Acts 16:16-34
With Paul and Silas, we came to Philippi in Macedonia, a Roman colony, and, 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. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” 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. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “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.” The crowd joined in attacking them, 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.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
Change can certainly be hard, and change is one of the few constants of life, and so it can be counted on. It’s odd then, that this culture we live in, on the whole, is so change averse. As a society, we mostly somewhat cling to the familiar, and can feel fear and anxiety when things change at a pace that’s felt to be too fast. Sometimes we’ll go to great lengths to ensure change is slowed waaaaay down or stopped altogether. What is it, really, that we’re afraid of?
Some changes, some cultural shifts, so very shocking in their day, seem somewhat daft now. In England, before I was born, there was a full-blown moral panic when ‘teenagers’ began to separate from mainstream culture and claim an identity of their own – the old-guard thought such social rebelliousness and disrespect for established systems of authority would usher in societal collapse. Young people, especially young working people were fed up in the post-war years, and questioning, and instead of mindlessly following the lifestyle trajectory of their parents and grandparents many chose instead to do things differently. … and many girls wore short skirts and many boys grew long hair and “the establishment” lost its mind. … and, life went on.
And, because of this social change, I got to be a ‘teenager.’
And I remember, during my teenage years, goths became a thing. I remember the news stories on tv and in the paper, folks were fascinated and horrified with the goth’s haunting aesthetic, their music, their black hair and pale faces, and the clothes, the culture-at-large took the view that we were on the edge of an occult take-over, a satanic uprising, that if this kind of thing was allowed to spread unchecked, goths would surely influence youth culture as a whole
and this would leave an entire generation on the brink of self-harm or suicide. Which, of course, it didn’t.
More recently, in this country, the pretty-mainstream appeal of drag queens as creative and engaging entertainers has been re-framed. Drag in some places has been reframed as the grooming of susceptible youth, there’ve been efforts to classify drag performances as child abuse, there’s a vocal chunk of society that whole-heartedly believes drag is obviously a mental health issue, why else, surely, would any man choose to dress like a woman in such an exaggerated and flamboyant way? Yet drag, in many different forms, has been a form of creative expression for centuries, and to my knowledge, has never been linked to anything other than creative expression – and protest movements and activism to fight for freedoms of creative, personal expression … just like goths, and the teenagers of the 1950’s and 60’s, and many other groups of folks have longed for, and some have needed to fight for, the right to express the fullness of who they are. The need for the fullness of the human person to be expressed is insuppressible.. yet how it gets expressed, and whether it’s safe to be expressed, has everything to do with the norms and expectations of the society it finds itself in.
Turning to Scripture, I think Paul, St. Paul, is, perhaps, a solid example of someone who comes to know what it is to live fully, a pioneer of the very many positive ways a single human life lived fully can actually change the world for the better.
In his letter to the Philippians Paul clearly knows his own identity,
“circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”[1] He knew himself, he lived into it 110%, and, whilst still embedded in and shaped by the society of the time, Paul energetically persecuted Christians left and right. And then came Paul’s conversion experience, which was something of a healing experience, because through Christ, Paul comes to see the terrible harms being done by the way he was expressing his commitment to God. Reoriented to God through Christ and not now through the societal expectations of the time, and so having been healed, liberated from the social norms he lived amidst and amongst, Paul takes that inherent drive, all that God-given energy and zeal, and, fully himself, finally, Paul becomes a monumentally effective apostle and evangelist, healing the lives of the folks he meets along the way, and playing a role in the spiritual transformation of readers of his letters through the ages.
Fully and completely himself, Paul not only finds himself at the center of many miraculous events, but, as we hear in the last bit of the last story from today’s reading from Acts, he’s also a remarkable evangelist! I’m not sure there’s anything that could be said, any idea shared, that in a brief moment could bring folks to a whole new understanding of reality, bring them entirely to the truth and presence of God in Christ .. unless it’s coupled with the undeniable power of fullness of being. I truly believe you can feel the power radiating from any person who is themselves fully, and is free to live as the person they were always created to be.
And so I think everyone should have that right, that the society we live in has space a-plenty for all the ways the human person is expressed,
in all its living glory; the human person in all its living glory a real and marvelous manifestation of the truth and presence of God on earth!
Social norms tend to serve only those who hold a position of privilege in society, and they’re designed to keep it that way, to hold change at bay. Social norms create something super-stable, whilst also expecting a way of living that is inherently excluding of a great many. Social norms have only ever served the folks who have the top spots, who hold the power, and they need to be maintained, and enforced, and more often than not they are maintained with violences of all kinds and enforced with violences of all kinds, and this does terrible harms to people, and also, I believe, it limits and even prevents the full expression of God’s glory through the human person here on earth.
Until the freedom to be and live fully is available to all, it’s for us, as the Church, to confidently and courageously disrupt, to fearlessly welcome change wherever it’s needed to prioritize fullness of life, and the freedom that brings, for all people, because this is the Good News of God in Christ. It is for us, as the Church, to push back on the violences of society, and to play a role in the healing and the liberation of everyone whose lives are limited by suffocating, inherently harmful social expectations or norms. Immigrants/migrants, disabled folks, trans, gay, and queer folks, indigenous folks, women – our very many different cultural and ethnic heritages, our skin color, the ways our bodies work, what they can and can’t do, the folks we love, the way we express our gender, the way we look, the way we long to live to feel fully alive .. can it not all just be, in all its healed fullness?
What if this is what Paul meant, as one who knew it deeply from his own lived experience,
what if this is what it means for us, here, in the 21st century, when he wrote in his letter to the Galatians “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
Let us pray,
O God, you made us all in your own image and redeemed us
through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole
human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which
infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us;
unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and
confusion to accomplish your healing and restoring purposes on earth; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.[2]
[1] Philippians 3:5-6
[2] Book of Common Prayer, p815 (adapt.)