Ac 16:16-34
16 May 2010
7th Sunday of Easter / Ascension Sunday
“Prisoners”
Hear a
tale from Greek mythology:
“It had been observed at a
very early period that the goats feeding on Parnassus were thrown into convulsions
when they approached a certain long deep cleft in the side of the
mountain. This was [due] to a peculiar
vapor arising out of the cavern, and one of the goatherds was induced to try
its effects upon himself. Inhaling the
intoxicating air, he was affected in the same manner as the [animals] had been,
and the inhabitants of the surrounding country, unable to explain the
circumstance, [attributed] the convulsive ravings to which he gave utterance
while under the power of the exhalations to a divine inspiration…
“A
priestess was appointed [to serve the god Apollo. Her job] was to inhale the hallowed air, and
who was named the Pythia… Her inspired
words…were interpreted by the priests.”[1] Pythia was an oracle; she predicted the
future at the site of Apollo’s temple, where he killed Python, the evil
serpent.
Why do
I begin with this mythological story?
Actually, I’m just taking a cue from Luke in Acts 16, when he mentions a
slave girl that Paul, Silas, he, and some others encounter. This is while they’re in Philippi in
Macedonia. They have already met Lydia,
who deals in purple cloth. She comes to
the faith; she and her whole household are baptized. Lydia insists that they stay at her place;
she will take no refusal. She is
determined to be hospitable!
Now, back to the girl. She has some owners who are getting filthy
rich off of her. They’ve been using her
to predict the future for their customers.
She’s proven to be a valuable meal ticket.
The
Good News Bible somewhat
inaccurately says she has an “evil” spirit.
A more precise term would be “a spirit of divination” (v. 16). In Greek, Luke calls her a “pythoness,”
having the spirit of “python” (puqwn, puthōn).[2] Such people are believed to have the spirit
of Pythia—that’s how they can foretell what’s coming.
Anyway, Luke says about the poor girl that “she followed Paul and us,
[and] she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to
you a way of salvation’” (v. 17).
Eventually, Paul gets tired of this, and he orders the python spirit to
leave in the name of Jesus Christ.
So, the
girl is set free; she is delivered. End
of story, right? Sorry, not yet. Her owners grab Paul and Silas, and they slither
up to the authorities.
Last week,
I quoted the late F. F. Bruce. He
displays a bit of wit when he comments on this development. He says that “the good deed done to the
fortune-telling slave-girl was not to the liking of her owners, for when Paul exorcized
the spirit that possessed her, he exorcized the source of their income as
well: she could no longer tell
fortunes. Their righteous indignation
was aroused at this wanton attack on the sacred rights of property.”[3]
They
couldn’t care less about the content of Paul’s and Silas’ preaching. What they do care about is that it is costing them money! Still, their loss of income isn’t enough to
get others sufficiently riled up. To
really get the juices flowing, they need to use something else. Notice in verse 20 their appeal to
anti-Jewish bigotry.
It doesn’t
matter that they have absolutely no
proof backing their accusation that Paul and Silas “are advocating customs that
are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe” (v. 21). Even though Paul and Silas are themselves Roman citizens, the fact
that they’re Jewish apparently means their rights can be ignored. As a result, the magistrates (officers with
both judicial and executive power) give the order for both of them to be flogged.
Again, here is Bruce:
“When, after this severe beating, they were entrusted to the jailor’s
custody, he interpreted his instructions strictly and fastened their legs in
the stocks, in the inmost part of the prison.
These stocks had more than two holes for the legs, which could be forced
wide apart in such a way as to cause the utmost discomfort and cramping
pain. It was not the jailor’s business
to take any thought for his prisoner’s comfort, but to make sure that they did
not escape.”[4]
(Today, when we lock up prisoners in ways that cause
agonizing pain, we refer to it as putting them in stress positions.)
So, Paul and Silas have been beaten half to death, tossed
into the hole, so to speak, and had chains slapped on them. It’s a wonder that they’re still conscious—or
not going nuts in that confined space!
I’m
reminded of something that happened to me not long before we left
Jamestown. I had an MRI as a check-up for the
first time in two years. Something happened that never in my life have I experienced: I had a
couple of moments of claustrophobia.
Beforehand, the technician’s assistant
asked the usual questions, like, “Do you have any metal in your body?” I
noticed a cartoon on the wall in which a woman is being rolled into the MRI
tube. The doctor’s telling her that they need to scan her brain to figure
out why she has claustrophobic episodes! I laughed about that with the
assistant, saying, “Yes, let’s put you in this coffin and figure out why you
have claustrophobia!”
But when they rolled me, head first, into
that tube—I don’t know what it was—my brain started working. I thought
about that idea of a coffin and being buried alive. I remembered the
movie The Vanishing, which is about a guy who does bury people alive. (By the way, the original Dutch version
is far superior to the American remake with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland.
The American film has the predictable happy ending.) That image of
waking up, buried alive in a coffin, kept coming back to me! Then I
thought about people in prison, like Paul and Silas, crammed into tiny cells.
A couple of times I was on the verge of
squeezing the little signaling device they give you. I didn’t want to
disrupt the scanning process, but I was also ready to get out of that thing!
Some deep breathing (and some prayer) enabled me to get through it. As I left the building and got in my car, I realized that
I’ve never understood how terrible it must be for those who have
claustrophobia.
As for Paul and Silas, they’re not only praying;
they’re singing hymns to God. The other
prisoners are hearing, not cries or screams, but worship. The apostles aren’t behaving like prisoners;
they’re behaving like free men. They’re
acting like they’re the ones calling the shots.
