The sermon preached on May 29th, 2022, based upon Acts 16:16-34, entitled “Letting Go of Our Need for Enemies.”
This is one of my favorite Bible stories. Let’s dive into it.
One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”
So, there is this girl who is enslaved to her rich masters. She has the psychic ability to tell people’s fortunes and other truths. This ability has come to her not as a blessing but rather as a curse. It is the result of a demonic spirit that had taken possession of her life. The owners of the slave girl profit from her affliction, charging people money to come and have their fortunes told by her.
The demonic spirit afflicting the poor slave girl announces to all that Paul and Silas are “slaves of the Most High God” who proclaim a way of salvation. The description of Paul and Silas as “slaves of God” points to what Bob Dylan sang about in his song, “You Gotta Serve Somebody” – one way or another each us will have a master – the question is, which master will we serve?
Initially, the words coming out of the slave girl likely helped attract a crowd for Paul and Silas preach to, but eventually the compulsive quality of her shouting became a distraction.
She kept (crying out) for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.
The story doesn’t tell us what happened to the slave girl, but what we do know is that having been delivered of the demonic spirit she now possesses an inner freedom she didn’t have before.
But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.”
The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods.
Did you catch the deception that took place here? The owners of the slave girl are upset for one reason and one reason only: in casting out the demon from the girl, Paul has brought an end to the steady cash flow that her affliction provided. Jesus talked about how money is a master and such was the case for the owners of the slave girl. They don’t care that the slave girl has been set free of her demon; they are enraged because they’ve lost money, and they want revenge.
But notice: when they drag Paul and Silas to the marketplace to bring charges against them before the authorities and a crowd of people from the city of Philippi, the owners of the slave girl make no mention of money. Instead, they portray Paul and Silas as outsiders who threaten the morals of the people of the city.
So, the people who control the flow of money are manipulating how people understand what is happening. For their own selfish interests the owners of the slave girl are working the people into a frenzy of hatred.
It happened then — it happens now. One example: big data companies like Google and Facebook make money by capturing our attention. They learned early on that the best way to capture our attention is to figure out what makes us angry. Once big data companies have determined what makes us good and mad, they make sure we get a steady feed of material that enrages us, thereby holding our attention. And since people who identify as conservative or liberal tend to get angry about different sorts of things, in their pursuit of profits big data companies ratchet up the hostility.
After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
A new character enters the story: the jailor. He is a loyal servant of the prevailing power structure of which the owners of the slave girl participate. The jailor obediently follows his masters’ orders, and in return he receives a steady income that allows him and his family to live comfortably.
The jailor doesn’t question the propaganda of the slave owners — the lies that support the prevailing power structure: He sees Paul and Silas not as ministers of the good news of God’s enormous love revealed in Jesus – no, he sees them as dangerous criminals, dead set on undermining the morals of people of the city. To use concepts I spoke about two weeks ago, the jailor can’t see Paul and Silas as holy and mysterious “Thous” – the system he serves obliged him to see them as “its” about whom he already knows all he needs to know. The jailor is confident he’s on the side of good, when in fact he is the foot soldier in an evil system.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
So, this is striking. It’s midnight. Paul and Silas are in a dark, dark place – as bad a situation as you can imagine. They’ve been beaten up, and now they’re locked in shackles in the innermost cell of the jail.
Last week I talked about how oftentimes people outwardly can appear whole, when inwardly they are quite broken, and sometimes people can be outwardly broken and yet inwardly they can be quite whole.
Something similar is happening here. You can’t get any more outwardly “in bondage” than Paul and Silas are at this moment, and yet they possess a striking inner freedom. Their outer circumstances don’t govern the posture of their hearts, which are turned towards their loving and merciful God in whom they’ve placed their trust. They are singing hymns, and as in the words of the hymn we just sang, they sing because they’re free. Paul and Silas aren’t in bondage to fear, nor to hate. They are free to love. And this freedom captures the attention of their fellow prisoners who are captivated by their surprising song.
Paul and Silas are praying, but there’s no indication that they’re telling God what needs to happen. They are simply making that essential connection to God – the connection that allows them to keep their hearts and minds open.
Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.
It’s all in the eyes of the beholder — the earthquake that suddenly occurs can either be seen as merely a random occurrence that just happened to occur at this precise moment or as a supernatural miracle sent by God to “set the captives free.”
Many of us can testify from our own experience how surprisingly, gracious things occur more often when we approach life with an open-hearted trust in God.
When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped.
This is a striking reversal of fortune, the sort often spoken of in the Gospels. One moment the jailor is seemingly in control, holding all the power – the next moment he descends into the deepest darkness, filled with shame and feeling as though he has no choice but to take his own life. The god he has served has let him down.
