The Fullness of Freedom
- Pastor Serena Rice
- Jun 1
- 6 min read
A sermon on Acts 16:16-34
[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Zulmaury Saavedra on Unsplash]
In commemoration of Memorial Day this past Monday, our church’s sign message all week read “REMEMBER THE FALLEN & THE FREEDOM THEY FOUGHT FOR.”
The limitations of no more than 20 characters per line can make it hard to craft a nuanced message, but this one felt right and important…
Acknowledging the ultimate sacrifice that some have made,
And calling us all to think about and value what that sacrifice is supposed to be for: Freedom.
On one level, I think, we all know instinctively what that means. Freedom is the quintessentially American value.
But on another level, freedom needs more descriptors to make it clear what we mean:
freedom from what?…
freedom for what?…
even freedom to do what?…
Freedom in the abstract is meaningless, save as a dog whistle for vague patriotism.
And the freedom for which service members sacrifice and die should not be abstract.
It should be grounded in solid commitments, or at least in clarity about what defines and ensures the freedom that requires such a cost.
Which is a really big conversation that probably needs to happen at the societal level and is way beyond any 12-minute sermon… but I do feel like today’s reading from Acts at least gives us some different ways of nuancing our thinking about what freedom can and should be as followers of Christ.
Because freedom – and the various ways that freedom can be constrained and restored – is a through line of the story about Paul and Silas in Philippi.
Before I move on, I want to acknowledge Professor Jaclyn P. Williams, whose commentary essay on this story helped me to recognize the three stories of freedom that it encapsulates: the stories of the “enslaved… set free,” the “imprisoned… set free,” and (maybe most interestingly) the “jailor… set free.”[1]
In each of these stories we see a person (or persons) in a situation that has them trapped, in one or more ways, and them freed.
The diversity of these stories, the different forms that freedom takes, in turn invites us to consider where we might also be trapped, and what freedom we might need.
The account begins with a slave girl.
With that very identification we are confronted with the brutal reality that she is “owned” by others – one of the ugliest things that human beings can do to each other.
But this is not actually her worst enslavement, because she does not even have autonomy over her own voice… it is used by a spirit of divination, for the profit of her owners… a double dehumanization.
Perhaps that is why the truth that the spirit speaks through her is framed as it is: calling Paul and his companions slaves of God… taunting the girl with words of salvation that must be inherently untrustworthy to her, because how could any salvation be real if it results in slavery?
How could she imagine a relationship of devotion, commitment, and empowerment described with such a term, when her experience on every level that we see is one of subjugation?
Except, she has one freedom: to follow after the disciples.
It’s a curious detail.
We are told that the girl brought a great deal of money to her owners through her fortune-telling, but there can have been no profit for them in her following after and irritating Paul and his companions for “many days.”
This must have been something she was doing on her own, and I have to believe that is important.
The possessing spirit is using the girl’s own voice to warn her off against seeking what the followers of Jesus have to offer, but she decides to follow them anyway… day after day… forcing them with the only power she has – the power of her own persistence – to do something about her spiritual enslavement.
And so, Paul releases her from the spirit.
He restores her control over her own voice.
We do not know what happens to her after that.
Presumably she is still a slave.
But, nevertheless, hers is the first example of freedom in this story… a reminder that the freedom to use your voice is a very real and important freedom, even when other parts of your life remain out of your control.
Next, we see Paul and Silas imprisoned for the disruptions they have caused to the interests of those in power.
Imprisoned doesn’t quite cover it, though. They are stripped in public, beaten, and flogged before being locked in stocks in the innermost cell of the prison.
They are subjected to humiliation, pain, and injury, as well as losing their liberty.
In a fascinating contrast to the slave girl, however, it is clear that Paul and Silas remain free in spirit despite their circumstances.
Even before the earthquake removed their physical constraints, they seem unafraid.
They are praying and singing, their trust in God undaunted.
As Williams describes, “what should have been a time of defeat was a time of celebrating the gospel.”
And so, when the earthquake breaks their physical chains, Paul and Silas do not grab the chance to run.
It’s what fear would tell anyone to do in such circumstances, but fear makes us look at only threats and not opportunities.
If they had run, they would have lost the opportunity to build a vital and thriving church in Philippi.
But because they are already free of fear, they stay.
The chain-breaking, door-opening miracle that seems like it should be the dramatic climax of the scene, is actually kind of insignificant as a source of deliverance.
At least as far as Paul and Silas go… but their decision to stay when they could have escaped is a powerful impetus for the freedom of the jailor.
At first glance it is not obvious that the jailor needs freedom, of course.
After all, he appears to be the one with the power. He chooses the most secure cell in which to lock his prisoners. He fastens their feet in the stocks. He holds the keys that – outside of miracles – are the only way to open the prison doors.
But his freedom is constrained by the same system of oppression that gives him this conditional power, that much is clear from the intensity of his fear when he first sees the open doors of the prison.
If he felt secure in his position, his first instinct would not be suicide in response to his own failure to prevent an act of God.
It was Maya Angelou who poignantly observed “no one of us can be free until everybody is free,” but the jailor makes her point.
He is trapped by the same system of injustice that he enforces… because his supposed freedom only lasts as long as that enforcement does.
And that’s not freedom. It’s just a more deceptive kind of slavery.
And in another beautifully surprising reversal, it is the jailor’s reckoning with his own powerlessness that turns him toward the only true source of power: the source of the earthquake and the source of Paul & Silas’ faith.
When he falls at their feet, trembling… when he willingly gives them the freedom he had – moments before – been terrified that they had taken for themselves…when he asks his prisoners to tell him how to be saved…
He is releasing his grasp on the delusion of power granted by a corrupt system, and seeking the freedom that really matters: the freedom of knowing who he is in Christ.
And when he receives that spiritual freedom, that release shifts his understanding of how to use the societal power he does have: to wash the prisoners’ wounds and feed them at this own table… to offer back the dignity and care that he had been a part of stripping from them.
In this one passage we get a view of three very different kinds of freedom:
The freedom to use one’s voice.
The freedom from fear, regardless of circumstances.
The freedom to push back against systems that manipulate us into complicity with injustices.
None of the people in this story experience absolute freedom in a human sense… they are still part of a broken world that treats people like property, and penalizes truth-tellers, and coerces compliance with corruption (so… a world not so different from our own).
But, nevertheless, this is a story of what liberation can look like in a broken world.
And it is a reminder for us that we also are free, even when our world is not.
Free to speak.
Free to reject fear.
Free to act on the side of humanity and justice.
Because we have the most important freedom there is. We know that we belong to Christ and no matter our circumstances no one can take that truth from us.
Thanks be to God.
