Freedom vs Liberation

Act 16:16-34

I’m excited to be with you this morning, and for the next few weeks. I know this might seem like a confusing and complicated time for you and I have questioned this sermon a couple of times. More than once i have said I made a mistake and I should have picked the John text in the lectionary this week. I want you that you are cared for and loved by the creator of the universe. And that you’ll be ok. Because of course all of that is true. And I think you know this. So, I also wanted to remind you that your work in this world isn’t done. So we strike the balance as much as we can. 

 Our story this week is part of the acts of Paul and his 2nd missionary journeys. Just earlier in the text, Paul was given a vision that lead him to this Roman colony of Philippi. It has been a retirement community for Roman soldiers who had fought for Octavius, or Caesar Augustus, after the death of his great-Uncle Julius Caesar. So 2 generations of Romans deeply committed to the Empire had grown up in Philippi, established root, made it very Roman. 

Into this city come Paul and Silas, as a citizen, Paul should have been safe. As a Jew and a Jesus worshiper… he might have been ok. As someone who didn’t know how to keep quiet, who was so committed to the cause of Christ there would, inevitably, be trouble. 

Trouble was not just something that he brought to him, it followed him in Philippi. See, there was this girl who wouldn't leave Paul and Silas alone.

I love the stories of women in the Bible. There is so little ink given to the women of the Bible, but they are always in the middle of what was happening. Mary of Magdala at the empty tomb and that she was the first to proclaim the resurrection. What we know about her from the Bible texts is that she was around a lot and used to have demons. 

We have Mary and Martha, we know they were followers of Jesus, and that Martha would focus on hospitality and Mary *just didn’t help her at all* but we don’t know why they weren’t married or how they had their own household. 

And just before our reading, we meet Lydia, a seller of purple cloth. She ran her own household and the first convert to Christianity in Europe. But not how she got to this place. And not who she would become.

This story we have a slave girl, whether that is because she was a child, or young, or because she was a slave and did not worthy the term woman. Regardless, we are told she has been controlled by a spirit that possesses some ability to know the truth. Her knowledge or visions had gained her owners large amounts money and possibly allowed her some amount of prestige the household. A slave, but an important one that was allowed out in public and, it seems, able to travel about the city

For she followed Paul and Silas around Philippi. Screaming. “These are the slaves of the God Most High!”

She was bound spiritually. The demon held her trapped and used her. And this demon could see that Paul and Silas had bound their lives to the God of Israel. 

That isn’t the only story of being chained.

There were consequences to Paul and Silas setting that girl free of her demon. There was the loss of money that the owners had and look at the ruckus that Paul and Silas brought with them.

They were disruptive. They are clearly going to be a problem, they need to be handled. So Paul and Silas were arrested, beat, and placed in the innermost cell and shackles added to their ankles. Really that is to say, they were bound, they were stuck, they were chained, and they weren’t going anywhere of their own free will.

 And we find out the prison guard was bound to something too. When Paul and Silas were miraculously released of their bonds. As well as every other prisoner present that day. The guard was convinced that the consequences of what would only be seen as his mistake, would be far worse than that his own death. He was trapped in a society who’s values were enforced at the end of a spear. 

There are so many ways that one can be trapped. 

It might be you and I, we too can be spiritual trapped. Maybe in Theologies that aren’t helpful, sometimes that bring us shame or fear or are unwelcoming to another. 

We might be bound up in our society’s ideals of who we should be and what we ought to do, look like, sound like, the books we read, food we eat. 

We might be bound. And there are those who are bound physically. Those jailed or imprisoned. 

There are centuries of stories of those enslaved, those are those who are slaves today trapped in relationships, forced and survival prostitution. There are those who are trapped in systems that are difficult or impossible to escape. Systems of poverty, prison industrial complex. There are so many ways to be bound, oppressed, trapped, chained, imprisoned. 

 Here’s the thing about the freedom given to Paul and Silas and the other prisoners and the slave girl: We don't’ know what happened to this girl. She went from being an important slave to being useless. We don't know if she was abandoned by her owners. We don’t know if she was moved into another area to be used. She was still enslaved. She was still trapped

 Paul and Silas were set free. It was done with all the others in the prison as well. They had each other, they had the support of Lydia, who had offered them her home. The guard, who invited them to visit with his family and the disciples and the apostles. 

They had people, they had each other, they had a plan, they had liberation. 

There is a difference between freedom and liberation. Freedom is releasing the bonds, liberation is creating a world within which one can live into that freedom

These are different: The slave girl, she was given freedom, but she was never given the means to live into that freedom. She was not liberated.

There are so many people, so many histories of people being freed and not liberated. Emancipation brought freedom to the black slaves but despite promises of 40 acres and a mule, the freedman were ultimately given nothing left to be sharecroppers and in a system that was not designed to keep one group separate from others. To keep them small, to keep them trapped while claiming freedom.

 At the end of the WWII and when the prison camps had been brought freedom to those who were left within their fences, there was really no plan to help them find homes or even to help them survive the malnutrition, their susceptibility to disease, to the point where some were told to stay put, in their prison. They were free, there was no plan for liberation. No plan to help them live in the new freedom. 

In our country, every day, people are imprisoned or set free. But these men and women, mostly men, aren’t often given tools for how to live in the world. A community, a family of some sort is one of the most important pieces for ending recidivism and employment which is made so difficult to stay free. Freedom is not the same as liberation

The slave girl, who met Paul along the road. She was free, but she was not liberated. God brought freedom and freedom and liberation to Paul and Silas and gave them the means to bring freedom and liberation to another.

 We have a God of liberation. Who offers release the captive, who liberates the oppressed, who sets right what has been made wrong, who declares a time of jubilee has come, who gave the Hebrew slaves a new way of life that would honor each other, their relationship with creation, and their creator, who came and lived in the body of Jesus, to set free, liberate, release, and to show us what it is to live to call us to this life.

 That is the call: To bring freedom, and Liberation. We support those who are always entering into new ways of living into resurrection living into a new life of freedom. It is supporting those who are transitioning from one life to another, from oppression to abundant life. 

This weekend was the public funeral service for Rachel Held Evans. She was an author, voice of her generation, which happens to be my generation as well. She was a voice of doubt and hope, of re-birth. She found home for her doubts and her questions as well as her hopes and joys. She imagined a church where all would be welcome, that the table we gather around this day, would be truly open. That the church could be that place where we can find liberation, where we can be made new, where we can facilitate liberation. It is not enough to loosen the chains. We participate in the freedom and liberation that god is doing in our world. It is who we are as people of the resurrection, it is who was  are as the church. 

 So St Luke’s, you are going to be ok. And I trust that you know that. But you still have work to do. You still have your place in this city  and the world to be people of freedom and liberation, hope and resurrection. New life. Beloved community, be blessed, live in the love and call. Be people of the resurrection.