Acts 16:16-34 "The Really Bad Day...."

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         The Gospel message is spreading, according to the writer of the Book of Acts.  The fledgling Christian church is growing by leaps and bounds.  Women and men are converting right and left to what was then called “The Way,” the Way of Jesus, the way of compassion and reconciliation, the way of justice and non-violence. 

         And those new followers often came from the most unexpected places and in the most surprising ways.  This morning’s story about the adventures of Paul and Silas in Philippi illustrate this ongoing theme.  Let’s take a look at it. 

         For the two traveling apostles, it all started out as a really bad day.  First there was the slave girl.  To be blunt, she was the kind of person that it was terribly hard to be nice to, to be a Christian toward.  Simply put, she was weird.  Her clothes were dirty, and she had this musty odor about her.  Her long dark hair was tangled and unkempt, and she had this kind of wild and unbalanced look in her eye.  She definitely had some mental health problems. 

         Back in her day, everyone called it being demon-possessed.  It was like there was a foreign being living inside of her, causing her to shout out predictions and strange prophecies.  She was a diviner of the future, a fortune-teller.  Had she had her own place and been a  bit more in control, she would have hung out a shingle proclaiming just that – or she would have had a neon sign in her front window that flashed on and off in red: “Psychic Readings – Tarot Cards.”

         But she had none of those things because two savvy businessmen owned her.  In order to keep down their overhead, these handlers (or pimps because that was what they really were) just turned her loose in the busy marketplace.  They directed her here and there if she started to get out-of-hand.  But mostly she read palms and tealeaves, and they collected a tidy little profit. 

         And so it was on that day that turned into the really bad day that the slave girl latched on to Paul and Silas.  She started following them around, calling everyone’s attention to them by yelling out embarrassing and totally inappropriate things, “These men are working for the Most High God. They’re laying out the road of salvation for you!”

        Now that behavior can be pretty annoying when you are just trying to get the lay of the land, come across as good upstanding “normal” Roman citizens, and ease yourself into the community before you started doing a lot of preaching and evangelizing.  And so it was only a few days before she really started to grate on Paul, and he finally got fed up with her buzzing around behind him like a mosquito that just would not give up.  So, at his wit’s end, he turned and commanded the demon spirit that possessed her, “Out! In the name of Jesus Christ, get out of her!” And it was gone, just like that.  And the slave girl was free. 

         And that was the start of the really bad day.  You see, the slave girl’s pimps were furious – and no wonder.  Their profit margin collapsed the instant she was healed and the door to a new life was opened to her. 

       As one blogger I read this week wrote, “It was fine to give a donation to the Mental Health Association last fall when they passed the bucket at the highway intersection. But now religion has gotten mixed up with economics, so the owners do what vested ones tend to do. They tried to protect their interests.  And when that failed, they attacked the preacher who robbed the slave girl of her money-making ability.

         Oh, they didn’t come out and say, “Paul is interfering with our profits.” They’re not dumb. You never talk about money. You talk around money.

         They are saying, “Look, we’re not against a little religion, as long as it’s kept in its place. They can preach and sing and worship all they want to in that little white clapboard building down the street.” (And so they say instead) “These men are Jews and they are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”

         They want to alert the people…that these weird religious (folks) from another country are infiltrating their city….And so they say  (while doing a bit of fortune telling of their own, I might add ):  ‘Paul and Silas are throwing the city into an uproar.….The city is threatened. The nation is threatened. We’re losing jobs. If this girl loses her job, she’ll go on welfare. More taxes. But since we’ll be making less money, we’ll pay less taxes (and someone else will have to bridge the gap). Can’t you see this is a national, economic disaster?’”

         And so, after generating a frenzy of economic doomsday, the two pimps (I mean, businessmen) see to it that Paul and Silas are beaten up, hauled them off to court, and thrown into jail.  Not a surprising turn of events.  After all, that is what happens when religious and economic convictions collide.  As Presbyterian pastor Clover Beal notes, “When religious conviction moves beyond innocuous concern to real action, people take notice. When we move from sending a few dollars to the charity of our choice to saying NO MORE to the unjust treatment of others, people notice. When economic boycotting dries up income streams, people notice - and they often get really angry.” 

         And so the bad day continues on into an equally bad evening – in a dirty jail cell – smelling of bad food and aged urine.  Our two apostles, however, make the most of their stint there.  Rather than bemoaning the doors that have closed behind them – the prison doors most literally – they pray and sing hymns and before you know it, there is a whole chorus of jailbirds robustly harmonizing “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace.”

