Being slung into jail is something most of us, I hope all of us, would seek to avoid at all costs. Nonetheless, if we break the law the State has a right to punish us and imprisonment is not unjust. Consider, however, those who lose their freedom for righteousness sake and not on account of any crime. Today in the near East, imprisonment is the best one can hope for with many believers paying for their faith with their lives. The story in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles concerns one such unjust imprisonment.

St Paul and St Silas had been jailed on trumped up charges, namely that they had disturbed the peace through the preaching of their Christian faith. A certain slave girl, practising occult divination had been exorcised and her masters had been deprived of the lucrative profit of her trade. The first thing we learn, therefore, about our witness to Christ is the inevitable economic and political impact of living a life pleasing to God and displeasing to men. How many Christians in the comfortable West would, like St Paul and St Silas, having been thrown into jail for such an uncompromising witness, proceed to sing hymns of praise to God all night in the midst of such a challenging situation? Well, St Paul and St Silas did and in confirmation of their faith a great earthquake burst open not only the bars of the prison cells but also the chains that held them.

Interestingly, neither St Paul nor St Silas attempted to escape. Perhaps they knew that if they made a run for it the jailer will be blamed and his life endangered. This is the characteristic Christian response, and the second thing we learn today about evangelism, not to take our own advantage at someone else’s expense. At first, the jailer thought his life was over anyway so he prepared to take it himself. St Paul saved him by assuring him that they had not escaped and this obviously made such an impact upon him that he was immediately drawn to enquire concerning Christ and salvation. Perhaps he had been listening to the hymns that St Paul and St Silas had been singing throughout the night.

This is the third lesson we can learn. If we praise God in all the situations of our lives, even the most challenging ones and if we keep our integrity and our conscience clear, then wonderful things can happen. The great blessing in this story of course is that the jailer and all his household found salvation in Christ and were baptised.  We now need to look at the closing events of the story a little more closely to learn our third and final lesson. This will teach us profound practical truths concerning our part, each and every one of us in the mission of the Church.

The jailer said to St Paul and St Silas: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” What we notice first of all is that the jailer knows that he has something he must do in order to become a Christian. “What must I do to be saved?”  The most deadly threat to the vitality of our Christian faith is a certain passivity, the feeling that we need not do anything to confess Christ nor that it is strictly necessary for anyone else to confess Christ in order to be saved.  Precisely the opposite is true; we must confess our faith openly and we must pray for others to receive our confession gladly and accept Christ as we have done.  But what does this little “big” word “saved” mean? Some Orthodox mistakenly think that it is a term used only by evangelical Protestants and, therefore, by definition, not Orthodox. Well we have just discovered that “being saved” is indeed Orthodox and does require a response not only from those who hear our message but also from we ourselves who deliver it. And what is this message of salvation?  St Paul makes this clear: “believe in the Lord Jesus.”  This is salvation.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there for St Paul and St Silas go on to explain both to him and his whole household the nature and implications of the Orthodox Christian faith from the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church. In other words, he and his family are catechised, but here only over a very short period of time. At this stage, it is sufficient for them to know their need of Christ for forgiveness and eternal life. This is the essential prerequisite for Christian baptism. A more detailed exposition of the Christian faith and life in the early Church would follow on after baptism in the so-called mystagogical lectures.  These explained the Christian mysteries or sacraments, notably the Holy Eucharist. But all of this would happen later for the jailer and his family. The first essential step for them all was to accept Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour.

Notice how the jailer’s household was automatically expected to embrace his faith. At this time it was inconceivable that a husband, wife and children should be spiritually divided by different confessions of faith. This is why the Orthodox Church, despite all the difficulties, and especially in the West where a consumerist notion of faith prevails, attempts to draw a whole family into the Church and not just individuals. This then is our final lesson from today’s reading. As Orthodox Christians we are called to make the same witness as St Paul and St Silas. We must confess Christ as Lord and Saviour. We must present Him as such to those persons whom God puts before us in our day to day lives. When we do this we must be confident that the Lord will give us the right words for the right occasion. We must pray for those to whom we witness that their hearts will be open to Christ. We must praise God in all situations even the most difficult and not accept any obstacle even at the pain of death from making a good confession of our faith.

If you doubt any of this, then listen to what our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ says about the importance for each one of us of this bold and unashamed confession. Upon this saying of Christ that hear now your own salvation depends.  Jesus said:

For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8:38). 

Let us not then be ashamed but let us confess Christ in love and truth, in word and by deed; and so may God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be glorified.