Free or Bound?

In an ironic twist, the illness gives her a knack for palm-reading, fortune-telling, and the like, and her master was exploiting this and making lots of money by using her.

Paul exorcises the demon and sets the girl free from that one bondage.

She is still a girl, still a slave, but no longer bound by a demon.

She had been speaking, even crying out after Paul, but speaking without understanding.

Now she is free from that babbling, free to listen carefully to Paul, free to trust God's word which Paul opens, free to follow...and that is what is crucial.

Sometimes folks have the mistaken notion that when one is a Christian, everything should go just fine, without troubles.

In fact, one's troubles may increase greatly when one is no longer just going with the flow and merely getting along with the crowd.

The girl's owners get angry with Paul when she is healed and they can no longer make money from her strange ability, but the story leaves unsaid what happened next to the slave girl.

Were they angry with her?

Now that there is nothing special about her, might they beat her, or sell her into an even worse situation?

This is a big question indeed, but it is all beside the point, because she now has the true freedom of knowing the Lord Jesus.

b.Then there are the owners, ones who think themselves to be free, who really are bound so tightly to their economic system and their little gold-mine of a girl that they cannot see or hear the worth of the new thing which God is doing right in front of them.

The girl who had been chained to a demon is free, and there ought to be rejoicing, but the owners are not free to do that.

It may be OK to give a donation to a charity, but now their wallets are threatened and they strike back with an appeal to nationalism, racial hatred, and traditions.

They manipulate the judicial system so that Paul and Silas are jailed.

c.Then we have Paul and Silas, languishing in jail, but they don't act as though they are.

They are not sulking or complaining.

Rather they are praying, or singing hymns to God, and other prisoners are listening.

It is just another day in their regular job of being missionaries.

Their bodies may be stuck in one place, but they are truly free.

They know where all of the twists and turns of life are finally heading, as we have been exploring in the book of Revelation as we have been hearing it these seven weeks of the Easter season.

They know their part in the cast of God's play, and they move ahead with it.

d.What about the jailer, the one who thought he could come and go as he pleased.

That was an illusion, for when the prisoners were loosened in the earthquake, suddenly it became clear that the jailer was bound more tightly than Paul and Silas ever could be.

For if the prisoners were to escape, he would be really cornered, and would feel that suicide is the only possible response.

But Paul breaks through to him and the jailer says to him: “What must I do to be saved, to be free?”

and Paul gives him the gift of the Gospel, which leads to Baptism for him and his household.

He continues to have serious responsibilities, but, oh, what freedom!

II.What about us? What binds us?

a. Here we are, Americans, quite used to talking about being free, by which we often mean that we want to be utterly independent.

Are we slaves to an idea that we need neither each other nor God?

It would seem to be a misuse of the opportunities presented to us through the efforts of those who have served and died in battle, as well as those who have sacrificed much in the work of parenthood, and those forebears in the faith who made sure we would have this place and time to gather as God's people.

It doesn't take much...the electricity being off for awhile, an accident on the beltway, an unexpected trip to the emergency room...to remind us how inter-dependent we truly are.

b.We could be enslaved by one of the many possible addictions.

One such person, who was caught in a downward spiral, for whom each hospital trip came closer to being the final one, was asked why he could not use the help that was offered to him in one of the 12-step programs.

He replied that he could not accept one of the basic principles of those programs which is that there are powers greater than oneself.

And so he was a slave to his addiction and could not break free by himself.

c.We could be enslaved by a particular hatred.

A wounding sorrow, or a deepening despair, or a health problem can bind us in an all-consuming anger.

Remember how Paul had to respond to this when he was burdened by his “thorn in the side”, whatever that was, and how he refused to allow it to cloud his joy in the Gospel, despite the serious trouble.

d.We could be enslaved by a job, or a particular economic circumstance, or a harsh social situation.

--What about our youth who may endure spoken or unspoken derision if they participate in Prayer at the Pole outside school in the fall, or offer a quick thank-you prayer at mealtime?

Who is enslaved and who is free in those situations?

--I read about a young man who wanted very much to be in a college fraternity, and so he endured the illegal but still practiced hazing.

But when the next pledge class was formed, he announced that if such things happened again, he would report everything to the college administration.

He knew what would happen; he would be ostracized, threatened, perhaps hurt, but he persisted.

They went ahead with hazing, and he did report, and was indeed ostracized and the rest.

But he was no longer bound by that great evil.

--The Methodist bishop of Angola visited the US some years back, and was asked about church life in a Marxist-run government.

He described the limitations, the decrees against church activities, and all the rest.

He said, “If we go to jail for being the church, we go to jail..

Jail is a wonderful place for Christian evangelism.

Our church made some of its most dramatic gains during the revolution when so many of us were in jail.

In jail, you have everyone there in one place.

You have time to teach and to preach.

Yes, 20 of our pastors were killed, but the rest of us came out of jail a much larger and stronger church.

Don't worry about the church in Angola; God is doing fine with us.

Frankly I would find it much more difficult to be a pastor in Chicago.

Here, there is so much, so many things.

It must be hard to be the church here.”

III. Who is bound, and who is free?

Are we like the slave-girl's owners who remain bound, or are we like the jailer and the girl, who in the midst of great difficulties are truly free?

And we know what the answer can be, because Christ is risen, He is risen indeed. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.