This reading from Acts begins by taking us into the strange world of exorcisms. No it's not Linda Bair but a young girl who was controlled by a pimp to perform acts of foretelling the future.
We don't know what her practices celebrate, whether she was a Gnostic or some other new Age variety, we do know that she was mad at the Christians because she thought they were enslaved to a single God.
Paul seems to be kind of hardnosed toward her. She is not wicked or bad but she is enslaved not only to her handlers, but also enslaved by a spirit. Paul mentions Jesus, and with mention of the Love of God the spirit leaves her. This sounds weird to our 21 first century ears.
It was helpful for me this week if I imagined the exorcism as a kind of ascension. The Love in Christ the one crucified and risen now has all the powers of heaven and earth in obedience to love, so even this hostile sprit obeys. When we transpose that strange exorcism to our lives, each of us knows that place large or small, where we act against our true selves. We are at times like that slave girl attacking the one who can free us.
The good news is that in God's Love we are welcomed to become, our true selves, not possessed, not occupied, not driven, not anxious. The news is that the crucified/risen one lets us be our true selves, without any fear or paralysis or pathologies of the days that are everywhere else.
We ascend beyond our anxious driven lives into love itself. What I'm talking about here, I witnessed at annual conference.
We listened to Frank Shaffer's story about marring his gay son and getting defrocked in the Pennsylvania Conference. By the way he was reinstated this week with back pay.
He told us that on the last Day of his trial that his legal advisors advised him to say that he wouldn't ever do this again, then maybe the jury could find a way around the rule and he wouldn't lose his orders.
But walking up to the stand that morning he went over to his council bench and said I can't do it. Then he testified to the truth, that his Son was a human being, loved by God, and that he, as his father saw nothing wrong with his son bringing his commitment to his partner, under God's marriage covenant.
He said the strangest thing happened when he saw the truth, when he chose the truth, when he spoke the truth, the fear went away. You see Frank didn't know it but in the moment but I think he ascended into unconditional love.
This moment is often comprised of leaving behind those parts of us, paralyzed by fear so that we can ascend to truth and there hear God.
Her handlers resent her emancipation, for she no longer can be used by them to make money. There is money to be made in a thousand enslavements-whether drug addiction or consumerism or fear mongering. The women in our bible story made her handlers mad; because the money is gone which came with the freedom Jesus has given her to be her true self.
So they take Paul and Silas to court and accuse them of disturbing the peace. Whose peace? Well of course people who practice emancipation and permit people to become their true selves always rock the boat. The story says the judges hear the case and side with the crowd. To enact Jesus freedom in the real world upsets settled social arrangements.
So Paul and Silas are now flogged and put in jail. Yes even though they were locked up notice that they manage to stay free. They practice and sing a freedom that overcomes the locks on the door. People who sing are free inside.
But there is more that same night suddenly there was an earthquake. Suddenly the foundations of the prison were shaken; all the doors were open everyone's chains unfastened. This reminds me of Good Friday when the earth trembled at the cross of Christ. All other ground begins to shake when love is the only solid ground around.
The jailer goes into panic mode he will be blamed for this mass jail break? He thinks everyone has escaped.
Yet Paul and Silas stayed in the trouble even with chains gone and doors open. A Love that stays in the trouble with you is some kind of love. That's what their songs were singing, their faith, faithing in, staying in trouble till others were out of trouble.
The jailer sees that more than an earthquake has happened. He understood the shaking ground was connected to the singing Jailbirds so he asks what must I do to be saved? So they were all baptized the jailer the prisoners engaged in an odd moment of freedom, baptized as these here this morning into truth and freedom.
Now I know you're saying this story has nothing to do with me. This business of casting out a troubling spirit, and jailed for disturbing the peace. It's easy to say well, "Pentecost has nothing to do with us either."
Unless you feel a hope and a yearning. Unless you want to be free like the slave girl was free to say yes to your true self. Unless you also get fearful like the magistrates. Unless we too go to sleep at times unaware suspecting nothing. Unless we too feel we are at the edge of an earthquake and fearful. If any of this comes close to you then this matters.
That a slave girl was made free to be herself. At the beginning and at the end, unsuspecting powerless, hopeless people are invited to begin again, to gather around the presence of God.
The presence of God is given endlessly in the spirit, a power that breaks old bondages, that crushes old killing arrangements that opens old doors long kept closed. Nobody knows how the slave girl got free, how the earthquake came, how the prison was opened. But they noticed that the people who lived that way referred their lives back to Christ.
That what baptism is about referring your life our lives to Christ, being free, and perhaps singing a song that makes the earth move, living with joy and not being paralyzed by fear.
These folks had to choose to live afresh and unafraid.
May these children this morning be wetted down with freedom afresh with God love that will walk with them throughout their lives? Shaking the ground from time to time, letting them know that the truly solid ground is love.
A boy was baptized at 14 in the Christian disciples of Christ church the kind that dunk with a pool built into back of the alter area. He remembers that the minister was saying a lot of wonderful things about being buried with Christ and all that. But as the pastor was talking he was thinking Do I hold the napkin over my nose or does he. I wonder if it's cold and I wonder if it's deep.
He was also thinking about lunch, Aunt Jane's Lemon meringue pie, and mom's lemonade. I hear him say you're buried with Christ and now rise to new life in Christ.
Later in life reflecting on some years it dawned on him that truth be told he did die a number of times saying goodbye to yesterday in order to embrace what new things are coming. Whether it's saying good bye to first grade and hello to second or saying goodbye to a dying friend, letting go of them to love and letting go of yourself to embrace the next day.
He said: "it just seems that we learn things afterward: it's in reflection and in memory that we learn."