St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Cleveland, Tennessee

Seventh Sunday of Easter
20 May 2007
Acts 16:16-34

The Gospel lesson for today is wonderful, and very important. I will preach on it many times, I am sure, as time goes on. Today, I really felt led to offer some thoughts on the lesson from Acts. What we see in this picture from the book of Acts is some incredible ancient history. It is very seldom in literature that you have such a close accounting of an event like this. We have accounts of large battles and large public acts of one kind or the other in ancient literature. But to have such a close reporting of a small event like this is really quite rare in ancient literature. I want us to look for just a few moments at this lesson from Acts. If you have your bulletin handy, you can follow along.

First of all, it begins one day when Luke, our patron saint, is speaking. The Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts are two volumes of the same work. Luke sets the stage giving us the life of Jesus. And then, volume two, or the sequel, to use some modern terminology, has to do with, “Now that the foundation has been laid by Jesus, how did the church begin?” So, Luke and Acts are written by the same person, Saint Luke. He is one of Paul’s travel companions. It is Luke, our patron saint, who says, “As we were traveling along. . .” Now we see this picture of a girl who has a spirit within her. There are times in the Gospels when spirits recognize Jesus before the people he is speaking to recognize him as being the Savior. So, the spirit in this young woman recognizes that Paul and Silas are genuine servants of God. She is following Paul around. Just imagine, for a moment, that you are trying to go about your daily business, particularly the important business of preaching the word; and you have been in Philippi where this incident happens. You have been in Philippi for a couple of days, and this girl and her owners are following you every where, non-stop. There is something wonderfully human in this passage. Look, where it says, this is Luke telling the story, “But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus to come out of her.’” Isn’t that a wonderfully human moment? I mean, Luke just flat out tells us, “Paul is tired of this.” Paul is tired of this girl following him around everywhere he goes, so Luke says, “He was very annoyed, and he turned to her and said to the spirit, not to the girl, ‘Come out of her.’” Paul has that kind of power of prayer.

Look down a few more verses to set the stage for what happens next. Of course, these people who own this girl have lost their source of income when Paul silences her, and exorcises the demon. They are very upset. So they, these citizens, bring Paul and Silas and their companions before the magistrates because they are upset that they have lost their source of income from this girl who has had this spirit. So, they say, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” There is some history here that is important to know. It helps us understand the context. Philippi was established specifically as a Roman colony. Mark Anthony and Octavian, after a very important battle, settled some of their veterans at Philippi which is in modern-day Greece. Philippi was settled specifically as a Roman colony. Later on, Octavia settled more veterans there. If you will, it was a military community kind of like Virginia Beach. A lot of retirees from the Roman military lived there together. Now, the point is that Philippi was completely under Roman law even though it was far removed from Rome itself; it was a Roman outpost.

In 49 A.D., which is just a couple of years before this was written, the emperor Claudius had expelled all Jews from Rome. There was a lot of anti-Semitic feeling in Roman circles at this time. So, if that background helps, let’s listen to this again. These owners of this slave girl say, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews.” So you can hear the hostility . . . “these people are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” They want these guys punished because these are Jews coming into a Roman colony. What are they doing? They are spreading the faith. They are not recognized as Christians by the Romans. They are recognized as Jews; but they are there to preach Jesus.

A couple of lines down, it says, “After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely.” In I Thessalonians, Chapter 2, verse 2, Paul speaks specifically about how shameful he and his companions have been treated in Philippi. So that is confirmation of this testimony. They were severely beaten by these Roman authorities before they were thrown into prison. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. We see here that they haven’t lost their faith. They have no monetary possessions with them. They have lost their freedom. They have been beaten severely. And, yet, Paul and Silas haven’t lost their faith. At midnight in this jail, they are singing hymns to God. Suddenly there was an earthquake so violent that the foundation of the prison was shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. We know that there are tremors frequently in this part of the world. We know, historically, that that was the case during the Biblical era. So, there is an earthquake, and the shaking is violent enough that the chains break free from the walls so that the prisoners could escape. The jailer was responsible for the lives of these prisoners, and in Roman custom, if he lost control of the prisoners, he had to pay with his own life. Not the greatest job to have, is it? He would have been completely responsible had prisoners escaped. He is about to commit suicide. Paul shouts, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” So, these people, who have been singing hymns of praise to God, when the walls crack and their chains are freed, and the jailer is about to kill himself because he has lost his prisoners; these same people say, “Don’t hurt yourself, we are all here.” Just imagine. This is history. This isn’t a made-up scenario. This is Luke recounting, for us, what happened in this Philippian jail. And so, seeing all this now, the jailer says to Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” What is he really saying here? “I want what you’ve got. Whatever you have, this relationship with your God. Whatever you’ve got, I want.” So, in the midst of all this turmoil, he says, “What must I do to be saved? How do I get what you’ve got in your heart?” The answer is very simple. “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” This is the man that scholars refer to as the Philippian jailer. He and his entire household were converted this night to Christian.