lived as sisters and brothers with women and men who had once been outcasts. “Salvation” meant life with God.

“Salvation” still means all of those things.

At the end of the last e-mail from my friend, Drew, he wrote these words:

Do you ever wonder though...what we are really doing? We talk about God,
visions, sin, life, meaning, hope, eternity… but do we really know what in
the hell we are talking about. Does one's faith (religion) do any more than
give one a sense of meaning, connection, ethics? If so, is that enough?
Just what are we promoting and participating in...with a straight face?

I think we are participating in “salvation.” It is the gift of God. It is grace. It is the good word that must be proclaimed, still, if the Church is to live again.

In Proclaiming a Way of Salvation in Christ, Paul and Silas offered freedom from bondage to this girl possessed by a demon. The Church must still proclaim freedom for those who are bound by the many possessions of this life. Paul and Silas offered their own captivity to save the jailer from a self-inflicted death. The Church must still be willing to sacrifice its own good in order to proclaim life. Paul and Silas offered hope and new life for the jailer’s entire family. The Church’s influence must still reach beyond personal encounters into family systems and structures, that God’s “salvation” might be known. Paul and Silas offered, and offer, still, courage to countless millions, because “salvation,” even in the darkest night is a song worth singing.

It is an old word. It conjures up strange emotions for many of us. It is a word which needs to be re-formed by the Church. A word whose connotation should be broadened by the “wideness of God’s mercy.” But it is a word which must be sung, in your own words, if the Church is to live even today.

“Restore to us, O God, the joy of our salvation.”

Let us Pray.

[Russ and Amy sang...]

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost but now I am found

Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

And Grace my fear relieved,

How precious did that grace appear,

The hour I first believed.

Amen!