June 2, 2019    Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ               

         For the last 20 some weeks, I have led a bible study on the book of Revelation. Now, some may remember the Left Behind Series, which takes the book of Revelation and makes it a parable about morality. But the bible study that I led, studied the book of Revelation from the Historical Critical Analysis that is the tradition of the Congregational Church.

In that analysis, the book of Revelation, proclaims hope to the members of the early church, who are oppressed by the economic system of Rome. That’s what all the stuff about 666 being marked on their arms or foreheads, and being allowed to buy or sell if they had the mark, is all about. In the 18^th Chapter of Revelation, we come to the high point of the book, the collapse of the Roman Empire, first the Kings of the earth who entered into exploitive covenants with Rome grieve the end of the empire, then the merchants who can no longer sell their goods, then the sea captains who are out of work.  From the Historical Critical Analysis point of view, faith in Jesus and being a Christian saves one from the fall of the Empire, and it’s economic system.

But even more than that, it saves our lives spiritually, from a life of constant fear and anxiety, living in a world, of constant competition, and the need to buy and satiate every physical desire. It helps us to see past the materialism of the world that ends in death, to a spirituality that leads to life.

Our story from the Acts of the Apostles this morning has some of these same themes of economic exploitation and salvation. The slave woman is exploited financially for her ability to read fortunes. When Paul gets rid of the demon that makes her able to do this, the business people in the community are outraged. The local authorities and even the crowd become complicit in sentencing them to flogging and the stocks. All of this to maintain the economic system of exploitation.

In the prison, Paul and Silas are surrounded by others who have been exploited and jailed by this system. And in the midst of prison, it is said that rather than despair, they were praying and singing the praises of God. At this, it says that an earthquake occurs, but when I read this text, I wonder if it wasn’t an earthshattering event, for the prisoners or the jailor to hear about this God who came to us in Jesus Christ, who suddenly come to realize their part in this economic system, and suddenly find themselves spiritually freed of it.

The jailor himself, fearing that he will be executed for allowing the prisoners to escape, decides to take his life, but Paul is there to stop him, and to encourage him to commit his life to Jesus Christ. And the story of course goes that this is what he did, he and his entire household, and they were saved.

When I was in seminary, one of the books we had to read was called God the Economist. In it, the author describes a world in which people are no longer ruled by the fear of scarcity, but the peace of abundance. In that kind of world, people are no longer in competition with one another, but work together as partners. In that kind of world, people are no longer driven by the need to acquire things or experiences, but focus their lives on their relationships with one another. In that kind of world, people no longer accumulate debts, but live responsibly as caretakers of the gifts and blessings God gives to them. In that kind of world, we no longer live as slaves or prisoners, but are freed to live our lives as God intended for us to live.

Now I know that this all seems very plain and practical, but that is what comes from a change in what we believe in, and if we believe in Jesus Christ, and accept him as our LORD and Savior, then we also will be freed from the power of mammon that enslaves us, and we will be saved from the economic powers that seek to rule over us. And that is the good news of Jesus Christ. Amen.