🐮 Easter 7

Readings: Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26.

From the TRNG Room: Dez the Jailer

Transcript

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Acts chapter 16 verses 16 through 34. One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a female slave who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune telling. While she followed Sonu, she would cry out These men are slaves of the most high God who proclaim to you the way of salvation. She kept doing this for many days, but Saul very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, I order you in the name of Joshua, the Christ to come out of her. And it came out of her that very hour. But when her owner saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Saul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities, when they brought them before the magistrates, they said, these men, these Jews are disturbing our city and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us being Romans to adopt or observe. The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight, Saul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw that the prison doors were wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Saul shouted in a loud voice, don't harm yourself. We're all here. The jailer called for lights and rushing in. He fell down, trembling before Saul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said. Lords, what must I do to be saved? They answered, believe in the Lord Joshua, and you'll be saved, you and your household. They spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who were in his house at the same hour of the night. He took them and washed their hand, washed their wounds. Then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food for them, and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God. Psalm 97. The Lord is king. Let the earth rejoice. Let the many coastlands be glad. Clouds and thick darkness are all around him. Righteousness and justice of the foundation of Earth. Throne fire goes before him and consumes our adversaries on every side. His lightnings light up the world, the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax. Before the Lord. Before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim her righteousness and all the peoples behold his glory. All servants of images. Images are put to shame those who make their boast and worthless idols all Gods bow down before her Zion hears and is glad. And the towns of Judah rejoice be because of your judgments. Oh God, for you, oh Lord, are most high over all the earth, you are exalted, far above all Gods you who love the Lord. Hate evil. She guards the lives of his faithful. She rescues them from the hand of the wicked. Light Dawns for the righteous and joy for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord Oe righteous and give thanks to our holy name. Revelation chapter 22, with selections from verse 12 through verse 21. See, I am coming soon. My reward is with me to repay according to everyone's work. I am the alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash the roads that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. Is I Joshua, who sent my angel to you With this testimony for the churches, I'm the root and the descendant of David the bur, the bright morning star, the spirit and the bride say, come and let everyone who hears say come and let everyone who is thirsty come let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift. The one who testifies to these things says, surely I'm coming soon. Amen. Come Lord Joshua, the grace of the Lord Joshua be with all the saints, all men. The Gospel of John chapter 17 verses 20 through 26. I'm not only, I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you father are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me the glory that you've given me. I've given them so that they may be one as we are one I in them, and you and me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world, righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you and these that you have sent me, I made your name known to them, and I'll make it known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. Good morning and welcome to the seventh Sunday of Easter. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Acts 16, Psalm 97, revelation 22, and John 17. Revelation of John are both Johannine works of literature and they're great. John in the gospel reading is doing a lot of philosophy I would say Greek philosophy, but the whole Trinity stuff and they're doing stuff for the immovable mover. And then the revelation is, very much eschatological stuff. And if you've been listening for very long at all, I'm meat and potatoes guy, gimme the gospels, maybe some old Testament stuff. And it happens that this week is also Acts 16 as the lectionary is going. Not chronologically, but it's Luke this year. That's why there's a cow. Luke is the ox. When we talk about the four figures of the evangelists yeah, there's being an angel, a lion and an eagle. John's the eagle. I wanna say Luke's the oxen, making Matthew the cow and mark the lion. Or Matthew, the angel. And mark the lion. Anyway act 16. We spoke about Lydia last time and the purple dye and military families. And we are back in military families because we're still in Philippi when we left off. Last week Saul had just met Lydia and she had pretty quickly, accepted what they were, picking up what Saul and Sila were putting down and we're continuing on and in Philippi as they're there, they said, Saul has this, dream where some unknown person, probably light skinned or skin that looked like his saying, oh, please come rescue me. And so he goes off to the European continent. Philippi is the first city on the European continent. And it also is this overtly militarized, romanized, italicized community. And so Lydia, I've made the case before and I put it in the show notes where she's almo, you, I, you, I don't think you could convince me that Lydia is not a military spouse or military brat. It's, those are the only two options. And if you want more, why go to last week's episode. Look up Lydia on the training room, which is at ppu hq.com/tng. Or maybe it's blog, I can't remember. Des is the next military family member. That we get in Acts 16, and we we see Saul and Silas essentially being followed by someone who seems to be able to communicate with God or the universe because she's speaking the truth. These men are servants of LLY, the spirit of spirits the God of God, the Lord of lords, to proclaim the way of salvation to you. But for whatever reason, somn Silas don't want people knowing ahead of time. Or maybe there's a little bit of narcissism and they wanna be the ones saying it, I don't know. Anyway, they get in trouble. They get thrown in jail, and the people who are accusing them are using Saul's Roman citizenship against him will see later in Acts 22 that he's, he was born a Roman citizen, but these soldiers, he's encountering at least some of them, many of them not in Philippi, but in. Jerusalem have to pay for the freedom their service