In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.
As
Americans, freedom is in our cultural DNA. While freedom is something that most
nations value, in the US we place a greater emphasis on it, with mottos such as
“live free or die” and “give me liberty or give me death;” and the First
Amendment focuses on the freedom of speech, religion, petition, assembly, and
the press. But there are really two kinds of freedom, and when we confuse them,
we miss the true import of freedom.
The
first sort of freedom is the American sort, it’s about having the power
self-determination, about independence, about being able to “do whatever you
want.” The cultural understanding of freedom is about freedom from certain things or restrictions. This
though, is not the same concept as the Biblical view of freedom, which focuses
not on what we are free from, but
rather what we are free for. The sort
of freedom that God intends for us isn’t the ability to do whatever we want, as
part of faith is obligation – it’s what the Baptismal Covenant is all about.
There are certain things that, as Christians, we simply are not free to do,
such as not respecting the dignity of every human being. Instead, the freedom
that God grants to us is the removal of the hindrances that prevent us from our
creational purpose. God’s freedom is about removing the chains of sin, death,
hopelessness, and fear that might prevent us from living fully in God’s love. The
distinction between these two sorts of freedom will be important as we consider
today’s reading from Acts.
In
this passage, we find Paul, and his traveling companion, Silas, in Philippi.
There are three captive forces that they encounter which will help us to
consider what it means to be free. The first is what we might call
“possession.” They encounter a slave girl who had the ability to tell fortunes.
Because of this skill, she was enslaved as a money making parlor trick. There’s
more going on in the text than we might realize though – as what our
translation renders as her “spirit of divination” is actually in Greek “the
spirit of a python.” According to Greek mythology, which very much would have
been operative in this Roman colony, Apollo defeated an evil serpent, known as
Pythos. While it might be easy to read her skillset as a gift, it should be
clear that it actually not. Today, we’d call her affliction “mental illness.”
It
might seem odd that this girl’s statement of “These men are slaves of the Most
High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation” would annoy Paul. But again,
the text obscures some of the historical background to that statement. A
reference to the “most high god,” sounds like it’s a reference to the God of
Israel, but it’s just a generic name for deities – the same title would have
been given to Apollo. And she speaks of “salvation,” but isn’t referring to the
sort of salvation given to us by Jesus, but rather a more simplistic definition
of “salvation” which means something closer to “rescue.” It’s a reminder that
just because we say the right words, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t captive
to sin.
In the name of Jesus,
Paul orders this spirit of a python to come out of her, and it does. And I
really don’t know to tell you about that. I wish it was that simple to cure
depression, or schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder. I wish that we could just
“pray away” mental illness, but we all know that isn’t how it works. I’m not
going to pretend to understand how it happened. What I take from this incident
is a statement that the God who Created all that is is more powerful than and
gives us freedom from other false gods, like Apollo or Wall Street. It’s a
statement that whatever our affliction – mental illness, anger management
issues, addiction – we are not owned by those “demons,” but rather our truest
and fullest identity is found in relation to Christ.
The next captor is
financial. The same word in Greek that is used to describe the spirit “going
out” of the girls is the same that is used to describe the profits that her
masters earned through her. People can tolerate Paul and Silas’ preaching, even
some of their healings, but when their actions started to impact their wallets,
they could no longer stand for it. And isn’t how the world still works today?
People are still exploited for their ability to pad our bottom line – whether
it’s phone factories in China or migrant workers in the eastern part of this
state, we still abuse people for financial motivations. We’re all for things
like access for all to healthcare, or school improvements, or better treatment
for veterans, that is until we realize that we’re going to have to pay more in
taxes.
It’s a reminder that the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ has a very tangible impact on our lives. Our faith
ought to disrupt the ordinary functioning of our economy and our wallets, our
faith ought to change the way we interact with others, our faith ought to
impact our priorities. Our faith in the Risen Lord should make us pay attention
to Gospel-based freedom, and we should be very uneasy when we see people who
are still captive.
