Acts 16.16-34 The Slave Woman and the Prison Guard
Our inclusiveness matters right now more than ever. It is only together that we can claim and regain ours and others' rights.
SERMON - Acts 16.16-34 The Slave Woman and the Prison Guard
Let’s start with a science lesson. I know, odd place to begin. But the text needs context to fit together and they do indeed fit together and fit with our dealer of purple Lydia from last week. Our society today has been shaped by scientific theory and the social sciences of sociology and psychology.
I first went to college for psychology thinking later I would study pastoral counseling. I was half right. My husband that I met while up north at college, was studying biology. I took some Biology in high school and am a fan of the sciences. The Bible tells us why but not how. Being a curious individual, I enjoy studying animals and plants as long as there isn’t any math involved.
One major theory in Biology that came out of the 1830’s was that of natural selection and evolutionary theories. Charles Darwin is a controversial name in some groups because he is sometimes credited with the evolutionary theory that humans came directly from apes. What he really said was, we, along with many animals come from common ancestors. That is not the same. This includes humans and apes, who share a common ancestor, but not in a direct lineage of humans evolving from current apes. It doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not.
What’s really important for our conversation is that his book and theory are more about natural selection. The concept that in each species certain traits that helped them survive become dominate simply because the ones without the trait did not live in large enough numbers over time to have children. While the stronger trait group did have children they could pass on the stronger trait. The ones that adapted survived and the ones that could not adapt did not. It was a longevity theory that would take long periods of time to see any changes. His examples were iguanas and birds on the Galapagos Islands, not humans or apes. He saw his work as an example of God’s creative work still seen today in nature.
Then someone had to come along and pervert his theory by applying it to human societies. I say a perversion because while Darwin was celebrating all the differences and intricacies of nature, this new late 19th century concept grouped people by strong desired traits against weak undesirable traits. Making the stronger trait to have an intrinsic value of good and the weaker trait to have an intrinsic value of bad. The ‘betters’ and the ‘not good enoughs’. It pitted those that certain societies preferred with those that were ‘different’. Men > women, physical strength > handicapped or less able, ignorant and pliable > smart and stubborn, pretty/handsome > less charming features, cruelty > kindness, brutality >empathy, domination > partnerships, competitive > cooperation, cold > the ability to express authentic feelings, wealthy > poor, intellectual > spiritual. Society became or always has been to some groups, the judge of who ‘fit in’ and who ‘made the cut’. What ‘they’ thought of you, became more important than what God calls us. Creatures created in God’s image, beloved children.
Over the past 50+ years there has been a steady uptick of self-esteem, depression, mental disorders, and suicidal thoughts at even the elementary school level and in the elderly. When we forget who made us and who claims us, we are left thinking that societies’ norms and standards are truth. That they are our only measure of ourselves. We internalize it so it feels like we also think those are the only norms. That is a lie. It is false. Society, while helpful in regulating some undesired behaviors such as murder, is not the final word on you or me. God, the Most High, the LORD Jesus Christ is our final judge.
Now for the text. Remember Acts for me is a book of inclusiveness and subversion of social norms. It includes the unexpected, subverting the status quo. Lydia, while rich, was ready and willing to use all of her resources for the work of The Church. She jumped right in.
Our slave woman on the other hand seems a strange middle for our sandwich of powerful people, Lydia, the slave, the prison guard, then Lydia again after this text. The slave girl in this place also seems to leave an uncomfortable bitterness. No one seems to care about or for her. She doesn’t even get a name. She loses the one thing she had going for her, fortune telling. Apparently a high dollar skill. Paul only heals her after days and days of her haunting them along their journey through the city towards the place of prayer. How many days does it take to annoy an apostle? I guess it’s about as long it would take to annoy me or you. He is a person after all. But what annoys him about her? She is in fact telling the truth. They are servants of the Most High God and they were proclaiming salvation.
She is a commodity and therefore when Paul heals her she exits the stage as her owners step in with their anger. They just lost their easy money ticket. Poof, gone in a second. When they bring Paul and Silas before the market they don’t say that though. They don’t use the, ‘he destroyed my property’ argument. Instead, they claim a much deeper crime. ‘These Jews are disturbing our city.’ A racial slur mixed with a claim of treason. They are trying to impose equality in our domineering society. They claim Jesus as ruler and Lord, not Caesar. They are not like us. They do not fit our social structure and norms set by those in charge with the real power… We are Romans and hail to no one, but Caesar.