Their faith is giving them strength.
And things start shaking! There
is, as they say, divine intervention.
It’s been noted, “The earthquake transforms the prison.
It is now a series of open rooms. The prisoners’ chains are loosed. All were constrained; now the constraints are
loosed.”[5] This wouldn’t be the first time that a
structure meant to confine becomes the vehicle of God’s freedom. Wasn’t there an enormous bolder sealing the
tomb of Jesus, which somehow rolled away?
It was liberty from captivity, life from death.
Meanwhile, the
jailer has been taking a little snooze.
Seeing that his house of detention is no longer quite so detaining, he
draws his sword and is about to do himself in.
Being a good soldier, he knows that letting prisoners escape is a
capital offense. But Paul yells, “Don’t
harm yourself! We’re still here!”
His question to
them is interesting: “what must I do to be saved?”
(v. 30). Our first reaction would likely
be: he’s talking about something at the
spiritual level. I would agree with
that. I say that because he’s probably
heard Paul and Silas, but also because the Roman Empire has enabled the spread
of many different religions. One popular
with the Roman military (and has some similarities with Christianity) is
Mithraism. There is spiritual hunger.
Still, at another level, he
realizes that he is in a fix. Earthquake
or not, there’s no guarantee that the rest
of the prisoners are going to hang around until morning. When a prison wall literally falls down,
unless you’re really enjoying your
stay, you’re probably going to make a run for it. You probably won’t wait for the cops to
arrest you again!
We have a strange parallel
with the jailer and Lydia. Both are
converted; both bring the apostles to their homes; both have their entire
households baptized. Both of them extend
hospitality to the apostles. And in the
case of the jailer, there’s something more.
As verse 33 tells us, “At the
same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his
entire family were baptized without delay.”
In the fourth century, St. John Chrysostom refers to the jailer this
way: “He washed and was washed; he
washed them from their stripes, and he himself was washed from his sins.”[6]
There are a number
of ways to look at this story, but as you might guess from my sermon title, I
want to look at ways in which we are imprisoned.
Kate Huey, a UCC
minister, has an interesting quote about this.
It’s about the way “Paul’s groundbreaking statement in
Galatians 3:28 [has been expanded] into an elegant story. ‘There is no longer Jew [Paul and Silas] or
Greek [Lydia, the pythoness, the jailer], there is no longer slave [the
pythoness] or free [Lydia, Paul], there is no longer male [Paul, Silas, the
jailer], or female [Lydia, the pythoness]; for all of you are one in Christ
Jesus.’”[7]
I’m
prompted to ask, “Who are the prisoners in this story? In what ways are they imprisoned?” I’ll suggest some answers, though no doubt,
there are plenty of others.
Of
course, we have the slave girl, prisoner of both the spirit that possesses her
and of her slimy owners, who also possess her.
The girl’s owners are imprisoned by their pursuit of money, as well as
their willingness to do whatever it takes to keep it coming in. The crowd and the magistrates are prisoners
of their bigotry and readiness to set aside the rule of law, in favor of rule
of the mob.
Paul
and Silas, just as the girl said, are slaves of the Most High God, and of
course, they are literally imprisoned in the Philippian jail. And drawing on my reflection a moment ago,
for some in detention, there may be the imprisonment of claustrophobia. Then there’s the jailer himself, prisoner of
his own sense of duty—to the extent that he’s ready to commit suicide.
Obviously, there are many
different ways to be a prisoner. Can we
see ourselves in any of these people?
This past Thursday was
the Ascension of the Lord. If this
doesn’t sound like an Ascension sermon, that’s because it isn’t. Acts 16 is a reading for the 7th Sunday of
Easter. In our text, we can see faith in
Christ as the key that unlocks the prison doors, in whatever form they take in
our lives.
We’re
nearing the end of what is, in my humble opinion, the most awesome season on
the Christian calendar. Some say the
Christian faith is too narrow. But if we
have an expansion of our vision, that observation itself will seem too
narrow. We’re nearing the end of the
Easter season, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ has broken the boundary of death
itself. “Christ has been raised from the
dead, the first fruits of those who have died” (1 Co 15.20).
Last
Thursday, as I said, was Ascension.
Christ has broken the boundary of the cosmos. As the cosmic Christ, he has broken every
boundary. Remember our call to
worship. Christ “fills all in all.” Christ “ascended far above all the heavens,
so that he might fill all things.”
Christ “is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Ep
1.23, 4.10; Col 1.17).
Next
Sunday is Pentecost. Jesus said, “Very
truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do
and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the
Father” (Jn 14.12).
How
is this possible? Jesus also says, “Let
the one who believes in me drink. As the
scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living
water.’” Now he said this about the
Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit,
because Jesus was not yet glorified” (Jn 7.38-39). Friends, we are given all of this.
So,
are we prisoners? Let us pray that we
might be slaves of the Most High God; prisoners of the ascended Christ.
[1] Bulfinch’s Mythology (New York: Gramercy Books, 1979), 297.
[2] F. F. Bruce, Commentary on the Book of the Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 332.
[3] Bruce, 335.
[4] Bruce, 336.
[5] www.drbilllong.com/LectionaryII/Ac16III.html
[6] in Bruce, 338.
[7] i.ucc.org/StretchYourMind/OpeningtheBible/WeeklySeeds/tabid/81/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/480/Breaking-Chains-May-10-16.aspx