Bob Maddox's Blog

Acts 16:16-34
Church Parlor, 9:00 AM
Bob Maddox

Even though Rich Smith plans to preach from Psalm 42, by “popular” request, the study group will work on the Acts passage as a way to follow up on last week’s discussion. Still read Psalm 42 in preparation for the sermon.

Paul and Silas in Prison
One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’ She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour.
But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market-place before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, ‘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.’ The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.’ The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ They answered, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’ They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

Last week, Rich Smith introduced us to Lydia, the Philippian seller of purple cloth. She and a small group of her God-fearing friends had gathered by the river for a prayer service. That’s where Paul and his friends, including the elusive “we” companion met them.

Evidence continues to accumulate that Paul focused his evangelistic efforts on this informal network of non-Jews scattered around the Empire who had found in Judaism spiritual fulfillment. Indeed, most current Acts scholars say he rarely went beyond this cluster of people with pre-dispositions to the Jewish understanding of God as he preached Jesus. The gospel spread out from these God-fearers according to a considerable body of current scholarship.

A recent book that I have begun to read makes much of Paul’s relationships with his own Jewish community. At least two themes run through this book (not an easy read, by the way). The first is Paul never lost his love for and appreciation of his Jewish heritage. He would probably never have called himself “Christian” certainly if that meant he was no longer Jewish.

The second theme is most New Testament writers, including the author of Luke/Acts negatively distorted the relationships between Jesus and Paul and the Jews. This happened because by the time the gospels and Acts were written the break between the Jesus branch of Judaism and the traditional branch were steadily diverging. The Gospel of John is especially hard on the Jews laying at their feet the death of Jesus. Overwhelmingly contemporary New Testament scholarship insists that the Jewish temple authorities played an instigating, gad-fly role in the death of Jesus. Only the Romans could crucify in that period. The Romans must have decided Jesus posed threats to the Pax Romana. This distortion has created profound agony for the Jewish people for much of the past two thousand years. This distortion certainly gave cover to the prejudice with which Jews in much of the western world struggled. This deep hatred set up the Jews under Hitler for the Holocaust. We Christians have much ancestral repenting to do. It’s too bad that now, all too often, the oppressed becomes oppressor in Israel. But here, as with the ancients, we must not blame all Israelis for injustice. Our pilgrims from last fall came back reporting on strong peace efforts among many Israelis.

I went to seminary in a scholarly climate that denigrated the vitality of the Jewish faith in the time of Jesus. My professors pointed out how many tiny rules and regulations Jewish religious leaders had imposed on the everyday life of the Jews. My professors would have called the Jewish faith of Jesus’ day “late Judaism” suggesting the vibrancy of Jewish faith was a thing of the past. The tome I am currently wading through cites a small army of 19th and 20th century New Testament who insist that Judaism in the days of Jesus and especially Paul was actually making a strong paradigm shift. New vitality was rising from the discomfort of the Pharisees, so often vilified by the gospels and subsequent history, over the ritualized and commercialized Temple practices. At least strains of Pharisaism had begun to preach a religion of the heart. Perhaps John the Baptist emerged on the backs of this resurgence rather than in complete reaction to the emptiness he saw in Temple worship of his day. For some time, I have been discussing the unfortunate way the gospel writers describe Jesus’ ongoing conflicts with the Pharisees. To the degree these scraps occurred, they may well have been a dispute among comrades rather than disputes as enemies.

Okay, today’s text. Notice the callous disregard the slave owners had for the troubled young woman. This callousness reflected prevailing attitude of the world then and in our own history of owners to slaves. Where ever did we hatch up the idea that it was permissible, even divinely ordained for one human being to own another human being! This certainly has to be an enduring blight on us human beings. Sad to say, the attitude has not gone away. Even in our world, the haves think it’s the law of the jungle to abuse the have nots up and down the corporate and political ladder. I can hope the curve against this prevailing injustice is generally up. But sometimes it is hard to tell.

