They are us

Acts 16: 16-40
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
May 8, 2016

            I find this story from the book of Acts irresistible. It reads like scenes out of the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou?” and “Cool Hand Luke” (“I think what we have here is a failure to communicate!”). But the comedy, the absurdity only lasts for a few verses. It’s about how we trample on each other, treat human beings like commodities, brush people off like a mosquito, the prisons we use to control others and the ones we put ourselves in. It’s another resurrection story of how God wants all of us to be not only free but whole.

            Paul and Silas and whoever is narrating this story, maybe Timothy, go down to the proverbial river to pray, presumably the same place where they met Lydia and her friends.  As they are going, they meet a slave girl with the ability to see through people, tell fortunes, like the many signs on establishments we see throughout our area proclaiming “psychic”.  If Paul had wanted to fly under the radar, this slave girl makes it downright impossible. She’s broadcasting, putting up a billboard for all to see, that Paul and his friends are on a mission from the Most High God.  She does this over a number of days, most likely to squeeze some hush money from them.  “Hey guys, I know I’m right. Now pay up!”

            It’s reminiscent of a story from the gospel of Luke.  Jesus is in the synagogue when a man possessed of a demon proclaims in a loud voice, “Let us alone! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”  Jesus tells the demon to be silent and to come out of the man.

         But there are vast differences between the two stories.  The possessed man is not a slave, is not female, and is surrounded by community, before and after he is healed.  Jesus heals the man presumably because, one, the demon causes fear and disruption, and two, Jesus could get arrested for such a proclamation.  The slave girl faces a different fate: she loses her source of livelihood and we never hear from her again.  Paul heals her, not out of compassion, but annoyance, not thinking about the consequences of his actions.  Rather than seeing her as a fellow witness and potential convert, from my perspective he in essence demonizes her and sees her as a rival to his work.

            It doesn’t take long for her traffickers to get wind of losing their moneymaker.  Rather than seeking any restitution, they want their pound of flesh instead.  They have Paul and Silas publicly humiliated and tortured, using the mob mentality to grease the wheels of injustice.  Then as now, it doesn’t take much to criminalize someone’s behavior or actions or beliefs.  They appeal to the Roman sensibility, to empire’s purpose of reestablishing order and control.  These slave owners use the punitive culture to exact power over the minority.  Sound familiar?

            Many of us are aware of civil rights lawyer and law professor Michelle Alexander and her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  She observes that the most punitive nations are also the most diverse; that as human beings we are punitive toward the ‘other’.  The United States is one of the most diverse nations in the world, across ethnicity, class, race, and religion.  We tout diversity as one of our core values.  And yet among first world countries we also have the highest incarceration rate among minorities, the highest prison population, and the death penalty is still legal in 31 states, including Delaware and Pennsylvania.

            Never before has this nation been so factious.  Not only people of color but women, gays and lesbians, transgender, bisexual, queer, and non cis-gender persons, addicts, religious minorities, specifically Muslims, and the poor are being criminalized and marginalized not only by attitude but by legislation. Vincent Harding, an African-American civil rights leader, historian and scholar once said, “…when it comes to creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious democratic society, we are still a developing nation.”  We witness this as #BlackLivesMatter banners are torn down, as #AllLivesMatter signs replace them, as violence accompanies angry rhetoric and invectives.

            In a recent interview with Krista Tippett, Michelle Alexander said that we have become a nation of stone throwers, and it’s not enough that we drop our own stone.  She went on to say that we have to be willing to be awake, to acknowledge our participation in the systems that have created the new Jim Crow, to honor the criminality in each one of us.  Who among us is without sin?  Who among us has not injured or caused pain to another?  Who among us has never broken the law?  We just haven’t been caught.  And we increase the divide by saying that white collar crime isn’t as bad as blue collar crime, which isn’t as bad as street crime; that I make mistakes or errors in judgment or I tell a white lie once in a while, but I’d hardly call it sin, let alone crime.

            If there is to be transformation in our culture, in our society, if God’s kingdom is to come on earth, it must include all of us.  If there is to be resurrection, we’re all going to have to die to something—whatever it is we’re holding onto so tightly we’re fearful to let go.  All of us here benefit from privilege of some kind, whether it is our skin color or our gender identity or our sexuality or socioeconomic class or education or that we were raised in the church rather than coming to it as a stranger.  Picking up our cross means giving up that privilege to travel with, lift up those who have little or no privilege, no power, what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called the cost of discipleship.

            So when Paul and Silas are in the innermost cell, maximum security, singing their hearts out (“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus”), and the earth quakes and the foundation of the prison shakes so violently that the doors are torn off their hinges and everyone’s chains are broken, they don’t leave, they don’t walk out, because not everyone is free.  The jailer is still bound by his fear of retribution and the regime which holds his very life.

            The jailer asks them what he must do to be saved, that is, to live a whole life, one that is reconciled and forgiven.  He takes Paul and Silas into his own home and washes their wounds, much in the way that Jesus would have done.  Can we imagine a justice system that is restorative rather than punitive, that calls each of us to be reconciled to one another and forgiven?  Perhaps it was in this story that Paul received his inspiration for his letter to the church in Galatia, that there is neither Jew nor Greek (Paul and Lydia), slave or free (the slave girl and the prisoners), male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.  

            It sounds impossible, this kind of reconciliation, this radical forgiveness and oneness.  And yet it was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that allowed both black and white South African citizens to forgive even the most heinous acts of apartheid so that their nation might heal and move forward.

            Last year the Central Atlantic Conference passed a resolution to dismantle the new Jim Crow, which then went on to pass at General Synod last summer.  Some folks in this congregation are part of the Delaware Coalition to Dismantle the New Jim Crow.  Congregations across denominations are renewing their commitment to sacred conversations on race and starting prison ministries.  The early community of the Way in the book of Acts was on Rome’s top wanted list.  How far are we willing to go to be just as troublesome, to set all people free, including ourselves?  

            It’s more than loud songs that need to be sung.  John Newton the author of the lyrics to “Amazing Grace” continued to own and trade slaves years after his conversion to Christianity.  Kierkegaard wrote, “The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”

            We are criminals as much as anyone else we might demonize.  And yet we follow someone who says the story doesn’t end there, that there’s healing and hope for even the worst in us.  If we want change, it begins with us and our story.  If we want things to be different, it is our lives that must change first.  Amen.