Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
May 29, 2022 (7th Sunday of Easter)
Scripture: Acts 16:16-34
There are a bunch of easy sermons I could preach on the story that we just heard.
I could look at the story of how God was with Paul and Silas in prison, and how God used and earthquake to free them from their captivity.
I could look at the story of the jailor, and how, because of Paul’s compassion and goodness, because Paul chose not to use the opportunity to escape, the jailor came to know the love of God through the love of another human.
I could look at Paul and Silas in prison, and how, when things were at their worst, in the midnight hour, they chose to pray and sing hymns, and with this sermon I would probably ask how we respond in our midnight hour when things are at their worst.
I might even look at how Paul healed the young slave-girl from the spirit that possessed her – this is a story of healing, after all, and what spirits possess us that we need to be healed from?
I could probably take any one of these angles on the story that we heard today – it is such a rich story after all – and preach a feel-good sermon about it.
But I can’t do that. I can’t do that because I keep tripping over the fact that the young slave girl who was owned by a wealthy family is used almost as a prop for Paul to show his healing powers, and then she disappears completely from the story.
And my heart goes out to this unnamed child. She is a slave – she is a human who is owned by other humans, with no autonomy over her own life. When her owners say, “Jump,” she jumps. When her owners tell her to use her gift of divination, she uses her gift of divination and her owners keep all of the money that this gift brings in.
And when Paul casts out the spirit of divination from her, she is still a slave. She may no longer be possessed, but she is still a possession.
And not only that, she is probably in a much more vulnerable position than she was at the beginning of the story. At least at the beginning of the story, when she had a spirit of divination, she was valuable to her owners. She made lots of money for them through her gift, and they likely extended more protection to her than they would a less-talented slave. But now her gift is gone, and she is no longer able to make lots of money for her owners, and she is no longer worthy – in their eyes – of the extra care and protection she had before. And if I let myself think too much into the story, my heart breaks as I think of how her owners might have used her after this story in order to try and recoup some of the value that Paul has taken away from her.
The Book of Acts is the story of the very early church – it is the story of how the Holy Spirit was working in the early church, causing the early church to grow and expand throughout the known world. And as such, the perspective of the narrator is the perspective of Paul and of Silas and of Peter and of all of the early disciples and apostles who were spreading the gospel.
And from Paul’s perspective, this slave girl – oh, I wish that we knew her name – from Paul’s perspective, this unnamed slave girl was an annoyance, as she followed them around, shouting at them; he cast out the spirit from her, and then likely never gave her another thought. She is a very minor side character in the story of the Book of Acts.
And yet in her own story – in the story of her life – she is the main character. And I also think that in God’s perspective, she is also valuable, a precious and beloved child, worthy of care and attention, just as all people are.
And yet Paul is so focused on his own story that he isn’t able to see her once she is no longer pestering him. She is a prop in a public healing he performs, and then she is forgotten.
My heart goes out to her, but at the same time I also have to wonder who else in the world goes overlooked and unseen and forgotten. Looking at Canadian history, my mind jumps to all of the children who died in Residential Schools run by churches including our own – who saw them in their suffering and in their death? Their families and their classmates, as the rest of the world turned away.
Or more recently, how many Indigenous women and girls have gone missing, without their disappearances being thoroughly investigated?
Another heartbreaking, more contemporary example might be all of the children who are killed as debate carries on over gun control. Their pictures are splashed all over the media for a couple of days; but when the media moves on to the next story and the debate shifts back to the realm of the hypothetical, who bears witness to their suffering and to the suffering of their families?
And we always have to be asking ourselves, who do we not see in the story of our own lives? Just as Paul carried on, arrested, imprisoned, preaching and singing even in jail, then using his privilege as a Roman Citizen to be released; as we move through our own lives, carrying our privilege whether it be privilege given to us based on the colour of our skin or the language we speak or our education or our socioeconomic status or our gender or our sexual orientation – as we move through our lives, who are we not seeing? Or even more than that – who might we be unintentionally causing harm to, and why are we unable to see the consequences of that harm?
But the good news is that this unnamed slave girl, as inconsequential as she was to Paul and the course of his life, she did matter to God. Even when Paul didn’t see her, God did. Even when Paul caused unintended harm to her, God longed for her to be free.
I think of Jesus proclaiming a message of liberation, a message of good news to the poor, a message of freedom from every form of captivity; and I wish that Paul had been able to channel that message on that day in Philippi. I wish that Paul had been able to see past his privilege to see where he was causing harm.
But before I am too harsh on Paul, I have to remind myself that hindsight is 20/20, and so if I am judging Paul for what he couldn’t see, then I also need to judge myself for the things that I don’t see around me – things that may only be revealed in the future.
And I have to seek the Holy Spirit’s wisdom to remain humble, and the Holy Spirit’s guidance to open my eyes and my ears and my heart to the people around me.
And may it be so. Amen.
“REDress” – photo by Rodger Evans on Flickr
How many people are unseen, unnoticed, forgotten?
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