A Footstool, a Jet, a Night in Prison: What Must I Do To Be Saved?

A week ago, or who even knows, Matt interrupted our evening studies by turning on that embarrassing Kenneth Copland video. You know the one. A polite but tenacious female reporter catches him as he’s climbing into a luxurious car and inquires of him about his—what’s the word—unchristian comment about how having to fly with ordinary people is like getting into a “tube with a bunch of demons.”

If you haven’t seen it, it’s an appalling eleven minutes, and there are many times when you, if you are sane, will have to look away. The bits at least where he try’s to regain his ground by calling the reporter “sweetheart” and other such démodé terms—those ones that passed out of fashion on account of their strong whiff of misogyny—but also when he starts trying to remember some proof texts from the…what’s that called, what’s that book..I’ve got it!—the Bible. She, however, sticks to her ground and calmly goads him into spinning out, something I would have been unable to do because of being arrested for punching him in the nose. “Sweetheart” forsooth.

Anyway, you should click the link, because life is a veil of tears, and you are supposed to walk in the way of the cross, which includes embracing certain kinds of small sufferings, like watching the whole thing. You don’t want to miss out on gems like:

“He made that airplane so cheap for me I couldn’t help but buy it.”
“I love your eyes.”
“We wrestle not with flesh and blood.”
“Give me a chance to talk, Sweetheart.”
“I love people, Jesus loves people.”
“I need my clothes when I get there.”
“I’m a very wealthy man.”
“I have a lot of natural gas on my property.”
“You didn’t know that, did you, Baby.”

What I love best, though, is the timing of this video. Because in some churches, if you haven’t transferred the Ascension to today, you will have the option of hearing Acts 16:16-34 read out. That’s the passage made famous by Katherine Jefferts  Schori in a sermon where she castigated St. Paul for not being willing to learn from the “spirituality” of the demon-possessed slave girl. Boy I’d love to listen to her and Kenneth Copland trying to make sense of it together.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, after Paul delivers the girl from her demon, which is really a good thing, even by today’s standards where enslaving people against their will for whatever reason is something most people, even on twitter, well sometimes on twitter, would admit was a bad thing, there’s a bit of a riot—in Paul’s case enfleshed rather than online—and he is thrown into prison. That is, after he’s been beaten, with many blows, Luke makes sure to note, his feet put into stocks. And so to pass the time he sings some hymns, and Silas is with him of course.

And this is all very perplexing, because there’s nothing nice to sing about really. Not in an obvious visible sense (think “flesh and blood” if you’re Kenneth Copland). Paul, superstar of the gospel, and yet strangely lacking the convenience of a personal airplane, unadorned by jeweled cuff-links, does something good—freeing a slave girl not just from a material enslavement, but from a spiritual one as well—and instead of a lot of people sharing the heartwarming moment on social media with hundreds of likes and crying gifs, his reward is that he is beaten and thrown into prison.

Perplexing as trying to make sense of that glorious Ascension Day psalm—the one where My LORD says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet—before the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. How can the LORD sit on the right hand of the Lord, and where did David go so suddenly?

Perplexing as standing on a hillside craning your neck watching Jesus disappear in a cloud of glory, when, for three years and forty days you had so been looking forward to a nice long sit down, long enough that it would never end, with that same Lord you had so come to depend upon.

Perplexing as staggering into another Sunday looking out over the apparent wasteland of a troubled life, the jet conspicuous by its absence, pressed upon by real and impossible sufferings and sorrows, the kind of suffering that swallows up joy when you have time to stop think about it. Most of us don’t even need a jet—wouldn’t be able to afford the petrol—but also are not facing prison. Instead, the ordinary Christian, turning from disappointment to frustration, often disconsolate and troubled, pressed in on every side by the unsolvable mysteries of other people, illness, want, discouragement, too much work, too much rain, not enough rain, maybe not enough money, is supposed to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Where is my Lord? What on earth is he doing? Why is he letting the wicked prosper?

The answer comes a paragraph later—see how well the scripture is organized, if only anyone had time to study it!—

“Sirs,” cries the jailor, discovering that Paul and Silas have been sprung from their prison bonds by some angelic person, suddenly terrified of losing his own life, “what must I do to be saved?” The very question puts everything into its rightful place.

If you don’t have any trouble, you don’t have anything to be saved from. If you have all the means to solve all your own problems, and you have no reason to fear hell because you haven’t seen that it exists, and you haven’t joined yourself to other people who have real power to hurt you, and you have placed all your energy and hopes on finding a comfortable footstool for your feet here and now, you have no reason to ask that question. Saved from what? Inconvenience?

But the jailor was about to lose his life. He had every reason to fear death. And he couldn’t face it. And so he cried out for help. And Paul and Silas, instead of padding their pockets, or selling him themselves, or demurring as if they didn’t know what he was talking about, answered his question:

“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.

He believed, and Paul and Silas believed, and hopefully you believe. You keep waking up and putting one foot in front of the other, rejoicing every time someone else is added to the household of God, catching a snatch of a song when you are really suffering, discovering over and over the perplexing mystery of grace whereby you are tethered to the Lord—that same Lord  sitting there at the right hand of the Father, stretching out his saving hands towards those who, though they cannot now see him, know the inexorable power of his life.