I don’t know about you, but when I heard this Bible story, I got confused. I got confused, because I couldn’t quite figure out who is a slave, and who is free.
Now, I know: it does seem quite obvious: the slave-girl is the slave. It can’t be much plainer than that. She was a slave to a master whose interest in her was for her ability to make money for him. Through what the scripture calls a “spirit of divination,” she told fortunes. No doubt her primary customers were the tourists, folks passing through Philippi on their way from one place to another, people like Paul and his companions.
But as I heard this story, I became unsure. Paul cast out this spirit of divination, and as a result, he and one of his companions – a man by the name of Silas – were accused by the girl’s masters of depriving them of their livelihood. Well, that’s not quite the way they worded it; such a thing would be hard to prove. So instead they said that Paul and Silas were “advocating customs that were not lawful” for Romans to adopt or observe. In other words, they were making converts out of Romans, something that was against the law.
Is that any easier to prove? I don’t know; but really, it doesn’t matter, because the slave-girl’s owners were rich enough and powerful enough that they could have sent Paul and Silas to jail, no matter what they said.
So Paul and Silas were in jail, in the innermost cell of the prison, their feet fastened in stocks that tortured them by keeping their legs apart, their backs blistered and bleeding from the flogging they had been given.
Who’s free, and who is not? Clearly, Paul and Silas are not free; they are chained up and in prison. But wait. What’s that sound? Can you hear it? It’s coming from that innermost cell, and yet it seems so out-of-place, coming from there.
It’s the sound of singing.
Do people sing in prison? We sing because we’re happy. We sing because we’re free.
See what I mean about not being sure about who’s free, and who is not?
Suddenly there was an earthquake; the prison doors were opened and all the chains unfastened. When the jailer saw this, he drew his sword to kill himself. He knew that he would be held responsible for the prisoner’s escape; better to die now than later, he figured. At least if he killed himself now, he could avoid any torture or beatings.
But wait: the prisoners were still there! Upon this discovery, the jailer rushed to them and pleaded with them, asking what he needed to do in order to be saved, and by saved he meant what he needed to do to find wholeness, to get his life back.
But doesn’t the jailer already have a life? He has a job … and the prisoners haven’t gone anywhere, so “no harm no foul,” right? But the jailer is acting like he’s the one who is enslaved. He’s acting like he’s the one trapped in a corner, the one who needs to be rescued.
Could it be that there are different kinds of enslavement, some more visible than others? Could it be that there are different kinds of freedom, some more true than others? Could it be that the jailer is living a life of enslavement, a life of captivity, and Paul and Silas – even though they are in prison – are the ones who are truly free?
Last week, I read a story about a woman who went snowshoeing, and it got me thinking. All her life, this woman had wanted to go snowshoeing, to be able to walk and hike in the snow. Finally, she got her chance. She got some snowshoes, and ventured out to explore a snowy-white landscape.
However, she hadn’t gone very far when some cross-country skiers came up behind her and passed her by. She watched them ski on by, slush up a low rise, coast down the other side, and continue on their way.
All of a sudden, this woman found herself envying the way they looked on their skis. She envied the way they got a free ride every time they went down a hill, the way they could coast effortlessly, enjoying a little rest on their trek.
After seeing them pass by, all of a sudden it seemed to her that trodding along in snowshoes wasn’t all that much fun. In fact, the whole time she was snowshoeing, doing that one thing that she had always wanted to do, all she could think about was how much she wanted a pair of skis.
She had expected to be satisfied to get the snowshoes she wanted, but what she discovered is that that wanting, that longing within her, was not going to go away. As soon as she had what she wanted, she found herself wanting something else.
It wasn’t because the snowshoes weren’t what she had expected; they were exactly what she had expected. However, she didn’t know how to transition from being in a state of wanting to being in a state of satisfaction. Satisfaction, she found, was elusive. It was hard work to be satisfied. A state of wanting seemed much more natural. A state of wanting, in fact, seemed inescapable.
To watch her, snowshoeing through the trees, one would think that she was as free as a bird. But inside, she felt enslaved to a never-ending stream of wants. Inside, she was captive to a never-ending flow of desires.
The jailer in today’s scripture story: Could it be that he was the one who was enslaved, bound by chains less visible but more real than the chains which, for a time, kept Paul and Silas in their cell?
