“Prisoners Who are Free, and a Jailer Seeking Freedom” May 20, 2007
Acts 16: 16-34, John 17: 20-26
In November of 2005 I had an experience that helps me have a lot more realism when I read a passage like today’s reading from Acts or similar sections of the Bible. The experience was the three days I spent in a prison, as a member of a Kairos team at the Hudson Correctional Facility, getting a taste of something most of us don’t really understand.
Oh, a few people here may have some first hand experience about what it’s like to be a prisoner – perhaps from experiences during wartime, or for some crime in the past. Some of you may have had friends or relatives spend time in jail, and so have a vicarious experience of it. Some of you have worked in prisons, and I know there are some here who have a lot more experience in prison ministry than I do, but most of us really don’t know what it means to be a prisoner – which hampers us as we try to read the numerous Biblical passages in which prison is a central theme. We don’t completely understand these passages, because we don’t really know what prison is all about.
Just think of all the Biblical characters who spent time in jail: Joseph, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, the apostles Peter and John, John the author of Revelation, just to name a few, and of course Paul who wrote several of his letters from prison and whose story of incarceration in Philippi we read today….. If you skim through the Psalms you will find many prison-related pleas to God, such as Psalm 142:6-7, which says “Save me from my persecutors for they are too strong for me. Bring me out of prison so that I may give thanks to your name.” There are also many Biblical verses that verses that spell out believers’ responsibility toward those who are behind bars. “Remember those who are in prison, as if you were in prison with them,” says one such verse, Hebrews 13:3, and of course we recall Jesus’ words of commendation: “I was in prison and you visited me…..As you did to the least of my brothers and sisters you did for me.” (Matthew 25:36)
I’m familiar with such texts, and I’ve preached about some of them, but they have a different feel to me since my visit to Hudson Correctional. My first impression, driving up to the facility was that I’d never seen so much razor wire, and I couldn’t help thinking about what it would be like to have your flesh lacerated while trying to slip through such a fence….. The corrections officers who let us in were not hostile, but they weren’t exactly warm and welcoming either, and it was a sobering feeling to hear heavy doors slammed behind us and keys turned in locks. I knew I’d be leaving only when those in authority gave their OK…... I looked at the prisoners and couldn’t help wondering what crimes had landed them in prison, and what it would be like if these were to be my only companions for months to come – would I be harmed, ostracized, exploited?..... While in the prison I ate when others said it was time to eat; I went into the bathroom only when an officer said it was all right, I never left the room to which I was assigned - these basic decisions and liberties now being out of my hands.
My experience was only a minor suggestion of what real imprisonment would be like; I didn’t really suffer at all but it helps me to be more realistic when I hear stories of prison, in contemporary life or in the Bible. I’ve preached before on the story of Paul and Silas in jail, and I’ve said “Faith can set you free even when you are in prison,” but I don’t think I realized what an amazing idea that is because my concept of prison was far too trivial. I’m going to say that again today – “faith can set you free, even in prison” - but now I say it with a lot more awe and wonder. Not just as a sentimental cliché, but with awareness of razor wire and slamming doors and fearsome companions and an absence of the most basic liberties – with a sense of how hard prison really could be - I will say it again: the message of scripture, and specifically of Paul’s experience in Philippi tell us, “Faith can set you free, no matter what kind of prison you face.”
Paul and Silas didn’t deserve to be behind bars, of course. As we read today, they were there because of trumped up charges brought by the owners of a slave girl they had healed. This young woman had what the Bible calls a “spirit of divination,” and her owners made money by portraying her as a fortune-teller, though whether she actually foresaw the future, or was simply a mentally ill person whose ravings could be passed off as fortune-telling we can’t say. In either case, her owners were exploiting her oddity and pocketing a nice profit because of this spirit that possessed her. The woman followed Paul and Silas everywhere they went, incessantly calling out “These men are slaves of the most high God who proclaim to you the way of salvation,” and after a time Paul became very annoyed. Maybe it was ordinary human irritation, or perhaps frustration at having his work interrupted, but eventually Paul had had enough. It was less from compassion than from annoyance, but Paul said to spirit within the woman “I order you, in the name of Jesus Christ, to come out of her,” and that spirit – the source of her strange utterings – was gone.
Some would have called this an act of mercy, but the slave-owners were angry that their money-maker had been ruined. They dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities, and since “healing” is not exactly a criminal charge they made up some phony accusations about disturbing the peace. Playing on the age-old fear that people have of outsiders, they said “These men are Jews who are advocating customs that are not right for Roman citizens,” and they got the crowd got caught up in their rabble rousing. The magistrates had Paul and Silas stripped and beaten with rods, and after a severe flogging they were taken to a prison and locked up in an inner cell, with their feet secured in stocks.
