I had been really looking forward to leading and preaching at All Saints Church, Minstead last Sunday, on a weekend when my Dad was celebrating his 90th Birthday, and another friend their 80th Birthday. However, it wasn’t to be as we ended up being Covid-bound at home; whilst I remained negative, my husband had brought it home from school and we didn’t want to risk the health of older relatives and friends. However, I am deeply grateful that not only did Dad step in to lead the Service of the Word, with musical support from our son, our future daughter-in-law, and the local vicar (to whom particular thanks), but his friend Karen was able to inhabit the character of the Jailor’s wife. This is my most recent monologue, and a pair for last week’s monologue on Lydia.
I’d never thought of us as being enslaved to Rome, but that night would transport us from being captive within a violent system, to being free to risk all in service to a risen King.
My husband took his job as the chief jailer here in Philippi very seriously; not least because it was the role he’d been awarded for his long service and good conduct in the military. Here, in this outpost of Roman power, we benefited from the gift of a settled family life in the heart of a city. Yes, we had to live ‘over the office’ is it were; yes, my husband’s authority was defined by the dutiful rigour with which he enforced the whim of the city’s officials; and yes, at times the stench from the prison cells could be deeply inhibiting; but we enjoyed the freedom that came with our social status. With the prison and thus our home so close to the public forum at the centre of Philippi, here was little that happened without us knowing.
We knew that there was a small group of a new Jewish sect in town – the Jesus-men I called them. They’d taken up residence with Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth. That seemed to jeopardise the status on which she relied for her wealthy trade, but she’d always been a rather independently-minded woman and it was hardly our concern. I did of course know that she regularly joined the Jews at worship in their prayer-station on the river bank outside town (Acts 16:13), but that wasn’t somewhere we ever went.
We were also more than familiar with the fortune-telling of the young Delphic-woman and her over-zealous, greedy minders. There was often more than a grain of truth in what she revealed, but her fascination with the Jesus-men who travelled out to pray by the river daily, seemed unusual. For days she was like an annoying stray dog, always yapping at their heels about some most High God, and something about a way of being saved. Well, I thought, we’d all like to be saved from a way of life that exerted authority through greed and violence, but something has to pay the bills. And, I doubted whether even the greatest god in the pantheon, be it Zeus or ‘the One’ the Jews believed in, was capable of paying the price to set her free.
How wrong was I?! Wrong about the One, wrong about the price of freedom, wrong to think it wasn’t possible to live with different priorities, wrong to think that it was only others who were oppressed by the violence that surrounded us.
I watched as these Jesus-men were dragged into the public forum. Apparently, they had uttered that name “Jesus” over the Delphic-woman. Now she was silent, free from the fortune-telling spirit whose power had spoken through her, and the grasp of those who had manipulated her for their own gain. But, there’s no-one so hard-done-by as a salesman whose gimmick has been busted, nor so canny; so these Jesus-men weren’t charged with property damage, but with disturbing the peace. Which was ironic, as doing so brought anything but peace. People love a band-wagon to climb on, even if it’s based on trumped-up charges, blatant discrimination, or a desire to exert power – and this was all three. There was a riot.
And the Jesus-men were beaten.
The senior civil-servants dealing out this so-called justice, may have been inured to inflicting pain, perhaps because they only briefly saw the consequences. However we did. The bloodied and bruised Jesus-men, Paul and Silas, were brought into the prison for our safe-keeping. We knew what the unsanitary depths into which they were shackled would do to open wounds. But mercy was not a word that the authorities understood, so we weren’t allowed to show it. Having done what was required of us, we slept; but not for long, because the earth moved.
We were used to the earthquakes, they’re relatively common here, but this was more terrifying. As we fled outside to safety, over the rumbling of the earth we could hear the cell doors falling from their hinges, the rattle of prisoners chains falling free, and the sound of something else, something like… songs of joy coming from deep inside the prison?! I was frightened of what my husband would do to himself as he ran, sword in hand, toward what should have been crumbling walls. I followed at his call, and there, in the lamplight, found him trembling on his knees at the feet of the prisoners within. Time stood still.
[Pause]
All the prisoners were free, but no-one had escaped. My husband seemed captive to the fear that even so, his life would be forfeit. I was simply flooded with relief, that he, that we, were all still alive. When he brought Paul and Silas out into the open, I could see the confusion on his face, and I heard it in the question that came stumbling from his lips: “What must I do to be saved?”
And then they spoke the name that had given freedom to the Delphic-girl, the name that had brought them to this place, the name they had been singing as my husband ran towards them… Jesus. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved. You and your household.”
There in the prison yard that night, those men spoke words that healed my husband, and I, from the painful scars inflicted on us by our blind acceptance of others expectations. As we carefully washed their wounds clean, they spoke words of healing which showed us that being bound to the One, true God, was a far greater service to the world he has created, than we could ever offer to a society which demanded hardened hearts and minds. We opened our home to these men who had travelled to us in response to a vision given them by the Spirit of the living God, and then been imprisoned at our hands. In return, they offered us the hospitality of Jesus in whose name they proclaimed these freedoms, breaking our bread to speak of a redemption that brought us to sit at table in unity and harmony.
There are some forms of light that shine more brightly than a candle in the darkness, or the sun at dawn. There are some forms of cleansing that can heal wounds that are far deeper than the eye can see. Yes, some insist on the freedom to bear arms, to carry keys that imprison, to manipulate the innocent; but there is also the freedom to understand that we need not be shackled to those behaviours, that we can be healed of our selfish adherence to power-politics and our bondage to that which destroys our humanity.
As our lives are being transformed by the message of freedom to be found in Jesus Christ, as we rise washed by the waters of baptism to a new life that will imprison no-one, least of all ourselves, the only duty which now carries any weight for us is that of learning more of the One who sent him because he loves us. As we work to release others from whatever evils control and manipulate them, we too can sing of freedom in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
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