It’s easy enough to breeze through today’s Acts scripture without thinking about the particulars too much. The slave girl with the spirit of divination, Paul, exasperated, freeing her from this spirit, the charges of disturbing the peace, the prison, the earthquake, the jailer being saved and extending hospitality to his former captives.
But think about it. Perhaps the slave girl heard through the grapevine about the work Paul and company had been doing in her land. Maybe she knew some of the slaves at Lydia’s place and had heard stories of the conversion celebration there. Or, possibly, she really did have a spirit of divination and was able supernaturally to know the truth about people. However she came by her knowledge, she was speaking the truth of Paul’s life out loud, daily. It can be dangerous to speak the truth. It was for the slave girl, who drew the attention of the disciples because she couldn’t help but proclaim the truth. When Paul ordered the spirit to come out from her, she ceased to hold value for her owners. We never hear what happened to the slave girl after this, but history tells us that when slaves lost their value, they were in danger of also losing their lives.
With Paul’s action, the slave girl’s chains were broken. She was no longer compelled to speak whatever truth came her way. Perhaps rather than killing her, the owners simply set her free of her physical bonds as well, hoping to recoup their losses through Paul’s money. Maybe her story has a happy ending, an ending in which Paul, Silas and friends find her in the streets and bring her into the celebration at the jailer’s place. If this were a Disney movie, surely that would be the case! But whatever became of her, it was surely frightening for her to be freed from the bondage to the spirit within her. If slavery was not the life she had chosen, at least it was familiar. At least she was certain of some degree of care, so that her money-making gift would not be lost. Without the bonds of divination, without physical bonds, her life was turned upside-down. Scary stuff.
Then, imagine Paul and those traveling with him being seized by the owners, stripped naked in the marketplace and beaten with rods. It brings to mind the scores of civil rights workers beaten & humiliated in the 1960s South. The three young CORE workers who were murdered in Mississippi in 1964, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney & Andrew Goodman, were in the middle of an investigation of the burning of Mt. Zion Methodist Church in the wake of voter registration rallies. The deacons of the church had been stopped while driving, made to kneel in the headlights of their cars and beaten with rifle butts, allegedly by the local sheriff, among others. Their activities on behalf of equal rights for African-Americans were disturbing the peace of the South, disturbing the peace of those who wanted to maintain the status quo. Paul & Silas, by working in the name of Christ’s peace, were charged with disturbing the peace. When people are in bonds to the status quo, their fear of having their worlds turned upside-down often turns them violent.
On top of the violence & indignity inflicted upon Paul & Silas in the marketplace, they suffered the further discomforts of prison. When we, whose images of prison are often shaped by the media, envision prison, it’s not a pretty picture. Narrow, uncomfortable beds. Toilets with no seats and no privacy. Scary cellmates intent on harming newcomers. However unpleasant prison may be today, though, it was much worse in the 1st century. Imagine heavy stone walls, seeping with damp and cold, with no windows to let the sun come in and warm your bones. The luxury of a narrow, uncomfortable bed and a toilet with no seat would be amazing to these prisoners, who likely had not even a pallet on the hard floor and had to live with their own waste. The smell alone would render it a kind of living hell. Add to that the heavy, rough forged iron bonds and wooden stocks limiting movement. I know how often I wiggle and change positions just at a Fraze concert! Imagine sitting naked on hard, cold stone without being able to move. Maybe Paul & Silas didn’t leave the prison right away because their legs wouldn’t work! Oh, and did I mention the rats? Roaches? Other creepy-crawlies? The only sounds the prisoners must have been used to hearing would be moans of pain, cries of fear & despair, clanking of chains.
Yet Paul & Silas were singing! They weren’t singing “Go Down Moses” or “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” either. They were singing hymns of praise to God, more like "How Great Thou Art!" Under those conditions, I think I’d be curled up in a fetal ball, trying hard to sleep so that the horrible reality of my condition would be obliterated for a little while. Sure, I’d pray, but I think a lot of my prayer might turn out as grumbling and “How could you do this to me, God?” kind of talk. I’d like to think I could maintain faith and hope in the midst of pain, foulness and cold, but I’m not so sure. I know how I can get to feeling sorry for myself just because I have to eat McDonald’s too much on a road trip.
Is it any wonder, then, that the other prisoners were listening to Paul & Silas? Perhaps at first, the prisoners just thought they were nuts! But then imagine hearing their cheer, their trust and praise for this God who was everything to them, long into the night! Imagine being in this cheerless, hopeless, godforsaken place and hearing such powerful witness. The scripture doesn’t say they were trying to convert the others. But their own faith was powerful enough witness that when the terror of the earthquake hit (and we all have recent images from Haiti, from Chile, from China of how frightening that must be), they didn’t run. When they realized their bonds were broken, their prison doors tumbled open, they didn’t run. Perhaps they wanted a little of what Paul and Silas had. Perhaps they wanted to see where this God, who inspires such faith, would lead. We don’t know what became of those other prisoners. I like the idea that they might have been drawn into the celebration, too, the baptism, the wound-cleansing, the feast in honor of the greatness of this God, who brings us earthquakes to free us from our bonds.
