TO BE FREE
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Texts: Acts 16:16-40
Dateline, Johannesburg, South Africa – “Zimbabwe's sex workers are deserting their country for greener pastures in South Africa as the World Cup 2010 draws nearer, causing human rights and church groups worldwide to call for measures to curb human trafficking and prostitution.
But the economic promise offered by the arrival of some 500,000 World Cup foreign fans is already attracting impoverished workers. ‘If ever there was time to make money, this is the right time,’ says Shuvai, a Zimbabwean commercial sex worker working at Maxime Hotel in Johannesburg…Young prostitutes appear to be organized into groups led by an elder women who smuggles the girls here from Zimbabwe” (The Christian Science Monitor, “Prostitutes Flock to South Africa Ahead of World Cup 2010,” May 12, 2010.)
It seems some stories never change. Characters and the settings may, but the essential tale is repeated over and over again throughout history. So it is with human trafficking. We spent a good deal of Bible study on Tuesday morning discussing the current manifestations of this ancient practice – human slavery for economic gain. We see it today in stories like this one from South Africa. We hear it in tales of child abuse. It is present in the lives of workers of all ages from all over the world brought from poor regions to wealthy ones, including the USA, to work as indentured servants in sweatshops and the homes of the wealthy and the privileged. Though the trappings may be different, what Paul and Silas encounter on the streets of Philippi can also be found on the mean streets as well as the respectable neighborhoods of our cities today.
A young girl, exploited by those claiming to “own” her for their personal financial gain! One way to look at her plight is to say that she is doubly possessed – both by her so-called “owners” and by a demonic spirit that is purported to give her the power to predict the future. In this fast-paced, exciting story, we may be impressed with Paul’s ability to heal her of one possession while we are dismayed that he seems to ignore the other. It is true that social and cultural attitudes toward slavery were much more accepting of the practice then than we profess to be today in our “freedom-loving” land. This is not the only case in the New Testament in which Paul seems to condone slavery, at least for the good of the social order. However, that does not free us from concern for the total welfare of such a young girl. If nothing more, our frustrations with Paul’s inattention call us to speak out against any practice of human trafficking and to work for its elimination everywhere. To be free truly this girl needs to be dispossessed of demonic spirits and demonic humans alike.
In fact, Paul does not come off well in this story at all. Even his act of exorcism is fueled by his annoyance at the girl’s prophesying on his behalf. “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” What’s wrong with all this publicity? The paraphrase we read earlier implies that the girl and her owners might have been using her harangue to build up their own business, but the text doesn’t really say that. Was she too loud? Was she too distracting? Was she exposing Paul and Silas on a larger stage than they were ready to act? After all, they were in foreign territory. Perhaps they were still trying to get the lay of the land. As was their custom, they had sought out the Jewish community to share the good news. Were they really ready to preach on the street corner? We do not know for sure why Paul was irritated with the girl, we just know that he turns and, looking right past her, rebukes the demonic spirit, ordering it to leave her.
What will be her lot now? Will she be punished, beaten, killed even because she is no longer lucrative? Does she believe she has been healed? Does she eventually find her way into the faith community? Clearly missing here is the kind of invitation to salvation that is offered earlier to Lydia and later to the jailer. Paul’s power to liberate is a wonderful thing but has he set her truly free. We will never know, this side of heaven, but if there are lessons to be learned here they move us beyond the actions that Paul takes on this day with this child of God. To be free requires liberation of body and soul as well as mind. We can only hope that the healing Paul works in this case is extended beyond what the writer of Acts tells us.
As with all scripture, this is a tale told to make specific points to a specific audience. Our contemporary frustration with what is done and not done, included and left out, may have had little or no meaning for its original audience. Some scholars go so far as to suggest that because the book of Acts follows the format of a Greek novel of the times, it may have actually been that in its original. There are certainly gaps that leave us wondering and questions of historical reliability that come up as we read. What is the writer trying to tell his original audience? What can we draw from this ancient tale that constitutes good news for us in our contemporary setting?
Well, the second act of this drama may offer us some insight into how we might organize our own faith community and spiritual practice. For reasons we are also not shown, the girl’s masters choose to escalate significantly the charges they bring against Paul, Silas and their party. They could simply accuse them of taking away their livelihood, which is an accurate description of what has happened. But, no, they choose instead to drag them before the authorities and charge them with disrupting the precious Pax Romana. “These men are disturbing our city; they are...advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” And for an extra measure of moving the mob to animosity and violence, they point that they are foreigners, aliens, specifically, “they are Jews”. These charges seem to have the desired effect. Not only do the magistrates take swift action to punish them, apparently without any real trial, but the crowd joins in the attack.
