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We have only a bare-bones mention of the Philippian jailer. He received Paul and Silas, beaten and bleeding; he fastened them in the painful stocks; after his conversion, he personally dressed their wounds and then fed them at his own table. What other changes grew from the jailer's new Christian faith? Let us attempt to stretch some living flesh over those bare bones.

Call me Quintus,
but my name doesn't matter.
Most people just see me as a slave,
a piece of the house furniture,
nothing more.
My master is the town jailer,
just that,
and most people don't bother to call his name:
he's the jailer, nothing more.

But there is more.
That's all he was
and all I was,
but now there is more.
He's a child of God:
still the jailer,
but now a child of God.
And I'm a child of God:
still a slave,
but now a child of God.

You raise an eyebrow?
I'll tell you how it came about,
and I'll tell you what it means.

This city of ours, Philippi, was an old city,
founded by Philip of Macedon,
father of Alexander the Great.
The Romans conquered it 200 years ago
and pretty well wrecked what was there.
Then some 80 years ago came Octavian
(you know him as the Emperor Augustus),
and here he defeated Brutus and Cassius,
the men who murdered his uncle, Julius Caesar.
Afterwards, he settled his veterans here
and made the city a Roman colony,
giving its freemen the status of Roman citizens.
It gave Rome a good military base,
and it gave the city a new start.

That's how my master came here.
He was a veteran of the Roman legions,
and he rose to the rank of centurion;
then he retired here.
All the town officials are veterans;
one of them, his old commander,
gave him the office of jailer.
It's a good living; he's not rich,
but he has a good house,.
enough money to support his family
and to keep a half-dozen servants.

He was a fair enough master, but strict;
all the old army men were trained to be strict.
Most were honest and fair.
They let you know their rules:
obey orders, and you'd be all right;
break orders, and be ready for punishment.
The training of those Roman legionnaires
didn't include very much
of the milk of human kindness.

But back to my story.
A man called Paul, a Jew,
and Silas, another Jew,
and two others, Timothy and Luke,
Greeks or part-Greeks,
came here.

Here's the way Luke told me the start of it.
"We set sail from Troas
and took a straight course to Samothrace,
the following day to Neapolis,
and from there to Phiippi.
We remained in this city for some days.
On the Sabbath day we went outside the gate
by the river,
where we supposed there was a place of prayer."
- that is, a Jewish place of prayer:
there weren't enough Jews in Philippi
to have a synagogue.
"A certain woman named Lydia,
a worshipper of God, was listening to us."
She's a Greek from Thyatira,
where they know the business
of making purple cloth.
She's the merchant for it here,
a real smart business woman,
well-respected,
a widow with a big household.
She was looking for something,
a true God, not some patchy idol.
That's why she was praying
with the Jewish women,
seeking a most high God.
"The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly
to what was said by Paul.
When she and her household were baptized,
she urged us, saying, 'If you have judged me
to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.' "
That's how it went for a while:
Paul and Silas preaching in the city every day,
going out to the place by the river to pray,
and teaching the believers more about Jesus.

But then they ran into trouble.
Luke said,
"We met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination
and brought her owners a great deal of money
by fortune-telling.
While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out,
'These men are slaves of the Most High God,
who proclaim to you a way of salvation.'
But Paul was very much annoyed."
Not annoyed that she shouted
they were servants of the Most High God
and that they told people the way of salvation;
that's what Paul himself said
every time he preached.
Paul was annoyed at the way her owners
were exploiting her.
There she was, tormented in spirit,
and her owners were making money
from her misery.
"Paul turned and said to the spirit,
'I order you in the name of Jesus Christ
to come out of her.'
And it came out that very hour."
The girl was set free
from that slavery of the spirit,
but she was still a slave,
a piece of property -
and it didn't suit her owners one bit.
As they saw it,
Paul had interfered with their property.

Luke told me the girl's owners seized Paul and Silas,
dragged them before the magistrates
in the marketplace, and said,
"These men are disturbing our city;
they are Jews
and are advocating customs
that are not lawful for us as Romans
to adopt or observe."
It was a pack of lies, of course,
but the mob was on their side:
they saw Paul and Silas as vagabond Jews,
spreading some kind of perverse superstition -
and there's a lot of anti-Jewish feeling
among Romans - always has been.

