“The meaning of slavery”
Highlands
Presbyterian Church
May
12, 2013
"The church is close, but the road is icy. The tavern is
far, but I will walk carefully" - Russian Proverb
As Paul tells the story, he and some others were
going somewhere to pray. Along the way they encountered a slave girl. This
quickly becomes a story about slavery, theirs and hers. There were then, as
there are now, many forms of slavery.
Captives
who were taken during warfare were often compelled to become slaves, and this
was seen by the law code of the book of Deuteronomy as a legitimate
form of enslavement. Poverty compelled some people to enter debt bondage. They would agree to become slaves in order
to ay off debts.
Furthermore,
in the ancient Near East, wives and non-adult children were viewed as property,
and were sometimes sold into slavery by the husband/father for financial
reasons. The Code of Hammurabi specifically
permitted debtors to sell their wives and children into temporary slavery for
as long as three years. Covenant Code instructs that if a thief is caught after sunrise, and is unable to make restitution for the
theft, then the thief should be enslaved.
The
slave girl Paul and his friends encountered was likely either a poverty slave
or a girl sold into slavery by her father. In any event, her owners used to her
make money by fortune telling.
She annoyed the heck out of Paul by following him day after day
and screaming, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you
a way of salvation.” The slave girl called them slaves. She knew a slave when
she saw one and these men were slaves…unlike she who was enslaved by men, they
were slaves to God.
Isn’t it curious that Paul would have been annoyed by that
salutation since that is exactly what he considered himself to be… Paul begins his letter to the Roman
Christians by identifying himself as “a slave of Christ Jesus.”
Romans
1:1… “This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus. The Greek original of
Romans contains the word doulos, which means “slave.” Paul identified
himself as “a devoted slave of Jesus Christ.” So
why does he become so annoyed with the slave wman who says he is a slave to
God?.
In any event, when he’d had his fill of her, Paul stopped,
turned around 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.
Her days as a slave were over. Her reaction is, interestingly,
not recorded but the displeasure of her master is. There was no longer a return
on the investment they had made in this girl. Without the spirit of divination,
she wasn’t worth a single denari to them. They turned on Paul and Silas and
dragged them before the judges in the marketplace.
The marketplace as the venue for their trial is poignant. The
case against Paul had to do with the economic value of the slave girl…before
and after the casting out of the spirit.
“These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are
advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.”
That is a curious charge. What customs were Paul and Silas
advocating that were unlawful for them and the Romans to observe? What we
should note is that the charges against them include their Jewishness…their
accusers make note of the fact that these men are Jews…and are advocating
customs that are inconsistent with Roman law.
They were speaking of the Roman laws regarding slavery. Slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the economy.
Besides manual labor, slaves performed many domestic services, and might also
be assigned highly skilled jobs and professions. Teachers, accountants, and
physicians were often slaves. Unskilled slaves, or those condemned to slavery
as punishment, worked on farms, in mines, and at mills. Their living conditions
were brutal, and their lives short.
Slaves
were considered property under Roman law and had no legal personhood. Unlike Roman citizens, were subjected to corporal punishment, sexual exploitation (prostitutes were often slaves),
they could be tortured and summarily executed.
Slavery
was then as it is now…an evil institution that denies human beings not only of
their freedom but also of their dignity.
The
Roman economy depended on slaves…in much the same way our own economy depends
on the work of undocumented workers and unskilled labor who must work for
minimum wages…and on teenaged girls working in unsafe clothing factories in
Bangladesh and China and elsewhere. Look at their fight today…where is Paul
today to cast out the spirit that enslaves these workers?
Why
can’t we hear there voices crying out to Christians the way Paul heard the
voice of this slave woman? Are the benefits we receive from their work drowning
out their cries for justice…aren’t they asking the slaves of the most high God
to free them…to speak for them…
…it’s
no small thing to give those people, those slaves, a safe work place, a livable
wage and the dignity of citizenship and economic security…
…and
it was no small thing in those days for these Jesus-loving Jews to free this
slave girl…to take from the business men who owned her the ability she had to
make money for her owners. The Roman businessmen could see that if this became
Roman policy, their income and their riches would be endangered. Sound
familiar?
So it is no surprise that others in the marketplace felt
threatened by the freeing of this slave.
The crowd readily joined in attacking Paul and the others, and the
magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten
with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into
prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these
instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the
stocks.
All in all…it’s a rather odd story. Paul doesn’t cast out the
demon for a particularly theological reason…he does it because this slave annoyed
him. But Paul’s annoyance achieves a theological result. She’s following him,
telling the truth about Paul and the others…they are slaves to the most high
God and she is telling everyone…making noise and making a spectacle of herself.
Paul
can’t tolerate it any more and puts a stop to it by casting out the evil spirit…and
in casting out the spirit, he frees her from the unjust system that enslaved
her.
Perhaps
the lesson here is that even the truth, when proclaimed through an abusive or
exploitive system, ends up being distorted. She is owned by men of evil
intentions. The spirit that possesses her enables their evil intentions.
Paul
realizes that the evil intent of the slave owners is served by the credibility
the slave woman gets by being a part of Paul’s group…the credibility she gains
by telling the truth about these men. Her recognition of Paul and the disciples
makes her other predictions more believable, more profitable. It’s an effort to
manipulate the truth to their own evil designs.
So
what does this mean to us?
Are
not the souls of the 1200 young girls killed in the predictable collapse of that
clothing factory calling out to us…hey you who claim to follow the most high
God…are you going to do anything about this? Or are you just going to quietly
keep buying the low cost clothing?
And
what about the children in the apartment houses surrounding our church…living
in poverty…in homes with no father…where mom is working more than one minimum
wage job? Can we hear their voices crying out to the flowers of the most high God?
And
those who are denied the basic civil right of marriage, those who are
marginalized by the color of their skin or the way in which they worship God or
those who live on the edges of life because they are elderly or disabled or
simply different?
How
about the fast food workers around the nation whose work makes their owners and
shareholders millions of dollars…they are going on strike until the slave
owners pay them enough of a wag to live on…will Christians support them or will
those who claim the most high God support the owners?
These
workers and others, like those who care for the elderly in rest homes, those
who clean our houses and serve meals in restaurants…they all live lives in some
form of the modern-day version of globalized slavery…and they mimic us who call
ourselves the followers of the most high God when we claim that God…but fail to
serve that God…
…their
slavery continues because we allow it to continue, because it somehow benefits
us, we like the low prices that comes from the work of low paid workers…and
when someone like a disciple like Paul demands their slavery end…we drag them
into the marketplace and beat them over the head with arguments about how
paying a fair wage will destroy the economy…when undocumented workers fill jobs
that no American will take and help build the economy…we call them “illegals”
and pretend we want them deported knowing that farms and ranches and
restaurants and motels would close their doors without these workers.
How
often do we encounter those who claim to serve the most high God while using
the scripture to manipulate the beliefs and feelings of others? To demean
others? To create God in their own image?
You
see the slave woman got her talking points from the slave master, the one who
benefited from her work…many of the voices opposing justice today get their
talking points from those who have so much at stake in making sure the poor
remain poor, that the poor provide a stable workforce for businesses that won’t
pay livable wages…and worse, those who choose to interpret scripture in a way
that supports their political and social views of the world.
And
so in the end…this is a story about how easy it is to become a slave to the
lies, especially when they are told by those who cloak themselves in religion and
what sounds like truth though it is self-serving.
Are
we slaves to the most high God…or are we making slaves of others? AMEN
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