“Paul and Silas” Acts 16: 16-34

 Have you ever had a moment when reading Scripture when you find yourself thinking - wow, I wish this person would have said something different or that they would have done something a different way. I confess, I have those feelings when it comes to this passage of scripture in Acts 16. 

Paul and his companions are on a missionary journey throughout different regions of Asia. They are heading towards Troas, and one night Paul has this powerful vision. A man from Macedonia is pleading with him, crying out “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Paul wakes up, packs his things, and everyone heads a new direction - to Macedonia.

They have already been in the region for several days. They were heading into a place to pray when this female slave - possessed by a spirit of divination - starts a different pleading. Only her cry is, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.”

Now this is the part of the story where I really wish that Paul would have acted differently. After several days of this behavior - crying out and following Paul and his companions, Paul doesn’t speak to the girl. Instead he talks right past her, mostly out of annoyance at the Spirit within her. And yes, he did free her from possession by the Spirit, but he didn’t free her from being a slave to man. 

I wanted better from Paul. 

And yet, even if in my humanness I wished for more - more freedom, more compassion. I wanted this young women’s exploration to end. But Paul himself couldn’t have handled a whole lot more, because as often happens with Paul, chaos erupts. He finds that the girls owner is dragging him before the authorities - not to make a property complaint (such as he took away the spirit from the girl I own that I was using to make money off of her), but instead saying that Paul and Silas are politically subversive - living in a way that is throwing the city into an uproar. 

So the magistrates find them guilty - have them beaten and thrown into prison, with an order to guard them carefully. Who knows what they will do. Who knows what uproar they will cause next. 

And the chaos continues. For as Paul and Silas, still wounded from their beating, are singing hymns and praying to God, all the human restraints against them are broken free by a violent earthquake. The doors are opened, their shackles freed. 

And the guard, awakened by the noise and the shaking, thinks that he has failed at his post, failed at his duty, so he prepares to kill himself. But Paul stops him by calling out that they are still there. 

All of this was used by God for the glory of God to save the jailer that day. 

One girl, saved from a spirit. One jailer, saved from misplaced priorities. Which leads us to ask - what do we need saved from this day?

I am not nieve enough to think that you are entering into worship today without living the last six and a half days of your life. Some of you have faced heartache. Others have had to make hard decisions. Still others have burdens that are so heavy that they are physically weighing you down. Some of you have dealt with family issues or health concerns. We come into worship with all of the pressures of our week weighing on our hearts and minds. 

And yet, we come. We have come to worship, yes to be connected to one another and to to connect deeply with God, but also because this time shapes us and clarifies our values. Because that is what is at the heart of this text. That we all have things that we value - that we place our emphasis on - that are not of God. That don’t draw us closer to God or replace God in our lives. 

It is so easy to see that in the first part of this text about the young woman. The men who own her, who are exploiting her, they need saved from how they treat people. Saved from the fact that they were willing to keep this girl possessed by an evil spirit in order to make them money. Saved from the fact that they were not loving their neighbor as themselves. 

And they seem to miss that opportunity, at least in the text as it is before us this day. 

But the jailer, what he needs saved from makes us a bit more uncomfortable in our culture. Because he needs saved from the fact that his primary source of meaning is his profession. Now I can hear the objections - but Pastor Michelle, we need to work. Sure. But we do not need to let it hold us captive to the point where we put it above God. 

This man’s identity was so tied with his occupation that he was about to take his own life because he felt that he had failed his job. Failed at what he was told to do. Not by God, but by man. 

Occupations can be good - they can give us an opportunity to live out our gifts and talents in a way that honor God - but they should never replace God as being first in our hearts and lives. 

And when looked at through that lens - isn’t it funny that the ones who are most free in this story are Paul and Silas - even when they are in prison. Because there identidy and value - friends, it rests in God. No matter where they are and not matter what happens to them. 

I think one of the most dangerous places to be is when we are asked “what do you need saved from?” And we try to sidestep the answer by simply saying “I’m alright.” That’s like saying, “I’m good-enough for the time being, thank you very much” or “I can make do on my own.”

Friends, we all have things that hold our hearts bondage. That can destroy us if they are left uncheck. Things that we need to be shaken free from and which hold us captive. 

But too many of us don’t want to admit that and like to hide under the guise of being “alright” or “good enough.”

Here’s the thing, friends. Salvation is not a program for self-improvement. It is not something that we can work hard enough to bring about on our own. It takes an act of surrender - to surrender our lives to God, including what is holding us in bondage. Even if we may not be able to point to or name what that may be. 

It takes allowing God to search us and speak to us, calling us to new life. It requires allowing us to confess that our life isn’t all about us - its about connecting us to this much larger story of God. And its about actually allowing our lives to bear witness to that in the world. 

So let’s take the first step today. Let’s be in prayer, asking God to reveal to us that which is holding our hearts back from him - even if it looks like a good thing on the surface. Let’s actually surrender that to God and watch what our God can and will do. Amen.