The magistrates are proud men:
proud of being Romans
and scornful of everyone else.
They took the accusations at face value
and didn't bother looking for the truth.
If they'd asked,
they would have found that Paul and Silas
were Roman citizens
and that the charges were false.
The magistrates said Roman citizens
shouldn't be bothered by strolling peddlers
of an outlandish religion:
such people must be taught
to keep their proper place.
So they tore the robes from Paul and Silas
and ordered them beaten with rods.
The lictors beat them pretty badly;
then they turned them over to my master
with orders to keep them safely.

Well, my master was a strict man.
He had his orders,
and he carried them out strictly.
He told the guards to throw them
into the innermost part of the prison
and fasten their legs in the stocks.
He didn't care that the blood was flowing
from the stripes on their bare backs
or that the stocks hurt their legs.
He didn't bother giving them food.
They were just a pair of tramps,
and he wasn't there to coddle them;
that was none of his business.

What would you expect Paul and Silas to do?
The other prisoners expected
to hear groaning and cursing,
what with the pain of their backs
and the cramping of their legs,
but what came out from the middle of the jail
was prayer to God
and the singing of hymns.
The others wondered about those two men:
wondered with a kind of awe.

Just then, at midnight, an earthquake hit;
rocked the stones, it did,
so the chains pulled loose from the wall
and the door flew open;
then the stones settled back.
This is earthquake country,
and it's funny what a quake will do
to old stone walls.

My master woke up,
ran to the jail,
found the door open,
and thought, of course,
the prisoners were all gone.
You know these Roman soldiers,
brought up on discipline
and their sense of honor.
When they've failed in their duty,
their own course of honor is suicide.

The master couldn't see into the jail,
but Paul, inside,
saw him outlined in the doorway,
drawing his sword to kill himself.
Paul shouted, "Do not harm yourself,
for we are all here."
There was something uncanny about those two men;
they had kept the other prisoners there, too.
With the jailer dead,
they'd all have a better chance of escaping,
but Paul cared about him,
kept him alive,
after the way Paul had been treated.
My master called for me to bring a light,
and he rushed in.
Trembling with fear,
he fell down before Paul and Silas.
Roman jailers don't bow down before prisoners,
but he did.
These men had saved his life.
He'd treated them like dogs,
yet they cared enough to keep him from suicide,
and then they told him of the love of God.
What kind of men were these?
My master had heard the reports around town,
that they spoke of salvation,
of a new life through the living God.
Now he knew that they had something real,
and he needed it.
He brought them outside and asked,
"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 my master called us all together -
his wife, children, slaves, guards -
and Paul told us the whole story,
the whole good news of Jesus Christ:
the Son of God,
his miracles and signs,
his teachings,
his crucifixion for our sins,
his rising from the dead,
his living power with his people.
Paul told us of a new life in Christ,
of being born anew as children of God.

That night my master became a child of God.
Lydia had been searching for God,
and she welcomed the Gospel.
My master was a different kind of man.
He'd lived a hard life and he had a tough hide.
It took an earthquake
and a close escape from suicide
to make him think of God and of salvation -
and God used the same Gospel
to turn him into a new person.

I saw the change, and everyone there saw it.
We saw Paul and Silas,
examples of the grace and love of God.
We saw my master:
the change was starting already.
He brought Paul and Silas into his house,
took a basin of water,
washed their wounds and soothed them with oil.
He could have told any servant to do it;
he did it himself,
and he did it with tenderness -
something I'd never seen in him before.
He'd always had a callous shell.
If the magistrates told him to kill, he killed.
If he received men who were bleeding,
he didn't care; that was their tough luck.
Now he was a new master,
a man of compassion.
One could say, "He washed and was washed.
He washed their stripes,
and he himself was washed from his sins."
The Spirit of God entered him.
He believed in Jesus:
by the love of Jesus he became a new man,
and he showed it.
The change in him was spontaneous,
and he lived it in a down-to-earth way.
He called for the cook - he was still master -
and fed Paul and Silas at his own table.

And I?
I felt the change, too.
A burden was lifted within me.
I'm a slave, but I'm free inside,
free by the grace of God.

There's a difference in the way my master treats us.
He has a job, and he wants it done;
but he's no longer harsh.
He cares.
He has a new care
in the way he treats the prisoners,
and he sends food to the hungry in town.
And we share a love;
we share a joy.

Yes, he's still the jailer,
and I'm still Quintus the slave,
but we are more.
We are children of God.