Texts: Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21; John 17:20-26
It is nice to see all of you here this morning. Thank you for coming out to listen to my story.
My name is Apollonius and I live in Philippi. I wish that I had time now to tell you the whole story of what has happened to my family, since we’ve never even met before. It really is quite an amazing story, after all. But, today, I only have time to tell you about what happened to our family when the holy apostles first came to our city.
We get a lot of visitors to Philippi. It’s an important city here in Macedonia! My father tells me about different people he sees all the time. He gets to see a lot of them, because he is the one in charge of the city jail. People around town just call him “the jailer”, but his real name is Sergius.
My father has been the chief jailer for 24 years now. After he met Paul and Silas, he thought a lot about quitting that job. I think he really just didn’t enjoy the work anymore. He changed a lot back then. My 3 sisters and I were really surprised. It was like we didn’t even know who he was anymore! Well, anyway, he didn’t quit. And he’s still the chief jailer in our city, but he’s so much different now. We have prisoners in our house all the time now! And my father learns all of their names, and he takes time to talk with them about their lives. I think it’s kind of strange some time how he does that. But, let me go back. I was telling the story of that first time, when we first became Christians.
When I left my tutor that afternoon, after finishing hours of rhetoric and mathematics, my mother asked me to go to the marketplace to buy some more cheese and oil for dinner. She was just beginning to trust me with errands like this, and I really loved to go into the busy markets after sitting for hours on end doing my studies. Well, when I was buying the oil, I heard the yelling over at the police headquarters. By the time I got over there, I think their punishment had started. I couldn’t quite see through the crowd, but I could hear the two men yell out in pain, and I could hear the rod hitting their backs. People were yelling nasty things at them, about them being dirty Jews and worse than dogs and such. When I think back on it now, it’s so embarrassing how our city treated such great men with that kind of violence and ignorant prejudice. But, thank God, we’ve changed a lot since then too.
Anyway, when I heard the magistrates give the order to put the men in prison, I realized that they were coming over to my house (we live over top of the prison, of course!) and so I turned and ran back as fast as I could so that I could warn my father about the big crowd. You know, I tried to help my father as much as I could with his work. (Back then, I thought I might take over his job one day when I became older.) The police brought people to our house all the time, but this was a little different, because these men were foreigners (they were Jews!) and there was such a loud and angry crowd around them.
Well, I did beat the crowd back to our house (I’ve always been a fast runner!) and I found my father in the kitchen. As soon as he came outside, the crowd was there, surrounding the police who were pulling Paul and Silas along. Those two could barely walk after that horrible beating! My father led the police down into the prison, but I didn’t follow. It is too loud and crowded, and honestly, the sight of all that blood surprised me a bit.
So I went back inside. And that was the last that I thought about this situation, because I realized that I was starving and I had seen the bread and the stew that our house-slave had prepared in the kitchen. The rest of that night was pretty normal. Father came up briefly to eat, then he went back down into the prison to keep watch. If the prison was crowded, that’s what he usually did. And it was crowded that night.
All the strange stuff started to happen after we all went to bed. I did hear the earthquake, but nothing fell down or broke upstairs where my sisters and I were sleeping, so I told them to go back to sleep and I did the same. But the voices downstairs in our house woke me up just a little bit later.
I heard my father calling for our house-slave, Chloris, to bring warm water and towels into the kitchen right away, and I thought: what in the world is going on? I quietly crept out of the room, careful not to disturb the girls, and I hurried downstairs. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
There was my father, helping my mother and Chloris to clean the wounds of the two Jews who the Police had brought to the prison that afternoon! Right there in our kitchen! And they had no chains on them, no ropes. They stood as free men, and my father was talking to them, asking them questions! And my mother was touching them, putting salve on their backs where they had been beaten.
I didn’t even know what to think. Had my father gone mad? Was this some kind of secret agreement that my father had made with these men when they came to the prison? Or did the magistrates order him to do this? No, that couldn’t be right, because I could tell that he wanted to do this. He was trying to help them. So what was going on?
The shorter of the 2 Jewish men saw me standing there on the stairs, still as a statue, and he looked right at me. He gave me this knowing look, sort of smiling, confident, hopeful, excited. That was Paul. And actually, that’s how he has always looked at me, I’m not sure exactly why. But anyway, my father followed his stare and saw me too. “Apollonius, good. Please, come here. You must meet these men.” And right away he turned to my mother and said, “My dear, go and wake the girls, right now. Bring them down. They must join us.”
As she moved past me up the stairs, I could see the confused look on my mother’s face as well. I know it probably seems so obvious now, but – you see – we had no idea what was going on. Never, ever had one of the prisoners ever entered into our home! My father would never allow it. He always warned the girls to stay away from the prison, to never go down there, to stay away from those men. I knew that there was some kind of earthquake during the night, but what did that have to do with my father’s mind, his odd behavior?
Finally, my father gathered us all around the table – all 3 sisters and me, with my mother – and he introduced the apostles to us: Paul and Silas. I will never forget what he said then. Tears came into his eyes. Tears! From my father, the chief jailer, who was afraid of no one! But there he was, with tears in his eyes, and he said: “Tonight, death nearly took me. It was the Lord Jesus who saved me.” Paul then explained to us who this Jesus is and what it means to live in and through him. When the house-slave brought food to the table, we all ate and listened to Paul and Silas as they spoke and sang hymns and as they showed us how the Lord broke bread and gave it to his friends as the way to remember him.
My younger 2 sisters were half-asleep in my mother’s lap, but the rest of us could see the change right there on my father’s face, how he embraced what these men were saying, and the tears and the joy in his eyes. We couldn’t help it. It was contagious! I could feel my own heart warmed by watching him, by seeing the genuine love with which he was treating these 2 men who were total strangers, foreigners as well!
That night was the start of something truly amazing in my family. Even my uncle, Lucretius, joined the church at Lydia’s house after we all prayed for him and the pain he had always had in right leg – it went away! I am really thankful that God brought Paul and Silas to our house that day. Now, I’m hoping that I can help the apostles with their work. What a privilege it would be to share this same joy and excitement and hope with other families. Hopefully, God willing, I can also be a faithful witness to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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