Sermon June 1 2025 Acts 16:16ff Freedom!                                 Rev. Betsy Hogan

Have you ever felt quite pleased with yourself, and then later realized that God might have been cringing for you?

On Friday, at 10:30am, I set off for the Annual Meeting of the Maritime Regions and Bermuda and Gaspé in Sackville. And I was some pleased with myself. I’d finished all the things. I’d packed up the car, I’d gassed up the car, and I was on my way up to the 102. In plenty of time. In fact, I might even get there early. 

An hour later, I was back at the gas station in the rotary. Because when I’d gassed up my car, I’d set my wallet and phone on the roof to do the windows… and driven off, leaving them to be flung off the car in my wake. And of course they were gone.

In the subsequent hour, bank cards cancelled and replaced, back at home locking down access and changing every password, all I could think was how pleased with myself I’d been driving up to the 102 at having done such excellent work being a proper adult, and leaving for Conference on time…

And how God must have been doing one of those head-shaking face-plants of despair. Oh, the irony.

And then there was a knock at my door. It was a Halifax Transit driver. She’d stopped her bus at the rotary. She’d seen my sad little wallet and phone lying there, having been driven over and utterly flattened. She’d hopped down, picked it up, popped it into an envelope because of course it was smashed – and when she finished her shift, she came to my house to drop it off. 

It hadn’t been stolen at all. I wouldn’t have to replace my driver’s licence, my medicare card. Because she saw it there, and she could help, and so she did. Loretta the Halifax Transit driver. My kids immediately asked me if I’d told her she’d for sure wind up being the hero of a sermon… which I didn’t. But she is.

It’s always amazing and beautiful and reassuring, when we see it happen. That instinctive human kindness. When something’s happened and we CAN help – and so we do. It’s exactly what moved in her spirit in that moment. It moves in people’s spirits all the time. And it’s such a beautiful thing. As I kept telling her while trying not to bawl all over her. 

It's such a beautiful thing. And it’s exactly that same instinct that Paul and Silas keep having in the passage from Acts that Gayle just read for us. Where they see someone in distress, and they CAN help, so they DO. All through this complicated reading that involves everything from a slave girl possessed by a demon, to a kangaroo court and a prison, to an earthquake and a guard in despair, and a nice baptism at the end to really finish it all with a flourish – when Paul and Silas CAN help, they do. 

Though weirdly, if we look at HOW Paul and Silas help in all these various situations, it’s hard not to wonder if God kept doing head-shaking face-plants of despair the whole time. Because it’s like they keep sort of missing the big picture. It’s actually a little bit strange.

Take their dealings with the slave girl, for example. When Paul and Silas see that slave girl on this day, in this passage, it’s not the first time. She’s apparently been harassing them. Yelling at them. Every day. She's mysteriously gifted with a spirit that allows her to see the real truth about people, and her owner has apparently been making money off her as a roadside fortune teller.

And so for several days, so we’re told, whenever Paul and Silas have been walking past her to the place of prayer, she’s been yelling at them on the street. And finally Paul recognizes that the spirit that is within her is a demon of sorts that is possessing her. 

It’s a bit like the unclean spirits that Jesus would occasionally call out of people who were afflicted. We might talk now about seizures or mental illness or catatonic episodes, but at that time Paul would have understood that slave girl’s visions and yelling as possession by a demon. And that annoys or at least troubles him enough that he wants to respond. He can heal her. He can free her of this possession. And so he does!

And it’s just as wonderful when he does it as it ever was when Jesus did it. She’s free – finally free – of this tumultuous presence inside her that has overwhelmed who she really is and has made her a prisoner in her own body. In the name of Jesus Christ, Paul says to her, I order this spirit to come out of you. And it does. And she is suddenly and miraculously free.

Except... the thing is, she’s still a slave. And Paul never questions that. Never challenges it. If the power of Jesus’ message was that there could be freedom from the demons within us that hold us prisoner – our fears, our addictions, our broken places – and it WAS…. 

Then surely it was equally so that the power of Jesus’ message was that there could be freedom from the chains outside us that hold us prisoner just as securely. Like for example, poverty, or oppression, or…  slavery. 

But Paul doesn’t say a word. I imagine God rolling God’s eyes. The slave girl gets hauled off by her owner, and we never hear about her again. We know she was freed from her demon, but was she ever freed from being a slave? I imagine God, frustrated hand to forehead, how to communicate this. 