Have you ever messed something up? Have you ever forgotten a crucial deadline, for example, at work and just known you were going to be fired? The jailer, realizing that he had let his prisoners escape, knew life was about to get really bad for him. Maybe he would even be put to death for allowing this to happen. So, he is ready to plunge his sword into his chest when he hears Paul. Now, the prison is completely black, as black as the West Virginia woods when I have to use the privy at night while staying with my mom, who chooses to live without electricity or running water. And they didn’t have a handy flashlight to drive away the dark, something I always have by my side at my mom’s. There is no way Paul has been able to see the drawn sword, the horror on the jailer’s face as he realizes his life has been turned upside-down. But, likely out of compassion and realization of how the jailer must be reacting to this situation, Paul chooses to call out with reassurances. Rather than guiding the prisoners quickly and quietly to safety beyond the reach of the law, as Zorro would have done in my favorite Saturday morning cartoon, or saving himself and letting the chips fall where they may for everyone else, Paul’s heart goes out to the jailer. Instead of taking the attitude that his oppressor (or the man who stands in for his real oppressors) deserves what he gets, Paul figures out how to comfort and save him.
Because Paul does not simply think of himself, his group, he is rewarded richly. He chooses to praise his God, to tell the jailer of the love and compassion of Jesus, of how that love and compassion extend even to this jailer, who has harmed God’s people. His action leads the jailer to the love of God and leads his people to the comfort of the jailer’s home, the warmth of human fellowship and the recognition that we are all God’s children. Had they simply escaped, they would have lost the opportunity to witness to the jailer, but they also would have consigned themselves to life on the run, until they could move beyond the reach of Rome, which had a long arm indeed. Beaten badly, naked, hungry, they would have contended with traveling through the countryside on the lam. Because Paul trusted God’s loving kindness enough to have mercy on this jailer, his enemy, he was able not only to be free from his bonds, but to have his wounds washed, eat in comfort and rejoice with a family who had newly discovered the greatness of God. His loving response, in light of his broken chains, allowed the bonds of love and friendship to develop & tighten.
It’s a powerful story when we let our imaginations take us there. But, friends, this story isn’t just an inspiration from the past. It’s happening today, in all of our lives. We are all in chains, of one kind and another. We may be bound in chains of addiction, of materialism, of fear of the unknown. We may be bound in chains of prejudice, of apathy, of poverty. Our chains aren’t always of our own making. I was at the Lift Greater Dayton meeting the other night and heard young people talking about the chains with which the youth in Dayton are bound. They spoke of the insecurity of an unsafe neighborhood, of troubled parents, of parks in which people are drinking, doing drugs, even having sex. They spoke of their hope for a future in which there are places for the youth in the Riverview/Five Oaks area to go, secure places, lovely places. They spoke of their hope for a future in which parents have employment and access to help with addictions. They spoke of their hope for a future in which schools are safe and provide adequate education for a viable adult life.
I believe their hopes can be realized. I believe the chains of poverty, fear and addiction can be broken in their lives. I believe the chains of spiritual poverty, fear and addiction can be broken in all of our lives, by that God who unsettles us. Leaving our chains can be scary. We all fear change, particularly when our chains are broken by an earthquake. God, more often than not, disarms us with the shocking ways in which our chains can be broken. If we can learn to sit calmly in the midst of the earthquake, if we can learn to have compassion for those who are against us, we will be freed from our chains.
Jeannene and I have a favorite song we play when we’re headed off for a little getaway trip. It’s by The Indigo Girls and it’s called “The Power of Two.” It’s about how everything is easier when two come together in love than when we try to do everything on our own. One of my favorite lyrics is about bonds, both the kind that chain us, hold us back and cause pain and the kind that free us to live out God’s will in our lives. It says,
“Now the steel bars between me and a promise
Suddenly bend with ease
And the closer I'm bound in love to you
The closer I am to free”
It’s a romantic lyric in its original context, but it applies equally well to our relationship with God. When we open ourselves to the peace and compassion God offers us, when we allow ourselves to be bound in love to God and to one another, we are that much closer to free. In the coming week, I invite you to explore what truths you need to speak to disturb whatever peace in your life needs disturbing. I invite you to look for chains that you can ask God to break. I invite you to leave those broken chains behind in favor of tight bonds & join in the feast and the rejoicing that ensues!
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