Sermon — June 1, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
It’s been days, by now, and it’s starting to get old.
The first time Paul and Silas heard footsteps behind them on the street, they started to worry. They’ve been run out of town before, and they’ve learned: when you start hearing footsteps on your trail, it’s time to leave, before the one person following you down a back alley turns into a mob.
But that first time, it wasn’t a mob, it was just a girl they’d seen before, telling fortunes for a few coins, payable to the two burly guys standing on either side of her. They were nowhere to be seen, that day, just her, following them quietly, looking at them curiously, until suddenly it’s as if something has seized hold of her and the words spill out of her mouth, “These men are slaves to the Most High God, proclaiming to you the way of salvation!” Silas laughed, at first. Paul knew better. They didn’t need this kind of publicity. Couldn’t she just be cool?
She could not just be cool, it turns out, because the next day, there she was again, following them. This time she looks a little worried, like she wants to walk away, but instead she keeps calling out in an even louder voice, “These men are slaves to the Most High God, proclaiming to you the way of salvation!” Heads started to turn. Silas started walking faster. Paul jaw clenched. Can’t she take a hint?
But she cannot take a hint, it turns out, because the next day, there she is, shouting frantically, again and again, “These men are slaves to the Most High God, proclaiming to you the way of salvation!” Now Paul is annoyed. And Paul is worried. And Paul is not the calmest guy, under the best of circumstances. And so he finally turns, and he stares into the very depths of her soul, and says, directly to the fortune-telling spirit within her, “In the name of Christ, I order you to come out of her.” And it’s as if something drains out of her, and she looks exhausted, and lucid, and scared.
Unfortunately, that’s the moment that her so-called masters come by. And they look at the woman, and they look at Paul, and they can tell right away that something’s changed. “What did you do?” they snarl. And they’re enraged. “That’s my business you’re messing with!” And the two big guys grab Paul and Silas and drag them right up to the courthouse.
“These men are Jews,” they say, “and they’re disturbing our city. They’ve been going around telling everyone not to follow our laws.” And the crowd who’s followed them in from the marketplace starts to push and shove, and things get a little blurry, and the next time Silas really comes to his senses, he’s lying on the floor, in the dark, with chains around his feet.
If only they’d left town when they started hearing footsteps.
But here they are, behind bars, and Paul starts humming. A real earworm of a hymn. And Silas can’t help himself. He starts humming, too. And then Paul starts to sing, and Silas starts to sing, and there they are, sitting in jail, rocking out, and everyone else in the cell is looking at them, thinking, “This is kind of cringe, but… it’s not a bad tune,” and they’re listening, and then [jump] the floor begins to shake, and the chains rattle, and a crack creeps up the wall as the whole doorway crumbles and then the guys in the cell look down and their chains have come undone, and they look up, and there’s Paul and Silas, still bopping away.
It’s dark in the cell, but from where they’re sitting they can see out into the hall, and they see a man, stumbling toward the door, wiping the sleep from his eyes. They can hear him mumbling—“Oh, gods! Oh no. The door’s gone. They must’ve gotten away.” And he covers his face in his hands. He had one job—to keep the prisoners inside the jail—and he had failed. He can’t bear the shame. And as he stands there, completely at a loss, he can only think of one way out. But as he begins to draw his sword, Paul shouts, “Whoa, whoa! Put the sword away. We’re here! We’re all right here.”
And the man’s sword falls to the ground, and he grabs a torch, instead. And he walks into the room, and he falls on his knees, the torch trembling in his hands, and, still worried about the consequences of his failure, but even more worried that he appears to have two demigods in jail, he asks, “Lords, how can I be saved?” And they say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”
And still numb with shock, he shows them out of the room, and brings them home with him.
There’s a remarkable irony in the climax of this story. The guard was so full of shame, so overwhelmed by the dishonor that would come if it was discovered that the prisoners had escaped, that he’s prepared to end his life. But when he finds that they’re still there—that they’ve been released but haven’t escaped—he’s so full of gratitude that he goes ahead and sets them free.
Can you imagine the conversation the next day? The magistrates come down to survey the damage to the jail. And they ask the jailer for an update. “Boy, was I worried,” he’d say. “This place was a wreck. The foundation’s cracked, the door came right out of the wall. I thought for sure the prisoners would be gone.”
“…And?” the magistrates would say.
“Well, I was so relieved when I saw they were still there, I just went ahead and let ’em all go.”
“…You what?”
(You shouldn’t worry too much about what happens to our friend, by the way. The reading this morning cuts off here, but in fact, on that next day, Paul belatedly reveals that he and Silas are Roman citizens. You do not let the crowd beat up two Roman citizens, so the magistrates apologize to Paul, and beg his forgiveness, and Paul and Silas go and say goodbye to Lydia, and they head on their way.)
But the jailer didn’t know that then. He isn’t thinking clearly when he sets these two men free. He’s acting instinctively. He’s doing what almost anyone would do. Having been set free from the overwhelming shame of losing his prisoners, he does the only thing he can, and sets them free in turn.
There’s a clever saying that you may have heard: “Hurt People Hurt People.” If you haven’t heard it, you can probably guess what it means. People who have been hurt go on to hurt other people in turn; unless something changes, we tend to perpetuate the cycles of trauma and pain that we have experienced.
The jailer’s actions suggest a related principle to me: “Freed people free people.” And this is really all the story is, from start to finish, an exchange of one set of chains for another until, finally, every character is free. Paul frees this enslaved woman from the spirit that possesses her and allows her captors to exploit her. They’re so enraged that they throw Paul in chains in retribution. God breaks Paul’s chains. But the breaking of those bonds wraps the jailer in his own spiritual chains: he is bowed down and nearly broken beneath their weight. But Paul sets him free, with a simple phrase: “We’re in here!” Freed from his burden, he sets Paul free in turn.
Each of these acts of liberation and release is a kind of forgiveness. And we should remember that while Paul begins the chain of events in this story, Paul’s own life is a response to having been set free. This man, who once persecuted the Christians viciously, has been forgiven by God for what he’s done, and gone out to spread the news of God’s liberating forgiveness and love.
In this ultimate sense, forgiveness isa vertical thing; it all flows out of God’s choice to forgive us. But we experience it horizontally. We mediate it to one another. We practice it by setting one another free, because barring a voice speaking to us out of the heavens or an earthquake shattering the walls, forgiving the people in front of us, as we have been forgiven, is all there is.
Each one of us holds great power in our hands, to keep other people wrapped in the chains of our resentment or to release those bonds and set them free. And most of us, I suspect, are also wrapped in chains: held by some sense of shame or fear or guilt, afraid to be seen for who we truly are, lest someone else slam the jail door shut. But God sees us. And God loves us. And there is no shame that is too great for God to want to set you free, no chains of guilt too strong for God to break, because God’s deepest desire is to set you free from judgment and condemnation and despair, and to send you into the world to set other people free, “so that the love with which [God] loved [Jesus Christ] may be in you,” and in all of them. Amen.