Saint with No Name
From the time I was a wee lad, I frequently found myself hanging out with an odd assortment of people, friends and acquaintances, who God threw me in with so that we might stumble along together, often goalessly, toward the end zone without end. Poor in spirit, wealthy in that which no one covets, our merry band of castaways allowed all who wanted to join us, though it was oft stated that we didn’t want to belong to any group that would have us as a member.
While much of this time I did not believe in the Creator who composed this silly symphony, if our crowd of witlesses would have had a patron, I’d have picked the jailer in Phillipi who found himself in charge of the first Roman prison run by the honor system—an open-door method of incarceration—doors and prisoners’ chains having been shaken loose by the Divine Earth Mover. Since, this worried warden had no name, I’d like to call him Innominatus the Jailer, his assigned alias being what my one year of Latin translates to “unnamed.”
Innominatus would have fit in beautifully with that old gang of mine. Assuming that an open prison meant an empty prison, he prepared to avoid disgrace and demotion at the point of his own sword. Paul piped up in the nick of time—having had no angel to lead them out of the lockup, all were patiently waiting for direction from on high. Their present chief of chains (and, perhaps, future patron of locksmiths), still shaking from the quake, threw himself down before Paul and Silas, convicted that the ragtag convicts were running with the winning empire. This was apparently confirmed when having been wined and dined and bandaged, our two evangelizers brought Innominatus’ household to the water, then returned to the prison where release orders were subsequently delivered.
Betwixt and between the political machinations of Paul’s demand for justice and an official escort out of prison, and the pleadings of the powers that be that he and his partner leave town, there was our newly cleansed jailer, left behind to write the rest of his story with an empty pen. There is no doubt that Innominatus the Jailer would be an appropriate patron for my group of graceless gropers. We wander, we wonder, we put the less in clueless, but we do love, one another and the One who art in Heaven in our own lackluster fashion. It’s what we were made to do, and if one day the cause is opened for Servant of God Innominatus the Jailer, we will be there at the celebration, probably not even allowed in the back of the arena. So, Jesus will have to go outside to get us if He wants to move us up to better seats.
