But on another level, the Acts of the Apostles is very much about us. In Acts, the Apostles often face daunting challenges, situations where they literally are held captive by outside forces. But this is your story as well. Each Sunday you come here bringing with you not only the ordinary routine and joys of life, but also life’s hardships, griefs and sorrows. Relationships sour; jobs are lost; illness strikes; abuse threatens; families fall apart and struggle to live together. Bound by these difficulties, you want to know, “How can I be set free to live with abundance?” “How can I be freed to enjoy the life that really is life?”

Living in these times and in this place, the “home of the free and the brave”, we can at times be tempted to think that we are free; that because we are not slaves, because we live in a democracy, because we have so much freedom to choose, we are exempt from bondage, we are free from captivity to more powerful forces than we are. And yet we might well pause to ask ourselves if this is truly so.

Are we, for instance, like the owners of the slave girl, bound by financial idolatry? Are we captive to that age-old desire to “keep up with the Jones”, do we buy into that bumper sticker philosophy “He who dies with the most toys wins”, do we measure our self-worth by how much stuff we have?

Are we, for instance, like the magistrates in our reading, bound by xenophobia, so worried about outsiders that it causes us to demonize others just because they are, we tell ourselves, different from us?

Are we bound by a desire for conformity, to please others, to excel because we believe that this is the only way we might earn the approval of our parents, our teachers, others, even maybe one’s congregants?

Two short stories about bondage. A friend, brought up in a family that stressed the importance of hard work as a necessity for getting ahead, internalized that message to the extent that she became driven to a perfectionism that consumed her. Good grades were all that mattered, and so while her friends had a social life, her life was the library. Good behavior was all that mattered, so she learned not to have too much fun, and then no fun at all. No one else was going to look after her, she was told, and so she believed in the depths of her soul that she alone could save herself. And then one day she woke up and it hit her – she was trapped. She could not save herself. She could never be good enough. She was wrapped up so tightly that she could never break free. And then came the day that changed her life forever – she heard the Gospel message. She heard that she did not need to save herself – that Christ had set her free, had broken those chains, had set before an abundant life that was not to be achieved by hard work, but simply accepted with joy. And she came to life, became a new person, became so full of life that these days she is just contagious. People see her, and like the character in the lunchroom says to the waitress in that old movie “When Harry Met Sally”, they say, “I’ll have whatever she’s having!”.

Second story, not so happy. Most of you know my story, about how there came a time in my life when I heard the call to ordained ministry and there came the time to leave my position in a corporate law department to attend seminary. I knew what the reactions of my colleagues would be, how this nutty idea would be received by those I had worked with in Marketing and Sales and HR and so on. Walk away from a settled career, leave behind the big paycheck, enter a new field where the pay is, well, let’s just leave that one alone. I could not have been more wrong. No one told me I was nuts; no one thought I was crazy. The almost universal response was this: “I just wish I could do that, just step off this treadmill, just do what I might be called to do instead of do what I am doing to keep it all going.”

I know there are a few “Gleeks” out there, those who watch the musical drama “Glee” on Fox Tuesday evenings. “Glee” is set in a fictional Ohio high school, and the stories revolve around the youth who participate in the school’s glee club. One story line this week was all about bondage. Rachel, a self-assured to the point of obnoxiousness singer with perfect pitch, has laryngitis, and is convinced that because she cannot sing, her life is over. She is unable to imagine life without singing. A fellow member of the glee club takes her to visit his friend, a football player paralyzed from the chest down, who even so is hopeful and full of life. One in bondage to self-absorption and self-pity, although healthy and able to carry on what some might call a “normal life” – the other held captive in his body by paralysis, yet free in spirit to embrace life nonetheless. By show’s end, of course, she had learned the lesson, and if freed from her self-absorption to come back and give him the singing lessons he had always wanted.

The irony in our reading for today parallels the irony in that episode of “Glee” – conventional expectations are upended. The ones in jail, Paul and Silas, are in fact truly free, free in even the most dire of situations to sing praises together to God, while the jailer, the one seemingly holding all the cards, is in fact the one in need of a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

This is the Good News of the Gospel for us today – the same Good News that caused that jailer long ago to rejoice and welcome Silas and Paul to the family table -- that through Christ you have been set free from whatever it is that binds you. And so you can let go of that addiction, that obsession, that history of being the victim, that perfectionism that cramps, that grudge you won’t forgive, that injury you won’t let go.

Our question is the same, of course, as was the question asked by the jailer long ago. “What must I do to be saved?” Likewise, our answer is the same answer as fell upon his eager ears: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”

Not, “Work it out yourself.” Not, “Keep on giving it that old college try and someday you might save yourself.” Just, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”

It is not up to you to free yourself. It has, in fact, already happened, the work has already been done. You just need to accept it. “Believe on the Lord Jesus”, which, translated another way, means “Put your trust in Jesus.” Let go of that trust you put on yourself, because it is not up to you. Put your trust in the one who came not to judge the world, but to save it. Put your trust in the one who came that you might have life, and life abundant. Put your trust in the one who came to take up his cross so that you might lay your burdens down, and be refreshed by the waters of life. Then those chains that bind you will be broken, and you will live as you were truly meant to live, and you will walk in newness of life, and in freedom.

And like the paralyzed football player and once self-obsessed singer in “Glee”, you too will say, “How can I keep from singing?”

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