Jailhouse Rock - Easter 7

Acts 16: 16 - 34

“I’m free!”

Words that may conjure up different pictures here this morning. Some of you may be think of the song by that title recorded by “The Who” in their rock opera “Tommy.” Others may the thinking of the late John Inman’s creation, the delightfully camp Mr Humphries, in that comic classic of double entendre, “Are you being served?”

Frankly I love “The Who” and in my younger days greatly enjoyed watching the goings on at Grace Brothers which will hopefully soon be repeated on our screens. But the authors of the Acts of the Apostles, who were deprived of these offerings of the late 20th Century, also had a thing or two to say about freedom as well. Indeed freedom is at the very heart of our reading from Acts. For here is a Scripture that affirms the desire of God for all people to be free.

This year, we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Act of Parliament which abolished the transatlantic slave trade. It was a major step to abolishing a trade upon which much of our nations prosperity had been built, a trade that had been supported by most people in our country who could not see the problem with treating people from different lands as lesser people who did not merit a share in freedom. To challenge this reality and to challenge the vested interests which always lie at the heart of wrong, was to step out on a limb and even risk one’s life.

And it was no different for Paul and Silas nearly 2,000 years ago. We find them being pestered by a disturbed slave-girl who has been following them around for several days. Her disturbance is put down to the presence of an evil spirit and her disturbance was source of income for her owners through her capability in terms of fortune telling. Anyway a clearly exasperated Paul is recorded as ordering the spirit from the girl. And this brings problems for Paul. For his actions whilst freeing the girl from a form of possession have taken away from the girl that capacity for fortune telling. And with it her profitability for her owners.

You see, in those days, there were those who greatly prized an ability to tell what the future held for them. They were prepared, like some gullible people even today, to pay substantial sums of money to those whom they believed to be gifted in this way. And so by his actions, Paul has cost her owners serious money. And with it he has made them angry!

Now it is obvious that the girl’s owners have no concern for the wellbeing of this girl. She is little more than a cash machine to them. Their attitude, we would all agree is contemptible. But wait a moment! Are there not ways in today’s world in which we like them treat people as expendable, as being only of use for what we can get out of them. Yet here, Paul is by his deeds proclaiming a message that we are each and everyone of us of intrinsic worth.

But more than that, Paul is prepared to challenge the accepted norms of society just like those nineteenth century opponents of slavery. Because, a practice is accepted or because it is part of what makes the local economy go round, does not make it right. For surely, there needs to be a critique of those practices, however, beneficial they may be to some, which in their working are life denying rather than life enhancing.

Let me use two examples which occur to me. The first is the export of deadly weapons often to the most obnoxious of regimes. Real talents are used for an outcome that might well involve the denial of life. Quite frankly, we are looking at a prostitution of science. Or let’s look at the rapid expansion of the gambling industry in our country with already close on 400,000 problem gamblers, a country in which in the past fortnight a man with huge gambling debts was in court for seeking to sell a kidney. Now, assuming that these things are not a straight example of to borrow a phrase from a 1980s hit record, “The lunatics are running the asylum,” I guess that there could be economists and politicians who would say that these things are job creating and valuable for the good of the economy and even for national security.

To which a loud response of “Rubbish” or something less polite is needed. You see, sometimes a Gospel stand confronts the centres of power and as in this case self interest. So please, let’s get away from the myth that Christianity is meant to have a comfortable relationship with the status quo. No way! The reality is that to be authentic the Gospel needs to challenge the status quo where it is life denying just as we see it doing so through Paul and also more importantly through Jesus. To follow Christ and true freedom is to embrace the words of James Russell Lowell, the American poet;

“THEY are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.”

Well for not conforming, for defending the weak, Paul and Silas join the litany of people who are treated callously by those who defend an oppressive status quo. The unthinking mob are incited into a rage and after the equivalent of a show trial, Paul and Silas are stripped, flogged and imprisoned by magistrates who are meant to administer justice but whose greater concern would seem to be to clampdown on those who challenge the way things are. Read the reports of Amnesty International and you find powerful echoes of such wrongdoing even today.

And so we find Paul and Silas denied of freedom in a dirty prison, recovering from the injuries inflicted upon them. But what are they doing? They are singing!

Now there are times when it is easy to sing. Back in 2,000 Robbie Williams produced an album entitled “Sing when you’re winning.” It reminds me of the taunt at football grounds across the country;

“You only sing when you’re winning.”

All of which means that as a Manchester United supporter I get to do quite a lot of singing despite yesterday - well certainly more than a Torquay United supporter! But singing when you are winning seems very distant from these two battered men recovering from the poisonous hatred of the mob. But sing they do. They are not going to allow brutality and injustice have the last word. No way! For here is a stance of defiance, a defiance that will later continue when they refuse their freedom and demand an apology from those who have treated them so badly. Now, instead of giving in or wallowing in self pity, they sing of and to a greater power than the morally bankrupt power of Rome. For arbitrary tyrants and their toys of violence are not the greatest authority. That position belongs to the unarmed God who works through love and faithfulness.

And now comes a twist, a moment of transformation. For the jailhouse begins to rock with the violence of one of the earthquakes that are so common in that part of the world. The doors open. The chains fall off. And suddenly, things are turned upside down. From being all powerful, the jailer is transformed into a desperate man. His authority has dissolved and with a sense of failure he is about to turn his sword upon himself. But relief is at hand in the shape of Paul and Silas. Rather than get their revenge served up, they instead urge him not to harm himself. And in what follows, they tell him of Jesus and of his need of Jesus. And so having begun the night placing Paul and Silas bound in chains with no relief from their physical pain, the jailer ends the night a changed person - now washing their wounds and in faith being baptised into the community of the followers of Jesus. Transformed not so much by the earthquake itself as by the desire of inmates not to wish him harm this jailer had met a new authority that;

- was everlasting rather than temporary as with Rome

-based on unending love rather than the imposition of fear

-rooted in truth rather than deception

-that valued him as a person rather than as a commodity

What a Jailhouse Rock! No, not in the sense of the classic Elvis Presley song about a group of gangsters. This was the Jailhouse Rock that set a man free to be all that he could be just as the same had happened to the slave girl.

And today! Are not we at times in chains? The chains of compulsion, of hurt, of prejudice and of rejection. Don’t we all need a touch of the Jailhouse Rock in our lives to set us free to know our value and that of others?

Today the God of love offers us each the embrace that tells us that we are allright, of value. The God of love, no control freak, offers each of us a blessing to make the most of our lives in this world and then commissions us to like Paul and Silas, go singing into the world with the news of a freedom train that is for all!


This sermon is being preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday May 20th 2007