Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-august-2-2023
Acts 16:16-24
16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” 18 She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.
19 When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. 20 They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar 21 by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”
22 The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. 23 After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully.
24 Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
One of the things people have commented on in our discussions of the TV series The Chosen is that Jesus is frequently shown laughing and joking. He laughs after just about all the miracles he performs, and sometimes interjects humor into moments of tension. Personally, I suspect that’s what Jesus was probably like. Children and non-religious people enjoyed being around him, and neither group is attracted to grave and serious types.
It might seem blasphemous to some of my fellow Presbyterians, but there are a few stories in the Bible seem genuinely funny, whether they were intended to be or not. Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles is one of those stories.
This passage appears in a part of Acts in which Paul and Silas are doing their ministry in the city of Philippi. As the two apostles are on their way through the city, they attract the attention of a slave girl who is described as having “a spirit by which she predicted the future.” The slave girl follows them, loudly announcing that Paul and Silas are servants of God who are teaching “the way to be saved.”
Doesn’t that seem like strange behavior for a person who is possessed? There are quite a few stories in the New Testament in which a person is possessed by an evil spirit. But that doesn’t really seem to be the case here, because the spirit was causing her to announce in a loud voice the very thing that Paul and Silas were saying in their teaching and preaching. So is it possible this slave girl was possessed by a good spirit? Or a neutral one? Do such things even exist?
The part of the story that strikes me as comical is the picture of Paul, trying to carry on his ministry, but struggling to get a word in edgewise over the shouting of this slave girl.
Personally, I’ve preached over the noise of ambulances, firetrucks, and once even a train. I’ve preached over crying babies and routinely had Teddy the cat jump up on the table when I was recording the sermon before we started live-streaming. None of that phases me. (Well, the train was a challenge.) But I can’t help thinking that even if someone is agreeing with you, a couple of days of incessant yelling would eventually get on your very last nerve.
And apparently that’s what happens in today’s story. After several days of putting up with this girl following them around the city shouting all the time, Paul gets so tired of it that he turns around, and in the name of Jesus, commands the spirit to come out of her. And it does.
The story gets serious then, because it turns out the slave girl’s owners don’t see anything funny about losing her services as a fortune teller. They’ve lost a productive asset. Her profitable gift has gone away with the spirit that had been possessing her. So the slave girl’s owners literally drag Paul and Silas into court.
The way the story is told, the girl’s owners are motivated entirely by the loss of income from her services. But if you remember, that’s not the complaint they file in court. Instead, the girl’s owners accuse Paul and Silas of disturbing the peace and teaching unauthorized theology.
I think that’s a really interesting detail of the story. The slave girl’s owners act like they’re deeply concerned for public order and for religious orthodoxy, when the truth is that all they really care about is the income they’ve lost. Some things never change. If you listen to the voices debating public issues in our time, those voices always couch their arguments in terms of the public good. But in the vast majority of cases, the policies those voices advocate just happen to be in their own material interest. Claiming you’re concerned with the greater good when you’re really concerned with your own interests is called ‘hypocrisy.’
That’s probably important for us to keep in mind. As followers of Jesus, we’re called to be devoted first and foremost to the advancement of God’s kingdom, and we should be sharply watchful for signs of hypocrisy in ourselves. Whatever we say we believe, we should always be on guard against baptizing our own interests and calling them “God’s will.”
And this story illustrates that standing up for God’s interests will sometimes bring the followers of Jesus into conflict with the commercial interests of this world. That happened when followers of Jesus spoke out against slavery. It happened again when followers of Jesus spoke out for restrictions on smoking. It’s happening today when followers of Jesus speak up against the effects of pollution on God’s creation. If we’re faithful to our calling as disciples of Jesus, it’s probably inevitable that there will be times when his message will conflict with the vested interests of the powers of this world.
This story shows how wrong it is to claim that the Bible has no relevance to today’s world. I’ll bet you could find at least a half-dozen applications for this story in today’s edition of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.
Let’s pray. Lord, this story reminds us that the powers of this world are not just political or military powers, but are financial powers, too. Give us the courage and commitment to speak the truth from the teachings of Jesus to powers of all kinds, and to trust that you will strengthen us when those powers strike back against us. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 105 and 106; II Samuel 3:22-39; and Mark 6:47-56. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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