And then the moment comes. Paul and Silas are now experiencing a little imprisonment of their own, thanks to charges trumped up by the slave girl’s owner. They're captured, they're flogged, they're bound and shackled, and they're chucked into a prison dungeon. With a bunch of other prisoners. All miserable, all without hope. And Paul and Silas praying and singing for comfort as best they can. 

And suddenly, there's an earthquake! Which I can’t even imagine how terrifying that would be. I've been in earthquakes, but never when I was shackled in a stone dungeon. 

But when the earthquake's over... the prisoners look around them, and they're free! Their chains have been broken, the walls have fallen, the doors have been opened wide -- there's basically no more prison. And note to Paul and Silas: when God does freedom, God means it.

There’s a great quote from a Brazilian archbishop, Helder Carrera – you’ve probably heard it. “When I give food to the poor they call me a saint,” he said. “When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

They could have called him an earthquake. Because the freedom Jesus proclaimed was real everything-shattering freedom – freedom from the fears and demons that twist us up inside AND freedom from the cycles and systems that have kept people imprisoned in poverty and oppression. It’s real freedom – release to the captives AND an end to whatever's holding them captive. When God does freedom, God means it. 

That earthquake in that prison, that’s God communicating to Paul and Silas how much God means it. Release to the captives. The prisoners have been made free. 

But do they run? Oooo, I bet they started to! Until Paul, noticing that the prison guard is about to commit suicide because all the prisoners have gotten free on his watch, stops them. And “Don’t worry, Mr. Guard,” Paul calls to him. “We’re all still here!”

So helpful, isn't he, our Paul? Indeed, the guard is so impressed with him and his friend Silas that he wants to know more about this Jesus that they talk about. “Come to my house,” the guard urges him. “I’ll bind up your wounds and bring you some food.” And off they go. The guard and his two "prisoners". Only now… Paul and Silas are free.

But the rest of the prisoners? Well, we don’t really know. But considering the fact that the guard was only kept from committing suicide by Paul’s assurance that they hadn’t all run away, it seems entirely possible that in fact they all got nicely locked back up in their chains so the guard could take Paul and Silas home for breakfast. We certainly don't hear otherwise, that they all scooted off into freedom.

And I know things happened quickly, and the whole thing was a bit chaotic – but doesn’t it seem like maybe Paul missed an opportunity here? Wasn’t it Jesus who talked about loosing the prisoner from his chains? Letting the oppressed go free? 

Because sure, some of those prisoners had probably done some very bad things. But can we really assume that the system that shackled Paul and Silas to a wall in a dungeon on trumped-up charges wasn’t doing the same thing to other people? Can we really assume that what was happening in that prison was actually justice? Might there not have been good reason, in the name of Jesus, for Paul to speak up? To challenge the way things were?

But Paul doesn’t say a word. Leaving poor God, I can only imagine, banging God’s head against a wall because God can’t even with this. Paul goes off with Silas to the home of the guard, they have a nice breakfast and a good conversation, and in the end the guard’s whole family is baptized. And then? We don’t know. We know the guard was freed from his ‘unbelief’, but did his experience with Paul and Silas lead him to challenge the system that had imprisoned them and others? Did he go back to work the next day and start asking questions? And what about those other prisoners? 

The things that Paul does, in the name of Jesus, in this reading, that seems to be all about freedom – they’re good things. He makes things better for the slave girl, frees her from the spirit that binds her, and he makes things better for the guard, frees him from the unbelief that binds him. In both cases, Paul can help, and so he does. He does these nice Christian acts of freeing people from this and that, and it’s good. 

But he totally misses the import and power of the earthquake. When God does freedom, God means it. When Jesus promises release of the captives and letting the oppressed be free of the chains and the fear and the danger that’s binding them, God means it. 

Paul keeps domesticating the earthquake, and God wants him to embrace the earthquake for himself. God wants him to BE the earthquake for others. God wants him to let God show him that when God does freedom, God means it. 

God means it. For us and for others. It’s a cautionary tale. There are a lot of times when we see someone in trouble and we CAN help and so we do, or someone helps us, and that’s just a beautiful thing. And Loretta the Halifax Transit driver becomes the hero of a sermon.

But it’s a cautionary tale. Paul keeps missing the import and power of the earthquake – sometimes there’s more freedom that God is desperately trying to make us notice is needed and promised and possible. If we embrace it. If we let it do its work. If we let it be our work as God’s people. May God help us have that courage. Amen.