“The Whole Of The Gospel”

Text: Acts 16:16-34

© May 20, 2007 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton United Presbyterian Church.

As you might be aware, the Butterball Turkey Company has a hotline that you can call. And that hotline answers all kinds of turkey-related questions. Some people call that number with a cell phone while they’re standing in the grocery store to ask how big of a turkey they should buy. Others have phoned from the dining room table to get advice about the best way to carve the turkey.

And over the years, they have had at least 380 calls from men, whose wives had gone into labor while the turkey was in the oven, wanting to know what they should do about the turkey. The director of the hotline says that she usually tells the men to forget about the turkey and focus on the main event.

I think most of us would agree that worrying about a turkey while your wife is about to give birth is a little bit extreme, but that goes to show that in different ways we can get so caught up with one particular thing that we lose sight of the big picture. We can get so focused on one piece of something that we lose sight of the fact that that one piece is not all that matters – that that one piece is not the whole thing.

And I believe that’s essentially what we see happening here in this story that we heard today in the book of Acts. The story begins with Paul and his companion Silas walking along, minding their own business, heading to the place of prayer there in Philippi, heading to what you might call the church there in that city. But as Paul and Silas walk along, minding their own business, this woman keeps following them.

And this woman is a bit of a character. She is someone, we are told, that is able to tell fortunes. Have you ever seen those women on those TV commercials, dressed with wild jewelry and make-up, who say that if you dial their 900 number, for $10 a minute, they’ll tell you your fortune? Well, this woman that Paul and Silas met up with might have been something like that.

But not only did that fortune teller woman follow Paul and Silas, she screamed at the top of her lungs, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” But even though that woman kept following them day after day, and even though she hollering at them like that day after day, we are told that Paul and Silas did their best to ignore her.

But why did Paul and Silas ignore her? The truth is that the Bible doesn’t really say why. One possibility is because Paul and Silas might have been afraid that if they talked to her and helped her to become a Christian, she wouldn’t have fit in with the other Christians there in Philippi. You see, right before this particular story in Acts, Paul had just started a church in that city, bringing together some local women who became believers. And one of those new Christians was a woman named Lydia, who sold purple clothing. In the ancient world, purple was the rarest and most expensive color of clothing – so the implication is that Lydia was someone who sold clothes to the well-to-do, and since it sounds like she owned her own business, quite possibly she was well-to-do herself. And so maybe Paul was afraid that if he dragged that fortune teller along to church, Lydia and her rich friends wouldn’t have liked that too much – and maybe, just maybe, that new church that he had just started would fall apart and disband before it ever really got off the ground. So maybe that’s why Paul and Silas ignored that woman.

Another possibility is that Paul and Silas ignored that woman because they thought she was mocking them. From reading the printed words in the Bible, it’s hard to know what tone that woman had to her voice. Was she yelling: “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation. Gather round, everybody, these preacher boys right here want to tell you the big bad God that they believe in – the biggest, baddest God in the whole universe!” And so maybe, just maybe, Paul and Silas ignored that woman in the hopes that she would give up and leave them alone, and quit making fun of them.

Or at least one more possibility is that Paul and Silas ignored her because they realized that if they did help her and did free her from that spirit that was causing her to be a freak show attraction, there would be repercussions. Perhaps Paul and Silas ignored her because they realized all too well that if they did help her, then her owners and their friends, the local authorities, would make them pay a price for doing that. And at least at first, maybe Paul and Silas weren’t so sure that they wanted to pay a price and endure suffering in order to reach out to that woman.

But in any case, after ignoring her for quite some time, all of a sudden one day Paul turned to that woman and said to the spirit that was in her, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And immediately the spirit came out of her and she was once again a healthy, normal human being.

But when it comes to what we’re told about that woman, that is where the story ends. Paul and Silas helped her – they drove out that spirit that inside her – but at no point did Paul and Silas ever talk to her about Jesus. At no point did they ever talk to her about what it means to be a Christian, what it means to have faith. At no point did they ever talk to her about being baptized or becoming a part of the church there in the city. Paul and Silas helped that woman – which is certainly a big part of what the gospel is all about – but helping people is not the whole of the gospel.

