sermon excerpts: "Prison Break" (Acts 16: 16-34)

A little late, but here're the excerpts from May 17:

Paul and the apostles spent a fair bit of time in prison. Being the church in those early days was a hazardous endeavour. Following Christ was lonely, despite the attempts to create community. If it wasn’t the persecution of the Roman Empire, it was resistance from the Jewish traditionalists that did not regard an executed criminal as Messiah.

So prison was not out of the question for people who expressed and lived their faith in Christ. What I’ve learned from TV and movies is that if you’re going to survive in prison, you don’t draw attention to yourself. You keep quiet, do your time and try not offend anyone or get drawn into any arguments. Paul and Silas don’t seem to understand that concept. They spend their time singing hymns and offering prayer, attracting the attention of the other inmates.

Prison in those days was a different sort of enterprise. It was more of a holding tank, not for the criminally dangerous, but the politically inconvenient, or those who simply owed money to powerful people. Maybe there was more of a willingness to listen to others and share their stories of injustice and how they came to be imprisoned among these prisoners. Or perhaps, the conviction of Paul and Silas’s faith moved them beyond self-preservation and internal power plays.

The inmates would not know much about these new guys. They would have seen them hustled in, bruised and bleeding, looking a frightful sight from the public beating they received. The other prisoners would note these new guys were chained to wooden stocks and thrown into the inmost, deepest, securest cell. If anything, the other prisoners would be leery and apprehensive about these new characters, certainly they must be truly dangerous if this was the treatment they got from the authorities. These guys must be the real deal!

So for these new guys to spend their evening in prayer and song, must have piqued the other prisoners’ interest. All this would be something that the jailer was used to, he would have seen all types in his work. But then the one thing that he’d never seen before happened: after a midnight earthquake left the doors open and chains broken, the jailer discovers that the prisoners stayed put.

As we learned this story in Monday School, some of the kids explained that they wouldn’t have run away either, they didn’t want to get into more trouble. However, the run-of-the-mill prisoner would have run off for freedom at that miraculous opportunity. Certainly, the jailer expected as much.

The punishment for an escaped prisoner was death for the jailer. He was prepared to kill himself over this personal failure and loss of honour. We learn that he too, was a prisoner, trapped in the expectations of an empire and society that had narrowly defined roles for all its members.

Paul and Silas deliver him from his captivity by doing the opposite of what was expected. They stayed put. They gave up their freedom so that they could fulfil their mission and calling to preach God’s word and share the story of Christ’s life and love. For all this talk of prison and the compelling story of Paul and Silas, we see that freedom is the theme running through the scriptures…

Paul and Silas are thrown in jail because of trumped up charges of inciting Jewish (not Christian) rebellion. What they actually did was free a slave girl from exploitation and spiritual blackmail. Although whether her life was better or not after losing her “gift” is an unknown story.

Unfortunately, it seems that freedom comes at the expense of someone else. The way that the world works, someone has ownership or responsibility over another. The slave owners, the jailer, had power over other people who were not free. When these people were released from their bonds, the slave owners and jailer suffered. It is a win-lose situation.

Can we ever get to a place where one’s personal freedom does not diminish another group? It comes to an understanding of mutual respect and acceptance of other’s rights. This embodies Jesus’ fervent prayer and hope that all may be one (John 17: 20-6). When we are all one, we recognize that we are connected and equal.

… This may be the key to how our churches are to survive in the coming years, remembering that Jesus desires for us to be one. That may mean giving up some personal freedom. Paul and Silas sacrificed their freedom by remaining in jail. We remember that Jesus sacrificed much more so that we may know the true power and personal expression of God’s presence in our lives.

We are called to a life of freedom, not only for ourselves, but for all in the world. If we are truly one before God, our care and commitment to others even in our darkest, bleakest times, will shine a small light in the face of fear, powerlessness and despair. Such is the freedom that Christ won for us; in that, all may be one and we are not alone. Thanks be to God.