Christ has set us free!
Last Sunday during our parish session on the Lectionary Readings for the month of February, mention of the jail breaks in the New Testament came up. For instance, shortly after the first Pentecost Peter was locked up within an ecclesiastical prison in Jerusalem. It did no good, because that very night an angel let him out to preach illegally again. So the next time Peter was arrested, they placed him within King Herod’s more secure prison. Peter’s hands and feet were chained and two guards assigned to share his cell, while two more sets of guards paced the corridors between his cell and the prison gate. But, as with James Cagney in those old 1930’s movies, no slammer could hold Peter. Once again an angel appeared, put the guards to sleep, prodded Peter to get dressed, then escorted him to the gate which opened of its own accord.
I was discussing these episodes with a group of gentlemen who meet every week over Scripture in the back room of what is now the Palms Restaurant. And the question came up as to who this angel might be. Could it have been a friend on the prison staff (as in recent prison breaks in the news)? Or a visiting relative (like Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill) carrying a hollow loaf of French bread stuffed with the contents of a hardware store? But the “how” of such escapes is hardly relevant. The deeper question is: why are so many such stories told throughout biblical and even secular literature?
I mean, as if two jail breaks weren’t enough, we have a third later in the Acts of the Apostles in which Paul is a prisoner. Only this time it’s an earthquake that opens up all the cell doors and flattens the prison walls – a funny outcome to everyone but the warden. And beyond Acts think of all those other biblical accounts: Joseph’s imprisonment and release, Jeremiah’s confinement to a muddy cistern, Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of a whale.
Or beyond the Bible, consider all those escape stories of The Count of Monte Cristo, The Prisoner of Zenda, those real or imagined escapes from Devil’s Island or Alcatraz. Or remember that touching scene in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities in which Sidney Carton (like Christ) sacrifices his own life to liberate Charles Darney. Or remember Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’s hilarious effort to spring Jim loose from that cabin – or the emotion you feel when documentaries show American GIs opening the gates of Buchenwald to receive the tearful embraces of walking ghosts.
Why are we fascinated by such stories? I can only guess that deep down each one of us often feels somehow hobbled, handcuffed, confined. By what? By fear, by some accuser or warden within our heads who sits in judgment upon us, who would have us doubt there is any meaning to our lives and thereby drain us of all our energy, leaving us bilious and depressed – some demonic jailer who, though daffodils bloom all around us, would have us see only dungeon walls. Isn’t that why we are drawn to such stories? Of course there are some imprisoned souls who are their own jailers, who wilfully lock their cell door from the inside and hold on to the key – the saddest case of all. But even such inmates fall within the reach of Christ’s mission, which he declared when he quoted the prophet Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to announce good news, to proclaim release for prisoners, to let broken victims go free.
(with permission (revised): Living the Lectionary Year C; Liturgical Training Publications, 2003; 1 800 933-1800)