We now would give the young woman’s mental condition some sort of technical name. Maybe autistic, maybe a form of bipolarism? In those days she was simply demon possessed. She must have had a second sense. She may have had a flair for the dramatic. At any rate, the owners made money off her divinations. With Paul and his friends in town, strangers, perhaps she began stalking them. She cried out they were preaching in the name of the “Most High God.” This would translate into Zeus (IB). She said they were defaming the name of the leading god by their preaching. The way Acts tells the story day after day she shouted after them. Paul, never noted for his patience, grew weary of the taunts. I can see him trying to exercise forbearance, attempting to ignore her, walking away. Finally, in exasperation, he shouted out to the demons in her, “In the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her.” And the demons complied.

First, this became a retelling of the classic stories such as Elijah and the prophets of Baal from 1 Kings of pitting one god against another. In this case, Paul put Jesus up against Jesus. “Now let’s see which one has more power,” Paul in effect said. Jesus won. Zeus could not hold the girl but the Spirit of Jesus could free her. This pericope aims to demonstrate the power of Jesus ultimately over the powers that dominated the Roman Empire. True, Paul did not attack the institution of slavery. We wish he had. The acceptance of slavery as a way of life was simply too deeply embedded in their collective psyche. He did attack the exploitation. He did make sure that the stunned crowd knew he and his friends did not preach in the name of the Most High God. What’s more, the Jesus they preached had power over the demons that lived in the girl.

The haves always lash out when threatened. The owners were not about to take this lying down. Lest we turn all our righteous indignation at the owners of the volcanic oil catastrophe, let’s at least balance that anger with our own consumer habits. (I finally remembered to take my reusable bag to the Giant yesterday. Maybe the habit will become sufficiently ingrained to take hold.) With a wave of Paul’s hand, the owners’ income dried up. No matter that a tortured human being might now be able to live a more normal life—still a slave but at least not a tortured one.

In fury the owners stirred up the crowd. That’s always a good ploy. Stir up the crowd. All manner of folks today make a living, often a huge living, from stirring up the crowd. Too bad the crowd let’s itself be stirred up so easily. Hauled before a kangaroo court, beaten severely and plopped into the town jail, apparently in the most awful and remote part of the jai and shackled for good measure.

The idea of Paul in prison raises some questions. Typically the Roman Empire did not have jails, certainly not in any modern sense. Justice was quick and mean. A person convicted of a crime that did not call for death was summarily beaten, his property confiscated, placed under strict house arrest or exiled. If he was convicted to die, most often the sentence was carried out immediately. He was strangled, beheaded, hanged or crucified. The infamous prison in Rome housed those political prisoners awaiting public execution or those destined to be strangled or starved to death.

What was Paul’s prison like? Probably a deep hole in the ground or cave. Wikipedia gives us a picture of “Paul’s prison.” This is probably a site that can attract the coins of eager tourists but with little or no historicity. Is this famous scene of Paul and Silas singing at midnight a piece of tradition that did not actually happen? No one knows. Too many sermons have come from that prison drama for me to disparage especially on flimsy evidence. So let’s give the story to Acts.

The scene certainly shows the faith and fortitude of Paul and Silas. It again shows the power of Jesus to come into the worst of situations to bring healing and hope. It shows the love of Paul for the Jesus he served. Grace marked the spot. Forgive and redeem the jailer. Offer him the good news of Jesus. Baptize him and his family on the spot. Make the best of a bad situation. Take advantage of God’s good work in the moment.

Acts does give us a cool side of Paul. Rather than leave the jail by the back door so as to save face for the magistrates who had improperly tossed him in jail, he insisted on leaving through the front door. I can see him waving smartly at the crowd that might have gathered to witness the outcome of the whole sordid mess.

And there was Lydia and her family welcoming the freed prisoners with open arms. Did she risk something of her own standing in the community by her friendship with Paul? We don’t know. Maybe she was rich enough for it not to matter. Maybe she had found such profound fulfillment in her new found relationship with Paul and the Jesus he preached that public onus mattered not at all.

As always, much to talk about on Sunday morning. Take the time to read and mediate on Psalm 42. Come praying for the service, for Rich as he and Pam go through the excitement and trauma of moving.

Robert L. Maddox