Acts 16:16-34 Commentary

Seeing Double

A unique aspect of Luke’s writing—both in the Gospel as well as the book of Acts—is the way he pairs stories.  Placing two characters back-to-back we are meant to wonder what makes them different.  Usually, it’s all kinds of social, economic, political, religious demographic factors intended to demonstrate that, ordinarily, these two people would live wholly separate lives.  They have nothing in common!  Except Jesus.  Because in these miracle stories, both this kind of person and that kind of person find healing, redemption or protection in Jesus Christ, through the ministry of the early church.  Now these two people who would otherwise live wholly separate lives now belong to one another in the most important way.

Let’s take this text as an example. Backing up for a second, we remember how these two narratives follow after the introduction of Lydia, a God-fearing Gentile and a woman of great wealth and standing in society.  She is saved and becomes part of, in fact benefactress to the early church.  In the first story we find a young girl. She had a “spirit of divination,” some way of foretelling the future or seeing things as they really are beneath the surface.  Her declaration about Paul and the disciples: “These men are servants of God Most High! They are declaring to you the way of salvation!” And her seeming inability to keep quiet about it lend validity to her claim of spiritual insight.  Some might stop here and see the problem as one, primarily, of witchcraft.  But the text demonstrates that her situation is far more complex.  She was being used to make a profit “for her owners.” She is enslaved and exploited.  Today we might say she is being “trafficked,” called on to turn (spiritual not sexual) tricks to make bank for her pimps. In other words, this is someone on the underside of society, oppressed and without agency. She is doubly-trapped. First by a kind of demon-possession and then by those who earn their profit from her misfortune.

In the second story, we encounter a jailer – a man accountable to and responsible for a household.  Someone working for the Roman Empire, a cog in the wheel of empire. When an earthquakes shakes the prison and unlocks the doors (a remarkable feat for a run-of-the-mill earthquake) the man is flooded with shame. The prisoners he has been guarding have surely absconded on his watch. He is also likely filled with fear at the retribution headed his way, a well-founded fear as we see what happened to the prison guards on duty when Peter escaped jail in Acts 12:19.  He is in the middle of attempting suicide when Paul and Silas call out. He asks for their help. He is also doubly-trapped. First by political allegiance that cares little for his humanity and then by the shame and fear of failing at his post.

Get Me Out of this Mess!

Most renderings of the text have him asking, “what must I do to be saved?” Because of course Bible scholars and preachers love that question. You couldn’t ask for a better tee-up. It is precisely what we pulpiteers want to preach on! But NT Wright, drawing on the wisdom of Greek scholar Stephen Neill, argues that the more faithful rendering of the text is something like, “Can you help me get out of this mess?” Taking both of these stories together, this is an excellent question because, my goodness, what a mess!  Spiritual, economic, political and social oppression.  Yes, we will get to the question of salvation as we have been conditioned by centuries of Christianity to mean it — the deliverance of one’s soul from sin and death through the forgiveness and new life offered in Jesus Christ.  But not just yet and not only that.

What Paul and the early church are doing here is continuing  the wholistic ministry of Jesus Christ.  After all, a bit of religion telling people to be nice, to be respectable, to go along and not make a fuss never got anyone killed.  What Jesus—and his apostles after him—did was challenge the powers and principalities of the spiritual and the earthly realms. What got Jesus killed is what got Paul and Silas thrown into prison.  While we might imagine that setting a young girl free of a demonic possession or alleviating symptoms of severe mental illness would be (should be!) Lauded, since it undermined the economic well-being of her owners, it could not be tolerated. NT Wright observes, “Not for the last time, when the gospel suddenly impacts someone’s trade, they turn nasty.”

Will Willimon characteristically embellishes the scene, “Religion has somehow gotten mixed up with economics here, and so her owners do what the vested interests always do when their interests are threatened.  The girls’ owners say to the judge, ‘We’re not against a little religion—as long as it is kept in its place.’ But ‘these men are Jews and they are disturbing our city.’ … No, we do not come right out and say that our financial self-interest is threatened; we say that our nation is threatened.” And others in the crowd realize that if one persons’ business is threatened by the freedom on offer by these evangelists, then whose to say it won’t be their slave set free next?!  So they band together, first beating Paul and Silas themselves and then ensuring that the state will finish the job on their behalf.

This is the kind of mess we are waiting for Jesus to set right.  We see in both of these stories glimmers of that hope realized, though far from perfectly restored.

Illustration/Ascension Connection:

Consider including The Heidelberg Catechism questions 47 and 49 somewhere in the liturgy as they address the implications of Jesus’ ascension and the even-now presence of the Resurrected Christ in heaven in a way that aptly illustrates the hope and longing of this morning’s passage:

Q: But isn’t Christ with us until the end of the world as he promised us?

A: Christ is true human and true God. In his human nature Christ is not now on earth; but in his divinity, majesty, grace and Spirit he is never absent from us.

Thus, the miracles that Peter could accomplish, the thankfulness Paul and Silas could express even when beaten and imprisoned and the hope they could hold out for those oppressed by the world as it is demonstrate that, by the power of the Spirit, Christ is not absent from us.

Question 49 asks, “How does Christ’s ascension to heaven benefit us?” The last part of the answer includes this assurance, “He sends his Spirit to us on earth as a corresponding pledge. By the Spirit’s power we seek not earthly things but the things above, where Christ is, sitting at God’s right hand.” So, too, when we long for and act toward the amelioration of spiritual, economic, political and social oppression, we are learning to shape our desires more to the kingdom of heaven than the kingdom of earth.