To get to the heart of what Luke means to convey in this story of Paul and Silas in prison, we need to begin in the oral hygiene aisle of the Gucci Food Lion. You know what I mean by the Gucci Food Lion, right? There I am, trying to pick out the right tube of toothpaste. I have my work cut out for me. There’s too much to choose from.
Even if I knew which brand to go with, there remains more to consider. Gel or paste? Which one’s more effective? Whitening formula? Is that important? What’s the difference, really, between the cheap stuff on the bottom row and the shiny, fancy-looking boxes on the top row? How in the world is toothpaste “3D?” And what about the cap? I’d prefer a flip instead of a twist. I like the ones that stand upright. No question I want a bigger tube, because I don’t want to go through this again any time soon. My ice cream is melting, and I’ve not yet finished shopping. Next, what beer do I want? The beer section is a good twenty feet long.
Freedom to choose among many options sounds good, but I’ve just spent four minutes of my life held captive in the toothpaste aisle of the Gucci Food Lion trying to pick out the right kind of toothpaste. So, maybe I should wonder how free I really am. We should pay attention to what we do with freedom—and what it does with us.
Then there’s this. We’re free, but in our freedom, we’re increasingly lonely and driven to exhaustion. Our jobs keep the best of us from our loved ones; then there are the mortgage payments; our over-programmed, over-anxious children who are learning that the only way to significance is by way of performance, which these days easily translates to exhaustion or burnout; or how about all of our inpatient desires that prevent us from experiencing abiding peace, or our ever-increasing distrust of our neighbors—is this what we call freedom? Is it possible that we have no idea what true freedom is?
Paul talks a good bit about “freedom in Christ,” and although the word isn’t mentioned in Acts 16, there is something for us to learn about the Gospel’s idea from this story. Christian freedom is different than the freedom the world knows about. We should ask how God understands freedom.
It starts with a nameless slave woman held captive by an evil spirit, and it continues with a picture of Paul and Silas bound in chains in an underground prison. Ironic. They share a cell next to a few other prisoners. They teach them their Jesus songs. The earth begins to shake, and the shackles break loose from the wrists and ankles of every man held there that day. The prison doors fly open. No one moves; neither do any of the other prisoners.
If there was anything that could have happened to convince Paul and his fellow apostles that God handed them a get-out-of-jail-free card; this is it. A timely earthquake that shakes their shackles loose and clears the way for a quick escape. But they’re not interested in getting their way. But they don’t think about themselves. It was not for them to wiggle their own freedom out of a situation like this. Something more held them in place. The sort of freedom they could have afforded at that moment was not for them to grab. God’s kind of freedom isn’t so easy a thing.
Think about Jesus in His forty-day wilderness journey, when the devil offers Jesus freedom from His hunger. Because He’s God, Jesus has what it took to turn rocks into loaves of bread. Because He’s God, Jesus was free to take advantage of His Divine power and show off by jumping off the edges of cliffs without worrying about hitting the ground.
“All these kingdoms and castles, all the crowns and royal scepters in the world—they’re yours for the taking,” the temper says to Jesus.
All Jesus had to do was forget His responsibility to His Father and take matters into His own hands. But none of that is freedom. So, Jesus said no, no, no.
What was Paul captive to? Who told him what makes for freedom? With the chains shaken off their wrists and ankles, and the prison bars thrown open, Paul and Silas could have taken matters into their own hands and scampered off. They could have skipped town before anyone noticed. But they didn’t.
They didn’t because Christian freedom doesn’t work like that. Christian freedom, in fact, was the very thing that kept them in place. Running off was not the faithful thing to do. Staying put was. Nothing had possession of them but the Spirit of the Most High God. They we were already free; what was there to escape from?
There’s something about Christian freedom that holds us and binds us. The best word that I can come up with to describe it—the one that’s been rolling through my head all week long as I wrestled with this text—is integrity. It was not up to Paul and His fellow missionaries to take advantage of this seismic turn of events. They knew a responsibility that came along with their freedom in Christ, and it kept them from running.
Our freedom in Christ binds us to a higher way, a greater loyalty, to a responsibility that mirrors the righteousness of God. In Christ, we are bound to be free. And the freedom afforded to us through Christ holds us to a specific kind of life. We are only free to show others how we are kept by Christ, held fast to His life, bound to the Gospel, and the responsibility it places upon us to love God and one another. It’s love that holds us in place.
We have been freed by that love, but we’re also held to it. In Christ, we are bound to be free. And choice? Sure, we have a choice. We always will. But we will only know Gospel freedom if we choose to hand over our lives in service to this binding love.
There were captives set free that day. Two of them. Not Paul and Silas; they were free long before those prison bars flew open. There was the woman who was freed from spiritual and economic custody; and then the jailer, who was freed from condemnation and the sentence of death.
Our text says Paul was ‘annoyed’ by this spirit-possessed woman, but that’s a terrible translation. ‘Grieved’ is a better translation. Paul wasn’t annoyed; he was soul-disturbed by the poor girl’s condition. He was distressed for her. This woman’s captivity was an offense against Christ. By casting this demon out of her, Paul freed her for Christ. The other captive, the jailer—just when he was about to end his life, assuming he had lost his prisoners—Paul shouted out to him, letting him know they were still there.
Paul, Silas, and the rest of those locked up with them were held there in songs of praise. Their worship of God kept them. And to that God, the One to whom their songs were raised, that jailer’s life was worth more than their own freedom. Anyone who values another’s well-being over their own escape from trouble knows what real freedom is. Paul and Silas were unbound long before their shackles broke away.
Who or what are you captive to? And who tells you what makes for freedom?
“The prison doors flew open, and the chains came loose, unfastened.”
These are the Gospel’s words for what Christ does for our souls. Freedom is not the ability to do what we want; it’s the ability to live our lives in faithful and loving response to the One who has rescued us, who lived and died and was raised to eternal life; who, all along the way, kept choosing God’s way over His own; who knew He was bound to be free as long as He held himself fast to love. For love is God’s way.
Freedom is a funny thing.
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful! Alleluia! Amen.