doesn't reward them with. And so Saul is a little entitled, but entitlement is a double-edged sword. So they the mobs get Saul and Silas thrown in jail because not only are they're Jews, but they're also Romans in verse 21. Us being Romans, we cannot adopt or observe and anybody who. That Paul or Saul wanting to know he is a citizen, could have known because he could have said it. But they're using their entitlement to put someone on the lower rung. It was the owners who were mad because this seer woman could no longer produce a profit for them. And so they're mad at Saul because there went their profit margin. And they throw them into the middle of the prison reserved for the worst of the worst or political prisoners, because that's what Saul is. Saul and Silas. As we know, if we've read the first part of Luke's testament called the Book of Luke acts as his sequel, and neither one of them had titles, but that's just what we call'em that the way of salvation. Kind of kicks Rome out of the way or can, if it needs to. And so we know as readers that this is already a politicized message that they're bringing to the Roman continent. And as we read, as Luke has already helped us see their incarceration in a Roman military colony a very influential Roman military colony makes them political prisoners. So they put them. A way where there's no windows, no light, because they're just gonna leave him to die, probably. And the jailer who we don't have a name for, I call him Dez. I'll leave a link to his page in the show notes. But Dez is from Desmo Lac, and that is the Greek word here, used for jailer. So Des the jailer has he's woken up in the middle of the night because. Some big earthquakes happen. He comes down and his political prisoners, his very high value targets are missing. And I don't know what kind of spot that Des was in, but he's ready to off himself. And that's also a recurring theme, either missing service members or military suicide. It's right here in the text. Saul stops des from killing himself, but before we even get there, like we should think about. Why Des wants to kill himself. He's let, he's failed at his mission and his mission. He sees as very important. Some early Christian historians gloss over or don't give a whole lot of attention to whether Dez is a civilian or a mil like a Legionnaire, and a lot of'em that don't really care too much to do very much critical. Ex of Jesus will say, ah, he's probably a civilian. It's Philippi, it's colony, right? But it's a military colony. In fact, it was known as Little Rome, and it was headed by two people who entered directly to the emperor, not through the provincial, power systems. But had direct access to the Emperor Octavian because Philippi was the site of the decisive battle that put Octavian in power, Philippi. To Rome is like Appomattox to America. Like it's important. Anybody who's Roman and knows anything about Rome knows that Philippi is important. Des is no civilian in a city like that. The empire, the emperor, would not allow someone to hold prisoners in his little city who was not. Answerable directly to him. And the Pretorian guard was mobile and it went with Caesar. So it probably wasn't Pretorian Guardsman, but it was almost certainly a Legionnaire, if not a Tribune, an officer. And so the De the Jailer, Desmo Phyla, whom I called Des, I contend, was a military soldier. He even has his own sword. He's ready to use it to kill himself. Not everybody would've been allowed to have a sword in Philippi. You'd have to have a lot of class and power to have weapons regularly and you wouldn't put a civilian in charge of a prison who you may or may not know what their motivations are. You want someone loyal. Anyway, let's just assume you believe me that Des is a military person, active duty service member. We might call him today. But Saul interrupts his unloving and he essentially says, look, you we're still here. You haven't lost any prisoners, because that was DE's fear. And then once that's sorted out, Des is oh, Lords carryon. What must I do to be saved? And I don't know where this coming from. It seems like it was just thrown out there as a cool moral to the story. But Sa and Silas say. Believe in Christ, Joshua the Messiah, Joshua, who's, which is his name. And you'll be saved, you and your household. And his household is attached repeatedly. I'll do like a word study on it soon because I suspect that I know that in a number of these cases, Lydia is one of them. Cornelius is another in Acts 10. I and the groundwork was laid in the Gospel of Luke with this entering of great faith, captain Marvel, this repeating word household, you and your household Kos, which is where we get the word economy. You and your household will be saved. Either it's said explicitly or it's pretty heavily implied. As with Captain Marvel. I don't, I'd have to look, but this household. Theme is attached repeatedly to military members and household. Ocos was a direct, was in direct contrast to Domos, the la later Latin Domos, which is where we get dominate dominion. And other things like that. There were houses that were doosies and it was. Defined by property and slavery and exploitation of labor. OCO simply means human relationships within a certain boundary. It wasn't always a house a rooftop. But Ocos was inclusive of slaves livestock, close family. It wasn't nuclear in. Cornelius's case in Acts, there were other soldiers that were a part of Cornelius's, OCOS or family. And so it's really important to notice when we talk about ocos and households because that's something that is attached to these representatives of Rome, of Roman power, that the best power can do is to build families, human relationships under a household or not. Rome. If you'd asked the emperor, they would've preferred to have Doosies domiciles, domiciliaries domestication, where power is an unspoken, but very clear and present piece of that equation. Power is not as important in families. It's there, but think of the difference between domesticate, which is to tame something, to deprive it, of its wildness. On the other hand, we have familiarize you, you acclimate someone or something to the ways of peace, to the ways of rest, to the ways of fairness and equity. That's a, that's an important distinction between domesticate, that familiarize and that word ocos is used repeatedly with Roman military families. Not always peninsula, not always white. Most of all of the soldiers that Joshua encounters in the gospels are brown skinned Syrian auxiliaries, even Claudius lys in Acts 22, who had to buy his freedom or buy his citizenship or buy his puleo, his agency. And so that's not insignificant, and I think that's important to look at when we do. Critical enlisted acts of Jesus to identify the things that the text might be doing deliberately, like what is Luke trying to say and what has the text said now that it has been given to us, and how does it help reorient us to the way of God and the polity, the structure, the economies of God in contrast to the systems of domination, oppression. Exploitation that the world typically comes up with in advances.