Have you ever noticed that freedom seems to be contagious?
Something comes up, the infection takes hold and then the next thing you know people are being set free all over the place.
Paul and Silas setting free a possessed slave girl.
The foundations of the prison are shaken.
Chains are unfastened.
Prison doors swing open.
A jailor is spared from death.
The wounded are washed.
The hungry have food set before them.
A whole family comes to believe and is baptized into Jesus Christ
It is kind of like the silver bullet that the Lone Ranger would leave behind as evidence of his passing.
The Holy Spirit moves through people and leaves freedom behind.
Prisoners are set free, captives are released, it’s like the Red Sea is being parted all over again.
What holds us captive? What chains us down?
Or even more difficult, are we benefitting from the harm of others like the slave owner and the jailor in today’s reading from Acts?
Like Thomas Jefferson the author of how our country understands freedom but who could not escape his own dependence on owning slaves- are we owned by harming others?
Hard questions, the freedom of the Holy Spirit brings hard questions, shaking the foundations of our prisons.
Belief is more than a personal thing. It changes the world. It challenges those who enslave and sets free those who are owned.
There are many who would like belief to be only about personal piety.
But they are wrong.
It shakes the foundations, it changes the world, it sets loose a freedom that is contagious.
The experience of God as chains broken, and captives released.
Those who profit from harming others find their livelihoods come to an end: that is also the expression of the Holy Spirit, the wind from God. Judgment.
God is like that.
Be that freedom, be baptized into the Jesus that sets the captives free.
Be contagious.