Paul and the Slave Girl: What about me?

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.   ~Albert Schweitzer

Sharing the sermon I preached on Sunday, May 8, 2016 which was the 7th Sunday of Easter.   Our resurrection practice for the week is Compassion and we viewed our last Resurrection video from The Work of The People, "This is not the end," which featured Dwight Peterson, PHD, a terminally ill theologian.

Theologian on hospice, Dwight Peterson says, “It’s a painful world … but no matter how painful it is, God is always with me.”  He says, “Christianity doesn’t ignore the pain of the world, it goes through it and provides hope beyond it.  This world is not the end.”    

God loved the world so much,

that whoever believes in Jesus will have eternal life!

“This world is not the end.”  This is Good News, isn’t it? 

In his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell says, “If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody.”  He goes on to say that, “It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display.”  

For me, the intersection of Dwight Peterson’s story and these radical acts of “compassion” that Rob Bell talks about and then moving into our scripture passage from Acts this morning … the commonality I find to connect the three of these is “pain.”

How many of us have not felt the searing pain of loss in our lives … loss of persons we love, loss of homes to natural disaster such and flooding or fire, loss of jobs and livelihood, loss of marriage due to divorce … etc.    During our healing process, questions emerge.  Why God Why?  Looking for reasons that we are suffering … we blame ourselves, we blame God, we blame others, it’s natural and normal and as Dwight Peterson says, “Part of being a Christian is giving our whole selves to God.”  In our pain we can experience the comfort of God for God is the one who comforts us in all our troubles so that we may be able to comfort those experiencing any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.2 Corinthians 1:4

Through our pain and our suffering, seeds of compassion are planted which take root in our soul and invite us to reach out in radical acts of hospitality and welcoming the unseen … the stranger, even the stranger within.   Our pain and suffering enable us over time to suffer “with” others as they suffer, which is the theological meaning of compassion.  It’s not feeling sorry for them, it’s not offering platitudes and empty promises.   It is the ability to see them, to really “see” them, to see their humanity, to see their suffering, and to be moved by it and to enter into it, this is the resurrection practice of compassion that results in radical acts of service to others … 

And with that I want to walk into a small portion of the scripture passage this morning … just 3 verses.  I’m reading from NET, the New English Translation:

^{Now as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave girl met us who had a spirit that enabled her to foretell the future by supernatural means. She brought her owners a great profit by fortune-telling.   She followed behind Paul and us and kept crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.”  She continued to do this for many days. But Paul became greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out of her at once.}

Let’s look at the Arc of Story within which this passage rests … Here is a link to read Acts 16 on Biblegateway.  After you take the link, you can choose your version if you prefer a different take.  Here is a synopsis:

• Paul meets Lydia.  She and her household were saved and baptized
• Encounter with Slave girl, Paul calls spirit out of her
• Owners were angry, deceitfully had Paul and Silas stripped, beaten and arrested 
• As the jailer slept they sang hymns/jailer slept through an earthquake that set them free … 
• When he awoke and saw the cell doors open he knew he would be killed if they were gone so he was about to kill himself 
• Paul said, “don’t kill yourself, we are here.”  
• They went to his house, his whole family was saved and baptized.

Within this large arc in which Lydia and her household were saved and baptized at the beginning and the Jailer and his household were saved and baptized at the end, you have the small but powerful and painful story of a young slave-girl who wasn’t saved and wasn’t baptized.  Paul, who so carefully shared the good news with Lydia and the Jailer and their families, didn’t “see” this young slave girl.  He didn’t even speak to her; he spoke to the spirit within her in what felt like an off-handed afterthought based upon his annoyance, much like we would swat a fly.   

Her owners objectified her and treated her as a commodity, as less than a human being but did Paul treat her any better?    Paul was not moved to compassion for this suffering young girl.  

We may be tempted to conclude that as a result of the exorcism Paul performed, the slave girl is free.  But free for what?  

Subject to the absolute power of their owners, slaves were dispensable in a slave society and female slaves doubly so.   While we will never know what happened to this slave girl, I think it is safe to say that when her angry owners were finished with Paul and Silas, they returned to her.   

Why would they not?  She was their property and she was now useless for making money the way she was before.  I can only wonder at how she made money for them after she was stripped of the spirit that inhabited her.   

When I read these few verses and enter into the narrative, I can her the young slave girl crying out in her pain, “What about me?”

As I sit with her in the silence of my thoughts, I wonder, “Who are the nameless ones we don’t ‘see’ in our midst?”

When I first began listening to clients at the West Houston Assistance Ministry as their Tuesday Chaplain, I once spent an afternoon listening to a young woman.  She told a very confusing story that I didn’t understand.  We cried together and we prayed together but I felt our time was very unresolved.   Knowing today some of the things I didn’t know them, I believe she was a victim of human trafficking.  Did you know that Houston is a major hub for human trafficking, which is modern day slavery?   

Dwight Peterson says, “It’s a painful world … but no matter how painful it is, God is always with us.  Christianity doesn’t ignore the pain of the world, it goes through it and provides hope beyond it.”  How can we “be” hope?

Can we open up our hearts large enough to practice radical compassion, to follow the way of Jesus and “be” hope for our neighbors, expecting nothing in return?