Acts 16:16-24
“One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling…. She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.”
(Acts 16:16, 18-19)
One of the great temptations in Christian discipleship is to become “dualistic.” By dualistic, I mean the assumption that there is part of our lives that are holy and part of our lives that are routine or mundane. So, going to church? Holy. Balancing our checkbooks? Mundane. Praying? Holy. How we do our jobs? Mundane. Often times, without even realizing we’re doing it, we start separating our lives into two – putting a little over here for Jesus and a little over here for us. Part of the reason I love this story of Paul healing the slave girl is because it collapses all of our attempts to be dualistic.
As the story reads, a young girl had a demon, but – financially fortuitously for her owners – this demon gave her powers to tell people’s fortunes. As a result, when Paul heals her of her demonic possession (a holy thing), it has severe implications on her value as a fortune-teller (a mundane thing). At least, that dualism is probably how this slave girl’s owners would’ve seen it. You can almost hear them saying, “It’s all well and good that she can pray, just so long as the people can still pay!” But that’s just not how Jesus’ liberative work, well, works.
When Jesus frees us from all sin and death, He rightfully takes over Lordship of every aspect of our lives. No longer can we claim “this is for Jesus and this is for me.” Instead, Jesus’ liberation runs all the way down, into the deepest parts of ourselves, and spreads all the way out, covering every inch of our lives.
I often wonder if we don’t all – to lesser or greater degrees – live under a similar possession as this young girl. Or, rather, if we don’t at least act like we do. We are tempted to believe “this is my time and this is God’s time” or “this is my money and this is God’s money” or “this I do to please myself and this I do to please God.” Like I said at the outset, it is an easy trap to fall into.
And this is why I’m grateful for the scriptural witness to what happens in this young girl’s life. At the name of Jesus, she becomes the possession not of some demon, nor even of her slave masters, but of Jesus Christ, who lived for her, who died for her, who was raised from the dead for her, who prays for her.
If you read the rest of the story, a tragic-ironic twist occurs. Paul sets this girl free, but our selection today ends with Paul imprisoned. Why? Because Paul – with the name of Jesus – threatened the power structures and status quo of his day. He told a society built on injustices that such a society cannot and will not stand before the Lord. It is a good reminder of two key facts about the Christian life: One, wherever there is injustice, Jesus will liberate its victims. Two, when Christians partner with Jesus in this work (like Paul did), they can expect society to push back against them. Of these two facts, we know what Jesus is going to do, so the real question is what we are going to do. Are we going to play along with the status quo, no matter how many it enslaves, or will we risk ourselves to be in partnership with our Lord? It is a question worth praying over. Amen.