        It was about that time that the earthquake came.  And we find ourselves well into a really bad night.  An earthquake, no less! It came out of nowhere, rocking and rolling like the prisoners’ chorus.  It shook the jail to its foundation until the cell doors flew off their hinges, the walls collapsed, and the chains were broken, and all the prisoners began to run free, singing at the top of their lungs:

My chains are gone, I've been set free

My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy reigns

Unending love, amazing grace

         How the jailer – the prison guard - could sleep through the music and the earthquake, I do not know.  But when he awoke and saw that the prison was a pile of rubble and presumed that the prisoners had all escaped, he knew his goose was cooked, and so he pulled out his sword, preparing to fall upon it and finish the job.  It was turning into a really bad day for him too.

         However, no one had actually escaped, which was what Paul and Silas told the jailer when they intervened.  As The Message Bible translation puts it:  “Badly shaken, he (the jailer) collapsed in front of Paul and Silas. He led them out of the jail and asked, ‘Sirs, what do I have to do to be saved, to be free, to really live?’ They said, ‘Put your entire trust in the Master Jesus.  Then you’ll live as you were meant to live—and everyone in your house included!’

         They went on to spell out in detail the story of the Master—the entire family got in on this part. They never did get to bed that night. The jailer made them feel at home, dressed their wounds, and then—he couldn’t wait till morning!—was baptized, he and everyone in his family. There in his home, he had food set out for a festive meal. It was a night to remember: He and his entire family had put their trust in God; everyone in the house was in on the celebration.”  They took the cup of freedom, and the doors to a new life were opened.

         And when all was said and done, it turned out to be not such a bad day after all, but rather a really, really good one.  My - God does work in mysterious ways!

         The theme that connects all the details of this story, drawing its many threads together, is the notion of opening – figurative and literal doors opening to a new life.  There was the slave girl whose mind was healed and who was free to start again.   A new future was opened to her.  There were the prison doors that literally opened, freeing Paul and Silas. 

There was the jailer who was not only freed from the death he was ready to impose upon himself but who also opened himself and his family to the healing grace of Jesus Christ. 

         This idea of opening is one that we might ponder as well.  Did you know that last Thursday was a festival day on the liturgical calendar?  It was Ascension Day.  It is a day that is recognized more in the Catholic Church than in most Protestant congregations, perhaps because it falls on a weekday rather than a Sunday and does not get the hype of Maundy Thursday or even Ash Wednesday. 

         Ascension Day celebrates the day that Jesus left his disciples and ascended into heaven, as the story goes and as the Creeds proclaim – “ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father.” 

         Depending on the Gospel you read, it is the day that Jesus sent his disciples out into the world to preach and to heal and to not be afraid when they did not see him walking beside them every step of the way because, he tells them, even if I am no there, the Holy Spirit will be there – wild and unpredictable as it is.  It will lead you to places that may not be the most comfortable places to go – lead you toward slave girls with mental health issues and jailbird choruses and suicidal prison guards. 

         Though Jesus may not have said it in so many words, I think his followers knew that he was telling them that they would need to open the door to that Spirit and let it enter their lives if they were to stay on the Way – the path – that Jesus had set out for them. They simply could not do it alone. They might not have Jesus, but they would have the Spirit and, in the long run, that would be better, because, with the help of the Spirit, they would learn to depend on themselves to transform the world around them – and not just presume that Jesus would do all the work. They would learn to trust that God believed they could be more than they thought themselves to be.

       Ludwig van Beethoven was born in 1770 and was raised in the home of a poor musician His father was described by one biographer as a "drunken tenor." Beethoven was gifted, but troubled. At age 30 he began to experience a hearing loss. By age 49 he was totally deaf. A portrait of Beethoven at his piano, painted during his deaf period, depicts the piano as something of a wreck. Apparently, he pounded it into submission in an effort to play it loud enough to hear the notes.  Yet, four years before he died, he composed his ninth symphony, closing with the memorable melody we now refer to as the "Ode to Joy" (“Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”).

       Who knows what happened to free Beethoven to be all God meant for him to be?  Who knows how he went from beating his piano into submission into creating the music by which we remember him?  I like to think that the Holy Spirit  - in a way I certainly cannot fully understand but can only trust – that the Holy Spirit offered him the freedom to open himself to his gift. 

       I like to think that is what Jesus was trying to tell his disciples when he left them – and maybe us who wait for him all these thousands of years later.  Wait, wait for the Holy Spirit to come to you.  Open yourself to that Spirit, and it will lead you to the one you seek. 

       But understand that it will not lead you to comfort and security.  It will lead you to the hungry and the lost and lonely.  It will lead you to the least of these but, take heart, because when you find them and share with them, you will have found and shared with the one you are looking for.  You will see him in the eyes of the lonely, the loony, the lost, and the unloved. 

       Wait, wait for the Holy Spirit to come to you – and when she does, she will offer you the cup of freedom – freedom to open yourself to God’s love and grace, freedom to open yourself to her working in your life and guiding you on the Way.  She will offer you the cup of freedom.  Take it, and the doors of new life will be opened to you.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, U.C.C., Raymond, Maine