They are beaten before being sent to prison. Put in the back of the jail chained up. What do two or more apostles do in jail? Feet in stocks and occupying a cell that is likely for those that will never be released. They sing, pray, and praise their God. The God who is higher than any earthly ruler, a ruler of the entire cosmos, heaven and earth and even Caesar. In that moment of sabbath that they make for themselves God goes ahead and lets everyone there, the other prisoners listening and the prison guard who was responsible for their incarceration. The earth, quakes enough to break all the doors open and the chains to fall off of every prisoner.
The guard is distraught, but Paul calls out that they are still all there, he has no reason to fear for the shame their escape would bring. “What must I do the be saved”? Saved from what? They didn’t leave so he was still honorably doing his job. The slave called their God the Most High. The owners accused them of calling someone other than Caesar Lord. The guard recognized the power of their God moving the very ground beneath them. He recognized that their God, was THE God and sovereign ruler of all things, himself included.
He joins the ranks of believers with his family who are baptized, post haste. He sees to the care of their wounds and feeds them before they head back to stay again with Lydia.
Robert Reich in a recent Substack article gives thought to the reemergence of Social Darwinism. He explains that the last time the USA was wealthy was in the late 19th century era called the Gilded Age. Tariffs were high, costs for consumers were high, ‘free’ enterprise was the ideal. But corruption was at the very heart. Those with money “literally deposited sacks of money on the desks of pliant legislators… The gap between rich and poor turned into a chasm. Urban slums festered. Women couldn’t vote. Black Americans were subject to Jim Crow [laws].”
William Graham Sumner is the individual that twisted Charles Darwin into a social theory to fit the times. “To Sumner and his followers, life was a competitive struggle in which only the fittest could survive.” His basic ideas were that our choice as a society was to choose ‘liberty’ by enacting inequality, survival of the fittest policies or non-liberty that favored equality and the survival of the wealthy upper class”. Millionaires as the product of natural selection. Being poor became criminal. Being disabled became a burden on society. Those who could not work the top jobs were not good enough for them anyway… Sound familiar?
This is the context of the New Testament and today. Paul’s context. Powerful people could wear as much purple no matter the desecration of tens of thousands of snails and dangerous working conditions. They could throw people in jail without a trial. They could beat a person or kneel on someone’s neck until they died in the street without any kind of judge intervening. Without being charged of a crime themselves. They could own people and do whatever they wanted to them.
They can levy taxes on the poor and keep the rest in overflowing coffers. They can deny healthcare to the poor who once relied on Medicaid. They can withhold food from the hungry who once had food stamps. They can withhold mental health services calling it wasteful spending. They do not want to offer education to anyone they deemed unworthy. Citizenship was a birthright but not for everyone anymore. Immigrants are turned away or sent to foreign prisons. Prisoners have not been granted trials or legal representation. An accusation from someone powerful is enough to be incarcerated for life. Being different is enough to be sent to internment camps. As Robert Reich laments, under our current White House administration and their lapdogs in the House and Senate, Social Darwinism is back.
Paul claimed his Roman citizenship to regain his rights. His voice matters. God is freeing and claiming those in integral positions to further the church and set more souls free. The powerful in this chapter remind us that we need to drop our expectations of who God calls and uses. Our inclusiveness matters right now more than ever. It is only together that we can claim and regain our rights. It is only together that we can claim and restore other’s rights. Only together can we offer others salvation from oppression from our government or any hidden inner voices that haunt our minds. Salvation from Jesus includes each individual’s body, mind, soul, and place in society. Reclaim your voice by making a sabbath in the midst of whatever prison enslaves you. Praise, pray, and sing in your most dire moments expecting God to shake the earth and free us all. Amen.
Bibliography
https://substack.com/home/post/p-164507509
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
https://biblehub.com/greek/5310.htm
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/acts/16-31.htm
Barlett, David L., Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors, Feasting on the Word YC Vol 2, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. Kindel Edition.
DeHaan, Peter, Women of the Bible: The Victorious, The Victims, The Virtuous, and The Vicious, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Rock Rooster Books, 2020.
Green, Joel B. Thomas B. Long, Luke A. Powery, General Editors, Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship: Year C, Volume Two, Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2018. Kindle Edition.
Jennings, Willie James, Acts a Theological Commentary on the Bible (Belief Series), Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017. Kindle version.
Richards, Sue Poorman and Lawrence O Richards, Women of the Bible, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2003.
Wilcox, Ashly M. The Women’s Lectionary: Preaching the Women of the Bible Throughout the Year, Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2021. Kindle Edition.