Encouraged

Acts 16:16-34

One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a female slave 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 the 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 marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men, these Jews, are disturbing our city and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us, being 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 in 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.

In a dog-eat-dog world, when money runs things and there’s a huge chasm between the haves and the have-nots, people will do anything to protect their wealth, even or maybe especially if, they are getting the wealth unethically. But—when there is a huge disparity between those who have money and those who don’t, when the monied lose their means of exploiting others for profit, the masses aren’t exactly sympathetic. So that means that the people who feel threatened, the people at risk of losing money, have to come up with a different strategy, a strategy to get the regular folks on their side. That’s what we’re seeing at play in the passage that Sue just read for us.

This week we’re starting right where we left off last week; Paul has just converted the household of the wealthy and hospitable Lydia, and the apostles are still hanging out in Macedonia. They come upon a slave girl who has some kind of sixth sense, some kind of soothsaying power, which is presenting itself in a way that to our modern sense would probably read as mental illness—she’s following Paul around (correctly) yelling that he’s a servant of God. Paul eventually tires of the constant yelling and he miraculously heals the slave girl. That he doesn’t seem to do this out of compassion, and that we don’t know what becomes or this slave girl is troubling to me, but in this case, for the purposes of this sermon, it kind of is what it is. I guess we can be optimistic, and hope that this girl was able to find a different way of life, not being exploited by these men.

But the men are… not happy. What would seem to be their main source of income is gone in and instant. They know that few people who care about their personal loss of money, especially due to the fact that it was the expense of a human being. So they decide to present Paul and Silas as disruptors. They present them as people coming in to destroy the Roman way of life. “‘These men, these Jews, are disturbing our city and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us, being Romans, to adopt or observe.’" Never mind that there were no laws at the time saying Romans couldn’t convert to Judaism; never mind that the Jews were legally allowed to practice their religion within Roman colonies, even if it was frowned upon by some of the more bigoted Romans. So this is a lie. These men are straight up lying to protect their material interests and to punish the men who took away their deeply unethical livelihood.

And their lie worked. “The crowd joined in in attacking them” and the magistrates, apparently uncaring that nothing the apostles did was actually illegal, stripped them, beat them, and threw them in jail.

Right now, a man whose name you have surely heard by this point, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has just been returned to the United States under dubious criminal allegations, but not after he was illegally imprisoned for months in El Salvador. He was living and working legally in the US, married to a US citizen, they have a child together. He was arrested, deported and imprisoned by mistake, because of an “administrative error”, and he has been ordered to be returned to the United States. He had one loitering charge on his record, and otherwise had been living a regular American life. Those are the facts. But you’d never know that by what those in power are saying to attempt to legitimize their wildly inhumane mistake and decision to keep an innocent man jailed thousands of miles away from his family, in a country that isn’t his own. He’s been called a terrorist. He’s been called a public safety threat. A very obviously doctored photo of Garcia with the text “MS-13” photoshopped into his tattooed hands has been the current regime’s main piece of evidence to keep an innocent man imprisoned. These are lies. These are the same kinds of lies powerful Romans citizens and magistrates were using to attempt to slow the spread or full-on stop what they saw as threats to their unjust way of life, threats in the form of healing and teaching from Jesus’ apostles.

It's a strategy of othering fellow human beings. It’s a strategy of dehumanization. There’s a reason the powerful will refer to immigrants as “illegals” or exponentially worse, as “animals,” actually portraying our fellow humans as a species below us. It’s the same strategy that was used to keep Black folks enslaved in this country for so long. It’s a philosophy of cruel and irrational fear. “These men, these Jews,” the Romans say (can’t you picture the sneer on their faces and hear it in their voices at the word Jews?) are disturbing their city, and the insinuation is that they are not compatible with the Roman way of life, and are therefore a threat to it. By framing these innocent men as illegal disruptors, they’re othering them so that they can get other Roman citizens who would may otherwise be sympathetic to the apostles’ cause—one of justice and equity for all—on their side. This is what those behind the cruel ICE deportations are doing— they’re claiming the hundreds they’ve deported are criminals, and they’ve done this with little to no evidence and no due process. It’s the same thing that’s happening to those who speak up about the plight of Palestinians; Mahmoud Khalil is still in a Louisiana detention facility, unable to even meet his newborn son, for the alleged crime of protesting against the continued war on Gaza. Our secretary of state makes wild claims of terrorism, saying it is un-American and a threat to the country to exercise his right to freedom of speech. He is being othered by this regime in order that they can continue their reign of terror against anyone who does not agree with them. These dehumanizing, and frightening tactics and raids are what has provoked the unrest happening across the country in Los Angeles right now, unlikely to end any time soon if National Guard troops are indeed sent to the city.

We’re living in trying, chaotic, and cruel times. I find myself lamenting yet again about how closely our modern day is paralleling with the oppressive Roman rule of the New Testament. But this passage indeed has a happy ending, one we can look to to give us hope.

