7 Easter, Yr C (2025) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

7 Easter, Yr C (2025)                                                               The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

Acts 16:16-34                                                                     St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

John 17:20-26

In the name of the one, holy, and loving God:

            who is, and who was, and who is to come.  Amen.

I always find today’s reading from Acts a good story…

 part of it seems a bit confounding

        and other parts are absolutely miraculous!

Paul and Silas,

on their missionary journey,

come across a slave girl who had the spirit of divination,

       which made her owners very wealthy.

She follows Paul and the other apostles around and keeps crying out:

            “These people serve the Most High God,

                        and they are telling you about a way of healing and wholeness.”

After this happened day in and day out for quite a while,

 Paul got annoyed

        and ordered the spirit, in the name of Jesus, to come out of her.

And it did.

I must admit that I am a bit confused by Paul’s action.

If Paul is out preaching and teaching the Good News of God in Christ,

            then why is he irritated when this girl, in essence,

       is drawing attention to their preaching of God’s healing?

Would this spirit not be helpful to their cause?

So, I began to wonder:

            Maybe Paul was annoyed, not with the spirit or the girl or the message,

       but with the people who owned this girl.

Maybe Paul’s issue was not necessarily with the proclamation of the spirit itself

but rather the enslavement of this girl…

       the use of a human being for profit against her will.

Maybe that is why Paul commands the spirit to leave her.

The girl,

now freed by Paul,

is no longer shackled to her past…

      no longer able to be exploited by her owners. 

The good news that the oppressed will be set free was not good news to the oppressor,

 but it certainly was for the slave girl.

With the spirit gone –

and their source of money,

the owners of this girl were furious

      and had Paul and Silas brought before the authorities in the marketplace,

      for all to see and hear.

“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.”

In other words, “these men are disrupting our business.”

Do not mess with our source of money and power…

            even if it is bringing harm to a human being.

Now, the jailer seems to have been quite frightened –

            whether of the power of the owners of this girl,

                        or of the power of Paul and Silas, I do not know…

But whatever the cause of his fear,

he put them in the innermost cell

       and fastened their feet in the stocks.

There is no way these men were going anywhere!

            Not on his watch.

But then about midnight

            as Paul and Silas were passing the time by praying and singing hymns to God,

      there was a violent earthquake.

Big enough to shake the foundations of the jail

            and break the locks on the doors

       and SNAP those chains.

The jailer, being violently roused from his sleep,

            drew his sword to kill himself when he saw the doors gaping open.

What prisoner, in their right mind,

 wouldn’t bolt right through those doors and out into the night?

Well, apparently, Paul and Silas wouldn’t.

Here are two men,

            sitting in prison on trumped up charges,

      who do not avail themselves of being free when the opportunity presents itself.

That demands notice!

But then again, Jesus knew the leaders were gunning for his life,

            creating trumped up charges against him,

      and yet he “set his face toward Jerusalem”

and was nailed to a cross.

Jesus also could have left when he had the opportunity,

            but he didn’t.

Upon seeing that Paul and Silas were still sitting in their cells with the doors wide open,

the jailer asks,

       “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

He had never seen such a thing!

“Believe on the Lord Jesus,

            and you will be saved.”

Believe on the Lord Jesus,

and you will find healing.

Believe on the Lord Jesus,

            and you will find wholeness.

Believe on the Lord Jesus,

            and you will be set free!

Not only will you be set free,

            but you will do the right thing,

                        the just thing,

      even in the face of unjust or perhaps violent opposition.

The jailer took the men and washed their wounds;

            then he and his entire family were baptized,

       and they shared in a great feast.

What is so striking about this story

is that Paul and Silas didn’t really care about the worldly values

and local laws and customs.

Paul and Silas didn’t really care about what was “right” in the eyes of the world…

in terms of profit and law.

They seemed to follow a different voice…

            a voice of compassion and dignity and respect and honor…

       and their witness changed lives.

As I read the news these days,

            I hear over and over stories about power and profit.

And at what cost?

People – nations – leaders

            are fighting over land and natural resources

      as if they are limited…

                        as if they “belonged” to humans in the first place!

Hospitals and nursing homes and private practices

            are being taken over and run by private equity firms - by corporations – by people

       who are seeking the highest yield for their stockholders,

                        not the healing of their patients,

       or the well-being of their caregivers.

Paul and Silas and Jesus,

            and Martin Luther King, Jr.

                        and Mahatma Gandhi

                                    and Rosa Parks

       and Robin Wall Kimmerer, among many others,

      are witnesses to a different way of living.

Richard Rohr wrote a reflection on “Meeting Christ Within Us,” 

and that is, I think, how Paul and Silas were living…with Christ within them.

Quoting Robert Ellsberg about Auschwitz victim Etty Hillesum, Rohr says:

In a time when everything was being swept away,

when “the whole world is becoming a giant concentration camp,”

[Etty Hillesum] felt one must hold fast to what endures

     —the encounter with God at the depths of one’s own soul and in other people. —Robert Ellsberg

[Robert Ellsberg, All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 1998, ©1997), 521.]

One must hold fast to what endures:

The encounter with God at the depths of one’s own soul…

        and in other people.

God dwells deep within us…

            within each one of us…

      and within every one of our neighbors on this earth,

                        even within the whole of creation!

This deep indwelling of God is exactly what Jesus prays for in today’s Gospel reading.

“As you, father, are in me and I am in you

may they also be in us,

     so that the world may believe that you have sent me….”

“I made your name known to them,

and I will make it known,

      so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them,

                    and I in them.”

My friends, God dwells within us,

            and we dwell within God.

This is our source of life…

            what a gift!

Paul and Silas freed a slave girl at the expense of being jailed.

Then Paul and Silas remained in jail even after their chains were broken

            and the doors were opened.

Jesus continued on his journey to the cross.

They are all witnesses to a different way of being in the world…

            a way of respect and humility and love,

       a way of generosity, abundance, grace, and forgiveness.

They are all witnesses to the fact that love overcomes fear and hate.

            That life overcomes death.

May our lives also bear such witness to God’s love and healing.

            Come, Lord Jesus, come… and dwell within us!  Amen.