We are reminded of just how fragile we all really are, and reminded of the distressing statistics regarding the steady climb of suicide in our society.
We’re also reminded of how important it is to actively cultivate our spiritual lives, because sooner or later the Ferris Wheel of life will turn, bringing us to that dark, dark place, and that capacity that Paul and Silas have in the deepest darkness to hold onto their connection to God – well, it really matters.
But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”
This is amazing. In the normal way of thinking, Paul should be focused on his own survival. His shackles have just come off, the prison doors sprung wide open and he should be focused on getting the hell out of there.
But that’s not where his focus is.
In the normal way of thinking, the jailor is the enemy. He’s the guy who locked Paul up in that dark prison cell. Paul shouldn’t have compassion for the man in his despair.
But he does.
The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.
“Believe on the Lord Jesus” – this doesn’t refer to some secret code that unlocks heaven. To believe on the Lord Jesus means letting the wonderous love revealed in Jesus deep down into our hearts – this great, great love that makes no distinction between “my people” and “my enemy”.
At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds;
Having experienced compassion from Paul and Silas, the jailor shows them compassion.
then (the man) and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
The story ends with table fellowship: No longer enemies, the jailor, Paul and Silas break bread together as brothers. All who are present are in awe of the mystery of God’s grace working so powerfully in their lives to bring down the walls that separate them.
This is a helpful story to hear, especially right now because frankly, it feels like we too are living in a time of deep darkness. It feels like our society is coming unhinged with hatred and violence.
There are a variety of things I could point to that express this darkness, but the most recent expressions of this darkness are the horrifying murders of 19 children in a school in Texas, and before that the murders of 10 people in a grocery store in Buffalo, in each case committed by eighteen-year-old “men” – “boys” really.
I want to speak briefly about gun laws, but what I have to say will be brief because this is not what I want to focus on today.
We have laws that withhold the right of people to order a drink in a bar before the age of 21, because we recognize that the brain of an 18-year-old hasn’t yet fully developed, and that consequently many 18-year-olds aren’t emotionally mature enough to responsibly drink alcohol. And yet in our country an eighteen-year-old boy can easily, legally take possession of a semi-automatic gun. There seems to be something terribly wrong with this fact, and if I’m missing something here, I humbly invite anyone who does believe I’m missing something to help me out here.
The fact that we can’t agree as a people on something this small leads me to believe that something similar is going on here as what took place in Philippi 2000 years ago:
Powerful money interests have manipulated the conversation.
I expect that a majority of you are agreeing with what I’m saying, but I really don’t want to “preach to the choir” as they say – I’m not interested in patting those of you who agree with me on the back, and I especially don’t want to point a finger at those of you who may disagree with what I’m saying.
The truth is, the problem of violence and hate plaguing our society can’t be fixed with gun laws, and frankly, we all have a hand in contributing to this problem.
I was struck by the words of Megan Ranney, an emergency room doctor, in an Atlantic interview published this week. She said, “People continue to harden into these two extreme positions: Get rid of all guns, or give everybody a gun. Gun rights versus gun control. When there’s a shooting, the two sides get louder and louder, and further and further apart. The way that we have been approaching this is clearly not working. But there is a third way, which is addressing this as a health problem.”
Ranney points to the success achieved over time lowering the number of people who die from automobile accidents. As a country we assumed cars are here to stay, and we asked, “how can we make it safer to drive them?” As a society, we addressed this question in a range of ways that have significantly increased the safety of driving. In a similar way we need to approach the problem of gun violence on a wide range of fronts.
But the question is, are we willing to work together to do this? Or do we find it preferable to just keep viewing those who disagree with us as the evil and ignorant enemy?
Is it more important to us to be “right” than actually do the hard work together required to create a more just, loving and safe society?
This isn’t what I wanted to be talking just two weeks away from my last Sunday after thirty-three years in this wonderful faith community.
One of the best things about our church is that in a world in which increasingly people on the right and the left avoid being in relationship to another, this church has always had room in the circle for both sides. This is a wonderful thing, and essential — because unfortunately the focal point of the terrible hostility that plagues our country right now is the great divide separating people on the right and the left.
And our story this morning reminds us that if we want follow Jesus, then like Paul and Silas we have to let go of our attachment to having enemies. We have to love people who see the world differently from the way we do, and we have to be open to the idea that they may be seeing things we’re overlooking.
This all gives me opportunity to say yet again: what we are about here at the Parsippany United Methodist Church is really, really important. The world desperately needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that’s what we’re seeking to live out together – this wondrous love that overcomes our differences – the extraordinary love that is unwilling to write off some people as our “enemies” – the powerful love that sets the captives free, both on the inside and on the outside.
We are here to bear witness to the eternal love-light that is stronger than every darkness.