The Price of Freedom
Memorial Day Weekend is an appropriate time to reflect on freedom. People who have been in prison may have an appreciation for freedom that others do not.
May 29, 2011
Acts 16:16-34, The Price of Freedom
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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In the Book of Acts there is a story about an experience that Paul and Silas had in prison. “16 One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. 17 While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” 18 She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.
19 But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. 20 When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews 21 and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” 22 The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. 23 After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. 24 Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26 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. 27 When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” 29 The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33 At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. 34 He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.”
I don’t know too many people who can identify with Paul and Silas in this incident. I haven’t been used by God to cast a demon out of a person in a moment with a few authoritative words. I’ve never been dragged before authorities, beaten by a mob, and thrown in prison for exercising my faith in Jesus. One person who could probably relate to Paul and Silas’s situation in prison is Terry Anderson who lived through six years as a hostage in Lebanon. Anderson was chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when he was kidnapped by Islamic extremists in 1985 and held prisoner for six years. He survived his ordeal by regaining the faith he had long ago abandoned and by keeping his mind sharp. He said in a speech, “Those first few dark weeks in those cells, in those chains, blindfolded, surrounded by men who hated me, I remember doing the only thing prisoners can do when they’re alone, and that is looking inward into my mind, searching for the things I had learned over the years.” But Anderson didn’t find much at first. “It frightened me, because there wasn’t much in there. Where were the books I’d read? The poetry I’d memorized? I couldn’t find them. Luckily the more I searched, the more I could find, the more I could recall.”
Anderson spent the majority of his time in captivity with Dr. Thomas Sutherland, Dean of Agriculture at the American University in Beirut. Anderson noted, “If you’re going to spend a lot of time locked in a cellar, take a professor with you.”[1]
If I was going to spend a lot of time locked up and I could choose, I might prefer Paul and Silas to a college professor, no disrespect intended, because those two believers bring with them into prison a freedom and a faith that no chains can restrain. When they looked inward they found a wealth of scriptures, prayer, hymns, and songs to sustain them in their time of need. They are an example of what Jesus said (John 8:31), “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.”
Paul and Silas had been led by a dream to go to Philippi in order to share the freedom God offers us in Christ – freedom from sin, selfishness, and slavery to all kinds of forces that seek to enslave us so that we serve them rather than God. Paul and Silas go to the place of prayer down by the riverside and are accosted by a slave girl who has some ability to tell fortunes or discern who people are. Because of her ability or condition she makes a lot of money for her owners by fortune telling. She is following Paul and Silas around shouting, ““These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days.”
Paul gets annoyed by this and in the name of Jesus Christ speaks a word and she is cured. She is free from her condition, but she is not free. She is a slave, someone who is not a person, but who is treated as a piece of property.
The response of her owners (notice the word is plural, it’s like she is “owned” jointly by several people who have “invested” in her) is to drag Paul and Silas before the authorities. You may recall that one time Jesus healed a man by casting the demons tormenting him into pigs that rushed down into the sea and were drowned. The owners of the pigs weren’t too happy about losing their livelihood and neither are these guys. Just as Jesus was asked to leave town by the local Pork Dealer’s Association, Paul and Silas are in trouble for helping the slave girl. When spirituality confronts economics there is usually a backlash.
The slave girl’s situation as well as Terry Anderson’s demonstrates that when we enslave others, we enslave ourselves. When we allow God to free us, we become instruments of God’s deliverance and freedom for others. Paul has been God’s agent of deliverance, but that has shaken up the prevailing and economic and political powers. The girl’s owners say to the magistrates, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews 21 and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” Living out our faith in Christ will often be disturbing or disrupting to other people until the priorities and values of the Kingdom of heaven become the priorities of and values on earth. Some people mistakenly think that Christianity or spirituality is a private matter between an individual and God, that faith should not mix with or interfere with politics or business. This is incorrect. Faith is personal, but it is not private. Following Jesus should influence and shape every aspect of our lives. Jesus preached the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God and a “kingdom” is certainly a concept that has social, political, and economic implications.
The opponents of Paul and Silas play the race and ethnic card. “These men [who] are disturbing our city are Jews.” Tribalism runs deep in the human race so bringing race and nationalism into a conflict will almost surely escalate emotions. Notice Luke and Timothy who are not Jews but Gentiles with Paul and Silas were not arrested. Paul and Silas are Roman citizens, but nationalism, race, and tradition all fall in line against the work of the Lord.
