NOTES for Act 16:16-40

One can imagine the history of the first centuries of our era as an "ideological confrontation" between Christians and the pagan world. However, from today's reading we can see that this confrontation is a special one. Indeed, Jews and Gentiles, Roman officials and craftsmen of Asia Minor, authorities and the plebs rose up against the apostles (a few decades later these persecutions would grow into bloody slaughters in Roman circuses and the fires of Nero).

But Christians never answer evil with evil. They bear the message of forgiveness, of reconciliation with God. They conquer not by force of arms, but by the power of Christ living in them. We all know how greatly the situation changed a thousand years later: fires, executions, and pogroms became the work of Christians. What will happen in our time depends on us.

During his apostolic ministry Paul had to find himself in many scrapes: whatever else one may say, his life was not poor in adventures. So it was in Philippi, a relatively small Macedonian city. Macedonia by this time was already fully Hellenized and belonged to the Roman Empire. There was also a Jewish community there. The city itself was fairly ordinary, not especially religious, the kind of place that in Gospel times was called "pagan." But lack of religiosity did not mean lack of superstition or lack of interest in everything supernatural: such interest is usually characteristic precisely of societies not distinguished by special religiosity. Against such a background the appearance of possessed people is quite understandable.

Sometimes these are simply ecstatics by nature, inclined to hysteria; sometimes they are people truly possessed, under the influence of a will alien and hostile to man. It is hard to say exactly what the servant girl mentioned in the book was: the description is too brief, the details few. It is clear only that she sensed the breath of the Kingdom that the apostles carried with them. For this one need not be a Christian or simply a believing person; a certain heightened "mystical" sensitivity is enough. In the end Paul, who was tired of the unceasing "religious" show accompanying his testimony, returned the servant girl to a normal state. And then her masters were indignant.

Not for religious reasons, of course, but for commercial ones: evidently they exploited their servant girl's unusual abilities to their own advantage. Still, they apparently did not want to admit such self-interested motives and decided to pose as defenders of state foundations and Roman traditions. They, of course, had no concern for the Messiah, the Kingdom, or Paul himself, just as they had no concern for Roman traditions. And the representatives of local authority cared that no unrest or disorder should happen in the city. So the local authority strives to get rid of unwanted witnesses.

The story of the Savior's earthly ministry, His condemnation and execution, is repeated. Not literally, of course, but in essence. They too wanted to get rid of Him not so much for ideological reasons as out of simple political expediency. In this respect the logic of all authorities in every age is apparently the same. Both secular and religious. The Kingdom of God threatens every authority. Except one: God's authority over the human heart.

In today's reading from Acts, a certain strangeness is visible. Paul and Silas pray, the prison doors open (so far everything is logical), but the prisoners do not leave. The question is, why did the Lord open the door for them?

The passage ends with the jailer and his whole family coming to believe in God, struck by the miracles shown to them. And the miracle here is not only the opened prison doors, but also the prisoners who did not run away, but sit and wait. One can suppose that this second circumstance became the greater miracle for the jailer: that the prisoners did not scatter, that Paul did not want his death, that those who should have hated him instead cared for him...

It is interesting that as a result the jailer himself voluntarily exposes himself to danger by inviting the prisoners into his house. But this is already his free choice - and for the sake of this choice, properly speaking, everything had been set in motion. The most important thing in today's reading is this jailer's encounter with Jesus.

We have read more than once about imprisonment ending in a miraculous deliverance, so we are no longer surprised that this time too the brothers did not remain in prison for long. But this time there are differences. They lie not only in the absence of an angel visibly coming into the prison and leading the captives out, but also in the captives themselves being in no hurry to go free. Paul and Silas are of course glad to proclaim the message of salvation to the jailer, but there is more to it: Paul and Silas are defending their rights as Roman citizens.

In recent years, one could repeatedly hear statements that Christianity is incompatible with defending civil rights, accompanied by arguments such as these: insisting on one’s rights is not humble; one should think not about rights but about duties. Yet Paul’s example shows that defending the rule of law—and therefore one’s lawful rights—is neither formalism nor legalistic quibbling, but a necessary defense of justice.

Paul’s example also shows us that even earthly laws of the state can serve the proclamation of what is above every law.

The rights of Roman citizens in the Roman Empire were strictly observed. Paul, as is clear, did not fail to make use of this. Roman citizenship gave him immunity from any local laws applying to those who did not have Roman citizenship. Conquering ever new territories, the Romans as a rule left local laws in force for the local population. But Roman citizens, wherever they found themselves, were under the protection of their own Roman laws.

Roman citizenship could be held not only by those born in Rome, but also by inhabitants of other territories in special cases. In principle it could be granted to any inhabitant of the empire, and sometimes it truly was granted, for special merits or for large donations to public or state needs. Paul, for example, was a hereditary Roman citizen, although he had no real connection with Rome itself: he was born in Asia Minor. Now the apostle uses his status as a Roman citizen, whom local authorities had no right either to imprison or to subject to corporal punishment, from which Roman citizens were exempt.

What is this: a desire to get even, to put in their place the local authorities who clearly exceeded their powers? Hardly, since in that case Paul could have declared his Roman citizenship from the very beginning. A kind of compensation for moral harm inflicted? Partly yes: the issue is in fact a public admission by representatives of the local authority that they were wrong. But the matter was not only this admission and not only Paul personally or his companions. The matter was the witness Paul was carrying.

Of course, the admission of wrongdoing by local officials was forced. But it was forced not only by Paul's status as a Roman citizen, but also by the events that accompanied his imprisonment. The issue was recognizing the reality and significance of these events, in which the manifestation of God's power is clearly visible. And therefore recognizing the reality of Paul's witness, which has the right to exist, so that everyone may see: God and His Kingdom can be ignored only for a time. Even by representatives of Roman authority.

The Macedonian who appeared to Paul in a dream was calling him not only to his own country. With the preaching in Philippi, the Gospel message reaches Europe, which from now on is to be a stronghold of Christianity for centuries. It is symbolic that at the founding of the first Christian community in Europe we see a woman, Lydia. From the very beginning, in her person, Europe's openness to the Good News reveals something qualitatively new. Of course, women's souls in the East also opened in love toward God; the Old Testament offers many examples, so Lydia continues a longstanding tradition. And yet, and yet...

Not all the women of Europe are like Lydia, however. Paul has to confront an unfortunate woman possessed by a spirit of divination. There are plenty of such women even now, except that the great income they bring is not for their masters, but for themselves. In casting out the spirit of divination, Paul acts, one might think, against his own advantage: the possessed woman is giving the apostle and his companions free publicity, drawing people to their preaching. Yet Paul has no need of demons' help, however tempting it might be to use it “for good” and “in the name of a higher purpose.” The services of the powers of darkness must be paid for, and the price of their “services” in preaching will inevitably be a distortion of the Gospel's essence. For the second time, after the encounter with Simon the Magician, the Church, in the person of Paul, rejects the temptations to make use of occult powers.