Escaping from Captivity, Together (June 1, 2025)
Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26
As Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns to their fellow prisoners in the jail at Philippi, “suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.”
If that is not a description of Easter, I don’t know what is. An earthquake that shakes the prison to its foundations, that throws open all the doors, that unlocks every chain.
In our first reading last week we began the story of Paul and his companions traveling to Philippi in Macedonia, today’s northern Greece, where they found themselves among a group of women who had been praying outside the city along the river. Among these was Lydia, a wealthy businesswoman from western Turkey, who becomes the host for the first Christian community in that city.
And as we continue the story in our first reading today, we read about another woman of Philippi, a young girl who was enslaved, and whose owners rented her out as a fortune-teller. She apparently was good at it – good enough to make her owners a great deal of money.
There was nothing necessarily supernatural about her abilities – some people are by nature very intuitive and can read what others are feeling and thinking. It’s a gift that I wish I had – when I meet people who are much more perceptive and insightful than I am, I often find myself feeling jealous, it would make being a pastor so much easier. But like any gift, this gift can be used for good – to sense quickly when someone is troubled and offer them the care and support they need – or for ill – to manipulate others, to make money off of them, or in this case she was being used by her owners to make money. And Paul understood that the way her gift was being used to exploit her and her customers was demonic.
Even so, Paul might have just left her alone. After all, her skills were valuable to her owners, which meant that they had an incentive to treat her well. Otherwise one can only imagine how they might have treated her. But every time Paul and his companions appeared in public, there was this fortune teller shouting to the world, “These men are slaves of the Most High God who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” As I said, she was insightful, and in fact what she was saying about Paul and his friends was correct.
Yet the whole situation really bothered Paul. The accuracy of her knowledge didn’t mean her gift was from God – quite the opposite, in fact. In the gospels the demons Jesus encountered all knew who he was – there are those wonderful scenes at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, for example, where a man is possessed by a demon who says to Jesus “What do you want from us? We know who you are” and then, when Jesus frees the man, the crowds say, “Who is this who commands even the evil spirits?” And if I were in Paul’s shoes, I know that accepting this girl’s testimony and taking advantage of it in my own ministry would make me feel complicit in what was being done to her – and that would keep me up at night.
For this, or perhaps another, reason, Paul commands the spirit of insight to come out of her – not, we are told, out of concern for the girl or her well-being or her spiritual or physical freedom, but simply out of his own annoyance at being dragged into this situation. Not even the apostles were always pure in their motivations. And indeed she was set free from the spirit – meaning the days of profit for her owners had come to an end. And her owners did not take this news very well. What they did to her, we do not know. But we do know what they did to Paul – they denounced Paul and his companions to the authorities. Called them outsiders, foreigners, Jews, thieves and troublemakers. And Paul and Silas were thrown into prison.
This is the world of the Roman colony at Philippi. A world where people were enslaved and oppressed. A world where the justice system operated to protect the property of the wealthy and connected and against the foreigner and outsider. A world where the authorities relied on fear to keep people from challenging the way things are. A world where everyone – including for a time Paul himself – is pressured to think above all about how to preserve themselves from the chaos and fear around them. This is the world of the Roman colony of Philippi, a world where Paul and Silas are not the only ones who are captives. And perhaps in many ways this is the world that we still live in today.
We are told that Paul and Silas, stripped and beaten and cast into prison, act with faith in the God of Easter. In prison, we find them praying and singing hymns, and the other prisoners are listening to them. They are living with faith in the God who breaks chains and sets people free, as followers of Jesus who was stripped and beaten and punished unjustly as well. They are living with faith that the God who raised Jesus from the dead and didn’t give Pilate the last word will somehow, someway, someday ensure that the jailers of Philippi will not have the last word either.
And then, “suddenly, there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.” What Paul and Silas had anticipated in faith became reality – for them, and for everyone who was imprisoned along with them. Whether they “deserved” to be in prison or not. The God of Easter set everyone free.
But when the prison guard saw the doors opened and the chains unfastened, he panicked at the thought that all the prisoners were about to escape on his watch. And, we read, he drew his sword to kill himself. Perhaps he was overwhelmed with a sense of his own failure. Perhaps – I suspect more likely – he knew that the authorities would blame him for the prisoners’ escape and figured he could end his own life more mercifully and painlessly than what the authorities were likely to do to him. It turns out that the jailer was just as much a prisoner of Philippi’s system of fear and control as anyone else.
But Paul shouts: No! Do not harm yourself. We are all still here. We aren’t going anywhere without you. Our freedom will not be complete until you, our prison guard, are free too.
In the gospel reading today Jesus prays for his disciples, present and future, and he prays that they will be one in love, as Jesus and the Father are one in love. And when I think about what it means for the disciples of Jesus to live together in unity, I think of Paul and the prison guard. Paul was set free in the earthquake that threw open the prison doors – in fact, even before the prison doors were opened, Paul already knew in faith that he was free in Christ. But Paul will not walk out of the prison unless he walks out together with the prison guard.
Easter begins when we accept the freedom of eternal life in faith, but Easter isn’t complete until everyone is free. Many activists today have a slogan, “None of us is free until all of us are free,” and this is the kind of freedom that the gospel promises us and calls us to live.
So much of our society is centered around the idea that suffering and captivity is tolerable if it happens to somebody else, somewhere else, preferably when we don’t have to see it. We fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here. Yes, immigrants might have their lives turned upside down, but only the ones who broke the law – so don’t worry, nothing will happen to you. Yes, gay and lesbian people and trans people will face discrimination and worse, but don’t worry, as long as you’re a normal person, that won’t affect you. Yes, life might get harder for some people, but only for those who deserve it, don’t worry, not for you. The captivity of slave girls and prison guards whose names are not even recorded in Scripture can be overlooked and forgotten, as long as you can go free.
That is not what Jesus wanted. Jesus wanted us – all of us – all people everywhere – to be united as closely as the Father and Son and the Spirit are united in the one God. And this unity is what the book of Revelation promises is the destiny of us all. The city of God where the doors are never shut and anyone who wishes is welcome to take the water of life as a gift. Even enslaved girls and prison guards. Amen. Lord Jesus, come quickly.