In the Church calendar we have entered into the commemoration of the period of time, after Jesus’ death, when his friends stopped having powerful physical experiences of his presence and started feeling inspired to take up his work as their own. In the Church calendar, the commemoration is nine days – a novena – a period of special devotion, waiting for the Spirit to deliver some grace in a circumstance of peril or need. Of course, nine is a symbolic number. In the Bible, nine has to do with discernment and judgment. (Think nine justices on the Supreme Court.) There are nine fruits of the Spirit according to Paul’s letter to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, perseverance, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.  Nine gifts of the Spirit according to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians are: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

One of the places that I regularly experience that kind of waiting for the Spirit to deliver grace, in a circumstance of peril or need, is in prison. Many of you know that for the last 13 years, I’ve gone most every week to visit women who are incarcerated at Suffolk County House of Correction. It is volunteer work for me – I don’t do it as part of my job and I don’t wear my priest uniform. I just go in kind of an anonymous way with other volunteers. It’s volunteer work that really feeds my soul. I’ve always been drawn to Bible stories and passages about setting prisoners free.

When I was first exploring prison ministry, I was sitting at a table coloring a picture with some inmates and one of them, a woman named Angela asked me if I got paid for being there. I said, “no, I’m doing this as part of an internship for school.” Her incredulous response was, “to learn what?” I smiled and said, “I’m in seminary. I’m training to be a priest.”  “A priest!?” she said, rather scornfully, “Why!?”

And in that moment I honestly had no answer for her. I was in seminary and I could only think of theological/churchy-fied jargon that didn’t make a bit of sense in the context of a prison – and I thought, if my stated reason for wanting to be a priest doesn’t make sense in prison, with people the Gospels command us to visit and care for, what is the point? I also felt shame for all the ways that her voice betrayed the irrelevance of Church in her life – or perhaps the damage Church had caused. Her question and my inability to answer became a spiritual crisis of sorts. The moment passed, but I continued to think about her question and I felt ashamed that I didn’t have an answer. I wondered if that was a sign that I really shouldn’t be a priest. (I actually was often looking for signs in those days that I shouldn’t be a priest. I was often looking for signs that I should pack it up and return to my more comfortable life in business as a Human Resources guru.)

I spent the next week reflecting, journaling, praying. What was my answer? Why would I want to be a priest in a Church that can sometimes seem only to vacillate between irrelevance and injury? Did I have an answer? And if so, how could I explain it in words that would make sense in prison? This is what I came up with. I believe that the Gospel messages of Jesus all boil down to be about how we are all called to feed and free all who are hungry and stuck – that mutual feeding and freeing is what God wants for God’s people. And I want to be a priest because I think I have gifts of leadership that I can offer to help people get in touch with their call to feed and free others. And I wanted the promise of support and the blessing of the Church as I exercise that leadership, because for all of its warts, I know how beautifully life giving the Church can be when we all help each other to get fed and free.

I was pretty pleased with that answer. I went back to the prison the next week, hoping that I would see Angela. (I never know from week to week, which women will want to and be allowed to participate in the art program.) So when Angela walked in I happily exclaimed, “I’m so glad to see you!” And she said, “you are? Why?” And I said, “well you asked me a question last week that I couldn’t answer and I’ve been thinking about it all week and I have an answer.” She said, “you mean about why you want to be a priest? You’ve been thinking about THAT all week?” Deflated again, I thought, “oh man, what a loser I’ve become.”

So I especially love this story from the Acts of the Apostles about Paul and Silas in Philippi because it’s all about captivity and freedom (and people who seem to be losers who turn out to not be losers). The setting is that Paul and Silas were on their way down to the river to pray.  They encountered a slave girl – she was not only enslaved by her owners but she was possessed by a demon and exploited by her owners. For many days she kept shouting out that Paul and Silas were slaves to the Most High God and finally Paul got so annoyed by her that he ordered the spirit possessing her to come out of her. He didn’t seem to care that she was possessed at first – but after a while, she started getting on his nerves. He freed her from the demon but she was still a slave – a piece of property.

Were her free owners free enough to celebrate her healing? No at all. The free owners responded to the slave girl’s freedom from possession by calling for imprisoning Paul and Silas.  The charge has something to do with disturbing the peace and being aliens, and not following Roman customs for religious reasons. In his reflections on this passage, theologian William Willimon points out that “Later, when Paul, Silas and the others are beaten, bloody, locked in the innermost cell of the jail and shackled besides, they are strangely free to sing. Is the jailer free? Not after the chains come off, at which point he decides that suicide will be the least objectionable way to die if his prisoners have escaped. …Having a key to someone else's cell does not make you free… By the end of the story," Willimon concludes, "everyone who at first appeared to be free—the girl's owners, the judges, the jailer—is a slave. And everyone who first appeared to be enslaved—the poor girl, Paul, and Silas—is free."(1)

Must have been some powerfully fine singing that Paul and Silas were doing in the middle of the night, in the pitch darkness, in the most secure part of the prison. What a great scene. Paul and Silas were getting freer themselves and they were freeing all the prisoners who were listening to them. It reminds me of this great love ballad that is sung by Lucinda Williams about the walls that separate two lovers are only made of concrete and barbed wire. That’s all. In other words, the concrete and barbed wire might look formidable, but really they are flimsy compared with the power of love. When the Love of God shakes a prison, it is as if the walls crumble and the chains fall away. The concrete and barbed wire are merely an inconvenience.

My favorite part of the story might be the conversion of the guard and his family. I have come to believe that the prison ministry program that I coordinate is first, and foremost, about my own conversion and the conversion of the volunteers. It changes us to go to the prison where we meet and serve Christ in those who are incarcerated. But I’m also increasingly aware of how our steady and friendly and voluntary presence in prison – week in and week out – creates a condition that facilitates the conversion of jailers – of the prison guards. It’s not that any of them have asked me about baptism. I don’t mean that kind of conversion. But over the years, it’s clear that many tough-guy prison guards look forward to seeing us and some quietly thank us for being there when we don’t have to be there. We’re not serving a sentence and we’re not trying to earn a living.

A number of years ago when we were frequently harassed or ignored by the front desk guards, one of the volunteers in our group started making greeting cards and praying each week in the program for “the FDG’s (the Front Desk Guys).” We didn’t ever tell them with words that we were praying for them – but the handmade cards demonstrated our concern for them. They were a little embarrassed and gruff, but most of them couldn’t help but smile and shake their heads when we gave them cards we’d made. They became somewhat less hostile (you know, a little bit at a time). A few years later, one of the volunteers began regularly sitting and talking with the guard who sat near the door while our program was going on. They talked about kids and work and the Red Sox and whatever else was going on. That guard went from indifferent to downright helpful on our program nights. Then that guard started asking to be assigned to our project. Then he began going out of his way to be helpful to us and to the incarcerated women who participate in the art program.

Being at the prison week after week gives me plenty of opportunities to wonder about what imprisons us? What things do we do or not do that keeps others in prison? Fear, greed, prejudices, anger, resentment; illness, poverty, hunger, misuse of power. And what frees us? Paul’s answer was to follow Jesus’ own example of waiting on the Spirit (that is, praying for inspiration) and Jesus’ own example of demonstrating again and again that Love is more powerful than any walls – even the walls of death – and that God believes in us – and that we have what it takes to feed and free people who are hungry and stuck and that we will get fed and freed by the very acts of feeding and freeing others. John the Divine’s answer in our reading from Revelations today was a reprise of the prophet Isaiah’s invitation: “And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” Everyone! Anyone! Take it! It’s a gift!