Beyond helping that woman, why didn’t Paul and Silas try to do what they could to invite that woman to become a Christian, to become a follower of Jesus? That’s kind of like how it is with a lot of us. A lot of us are more than happy to do what we can to help other people. But when it comes time to talk about our faith, when it comes time to share with someone else what it is that we believe, we become silent.

It’s like an old joke that I’ve mentioned before: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with a Presbyterian? The answer: someone who rings your doorbell but who has absolutely no idea what to say. But if we want to live up to the whole of the gospel, then we need to do more than focus just on helping people. We also need to cultivate our ability to share our faith with others, so that they too might come and develop a relationship with Jesus.

We need to cultivate our ability to share with others the Bible’s message that God created us, and that God intended for us to live in peace with God and with one another. But because of sin, that peace has been shattered – shattered in our lives and in the world around us. But instead of giving up on us and letting us suffer forever with the consequences of our sin, God sent Jesus into the world to be our Savior, to save us from our sin. And by putting our trust in Jesus, by having faith in him, God makes it possible for us once again to begin experiencing that peace that God wants us to have – peace in our relationship with God and peace in our relationships with one another.

And so when we read this story about Paul and Silas helping that woman by casting out that spirit from her, we can’t help but wonder, why did they stop with that? Why did they stop with offering her just a part of the gospel? Why didn’t they offer her an invitation to become a believer and to go with them? Helping other people certainly is an important part of what the gospel is about – but helping other people is not the whole of the gospel – it’s a part of the gospel.

That then brings us to the other person that Paul and Silas encounter here in this story – and that is the jailer. After Paul and Silas help that fortuneteller, her owners have Paul and Silas arrested for being troublemakers and the local authorities have them thrown into jail.

But about midnight, as Paul and Silas were sitting in their jail cell, their arms and legs strapped in metal chains, they started praying and singing hymns. And the next thing you know, an earthquake rumbled through that jail and their chains fell off and their cell door flung itself open.

Well, when the jailer woke up and saw that the cell doors in the prison were open, he drew out his sword and prepared to kill himself. You see, under Roman law, if you were a prison guard and if any of your prisoners ever escaped, the penalty was that you would be put to death as punishment for your carelessness. And so the jailer prepared to do himself in, because he knew what sort of fate awaited him.

But just as the jailer was about to plunge his sword into himself, Paul called out to him and told him that none of the prisoners had escaped – they were all still there. Well, the jailer was so overcome by what was going on, he turned to Paul and asked, “Sir, what must I do to be saved?” And Paul answered by saying, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household!” And at once the jailer got his family together and Paul baptized them.

But when it comes to what we’re told about that jailer, that’s basically where the story ends. Paul and Silas invited that man and his family to come to faith in Jesus and they baptized them. But at no point in the story are we told anything about Paul and Silas helping that man to make the changes that he was going to need to make in his life.

After all, if that man was going to be a Christian, could he go on working as a Roman jailer – getting paid to imprison and mistreat people who had done nothing wrong, people like Paul and Silas? If that man was going to be a Christian, could he go on working in an environment that was brutal and vicious and unforgiving, and where being brutal and vicious and unforgiving were job requirements? If that man was going to be a Christian, he was probably going to need to find some other way to make a living. But here in this story, we aren’t told anything about Paul and Silas offering to help that man to make those kinds of changes.

And so when we read this story about Paul and Silas inviting that jailer and his family to become believers, we can’t help but wonder, why did they stop with that? Why did they stop with offering them just a part of the gospel? Why didn’t they offer to help – to help the jailer find a new way of life that was more consistent with his newly professed faith? Inviting other people to become believers certainly is an important part of what the gospel is about – but inviting other people to become believers is not the whole of the gospel – it’s a part of the gospel.

The gospel is not an either/or proposition. It’s not a matter of choosing either to invite people to become believers or choosing to help people. No, the gospel is not an either/or proposition – it’s not one or the other. It’s both together. And when we learn how to put both of those parts together, we discover for ourselves what the whole of the gospel is all about.