Then the crowd properly stirred up by the presence of foreigners advocating strange customs falls into line behind the aggrieved owners of the slave girl, attacking and beating Paul and Silas who are then taken to prison and placed in the innermost cell with their feet locked in shackles. The liberators of the girl have become the imprisoned. The name of Jesus has helped set a woman free from a spirit, but two of Jesus’ people get jailed in the process. Paul and Silas are not exactly languishing in prison. “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” Well of course they were listening to them – they were all chained up, where were they going to go even if they didn’t want to listen to them? Paul and Silas though in chains, legs in shackles, are singing and praying, having a sort of rally in jail. Iron bars do not a prison make.
Luke says the earth reeled and rocked, the prison shook, the doors flew open and everyone’s chains were unfastened. The power of worship, prayer and witnessing to free and deliver people is underscored. The jailer wakes up and when he sees the doors are open, he is horrified. Knowing the fate of jailers who permit their prisoners to escape, he draws his sword and prepares to take his own life – the honorable thing for disgraced jailers to do. You see having the key to someone else’s cell or chains doesn’t make you free. The men who guarded Terry Anderson were enslaved also because their lives revolved around keeping someone else in chains so they weren’t truly and fully free either. Paul shouts at the jailer, “Don’t do it; don’t kill yourself. We’re all still here, we’re just singing.” The jailer basically replies, “But you were bound in chains and now you’re free to escape.” Paul says, “No, we prisoners are free, and you, our jailer, were chained but now you are free to escape.” The jailer brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
This incident causes me to reflect on what is freedom. By the end of the story, everyone who at first appeared to be free – the slave girl’s owners, the magistrates, the crowd, the jailer – is revealed to be a slave. And everyone who at first appeared to be enslaved – the girl, Paul, and Silas – is revealed to be or made free. There is freedom and then there is freedom.
Jesus said (John 8:31), “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” Those who were listening to Jesus replied, “We are Abraham’s descendents and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” There is perhaps no more delusional verse in the New Testament. How could they make such a statement? The ones who spoke so pridefully of their freedom spoke with the heel of Caesar upon their necks – they had been slaves of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome, anybody big enough to raise an army and blow through the Middle East. In truth they were not free, even if they didn’t realize it.
Jesus is saying in John 8 that we’re all slaves to sin and selfishness and many other forces and powers. We’re all in need of deliverance and true freedom. Jesus also said (John 8:36), “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
I encourage you to reflect on the characters in the passage from Acts 16. Paul and Silas are chained yet they are the freest characters in the story. Slaves of God, they are willing to defy tradition, economics, nationalism, in order to share the freedom God offers us all in Christ. They are carrying on the ministry of Jesus “to proclaim release to the captives, to let the oppressed go free.” There is the slave girl who is treated like property rather than a daughter of God and a sister of Christ who is freed by God’s people. There are the business people, the girl’s “owners,” the magistrates, and the crowd who are outwardly free and inwardly enslaved by sin and selfishness. Then there is the jailer who accepts the sacrifice of Christ on his behalf and becomes a slave, not of himself or his job but of the Most High God.
One of the things about going to Israel and Jordan is that it once again affirmed for me how fortunate we are in the United States to have the freedom we enjoy. As we wasted hours of time going through border crossings, as we had young men with automatic weapons walk through our bus, I thought how free and open our country is. We can drive 3,000 miles without a permit and never go through a check point, and never have our vehicle searched. We have such freedom because of the sacrifices that so many men and women have made for the sake of others. Especially those in many wars, as President Abraham Lincoln said at the dedication of the national cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in November of 1863 who gave “The last full measure of devotion.” We are blessed to live as free people; the question is what we do with that precious freedom.
Memorial Day began as a day to decorate the graves of the fallen in the American Civil War. The words of the closing song we’ll sing today said of Jesus in verse four, “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, while God is marching on.”
There is political freedom thanks to the sacrifice of men and women, but even greater than that is the freedom we have because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for us all. Thank God for people like Paul and Silas and their modern counterparts who will pay any price to bring others into the freedom they have experienced.
1 Peter 2:16-17a, “As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. Honor everyone. Love the family of believers.”
[1] Graduation speech, Westfield State College, May 23, 1998.