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| Paul and Silas in Prison, Washington Allston, Kemper Art Museum |
A Thought for the Day given at a lunchtime service of Holy Communion at St Olave Hart Street on Tuesday 12th May 2026 based on the text of Acts 16.22-34.
In today’s passage from Acts we encounter Paul and Silas being sent to and released from prison. The nature of freedom has been a constant theme since they first arrived in Europe.
Driven there by a vision of a man in need, Paul and Silas entered the city of Philippi in Macedonia. Lydia, a wealthy cloth seller became the first European convert to the faith - and she invited the two missionaries to stay with her at her home.
They set out a few days later and encountered a slave girl, described as being possessed by a “spirit of divination” and who earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling.
The slave girl - captive by both human and spiritual forces - followed Paul and Silas around the streets shouting to all about the mystery at the heart of our faith - that true freedom is found in entrusting our whole lives to Christ: “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation’ - she cries.
Deeply troubled, Paul commands the spirit to leave the girl, rendering her less profitable to her owners. They appeal to the magistrates to have Paul and Silas thrown in jail, claiming they are Jewish agitators intent on causing trouble. Prejudice that imprisons the hearts of those who fall captive to it.
The mob attack and beating at the start of today’s passage is rooted in that antisemitism.
Not knowing that Paul and Silas are Roman citizens, the slaves to Christ are dragged to the centre of the City’s prison, their feet placed in stocks - but with their mouths unbridled they continue to sing hymns and praise God through the night - their fellow prisoners listening on. Just after midnight a huge earthquake rocks the foundations of the prison and its doors fly open.
The jailer awakes and pulls out his sword to kill himself - death, he thinks, is the best chance of freedom from the wrath that is to come when his bosses find out that all the prisoners are loose.
But before he can pierce his heart, Paul calls out from the darkness “do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”
The jailer throws himself at Paul’s feet asking “what must I do to be saved?”
Believe in Jesus. Paul says. Later that same night, the jailers whole family were baptised.
The dramatic account of Paul and Silas’s first missionary journey to Europe reveals people imprisoned by economic systems and greed, others trapped by suffering in body or mind, those whose hearts and minds are enslaved by prejudice and group think and others who are paralyzed by fear of those in power and authority over them. All, in different ways, discover freedom when they encounter Christ.
And that remains true for us. Often the moments in which we come closest to recognising what holds us captive are moments of strain or disturbance — when we feel the chains pull tight. A heated argument that reveals an old wound we thought long buried. The pressure of work when we feel like we are a square peg in a round hole and see no way out.
For Paul, Silas and their fellow prisoners, it was an earthquake at midnight that opened the prison doors. In our own lives, the moment may be quieter, but no less revealing. A conversation. A failure. An illness. Grief. Or simply the sudden recognition that the things in which we have been placing our hope for freedom – success, control, approval, security – are in fact the shackles that bind us.
Often, like the jailer, it is in the dark before dawn that we encounter the light of Christ, speaking to us through the Spirit: “Do not harm yourself.” “Do not be afraid.”
What must we do to be saved?
Offer our lives - our worries our fears to the one who has broken the chains of death and hell.
The source of our true freedom.
Our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Image: Paul and Silas in Prison, Washington Allston, Kemper Art Museum
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