The third captor is
prejudice. While sociology can teach us that sometimes having a bias against
groups and tribes that are different from us is evolutionarily advantageous,
prejudice hinders us from living into the vision that we heard in the reading
from Revelation: “And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who
is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” There
was recently a story about how prejudice affects the new sharing economy. Researchers have
studied services such as Uber, Airbnb, and Craigslist and found that minorities
are less likely to be offered services on such sites – and similar findings
have been found in the fields of education, the legal system, and medicine. As
we’ve seen all around the nation over the past few years, racial tensions are
quite high.
Notice that the complaint
of the slave girl’s owners isn’t “They’ve destroyed our product and taken away
our revenue stream.” No, they commit an even greater sin than greed; they act
out of prejudice. They say “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.” Essentially, they say “These people are destroying our way of life,
not by their actions, but by their very existence.” If it sounds familiar,
that’s because it is. Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, and the Jim Crow
South all know that language – “those people are not like us, and therefore are
less than us, and therefore we can imprison and beat them.” Language is an
extremely powerful tool, and how we describe people will affect how we perceive
and treat them. This is what disturbs me so greatly about our political and
cultural climate today – the way Muslims, Blacks, immigrants, women are
vilified, called “un-American,” or treated as “less than.” The crowd and the
magistrates buy into that prejudice, and Paul and Silas are stripped, flogged,
and imprisoned. In a perversion of justice, the liberators become captives, not
because of their actions, but because of prejudice and bias. It’s a reminder to
us of the evils that we are capable of when we define people as anything other
than “children of God.”
What happens next in the
text is a reversal of freedom and captivity. Those who are captive become free:
by the end of the story, the slave girl, Paul, and Silas all end up being freed
from their captivity. While those who thought they were free: the slave owners
and the magistrates become captive to greed and prejudice. While they think
they are the masters of their own destinies, they are actually enslaved to evil
forces. The character of the jailer becomes a lens through which we see this
transition from the two types of freedom, as he moves from thinking that he is
free, holding the keys, to finding true freedom in Christ.
After Paul and Silas’
arrest, they sing, which is a great reminder to us of the power of prayer and
song to sustain us through difficult times. Singing is what sustained the
slaves in the cotton fields of the American South. When you’re in a tough spot,
try singing; and I’d recommend starting with There is a balm in Gilead.
There is a then an
earthquake that frees Paul and Silas from their captivity, but they don’t seem
to view it that way. Instead of running out of the jail, they know that they
are already free in Christ, and no human imprisonment can take that away. So
they continue their singing. The jailer is so impressed with their
understanding of freedom, he asks “What must I do to be saved?” And they say
“believe in the Lord Jesus.” Freedom comes through belief.
As I’ve said many times
before, in the Bible “belief” isn’t about what you think as much as it is about
what you love and where you put your trust. The word that is used here in Greek
means “trust,” “loyalty,” “commitment.” Our reading from John today concludes
with Jesus saying “So that the love with which you have loved me may be in
them, and I in them.” Chapters 14-17 in John are all one long prayer that Jesus
offers to God before his Passion. And the very next verse of John is the
movement to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus will be betrayed. Some
scholars suggest that the whole of the Gospel according to John can be summed
up by those words – that the love of God that we saw in Jesus is in and among
us. This is what belief is about – being tuned in to the love of God. And it is
when we are plugged into the current of that love that we find freedom.
We find our freedom not
when we define it as independence or self-determination, but rather true Gospel
freedom comes when we root our identity in Christ. Freedom comes when we
realize that we are dependent on the God who is Alpha and Omega. Freedom comes
when we untangle ourselves from money’s ability to exploit us or make us
exploit others. Freedom comes when we are given Gospel vision to see people not
as the “other” but as “one of us.” This is such a fitting reading for the final
Sunday in Easter – Freedom comes when we trust in the power of Jesus’
Resurrection to overcome fear, evil, and death. When the jailer gives his
loyalty to God instead of the Empire, he finds true freedom.
Let us pray: O God, you
are our Alpha and our Omega, our beginning and our end, to know you is eternal
life and to serve you is perfect freedom: Give us grace to find our identity in
you, forgive us when we exploit others, and help us to see all people as your
beloved sons and daughters. Help us to walk in the power of Jesus’
Resurrection; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power
of any adversaries; through the might of the Risen Christ. Amen.
