Text: Acts 16:16-40

Last week we journeyed with Paul and Silas and Timothy across the Aegean Sea from Troas, lured by Luke or a Macedonian apparition to the Roman colony at Philippi. Here they spread the gospel to a small group of women, Jews and god-fearers, gathered by the river for Sabbath prayers. In the home of the wealthy convert, Lydia, the first church in Europe is founded. Today’s text treats the further adventures of Paul and his entourage in Philippi.

As we noted last week, all of these wonderful tales of adventure surrounding the early church are rooted in prayer and disciplined spiritual practice. The text begins, “One day, as we were going to the place of prayer…” We should never lose sight of the significance of prayer, study and communal worship to the life and vitality of the early church or to ours. Part of the reason the Spirit came upon them so mightily is that they were constantly in a state of prepared openness for the Spirit to move among them.

There are three acts to today’s little drama. It is a drama about disturbing the peace and songs in the night. In the first act, Paul, Silas and their party were headed toward the river to pray when they encountered a slave girl with some sort of power to predict the future. She had a “spirit of divination.” Was she gifted? Was she mad? Was she wise? Was she pathetic? Perhaps she was all of these and more. The story makes it clear that, whatever the source of her powers, she was being exploited by her owners for financial gain. She prophesied for profit, she told fortunes so that her owners could line their own’ pockets. That morning, she seemed particularly tormented as she cried out to anyone who could hear, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” Whatever spirit possessed her clearly recognized the Spirit that lived in Paul and his party.

Apparently, this scenario was repeated over several days as the missionaries met her in the marketplace and encountered her on the streets. The story doesn’t tell us why Paul didn’t actually revel in all the free publicity she was giving them. However, it does tell us that he became very annoyed with her and, in what may not have been the most compassionate gesture, finally performed an exorcism on her right there in the middle of the street. He said to the spirit possessing her, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her,” though I imagine it might have sounded more like, “For Christ’s sake, be quiet woman!”

Whatever the purity of his motivation, Paul’s command is obeyed and the spirit leaves her. At last she is quiet, at peace, free of her tormentor, healed. Good for her, good for Paul, good, not so good for her owners, who were quite upset at having lost their cash cow. Before they knew what has hit them, Paul and Silas had been seized by the crowd at the instigation of the irate owners and hauled before the magistrates for disturbing the peace. “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.” Before they have uttered a word in their own defense, the missionaries are attacked by the mob as the magistrates ordered them beaten and imprisoned.

Disturbing the city, disturbing the peace…how? In spite of acting in annoyance, hasn’t Paul done the right thing by liberating the girl from her possession, by freeing her from her tormenting spirit? Of course, she remains a slave, though perhaps no longer a valuable one. Her freedom may have been bought for her at the price of actually worsening her lot in daily life. Unfortunately, we don’t know what became of her. Was she also beaten? Was she cast aside? Was she exploited in new and even more demeaning ways? Was she able to join the community of believers? All we can do is speculate. This is an exploration for another time. The main point of the story we are given is that her exploiting owners were angry that they could no longer use her for their personal gain and, therefore, needed to take out their anger on some other victims.

William Barclay comments on the scene that “When Paul cured her of her madness the one thing that these [owners] felt was not joy at a fellow creature’s restoration to health and sanity but fury that their source of revenue was gone. They were astute...They played on the…anti-Semitism of the mob; and they appealed to their pride in things Roman…” He goes on to note that “The tragic thing is that Paul and Silas were arrested and maltreated for doing good. Whenever Christianity attacks vested interest trouble follows. It is characteristic of [human beings] that if their pockets are threatened they are up in arms” (William Barclay, Daily Study Bible, The Acts of the Apostles, p. 135.) The petty pride of the Roman citizens of Philippi came out in the behavior of the slave owners and the magistrates. Paul and Silas were not charged with disturbing the peace because they were simply praying and preaching; they were hauled before the authorities only when their witness came into conflict with the powers that be, when it meant something that challenged conventional ways of life and threatened to turn the world right side up. It is ironic that there was no fuss made about the transformation of Lydia. Her whole household was converted with her, and though her conversion had social, political and economic consequences, no one complained to the authorities, because she was rich, powerful and independent.

But when the transformation ascends from the bottom up, it is a different tale. When the person who was changed was a slave girl who, in her healing, could no longer be prostituted for her owners’ gain, all hell broke loose. The charges were bogus. Paul and Silas were not disturbing the city. It was these exploitative slave owners who were doing the disturbing with their get-rich-quick scheme worked at the expense of another human being and a troubled one at that. Paul and Silas were Jews, but Judaism was a licensed religion and it was not illegal to be a Jew or practice that faith. It is likely that active proselytizing would have been frowned on, as a threat to the cult of the emperor, and we do know that Claudius had persecuted Jews in Rome around this time. Here it seems a trumped up charge, though Paul and Silas certainly had been about the business of spreading the good news about Jesus Christ and his transformative power. At any rate, the magistrates seemed not to want to be bothered with the facts; their sentence was swift and harsh. So ends act one.

