NOTES for Act 16:11-24

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.

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.

Today's reading helps us better understand the motives of those who, in our still untransfigured world, oppose the Kingdom and God's action. Luke's account concerns a “prophesying” servant girl (v. 16). Such diviners, prone to ecstatic fits, were not uncommon in antiquity—or, indeed, in any other age. These ecstatics were often genuinely possessed, as proved to be the case here (vv. 17–18). When the girl was healed, her masters were enraged at losing a source of income (v. 19). Apparently, they knew nothing of the Kingdom and gave it no thought at all, seeing the apostles merely as an obstacle to their business. To get rid of them, however, they needed to accuse them of something serious, such as undermining the foundations of Roman society, and that is what they did (vv. 19–20). Of course, the accusers had no intention of examining the substance of the apostles' preaching: apparently, all Jews looked alike to them. The authorities were not particularly interested in the details either: they found it easier to punish the accused than to conduct a proper, thorough investigation of the charges (vv. 22–24). Only God's direct intervention changed the situation: an earthquake struck at night, something all ancient peoples without exception regarded as a sign of the higher powers' anger (vv. 25–26). This was probably what made the authorities look more closely at the situation. The prisoners' own behavior also contributed greatly: they made no attempt to escape, which apparently impressed the jailer guarding them enormously (vv. 27–32). Yet even a sign from above seems to change nothing fundamental in the authorities' position: only one person converts, while the officials try to let the matter quietly subside (vv. 35–36). Those who were punished, however, do not allow this: the affair has already become public, and what happened can itself become a testimony. It is no surprise that the apostles do not want to miss this opportunity (vv. 37–40). Apparently, those who oppose the Kingdom do so not from any convictions of principle. Some do not wish to lose their profit; others do not want extra trouble; all hide behind the interests of the state. The result is that both stand in the way of the Kingdom's witnesses. Yet God can turn any situation into testimony, provided the witnesses themselves are ready for such a turn of events. Then every persecution ends in the triumph of the Kingdom entering the world.

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.

Today's reading helps us better understand how the Kingdom spreads through the world after Pentecost. The account begins with a disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over the membership of their future missionary group (Acts, vv. 36–41). The disagreement was serious enough to create tension between them, which is the literal sense of the corresponding Greek word. It was probably connected with Paul's passionate and resolute character: apparently, he did not place much trust in John Mark, who, as the evangelist tells us, had earlier left Paul and Barnabas in Pamphylia. These differences evidently caused the apostles to part company. The episode clearly shows that even people who know the Kingdom are sometimes far from free of disagreements and even quarrels. The only question is how such quarrels end. In our still untransfigured world, they often end, as we know, in enmity. In the Kingdom, things do not reach that point: when a fundamental disagreement arises, those involved usually simply part, generally for a time, and continue separately the work God has entrusted to them, though the work itself remains shared. Of course, a quarrel is not the best form of human relationship. But if it does not lead to enmity and hatred, disagreements do not become insurmountable or destroy the unity without which the Kingdom is impossible. Such a situation does, of course, create obstacles and difficulties, but God's power overcomes them: here there is none of that resistance to His will before which God stops, respecting human freedom of choice. The situation involving Timothy that Luke mentions is also interesting (Acts 16:1–3). Given the Apostolic Council's decisions, one might think circumcision was entirely unnecessary for him. Yet Paul circumcises Timothy, in the evangelist's words, “because of the Jews.” Apparently, the point here is not that “there is no salvation without circumcision,” but that one should not set oneself against a particular church, probably composed entirely or predominantly of Jews. In such a situation, observing Jewish religious norms was entirely natural; ostentatiously rejecting them would have been more likely to unsettle the community. This is how the religious question is resolved in the Kingdom: if religion is an organic part of an individual's or a whole community's life, it has a place in both the Kingdom and the Church. In that case, religion itself becomes one of the forms of the Kingdom, which is as varied as the lives of those who enter it.

What do we look to when we discuss what a person needs or does not need to do for salvation, or when we discuss questions of church order, when we ask questions like: "how and what should we believe?", "what decision will be pleasing to God?", "what does He expect personally from me"?

Usually we recall certain words from Scripture, from church rules, from other people's experience. At worst, we do whatever comes into our head. But the book of Acts opens before us an astonishing example of apostolic faith, when the Holy Spirit clearly lets them see how they must act and where they must go. That is why Luke can say so simply: "the Spirit did not allow them to go there"...

Only one question remains: if the apostles' experience differs greatly from our experience, what does that give us - a reason for gloom and despair, or a reason to plead for the Spirit?