Sermon June 1st 2025 Revd Sue McCoan
Acts 16:16-34
This story of Paul and Silas in prison comes from about 2000 years ago. But with a few tweaks to the setting, it’s a story that could be told today – of power, money, exploitation and influence. And at any time in between.
The historian Lucy Worsley has a new radio series, ‘Lady Swindlers’. She did a previous series, Lady Killers, on women who committed murder; this is about women who have committed fraud. This week’s episode featured Catharine Murphy, who in the 1780s was convicted of making counterfeit coins. The penalty for this was death by burning – coins belonged to the monarch so it was regarded as treason. Why, Lucy Worsley asked, would a woman like Catharine risk such a horrible punishment? And the answer was: because she was poor. Her husband had abandoned her, she needed to provide for her children, and another man befriended her and showed her an easy way to make money – literally to make money. She could do it at home, fit it in around childcare and other work. As a woman she could easily pass off the dud coins in her household shopping. He profited from her work – until a nosy neighbour reported them both.
How many women through the ages, have been lured into illegal or demeaning work because they needed the money? How many have been offered a chance to follow their dreams in another country, only to find themselves exploited in modern slavery? How many have found their talents marketed for profit while they had little control over their careers? (I’m thinking of Judy Garland, or more recently Britney Spears).
Here in our bible reading is an exploited girl. She’s a slave, so she had no choice about her work; she is possessed by a spirit and seems to have no choice or control over what she says. Her owners don’t care because they are making a great deal of money out of her. They don’t care when she follows Paul round making a nuisance of herself. They do care when Paul heals her – but not because they are concerned for her wellbeing. Let’s hear the next part of the story.
Acts 16:19-25
All the girl’s owners can think about her healing is, that’s their income gone. They are furious with Paul. But they know they are not going to get any legal redress for losing a dodgy business. So they go for the nasty option – they denounce Paul and Silas as enemies of Rome. It’s easy enough to do – they are newcomers in Philippi; not many people know them. The crowd and the magistrates believe the lies, and Paul and Silas are beaten and thrown into prison.
This is an object lesson in how to get rid of your personal enemies, your rivals, your political opponents, or those pesky people who stand in your way because they want to uphold human rights. You start by identifying them as a threat: to security, democracy, decency. You stoke fear and suspicion. You turn people against them and then you can do what you want and claim it as being for the greater good. It’s often said, the holocaust did not begin with the gas chambers; it began with disparaging remarks against Jews.
We’ve seen this process in this country, in recent years. David Cameron spoke of ‘workers and shirkers’ – implying that anyone who needed help from the state was lazy. Theresa May introduced her ‘hostile environment’ for undocumented migrants. It had little effect on immigration, but it led to a rise in hate crime against people with every right to live here and to the harsh deportations of the Windrush scandal. Keir Starmer just recently spoke of Britain becoming ‘an island of strangers’, which feeds into the fears of racists.
I realise I’ve been painting rather an unhappy picture so far, of exploitation, false accusations, wrongful imprisonment. I’m sorry to be gloomy but this is a reality for many people, and if we’ve not experienced any of it directly then we can count ourselves fortunate. And it does get better! Because in the final part of our reading, we’ll hear how Paul and Silas respond to their ill-treatment and that’s what we can learn from.
Before we get there, we might just spend some time in solidarity with people who are in prison, or in other kinds of difficulty. We’ll do this in the hymn written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he was imprisoned by the Nazis, awaiting execution: By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered.
[Hymn]
Now we hear the third and final part of our bible reading.
Acts 16:25-34
Freedom
We can’t always choose the circumstances of our lives. But we can choose how to respond.
We’ve already noted that the owners of the slave girl reacted very badly to the girl being healed, being free of her condition. Getting Paul and Silas thrown into prison. won’t reverse the girl’s healing; it won’t give them back their money. They are acting purely out of spite, out of a desire for revenge. Nobody comes off better for this. It’s all negative and mean-spirited.
Contrast this with Paul and Silas. They have been thrown into the innermost room in the jail; their feet are in stocks so they can hardly move, and they are in pain from their beating. This is a grim time. Far from being angry at the injustice of it all, as you might expect, they pray. They pray and they sing hymns to God. They know that God is with them, even in their darkest hour. And the other prisoners are listening.
Suddenly, there’s an earthquake. Paul and Silas find themselves with their prison chains undone and the prison doors open and in the confusion of the earthquake they could easily make a run for it – they could escape, they could be free, and all the other prisoners too. But Paul and Silas don’t just think of themselves. They know that if the prisoners escape, the jailer will be in real trouble – he knows that too – he would rather kill himself than face death as punishment in a much more gruesome way.
We don’t know much about this jailer. But a friend of mine used to be a prison officer, and it’s not an easy job. Prisoners by definition don’t want to be there and they take out their anger and resentment on the guards, the jailers. So we can assume this man guarding Paul and Silas was used to people being angry, violent, and horrible to him. Suddenly, in the middle of this crisis, here are Paul and Silas being really kind, assuring him that all the prisoners are still there, caring that he doesn’t harm himself.
It’s so lovely, and so unexpected. The jailer is completely overcome by their kindness. He ends up taking Paul and Silas home, tending their wounds, and waking up his whole family to be baptised and have a meal together. Everybody comes off better after this; it’s all positive and holy-spirited.
I really hope nobody here gets put in prison, for any reason. But there may be other ways in which we can put our own difficult times at the service of others. I’m thinking of a friend, who had a serious operation, and went back to the hospital for a check-up. In the waiting room she met someone about to undergo the same operation, who was clearly terrified about it. Claire was able to talk honestly about her experience, about her own fears, and about her trust in the surgeons and nurses. And then she said, would you like me to pray for you?
Paul and Silas used their imprisonment to help their fellow prisoners, and their unexpected freedom to help the jailer, bringing a blessing to all. Claire used her illness to encourage someone else. As we go through life, may we keep so close to God that we, too, are always ready to be a blessing to others.
Amen.