The jailer’s life had been shaped by the kingdom of Rome; and in the kingdom of Rome, true freedom was in short supply. The owners of the slave-girl also lived in the kingdom of Rome. It was all they had ever known. It was what shaped their life. It was what taught them to believe that more power and more money led to more enjoyment and more satisfaction.
The problem is that “more” is always a relative term. “More” can never be achieved. Once you get “more,” there will always be another “more” that you don’t have. And so you become stuck in a pattern – a never-ending pattern – of always trying to get more. What you have now is not enough. You need to have more.
When the jailer saw that Paul and Silas did not escape when they could have, he realized that they had somehow overcome this rat-race lifestyle. They had learned to break the cycle. They had learned to beat the system, or at least, not let the system define who they were and how they lived. They were free to find satisfaction with whatever situation they were in. They were able to be content and at ease. They were able to be free.
No wonder the jailer pleaded that they might show him how to find salvation and freedom.
Our society today is not that much different than the ancient kingdom of Rome. Even more so than ancient Romans, we have been trained to want what we don’t have, and to never be satisfied with what we do have. In fact, “trained” is, I think, too soft a word. “Brainwashed” might be closer to the truth. If there’s something that we want, and we do get it, are we able to sit back in enjoyment and gratitude? How often do we say to ourselves, “I got what I wanted, now I’m happy?” How often are we truly satisfied, content with what we have?
As soon as we get what we want, we immediately find something else to want. We replace one longing with another, so that we are always living in a state of unfulfilled desires, always wanting something, always saying to ourselves, “if only.” “If only had had this. If only I had that.”
We are enslaved by this way of thinking. Perhaps we are even possessed by it. It is the paradigm that guides the way we live. And we’ve been living with this spirit of wanting since we were infants. It was drilled into us every time someone asked us, “What do you WANT for Christmas? What do you WANT for your birthday?”
My birthday comes one month after Christmas, and I can remember as a child that I had hardly got the wrapping paper off the Christmas presents when I would be asked by well-meaning relatives what I wanted for my birthday. I hadn’t even had time to enjoy the gifts I got for Christmas yet. There was no time for satisfaction. No time for enjoyment. Almost no time for gratitude. Life, I learned, is about wanting.
The brainwashing continues throughout our lives. Every day, we see hundreds of messages that reinforce the importance of wanting, messages that convince us that our lives are incomplete unless we get more. That’s why the car we have is never good enough. That’s why the TV we have is not good enough. That’s why the spouse we have is not good enough. Because no matter how good things are, we know that there’s something better out there – there always is – and we’ve been brainwashed to want something better, something different, something new.
That’s our enslavement. With all these wants programmed into us, it’s like we’re not even living our own lives, that we are possessed, that we are trying to live somebody else’s life: the life our society, through advertising and other media, tells us we should be living.
But look again at the Bible story. Look again at the gospel. There is freedom. Through Jesus, God sets us free. When we live in the kingdom of God, we are free from the spirits and demons which possess us.
When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God – and he talked about the kingdom of God a lot – he was intentional about describing it as an alternative to the kingdom of Rome, the kingdom by which all lives were shaped. The kingdom of Rome was about power and status; the kingdom of God is about service and community. The kingdom of Rome was about accumulating wealth; the kingdom of God is about sharing. The kingdom of Rome was about scarcity, never having enough; the kingdom of God is about abundance. The kingdom of Rome is about fighting one’s way to the top of the food chain; the kingdom of God is about lions and lambs lying down together.
When we choose to break free from the kingdom of Rome and to live in the kingdom of God, we learn to see that much of how we were living was how society told us to live. We were living our lives on the basis of needing to prove ourselves, and the primary way we did that was through the accumulation of material wealth. In order to constantly prove ourselves in the eyes of society, we had to have more, and we could never be satisfied with what we had.
But in the kingdom of God, there is freedom. In the kingdom of God, we are free. Free to follow our passion. Free to live our own lives, the lives to which God calls us. Free to ignore the judgmental stares of society when we go against conventional wisdom, and dare to be satisfied and grateful. Free to dwell in the love and grace of God. Free to sing hymns of praise, even in the darkest prison cell.
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