Do we know anything of this sort of mob mentality? I can’t help but think of the raucous rally over the big t-shirt controversy in Morgan Hill last week with people shouting xenophobic lunacy, expending precious time and energy defending what looks to me like flagrant acts of bigotry. It seems some people will go to any extreme to attack those who are different, who hold different values or have a different skin tone or come from a different cultural background. The chauvinism and the fear that drives the people of Philippi to attack Paul is not far removed from the rationale for careless deportations, water boarding, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
Perhaps Paul wanted to silence the girl because he was afraid that something like this would happen. It is ironic that the complete disregard that Philippians show for the humanity of Paul and Silas has common roots with the lack of attention that Paul gives to the slave girl’s humanity. I am not saying that God is trying to teach Paul a lesson here, but there is significant irony that the dehumanizing inherent in human trafficking shares roots with the dehumanizing inherent in xenophobia, anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry. To be free is to see and to embrace the common humanity of all God’s children. Anything less leaves us bound. Until all are free, none are free. And of course this is exactly the state of the girl’s “owners”, the magistrates and the mob. They are captive to prejudice borne of fear and ignorance. If we took a moment and looked deeply into our own lives, would we find any vestiges of such chains binding us? Could we find a residue of bigotry, a cherished prejudice, a rationalized bit of chauvinism, a tiny spot of hatred? I know that’s not an exercise I want to take on very often. I am afraid of what I might find yet hidden in the heart my supposedly enlightened self.
My favorite part of this old story is what happens next. Here are Paul, Silas and their party, stripped, beaten, locked into stocks in the deepest, darkest dungeon, filthy, foul smelling, the place of absolute security from which no one could escape. Talk about overkill! No effort is made here to make the punishment fit the crime. It’s maximum security all the way. It doesn’t matter that the charges were trumped up, that there was no fair trial, that the defendants did not have the opportunity for adequate representation. Lock them up and throw away the key. Well, we don’t know anything about that in our own criminal justice system, but it was the fate of our protagonists.
I don’t mean that the punishment is my favorite part, it’s the prisoners’ response that moves me. Were they yelling and cursing because they’d been treated unfairly? Were they crying and licking their wounds? Were they shaking their fists at God because God had not taken care of them? None of the above! “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” At first, we want to say that seems so improbable, but when we take a look at the legacy of oppressed people down through the ages – the Hebrew psalms, Negro spirituals, gospel stories from the base communities of Latin America – we hear people of faith praying and singing with all their might, even as they endured the master’s lash, the injustice of prison and the valley of the shadow. “Oh Freedom.” Ironically, it seems to take imprisonment to teach Paul the true meaning of freedom.
There is nothing weak and sentimental in these actions. These acts of faith take incredible courage. In our own time, James Loney writes of the witness of Tom Fox, a Quaker peace activist from the US, one of four members of a Christian Peacemaker’s Team held captive and ultimately executed in Iraq. “During those days of relentless, terrifying, excruciating uncertainty, Tom Fox dove into prayer the way a warrior might charge into battle. He turned his captivity into a sustained, unbroken meditation.” Loney describes Fox’s prayer practice in detail: “The chain that bound his wrist became a sort of rosary, or sebha (the beads Muslims use to count the names of God.) He would picture someone: a member of his family, a member of the Iraq team or of the CPT office, one of the captors – whomever he felt needed a prayer. Holding a link of the chain, he would breathe in and out, slowly, so that you could hear the air gushing in and out of his lungs, praying for the person he was holding in his mind. With the completion of each breath, he would pass a link through his thumb and index finger. During the first breath he would say to himself, ‘with the warmth of my heart.’ In the second, ‘with the stillness of my mind.’ In the third, ‘with the fluidity of my body.’ And in the fourth, ‘with the light of my soul.’ At the end of each series of four breaths, he would pause and simply rest in the light with the person he was praying for’” (James Loney, “Cell Group” in The Christian Century, July 24, 2007.)
Can you imagine yourself in such a situation, incarcerated, abused, facing death, singing and praying your faith, remembering not only your loved ones but your enemies, as you reach out to the God who made us all? Wouldn’t that kind of prayer and singing shake the very foundations? Wouldn’t it rattle our lives and loosen every chain that binds us? This is the power of the gospel to liberate, to bear witness to the good news that frees us from each bias, addiction, fear that holds us hostage. This is the power of God’s spirit moving in us to transform all of life. To be free – of any vestige of dehumanization, to hold in loving embrace the whole of creation, to live in compassion for all our sisters and brothers of any description, to share the abundance of our resources, to build together the Peaceable Realm of God. Oh freedom! Let it be. Amen.