While the action the second part of the passage here is indeed dramatic, literally supernatural—an earthquake by the grace of God that undoes the chains and locks holding the prisoners of this jail captive—I don’t believe that is the main event that leads the jailer to be moved to conversion to Jesus. I believe it’s simply compassion and grace that leads the jailer to change his ways.

Just a few chapters earlier in Acts, Peter escapes from jail, and the king has the guards who were watching over him executed. Assuming this was also his cruel fate, the jailer, upon seeing the cells empty, is about to kill himself, when Paul interjects: “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” Rather than sprinting out of the prison, rather than leaving the jailer to the same fate as Peter’s guards, rather than doing harm to him themselves, as some surely would be wont to do, looking at him as an enemy, Paul, Silas, and the other prisoners remain. And they save this man from taking his own life.

Surely the earthquake had… something to do with the jailer’s awe and humility, but it is after not the earthquake, but after Paul stopping him from drawing his sword on himself that he falls to his knees and trembles and asks how he can join up with them, how he can leave this life of bars and chains behind.

I wonder how many more hearts would be moved, how many acts of violence could be prevented by a little compassion; by a little understanding, by some listening and communication. Presumably, Paul knows that will happen to this jailer if he’s left alone by an empty jail cell; but what he doesn’t know is this jailer’s spirit; if he is humble or proud, whether he is open-minded or bigoted, but it doesn’t matter—in order to save a life, he takes a risk by not immediately fleeing the jail.

And he is rewarded for taking this risk—not just in converting more people to their cause, but also in radical hospitality. Just like with Lydia, about whom we talked last week, the story ends with a celebratory meal, people from different walks of life, different backgrounds, joining together to rejoice thanks to the love and compassion gifted by God. It’s a beautiful ending to a harrowing story.

How do we achieve such an ending? How do we create a world in which we’re not constantly on edge because of manufactured scarcity, because of irrational fears of people who are different than us? We have to push back—we have to push back against dehumanizing rhetoric and propaganda. We have to do everything in our power to make sure every person on this country’s soil receives the due process they’re entitled to. To only grant some people these rights is to go against Christian values of full equity, equality, and unconditional love. To make up false charges and lie in order to enact unethical or just full-on illegal punishment, to whip up lynch mobs of public opinion, makes us no better than the ancient Romans, no better than the Jim Crow-era South.

We can be better. We can recognize that it’s not material wealth that’s important; it’s not power over those who are different than us. We can recognize that everyone, from the most hardened of criminals to the wrongfully accused and innocent, to the peaceful protesters deserve a trial, deserve the most basic of rights. This should not be controversial to us as Christians, or to anyone in living in a democracy.

The jailer, upon hearing Paul’s voice realizes this. He realizes that everyone deserves the opportunity to have their voice heard, and the public deserves to have the opportunity to hear other voices. He sees this beautiful reciprocity at play in Paul’s remaining at the jail in hopes to stop his supposed enemy from harming himself. Paul and Silas are given a second chance by this supernatural quake; and so they make sure this guard as a chance to turn to a new way of life—one of understanding, radical hospitality, and love.

This Macedonian  saga ends after our passage today, in the following five verses— it’s sort of a full circle moment, where they wind up back with Lydia, their new disciple, and wealthy benefactor, who continues this streak of radical hospitality by allowing the apostles into her home once again. When they arrive Lydia’s, they “encouraged brothers and sisters there” before departing. Lydia has apparently been housing more new Jesus-followers, and the apostles take the time to tell their story and remind them of the great power God and the love of Christ that freed them from their unlawful stint in jail. And God, don’t we need encouragement now? That may be what we need most in this chaotic time… encouragement to keep doing our small part in our small corner of this world; encouragement to keep doing the work of forgiveness, of compassion, and of love that we’re called to carry out.

So encourage each other. Lift each other up. Take the grace you’ve been blessed with, that we’ve all been blessed with, and spread it around so that the world doesn’t get even more bogged down in despair and fear being driven by the cruel in power. Encourage each other by not giving into the lies and the fear. Encourage each other by remembering and retelling stories like that of the Upper Valley’s own Mohsen Mahdawi, a rare bright spot amidst the cruel chaos of the world, thanks to the wider community right here, that rallied around him and encouraged him and each other, not giving up on the hope that justice can actually prevail, and the peaceful and innocent can be free.

Encourage each other, remind each other that liberation is possible. Encourage each other by acting with compassion towards all people, by connecting with people, by being open to people changing and learning. Encourage each other by being open to changing and learning yourself. Encourage each other by praying and singing hymns together, as Silas a Paul did in their cell, ushering in that liberating quake. Encourage that liberating earthquake to come— so that God’s power of unconditional love and liberation will indeed free us all. Amen.