Imagine for a moment you own a jail.
It’s not just a job in Philippi; you actually own the place. You’re a
government subcontractor. You both own the place and run it for the Romans. You
are responsible for the prisoners. Your livelihood and the well being of your
family depend on how well you run the jail. Not how well you run it for the
prisoners, but how well you run it for the Romans. A jail isn’t the best thing
to own because it’s a step or two beneath the guys who own the butcheries and
the spice shops and the cloth shops and the places that sell pottery. Your
social status is well below those folks and certainly below the soldiers and
government officials who check to see how you’re running the jail. Luckily you
don’t have to provide meals; those are brought in by the family and friends of
the people jailed. You do, however, have to see that everyone in jail is kept
safe, safe until their trial, their release, or their execution. Your job is to
keep it together: no unseemly deaths prior to execution, no escapes, and no
riots. You likely live on the jail premises with your family to make sure
things are okay.
Most of the people that come to you
are pretty normal, your ordinary lawbreakers: petty thieves, business cheats,
tax evaders, the usual. But tonight for some reason law enforcement hauled in a
couple of lawbreakers for something unusual. These two guys did an exorcism.
Well it was really Paul. Silas, the guy with him was just a witness, but they
were together so they were both arrested. You’d think people would have been
glad to see an exorcism, wouldn’t you? But it turned out the woman who was the
recipient of the exorcism was doubly enslaved. She was not only enslaved to an
evil spirit, she was also enslaved to owners, a cartel of human masters who used
her gift of prophecy to make money.
Paul had the foolish idea that
everyone needs to be set free in Christ. He’d reached the end of his patience
with this woman following them and yelling about what they were doing. So he
turned on her and healed her.
You’d think the people who witnessed
the exorcism would react with wonder and awe and maybe even with faith in the
God that made it happen. Instead they reacted with anger and greed. Not only is
the livelihood of the people who own this slave at risk but also there is
something different and alien in their midst. Paul and Silas are different,
other, strange, and definitely a threat to the socio-economic structure. The
livelihood that was made possible by the twin slavery of this woman is
threatened and now destroyed. And like many protesters against the socio-economic
system, Paul and Silas were thrown in jail.
All too frequently, those who are
seen as strangers become objects: objects of criticism and violence because
they are upsetting the system. And all too frequently we call those people
either “un-American” or “un-Christian” and fail to recognize how God might be
working in our midst. We especially miss God working in our midst when our
cherished profits and our carefully laid plans are thwarted by this new thing
God does.
So it seems to the jailer that Paul
and Silas have lost the fight. They are in chains in his jail. They have lost
their freedom. All is safe, all is right with the world and the government. Everyone
can keep on the way they were: profiteering and profit making.
But people who don’t listen and look
for God’s presence sometimes miss what’s gone before. The Book of Acts records
that twice before God broke open jail cells.[1]
We don’t know for sure whether Paul and Silas knew about those other jail
breaks, but we do know they had faith in God whether they were rescued or not.
So they prayed and they sang. And their singing and their praying inspired a
song called the “The Song of the Freedmen” or “We’re all here.”[2]
The chorus of the song is like this. (I sang the following.) “Paul and Silas were bound in jail, do thy
self a no harm.” The chorus is based on Paul’s shout to the jailer, “We’re all
here. We’re all here. Do thyself a no harm.” It’s been sung in a lot of jails
and by a lot of people: striking garment workers like Clara Lemlich in 1903,
protesting the dangerous and underpaid conditions in garment factories in the
United States. Civil rights workers in the 1950s and 60s sang it. It was sung
by children, working in factories in the 1800s before child labor laws were
enacted in this country. War protesters and eco protestors sing it. It will
continue to be sung as long as injustice exists. It is a song of freedom in the
midst of fear and imprisonment.
You would expect, then, once having
assured the jailer that everything was all right, Paul and Silas would get out
of jail. Instead they do just what they did when they met Lydia, the story we
heard in Acts last week. Paul and Silas shared their freedom in Christ Jesus, a
freedom that does not depend on walls or locks or circumstances.
Just as in Lydia’s story, the
response was the same. Lydia opened her home to Paul and Silas, and so did the
jailer. He washed Paul and Silas’ wounds. The jailer and his entire family were
baptized. The jailer fed Paul and Silas and he and his entire household
rejoiced that he and his family had been set free.
Three stories about freedom in Christ
Jesus: one last week and two this week. One story about Lydia last week and two
stories this week, one about a slave girl and one about a jailer. Three stories
about how encounters with the living God occur in the midst of fear and imprisonment.
The world can never go back to the way it was when by the power of God’s freedom
in Christ is made known.
This is what Jesus means in today’s
Gospel when he prays for his disciples. This is what it means to be one with
God in Christ Jesus: To be free from fear and imprisonment, and to hear Jesus
pray for us. “I ask not only on behalf of my disciples but also on behalf of
those who believe in me through my disciples’ words. The glory that you have
given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, so the
world may know I have loved them even as you have loved me.”[3]
We are free from fear and imprisonment and made one in Christ Jesus. AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette
Papanek
©2016
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