Abstract
There is a moment of sublime insurrection in the film The Shawshank Redemption, well known to you all, I’m sure, but worth recalling today on this last Sunday of the Easter season; the season in which we have been celebrating the transcendent subversion, the divine joke, of the Resurrection. The hero of the film, wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, barricades himself in one of the prison offices and decides to treat his cellmates to some music over the public address system. Placing on the turntable a recording of the ‘little duet’ “Sull’Aria” from Act III of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, he sinks back entranced into the Warden’s chair as the heavenly music floats out across the prison yard where fellow inmates stand transfixed by its beauty.
The freemen, those whose duty it is to curb any outbursts and corral subversives, are trammelled by the experience. It confounds the rule book. The response is further repression. It is the prisoners, the incarcerated ones, who taste true freedom. As one of them, ‘Red’, says:
I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
Our first reading today is likewise peopled by two types of character, the free and the enslaved, but here too the boundaries shift as the story progresses. First we meet a slave girl, kept in subjection by the ‘three oppressions’ of illness, status and gender. She is in bondage to ‘the power of divination’ (pneuma pythona), enslaved by manipulative owners who capitalise upon this possession, and exploited by patriarchy. And Macedonian society colludes with this triple subjection, indeed enables it to flourish; the woman prophesies for pay, but that revenue is pocketed by her masters, the city’s business leaders. There is a market in anxiety about the future, and civic society colludes with that. The woman is a commodity, a pawn, possessed in more ways than one. And private wealth is generated through personal pain and structural sin.
Next we meet the woman’s owners, a shadowy syndicate which has been making a tidy profit from her labours. But they are no less imprisoned than she is, imprisoned in this case by greed. And that mercenary impulse has clearly warped their integrity. For when they see their cash-cow being liberated by Paul and Silas, they cloak their anger with assumed civic concern, with protestations of good citizenship, lobbing in to the debate the powerful grenades of nation, race and tradition. Crowd-pleasers all.
And the tactics work. Mob and magistrates collude; those who are charged with using their authority to maintain the status quo listen solely to the business leaders and the baying of the crowd. They convene a kangaroo court in the commodity centre, and throw Paul and Silas into prison, that ultimate symbol of the state’s power, control and sense of order. Thus civic order is restored, social disturbance averted. Job done.
And lastly we meet the jailer, a man constrained by duty. Someone whose life has derived meaning solely from his profession; whose very being has been so bound up with his job that when he feels he has failed at his allotted task, he seeks to take his life. Chooses death rather than presumed disgrace. Someone who holds the keys to others’ physical freedom and yet is deeply shackled himself.
And these three characters in the story, themselves all imprisoned, perform upon a stage which is itself shackled: ‘Philippi, a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony’. (Acts 16. 12). It’s Pinteresque.
Onto this stage, into this so-called ‘stable society’, this milieu of oppression, come Paul and his companions. They too are enthralled, they too are ‘slaves’ - but to the highest Power (Acts 16. 17). They offer a different ‘way of salvation’, speak of a society in which ‘righteousness and justice’ (Psalm 97. 2) are foundational and where true freedom reigns. Their gospel exposes the folly of ‘the worthless idols’ (Psalm 97. 7), those civic values of money, power and prestige; their gospel brings all the fraudulent old ways into the Light. This gospel liberates, frees the souls of women and men so that even in chains they can sing of another way, as Paul and Silas do through the long night of their incarceration. Clothed with power from on high that confounds the earthly powers, they sing spiritual songs - Freedom Songs - and they pray. Is there anything more subversive than that?
This gospel bursts into the world and breaks down the barriers, subverting all man-made oppression. ‘Suddenly there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened’ (Acts 16. 26). The very pillars on which the status quo is built are rocked to the core. The aftershock of Calvary ricochets outwards across the Aegean; that groundswell of New Life that was triggered when ‘the earth shook and the rocks were split’. Once more, Resurrection Life is made manifest; the power and the presence of God are made visible before our very eyes. The fixtures of shut-down control – magistrates, colonial power, exploitative masters - are shattered; the prison-houses of fear cannot contain the power of this God, ‘most high over all the earth and exalted far above all gods’ (Psalm 97. 9). For God, as we heard on Thursday, ‘put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.’ (Epistle for Ascension Day)
In this tale about various forms of imprisonment, we see wherein true freedom lies. It lies, yes, in bondage, but bondage in, to and for God. For Godself is bonded together by Love, a Cross-shaped Love, and we too can be embraced by it. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17. 21, 23). It is Love which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
That Love is for us. As ‘Red’ said so prophetically in the Shawshank jail, every last one of us can be free. If we so desire. Will you take off all that chains you and enter this servitude of Love, this imprisonment of freedom? It is all so very simple, now as then:
(Then the jailer said to Paul and Silas) “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
Come; let us too receive forgiveness and freedom, fellowship and food.