Once again I have been invited back to St Nicholas’ Church in the village of Fyfield in Hampshire. This week’s readings continue to follow Paul’s missionary adventures.

As I read through the adventures this week, I am struck by what it means to be family. We begin with a family which is using the ‘giftings’ of one member to fund the others. I am reminded of the pushy parents in TV talent shows such as Pop Idol, The X Factor, and Britain’s Got Talent who are interviewed beforehand talking about how talented their child is and how they have ‘encouraged’ them to live their dream. I remember a particular participant who had been dressed by her grandfather in an horrendous outfit he had made himself. We all know that the audition will end in tears, that there is very little talent to be harvested and that their beloved child will be roasted by the judges. Even when the judges speak quite clearly about the lack of talent, and even of the harm the parents may be inflicting by deluding their child, the family fight back. They have been personally insulted, perhaps it is their own dream that they have been chasing, perhaps it is greed: there is a big prize at stake after all. Often, though, the actual performer seems quite relieved.

Today’s passage from Acts begins with a similar tale: in this case it is not a daughter but a slave-girl with the ‘gift’ of divination. Her owners had used her abilities in fortune telling to make a great deal of money, however Paul and his companion Silas recognise it for what it is: an unholy spirit. This spirit within her recognised the Holy Spirit within Paul and Silas and hounded them, until Paul snapped and cast it out.

I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!

Acts 16:18

Perhaps this was not the best way to go about such healings, however, the actions of the spirit were preventing the two men from proclaiming the gospel. This ‘Cassandra’ was released from the agony of knowing things she shouldn’t, but her owners had suddenly lost their golden goose and were very angry. They obviously didn’t care about the well-being of the girl, after all she was property, business not family, and no longer a valuable asset. The girl’s owners want recompense for loss of income, their anger overflows and they stir up the crowds until Paul and Silas are not only arrested, but beaten with rods and thrown into prison.

It is here in prison that we are introduced to the second ‘family’. Paul and Silas have been treated as dangerous criminals, battered, bruised, and naked, they are imprisoned in a secure unit, bound in stocks, with a Jailer placed guard over them; yet Paul and Silas are not alone. They know that their faithful family are praying for them, they know that God is with them; instead of weeping and wailing and licking their wounds, they sing hymns of praise throughout the night, drawing the other prisoners into their presence, into their ‘family’. When the miraculous happens and an earthquake flings open the locked doors, all the prisoners find their chains unfastened, not just Paul and Silas. The inclusivity of this family of prisoners doesn’t just extend to those in shackles alongside our heroes, but to the Jailer also. The Jailer had failed his charge and punishment under Roman law would be unbearable; he draws his sword ready to fall upon it, when Paul invites him into this family.

Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.’

Acts 16:28

It is an invitation which the Jailer accepts wholeheartedly: He chooses to release the prisoners, guiding them out of the rubble and into the freedom of the night, and then seeks freedom for himself. He has been witness not just to the supernatural jailbreak, but to the prayerful and inclusive way in which the two men faced their situation; he sees in them a freedom that he has never experienced, and he wants in.

Sirs, what must I do to be saved?

Acts 16:30

Perhaps it is a question we have asked ourselves? Not in the same way in which the Jailer does, after all the concept of salvation is rather an odd one in such a self sufficient culture, but perhaps we have seen something special in a person of faith and we are envious of it. Perhaps when someone who has been harmed publicly speaks forgiveness over the one who harms them? Or when in the midst of turbulent times, a friend seems to be at such deep peace that it is contagious? How can we be ‘saved’ from such anguish, how can we become free from blame and anger? How can we experience life at a deeper level? The answer is the same for us as it was for the Jailer: Believe.

If it is so simple, why do we have difficulty in doing so, in believing in the Lord Jesus, or as is written in the passage, ‘believing on’? Perhaps because it is so long ago, perhaps because despite the promises that evil has been destroyed by Jesus’ loving action on the cross we still see it all around us, perhaps because the people we do know who confess a faith in Jesus seem nothing like Paul and Silas and the other heroes of the early church? The Jailer isn’t called to believe in Jesus: at that time everyone had heard of the man and his actions, it was irrefutable that he existed. Even to this day there is more historical evidence (not just biblical) that Jesus lived and died, and even his resurrection, than Julius Caesar did; but to believe on Jesus is to stake your life upon your belief, to have confidence in your faith, to live according to it. This is what Paul invites the Jailer to do, and he does. The Jailer could have kept the prisoners captive, secured their chains, summoned help, and acclamation for single handedly doing so. The Jailer could have protected himself, but he didn’t, instead, believing on Jesus, he invites the men into his home, into the the third family of this story.

He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entre household rejoiced.

Acts 16:34

If the Jailer had believed in Jesus, he might have simply set them free, instead he follows Jesus’ actions: as Jesus bathed the disciples feet, the Jailer bathes the prisoners’ wounds, and then he and his whole household are baptised. The Jailer offers the prisoners hospitality laying on a banquet for them, he engages in the currency of the Kingdom of God rather than the Empire of Rome, and instead of his household being angry and upset at this change, as the slave’s owners had been, they rejoice. The Jailer would quite possibly lose his job, their livelihood was just as much in jeopardy as the slave owners’ was.

We don’t know what happened next for the Jailer, or the other prisoners, or even the slave girl. We can’t rely on their story to create our own. Did the slave girl find faith and a happy future? Did the other prisoners follow the Jailer in confessions of faith? Did the unnamed Jailer and his family live blessed and faithful lives? We have to choose for ourselves whether we are willing to believe in or believe on Jesus. At the end of the day, whose family do we want to belong to?

Read the full story here.