Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
We live in a time, so we hear almost incessantly, of great divisions. We are divided along party affiliations. We are divided by geographical regions. We are divided by our religious identifications. And it doesn’t help that folks who have stuff to sell—like product brands and news outlets—make the most of such divisions. For them, each division (and with them each identity marker) represents another market niche.
If only this all were a matter of selling more stuff in a consumer society. But these days and for a lot of folks these divisions feel something like a call to arms. The enemy is not just out there. The enemy is near. And the stakes are high.
Paul and Silas know something about all that. After all, they are living in an empire that doesn’t care too much for Christians. In fact, they’re in jail because they are seen as the enemy of all that is good, right, and true in the Roman empire.
In the scene before us today, they are living it in the most concrete way. They’re in jail. They have been put in chains and locked up. Whatever their fate might be, it doesn’t look good at midnight.
Oddly enough, they’re singing. Even stranger, an earthquake hits. Stranger yet, the doors of the prison fly open. Most bizarre of all, they don’t run out. God (or perhaps the Holy Spirit that Jesus speaks of in our text from John today) has just blown the doors of the prison wide open. Instead of running for their lives, they choose to stay and witness to, of all people, the very jailer who has been holding them. Next thing you know, he is hosting them in his own home and bathing their wounds.
This is a powerful story. And it’s a story that reminds us that Paul—the great evangelist and the great theologian of the church—was also once an enemy of Christians.
Who are our enemies?
Today in Ohio (and elsewhere) I will be heading to the polls to vote in a primary election. And my prayer is that I will encounter every human being there with something of the love that, by the grace of God, Paul and Silas did. Amen.
- Sue Trollinger