Jesus’ disciples would become familiar with prisons. But rather than
wallow in the injustice of their incarceration, the apostles saw their
imprisonment as an opportunity to offer God’s justice and peace to those on the
inside.
Luke shares the story of a
nameless, possessed slave-girl, who supports her owner’s household as a fortuneteller
(16:16-18). She was in her own prison,
of course. Paul may have been annoyed with the noise she created. In any case,
he liberated her from the spirit that possessed her. Yet, he made those making
money off her mad. They wanted to keep her in her prison. They had exorcised a
demon from a slave girl who had made a lot of money for her masters by fortune
telling. Her story becomes representative of far greater powers at play.
In fact, this story differs from other exorcisms in the New Testament. Paul
speaks no words directly to the evil spirit. Luke records no demonstration of
the departure of the spirit. Luke records no astonishment from those who
witness the exorcism. It does not lead to the spreading of the gospel. In fact,
it leads to opposition. In fact, their accusers argue a case against Paul and
Silas based on class distinctions and religious differences. They do not
identify Paul and Silas as “servants of the Most High God.” Now, they are
“Jews” who are “throwing the city into confusion” and proclaiming not
salvation, but customs that are unlawful for “Romans” (vv. 20-21). They stress
the foreign nature of these disciples: both strangers to "our city"
and "Jews," a twofold oddness.
Next, Paul and Silas find themselves chained fast in the dungeon of a
Philippian prison. Tossed into a cold, dark cell with others who were likely
real criminals, these two followers of Christ put aside their fear and begin to
pray and sing hymns, seeing midnight in a dungeon as being the perfect time and
place for worship. However, note the next line in Acts 16:25 — “the prisoners
were listening to them.” Paul and Silas were bringing the light of Christ into
a very dark place by ministering among fellow prisoners.
So, if there are happy places in
this world, can we say the same true about unhappy places? Are they unhappy in
their own ways as well?
Consider the Philippian jail where
Paul and Silas find themselves in our Scripture reading. The two missionaries
had been flogged before being imprisoned, and in the jail, their feet were
secured in stocks for good measure. All of that sounds quite grim, but come
midnight, "Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God."
The story shifts as Paul and Silas
praise God in the midst of their circumstance, and God acts. In the middle of
the night, in the midst of darkness, and in the midst of their chaos, God acts
through the form of an earthquake that effectively removes the fetters of all
the prisoners and opens all the doors while miraculously not harming a single
person.
The point is, in this place that
was specifically designed to make its residents unhappy, Paul and Silas were
not wailing tunes of despair. They were not chanting about the injustice of
their punishment.
When the earthquake broke open the prison doors, Paul and Silas did not
leave. A matter of honor was at stake, and the jailor almost takes his life.
Other apostles, freed by angels, left in Acts 5:17-26, and Peter escaped with
the help of an angel in Acts 12:6-19. Paul and Silas, however, stayed. They seemed
to see their stay in prison as an opportunity to bring hope and freedom to
others. The jailor wants to know what he must do to be saved. Paul and Silas
share with him that he must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. They share the
word of the Lord with him and his household. The jailor washed their wounds.
Paul and Silas baptized the jailor and his household. Note the sequence here:
preaching, then faith, and then baptism. Then, they share a meal together and
rejoice in their newly discovered freedom. You see, even though Paul and Silas
were in prison, they were free in mind and heart.
In verse 33, the reference to the baptism of the household is often
taken as the New Testament basis for infant baptism. Karl Barth[1] thought
that such verses were a slender rope upon which to build a biblical basis for
infant baptism, for even in these verses, the sequence is that of preaching,
faith, and baptism. Pannenberg[2] says we
can draw no firm conclusions as to the baptism of infants from such statements.
All such a statement tells us is that turning to faith in the message about
Christ was not always an isolated individual decision. Rather, from early times
it might be a family matter. However, he does think it likely that this family
decision in the first century became the basis for the common practice of the
baptism of infants by the third century. One could also refer to Acts 16:15,
18:8, and I Corinthians 1:16.
The mission of Paul and Silas looked like it had come to an end in
prison. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity to continue the mission, and
leave the results to God. It becomes a story of preaching, faith, joy,
conversion, and baptism.
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