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spirituality
June 2007 
The Prison Door Swings Open
Posted on May 22nd, 2007
by 
Nichola
Nichola
The following blog grows out of a Christian service I attended on the Sunday before Pentacost and out of a conversation I had with Rabbi Michael Lerner a couple days later about the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.
The Christian lectionary text for last Sunday (Acts 16: 16-40) tells the story of how Paul and Silas were beaten and then arrested and thrown into a maximum security prison cell in Phillipi. According to their accusers, their crime was advocating strange customs, but that isn’t really what got them in trouble. What really got them in trouble was interfering with someone’s ability to make a profit from another person’s suffering. Earlier that day, Paul had driven a demon out of a slave girl who had been following them, a demon that had given the girl fortune-telling powers that were making her owners a great deal of money. Her owners’ cash cow had dried up. That’s when Paul and Silas were dragged into the marketplace, beaten with rods, and thrown into prison. Anyone who is awake at all in twenty-first century America knows the power of an addiction to profit. And we know the risks that come with getting in its way.
But the story doesn’t end there. Later that night, Paul and Silas are in their prison cell near midnight, singing and praising God, when suddenly there is an earthquake that breaks the prisoners’ chains and causes the doors to the cells to swing open.
This is a story of God’s power to right injustice, to set us all free from whatever chains bind us, keep us shackled to The Way Things Are. Here are these two guys from a faraway place, hidden away in the innermost chamber of a prison in a strange land, with their feet bound in chains. Things look pretty grim. Yet they are freed by this “mysterious” natural event, this earthquake that shatters all the locks in the place.
Note that Paul and Silas weren’t passive in this process. They hadn’t fallen into a depressive lethargy, despairing of their situation. They weren’t sleeping. They weren’t even engaged in self-righteous protest against the injustice of their situation. Instead they were singing their praises to a God whose power they trusted even though their situation belied it.
This is the spirit that made it possible for Martin Luther King to call out, amid opposition and oppression and violence and threats on his life, “I have a dream” (not, as Van Jones memorably pointed out at the 2005 Spiritual Activism Conference, “I have a complaint.”) And this is the spirit our movement needs to embody if we are serious about transformation.
It’s hard to sustain a belief in the possibility of transformation when sometimes it feels as if so much is working against us, including our own fear and doubt. Sometimes I wonder if my own despair keeps me from noticing the earthquakes that may be happening all the time. Are those shackles still in place, or have I just given up moving my feet?
It’s also telling that the story in Acts doesn’t end with the transformative release. It goes on to relate how Paul and Silas comforted the jailkeeper and recruited him for the new Christian movement. (The jailkeeper nearly killed himself with his own sword when he saw that the prisoners had been freed, but Paul called out to him that they were all still there and then went to his house to save him and his family.) Paul’s natural response to God’s gift of freedom is an act of love and compassion for the man who had been his oppressor. As Jesus says in John 14:15: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” In the face of the loving God, one has no choice but to love.
Likewise, in the Jewish tradition, acting according to God’s commandments is a natural outgrowth of having experienced the Exodus, the transformative release from bondage. According to Rabbi Michael Lerner, the revelation of the commandments at Sinai is simply the first articulation of the unavoidable response to having been loved so deeply. This coming to consciousness is what Jews celebrate this week at Shavuot.
Both Shavuot—the revelation of the commandments at Sinai--and Pentacost—the descent of the Holy Spirit to empower the early Christians—mark moments of profound communion between God and human beings. They also mark our entrance into a relationship with God in the healing and transformation of the world. That transformation is underway now. The prison doors are ready to break. What are you doing to help it happen?
The Christian lectionary text for last Sunday (Acts 16: 16-40) tells the story of how Paul and Silas were beaten and then arrested and thrown into a maximum security prison cell in Phillipi. According to their accusers, their crime was advocating strange customs, but that isn’t really what got them in trouble. What really got them in trouble was interfering with someone’s ability to make a profit from another person’s suffering. Earlier that day, Paul had driven a demon out of a slave girl who had been following them, a demon that had given the girl fortune-telling powers that were making her owners a great deal of money. Her owners’ cash cow had dried up. That’s when Paul and Silas were dragged into the marketplace, beaten with rods, and thrown into prison. Anyone who is awake at all in twenty-first century America knows the power of an addiction to profit. And we know the risks that come with getting in its way.
But the story doesn’t end there. Later that night, Paul and Silas are in their prison cell near midnight, singing and praising God, when suddenly there is an earthquake that breaks the prisoners’ chains and causes the doors to the cells to swing open.
This is a story of God’s power to right injustice, to set us all free from whatever chains bind us, keep us shackled to The Way Things Are. Here are these two guys from a faraway place, hidden away in the innermost chamber of a prison in a strange land, with their feet bound in chains. Things look pretty grim. Yet they are freed by this “mysterious” natural event, this earthquake that shatters all the locks in the place.
Note that Paul and Silas weren’t passive in this process. They hadn’t fallen into a depressive lethargy, despairing of their situation. They weren’t sleeping. They weren’t even engaged in self-righteous protest against the injustice of their situation. Instead they were singing their praises to a God whose power they trusted even though their situation belied it.
This is the spirit that made it possible for Martin Luther King to call out, amid opposition and oppression and violence and threats on his life, “I have a dream” (not, as Van Jones memorably pointed out at the 2005 Spiritual Activism Conference, “I have a complaint.”) And this is the spirit our movement needs to embody if we are serious about transformation.
It’s hard to sustain a belief in the possibility of transformation when sometimes it feels as if so much is working against us, including our own fear and doubt. Sometimes I wonder if my own despair keeps me from noticing the earthquakes that may be happening all the time. Are those shackles still in place, or have I just given up moving my feet?
It’s also telling that the story in Acts doesn’t end with the transformative release. It goes on to relate how Paul and Silas comforted the jailkeeper and recruited him for the new Christian movement. (The jailkeeper nearly killed himself with his own sword when he saw that the prisoners had been freed, but Paul called out to him that they were all still there and then went to his house to save him and his family.) Paul’s natural response to God’s gift of freedom is an act of love and compassion for the man who had been his oppressor. As Jesus says in John 14:15: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” In the face of the loving God, one has no choice but to love.
Likewise, in the Jewish tradition, acting according to God’s commandments is a natural outgrowth of having experienced the Exodus, the transformative release from bondage. According to Rabbi Michael Lerner, the revelation of the commandments at Sinai is simply the first articulation of the unavoidable response to having been loved so deeply. This coming to consciousness is what Jews celebrate this week at Shavuot.
Both Shavuot—the revelation of the commandments at Sinai--and Pentacost—the descent of the Holy Spirit to empower the early Christians—mark moments of profound communion between God and human beings. They also mark our entrance into a relationship with God in the healing and transformation of the world. That transformation is underway now. The prison doors are ready to break. What are you doing to help it happen?
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