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May 8, 2016 - Seventh Sunday of Easter
Sermon:
“A Costly Freedom”
Acts
16:16-34
16One 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. 17While 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." 18She kept
doing this 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.
19But 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. 20When they had brought them before the
magistrates, they said, "These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews 21and
are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or
observe." 22The crowd joined in attacking them, and the
magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten
with rods. 23After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw
them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. 24Following
these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet
in the stocks.
25About midnight Paul and Silas were
praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26Suddenly
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.
27When 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. 28But Paul shouted in a loud voice, "Do
not harm yourself, for we are all here." 29The jailer called
for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30Then
he brought them outside and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
31They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be
saved, you and your household." 32They spoke the word of the
Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33At the same hour of
the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family
were baptized without delay. 34He 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.
Sermon: “A Costly
Freedom”
I once took part in an accidental exorcism. I fear this sentence needs some explaining!
I spent one of my summers in seminary doing Clinical Pastoral
Education at Grady Hospital, a large inner-city facility in Atlanta. As part of this training, we seminary
students visited folks throughout the hospital, prayed with families at the
loss of a loved one, accompanied doctors to share that sad news, and provided
pastoral care to hospital staff. On one
of my first days there, I was called to visit a man who wanted prayer. He was recovering from gallbladder
surgery.
From the moment I entered his room, this rather imposing fellow
began preaching to me. He knew his
Bible. He wanted to walk the halls, so
we did, and he quoted scripture loudly and boldly with each step. Another patient overheard us talking, and
requested for us to go see him, so we did.
We entered the room to pray, and when I closed my eyes, my new
preacher friend began loudly saying, “Evil spirits enter by the feet, come out
now in the naaame of Jeeeesus!” and running his hands over the man’s body. I didn’t really know what to do. I mean, we Presbyterians get uncomfortable
with clapping sometimes! This was way
out of my comfort zone. I just stood
there, a bit shocked, and soon enough, the impromptu exorcism was over. The patient in the bed was crying quietly,
but looked somehow at peace. My new
preacher friend patient said sternly to him, “You know you have to live
differently now, right?” He nodded. And that was that. The accidental exorcism.
I went back to the chaplain’s lounge in a daze, wondering if I
might somehow become known as the exorcism chaplain. My colleagues noticed my bizarre disposition
and asked what was up. I told them, and
most looked pretty shocked. Not Winston,
though. Winston was a pastor from
Jamaica. He just nodded and said, “Ah
yes, that’s no big deal. Happens all the
time. In Kingston, every Thursday is exorcism day!”
Exorcism is not often part of the faith experience of many
American Christians. We are nothing if
not rational, and often reject the idea of possession because we do not have a
scientific explanation for it.
But scripture is full of stories of exorcisms. In fact, for Jesus, it seemed “exorcism day”
was any day ending in y! And we have
something of an accidental exorcism in our Acts reading this morning. A slave girl – lowest of the low because she
was a child, she was a slave, and she was a she – was possessed. She was given an unnatural talent for
divination, or fortune telling. Which
made her a profitable slave to own.
Until she started following Paul and Silas around and shouting, "These
men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation!”
This annoyed Paul. I do
wonder why, really. Because her message
seemed to bolster their claims. She
wasn’t arguing with them; she was a walking commercial! Who knows why Paul got so irritated. Perhaps the “thorn in his side,” a mysterious
ailment he often referred to, made him extra grumpy that day. Perhaps he just got tired of the noise. Who knows, but finally, impulsively it would
seem, he had himself an accidental exorcism.
She was free in spirit, but not necessarily in body. And those slave owners who had bought their timeshares on her fortune telling tricks were none-too-pleased that she’d lost her special talent. They dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities and in that carefully-crafted dancing around the issue that often happened (and happens still) with slavery, they said this: "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."
See what they did there? They didn’t name the real issue (that they lost out on their income from a slave). Instead they first called it a civil disturbance. Then they drew attention to the ethnicity of these troublemakers – Jews. Which is, of course, racism. Then they made clear that these Jews were not following Roman (their) customs. They couldn’t have drawn the lines between us-and-them more clearly if they were using red spray paint!
Funny isn’t it, how we human beings, especially those in power, don’t say what we really mean. We often don’t name our motivations for things, especially when money is involved. We don’t name the oppression we’re complicit in. Instead, we cry for “order” and threaten those who disturb our understanding of it. It often works. Paul and Silas had their freedom taken from them for setting a slave girl free of her demons.
It was a costly freedom: it cost those slave owners their unjust income; it cost Paul and Silas their freedom, for a little while anyway. Freedom and liberation always come at a cost –Jesus certainly knew that.
And we all know that some things are worth the cost. We may not have all experienced exorcisms – accidental or not – but we know what it is to be possessed by something that is not of God. That spirit might be called jealousy. It might be pride, or greed, or insecurity. It might be loneliness, or grief, or regret that is especially poignant on this Mother’s Day. We all need to be set free from something. And Jesus, who made every day ‘exorcism day’ is still about that important work of liberating this world from all that holds us captive, no matter what the cost.
It might come when we least expect it; I have a feeling exorcisms do. But that sort of wholeness is on its way. The God who made a slave girl free, putting her person before a profit, is still at work.
Trust me, from my experience at Grady Hospital, I can say there’s nothing comfortable about an exorcism. It’s a messy business: shouting, tears, way more physical touch than we might be comfortable with. But the work of liberation, of being freed by God from all that holds us captive, should never be comfortable. Chains to the past must be broken. Motivations of greed must be exposed. And we, all of us, must become a new creation, with God’s help, until no child knows slavery, until we are set free from the need for power that threatens us all. Until we feel God’s holy change in us, and hear God’s voice speaking to us, very simply saying, “You know you have to live differently now, right?”
Alleluia! Amen.
[1] Rakotojoelinandrasana, Daniel,
"The Gospel in Adversity: Reading Acts 16:16-34 in African Context," Word & World, 2001.
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