As act two begins we find the missionaries chained away in the bowels of the prison. Some commentators suggest that this is a formulaic insertion into the text, something the story editors added to the show to beef it up for a ratings sweep. Though earthquakes are common in this part of the world, the probability that an earthquake occurred at this precise point in the story and liberated all the prisoners, who did NOT escape, is somewhat suspect. It does make for a great climax, however: Paul and Silas, so secure in their faith that they were singing songs in the night, the night of their own torture and imprisonment, has been an inspiration and a source of hope for many who have found themselves or felt themselves in imprisoned in many different ways.

Hear again the words of Nelson Mandela as he pays tribute to all the singers of those wonderful South African freedom songs, like Siyahamba, today’s opening song. “Imagine how our hearts beat as your voices wafted across the great distances that separated us and penetrated through the prison walls…to reach us in our cells. Every day we heard your voices ring: Let my people go. As we heard that vibrating and invigorating cry of human concern, we knew that we would be free….We drew strength and sustenance from the knowledge we were part of a greater humanity than our jailers could claim” (Nelson Mandela, quoted in “Singing our Freedom,” Seasons of the Spirit, Congregational Life, Lent Easter 2007, p. 130.) Songs in the night – songs of hope, songs of freedom, songs of faith - are lifted up within and without whatever walls, real or imagined, may be thrown up to hold God’s children down; such songs will not go unheard. In our little drama, the peace now really had been disturbed. I suppose one could argue that God was angry and caused the earth to shake in order to liberate God’s servants, though I am not at all certain God works this way, but God is a God of liberation.

Pity the poor jailer who was ready to impale himself. He thought the world and his life had come undone. He was bound to suffer the consequences of all the escaped prisoners. Their collective sentences would be meted out on him. Better to kill himself. But here the story comes full circle as Paul and Silas act to restore the peace. And again the peace they offer is of the new order, the one that turns the world right side up in the service of God. These followers of Christ, who dealt with their suffering by singing songs in the night, not only did not flee the prison when their chains were broken, they stayed to minister to their jailer. “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here,” they called to the jailer, with his sword already drawn. The text does not record how they accomplished the miracle of keeping all the prisoners present, but there it is for our consideration and the jailer’s salvation.

One mark of the jailer’s transformation is how he ministers to them in return. This new form of peace that leads to valuing human life and imparting dignity to the downtrodden, that frees captives and generates real compassion and hospitality across lines of race and religion, culture and class, gender and role, is the stuff of salvation. Again, William Barclay reflects on the jailer “that he immediately confirmed his conversion by his deeds. No sooner had he turned to Christ than he washed the [wounds] upon the prisoners’ backs and set a meal before them. His Christianity issued there and then in the most practical acts of kindness. Unless [one’s] Christianity makes [one] kind it is not Christianity at all. Unless [one’s] change of heart is guaranteed by [one’s] deeds it is a spurious and counterfeit thing” (William Barclay, Daily Study Bible, The Acts of the Apostles, p. 137.) And, I would dare add, highly susceptible to having its peace disturbed.

The transformation that comes with believing in Jesus and following Jesus is broad and deep. In writing on this passage, Theodore Ferris has said that “The person who would be saved must learn the fundamental principles which underlie Christian belief and behavior.” Among those principles, he notes that “There is no use in asking [people] to love [their] enemies unless [they] believe in the kind of God and the kind of universe in which such seemingly unnatural love is conceivable and practical” (Theodore Ferris, Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 9, Acts/Romans, p. 223.) This is what I mean by how the gospel seeks to turn the world right side up. It is a new world, a new order of things God’s order.

Act three is really a sort of funny footnote to the text. The petty officials, perhaps not having slept so well over having allowing themselves to be swayed by the mob and having given into their own prejudices, sent word to release the prisoners. They had been so full of themselves when they sentenced Paul and Silas; the next morning they were fearful and wanted them to just go away. “This wasn’t really a miscarriage of justice; it was just a slight misunderstanding in the heat of the moment. No hard feelings, right?” The jailer told our heroes, “The magistrates sent word to let you go; therefore come out now and go in peace.” Apparently, the jailer still hadn’t learned what peace is all about, but Paul was having none of it. Perhaps in his own attraction to pride of place and standing, he insisted on the formal apology due him as a Roman citizen. “These men have beaten us in public, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and now they are going to discharge us in secret? Certainly not! Let them come and take us out themselves.”

Well, you can imagine the flustered authorities falling all over themselves to right such a serious violation of Roman law. The embarrassed officials swallowed their pride and did their duty. Hopefully, they learned a lesson in the process. In the end, some rights were restored, some justice was done, some peace was disturbed and some peace was deepened. Paul and Silas returned to Lydia’s hospitality long enough to offer words of encouragement and blessing for the new church before moving on somewhere else that God was leading them in order to disturb the peace. As they head up the road, perhaps we can still hear them singing an old song, “What though my joys and comforts die? I know my Savior liveth. What though the darkness gather round? Songs in the night he giveth. No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging. Since love is Lord of heav’n and earth, how can I keep from singing?” Amen.