Reading Luke/Acts Together #71 – 3 Conversions
Read Acts 16:11-34! After the easy, swift sailing from Troas to Neapolis, Paul walked up the road to Philippi, sort of a “Little Italy,” where there were more Roman military veterans than native Greeks. Acts 16 narrates the high drama of the birth of the church in such a place. His deep love for that small, fledgling gathering of a few believers is evidenced in the lovely letter he wrote to them from prison. I wonder if he corresponded with them more than we know. What fun would it be if archaeologists unearthed another letter of warm friendship to the Philippians?
In this stirring drama, three very different people are converted, and all become one in the newborn Church of Philippi. Lydia, who was wealthy (a dealer in purple goods) and also very religious. Like Cornelius in Acts 10, she was a “God-fearer” or “a worshipper of God,” meaning she was intrigued by Judaism, attended and listened, but more like a student auditing a course instead of being all in. Responding to Paul’s message, which was in a way the Judaism she’d been intrigued by but with the mysterious, baffling but appealing addition of God having become flesh in the Jew named Jesus, she stopped just being “religious” and became a Christian, even opening her home (which must have been a large one) to become the church building!
Then we read about a slave girl “with a spirit of divination” (verse 16). We know that young women under the influence of hallucinogenics claimed to utter riddles from the god Apollo – the famed “oracle of Delphi.” Since travel to Delphi (pictured above) was arduous, clever businessmen opened up branch establishments all over the empire – including in Philippi. People would pay for this “spirit of divination,” and this particular slave girl – yes, she was in bondage to her owners! – must have been good at it, for “she brought her owners much gain.” It’s humorous: although it’s pagan religion, she somehow intuits the Spirit in Paul and follows him around, getting on his nerves!
Perhaps to get her to hush, or out of true compassion, Paul healed this particular slave girl. Acts 16 reminds us that not everybody gets excited over the prospect of others, especially the disadvantaged, being cured! Acts repeatedly reports that when Christianity arrived in town, solid citizens were thrown into turmoil. If she was cured, she would no longer bring her owners much or any gain! This new faith is upsetting the economic foundations of people’s lives! It’s not good for business!
A riot ensued. Much confusion. The shouts? The complaint? “These men are disturbing our city…and advocating customs we do not accept” (verse 20)! Civil disobedience has stellar precedent in the Bible – and we may ask if we create the slightest disturbance in our cities? or if onlookers simply yawn?
We’ve had a wealthy woman, and then the poorest of the poor, a slave. Now we get to a regular worker, in the middle of their economic ladder: the jailer. The question raised in the story is Who is free? and who isn’t? Paul and Silas, behind bars, were truly free, exhibiting their freedom by singing joyfully at midnight in a dark, dank, cold stone hole in the ground. The jailer outside with the keys? Not free – or not yet. He believed, and probably lost his job because of it (once he took the prisoners to his home to help them!).
Anthony Robinson points out that in this story alone we see a display of all the essential habits of discipleship, what he calls “resurrection practices”: hospitality, justice, suffering, worship and prayer. Lydia’s hospitality, justice for a woman taken advantage of in the market place, Christians joyfully bearing up under persecution, worship (even in a jail cell!).
With sheer delight (or envy?) we can imagine the first worship gatherings in Philippi: wealthy Lydia sitting next to a slave girl (with whom she would never have deigned to speak the week before), sitting next to the unemployed jailer, crossing all social boundaries, defying custom and authority, living out the radical Christian life – and posing countless questions to us about our comfortable existence, and whom we go to church with…