I suppose Paul and Silas could be excused if they had said to God, “If this is the way you let your friends be treated it’s no wonder you have so many enemies!” but that’s not their story. No, they have a kind of freedom, and being in the inner cell with their feet secured in stocks doesn’t take that freedom away. Do you remember what they were doing in the night time? The text says “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the prisoners were listening to them…” How can they sing in prison? How can they pray when a cynic’s interpretation of events would be “Your God isn’t really strong enough to be of any help to you”? They sing and pray because there is something at the core of their life that is strong and steady regardless of outside circumstances. They have a vital, dynamic relationship with the living God, and the strength of this relationship makes everything else secondary. Good things, bad things, successes, failures, comfort, pain – those are not the defining realities of life. Even in the inner cell, with their feet in stocks, Paul and Silas have the freedom that allows them to sing.
I’ve met some people who possess that kind of freedom, the faith that transcends prison bars. Some of the men I met at Hudson Correctional had it, at least to a degree. They knew they weren’t going to leave prison for quite a while, but their faith in Christ was helping them to live with dignity, self-worth, awareness of forgiveness, and hope for a new future. I’ve met some people exercising their freedom while in other kind of prisons too: people who will not let the prison of chronic illness, or poverty, or racial prejudice, or a childhood of abuse be the defining reality of their lives. They may be stuck in a wheelchair, they may live in a house that you’d consider unacceptable, they may have had doors slammed in their faces because people think they’re the wrong color, they may have the scars of some horrible childhood memories that can’t be erased – but that’s not what defines their life. They live with the hope and the freedom that comes from a relationship with the living God, the God we know through Jesus Christ.
By contrast, there are many in this world – and perhaps some of us at times – who live like prisoners when they really could be free, and we meet such a character as we read on in Paul’s story. He and Silas are singing and praying, enjoying the freedom that is unaffected by prison bars, when an earthquake shakes the region. The prison walls are cracked, the stocks are broken, and the prisoners have a chance to escape, but for some reason they don’t run. So, here they are, standing in the earthquake-shattered jail, when we meet the other player in the drama, the jailer.
He sees the prison doors open, and his immediate reaction is to draw his sword to kill himself, knowing that he will have to pay for the prisoners’ escape with his life. Isn’t that ironic? Paul and Silas know a kind of freedom behind bars but this man, who has never been a prisoner, is the one who lives in confinement. He’s never been locked up but he’s never been really free either – always living with that mythical sword above his head, always having to be vigilant, always having to deny any feeling of humanity toward his prisoners, always in dread because of his lot in life. I wonder how many years he’d been at it, how many times he had wondered “Is this the night that prisoners will escape, costing me my life?” Now that it seems to have happened, he’s ready to beat the authorities to the punch, ready to kill himself and get it over with.
But the prisoner is the one who can set the jailer free, and Paul calls out “Don’t harm yourself; we’re all here!” The jailer calls for lights, comes rushing to see what has happened, and falls down trembling before Paul and Silas. He takes them outside and asks a very basic question, and I think it would be true to the story to paraphrase it as “How can I be free?” He’s been living in an invisible prison of fear for all these years, and he’s heard the singing of these men who were free even when locked up, these men who have no need to run when their stocks are broken. He could have said, “How can I be free?” but his actual words were “What must I do to be saved?” “Being saved” is actually a better way to put it, acknowledging that someone else is involved – that freedom of this sort is not our own doing but that it comes when someone else saves us.
Paul’s answer is short: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and you household,” but the Bible makes it clear that he goes beyond any mechanical, rote answer. It says that Paul “spoke the word of the Lord” to the jailer and everyone in the house, that he explained things and made sure people knew what was expected of them. “What does it mean to believe in Jesus? What does it mean to be saved?” Paul took time to let them know.
And now the jailer – freed to be a human being instead of just a jail-keeper – does what a person of compassion would have done that afternoon. He takes the prisoners into his house and washes their wounds. Then he and his family are all baptized, and though the text doesn’t give any hint of it, I wonder if they used the same water. Wouldn’t that be amazing – water of mercy for washing wounds and water of mercy conveying God’s love, all out of the same basin? Then the jailer sets the table so Paul and Silas can eat with them, and he and the entire household are filled with joy – joy at now believing in God, and joy at beginning a new life with a different kind of freedom.
What
a story! How amazing that such a thing
could happen, long ago in