Keep It Simple, Sinner
Acts 16:16-34
We’re at the start of the Hollywood summer blockbuster season, but I don’t know if any upcoming movie release could compete with what this passage offers: a slave girl, an evil spirit, villainous slave masters, a violent mob, a public stripping and beating, imprisonment, an earthquake, impending death followed by a miraculous deliverance, a dramatic conversion and, oh yes, a happy ending.
Like the sequel to a popular movie, we pick up the plot right where the previous story left off. Last week we followed Paul to Philippi, a Roman colony in Macedonia. So overwhelmingly gentile was Philippi that there didn’t appear to be a synagogue in the entire town. Therefore, instead of heading straight to the synagogue, as was his custom when arriving in a new town, Paul made for a riverbank outside the town gate where he found a few assorted Jewish faithful, including Lydia, a wealthy gentile merchant who nevertheless worshiped the God of Israel.
Now Paul returns to that same place of prayer and he encounters yet another singular sort of female. She’s not a merchant like Lydia but a slave. However, this slave girl is not forced to work in the house or in the fields but rather in the public square. We’re told that she has “a spirit of divination” that made her a valuable asset to her masters who exploited the girl by making her tell fortunes for money.
“A spirit of divination.” What a peculiar phrase! The Greek word for divination is puthonos from which we get the English word “python,” as in, a snake. In Greek mythology, the snake was a symbol of the god Apollo who was associated with divination, i.e., telling the future. Going back to your school days, you may remember learning about the Oracle of Delphi, a temple of Apollo where the priestess made prophecies by channeling the god.
Paul can’t help but take notice of this slave girl because she follows him around wherever he preaches the gospel. He goes to the riverbank; she follows. He goes to the market; she follows. He goes to the public square; she follows. Being constantly followed would be disconcerting on its own, but wherever Paul goes she shouts and makes a nuisance of herself, distracting from Paul’s attempts to spread the gospel, even as she shouts that Paul is God’s messenger and proclaims the way of salvation.
The slave girl carries on this way not just for a moment or even all morning or afternoon, but day after day. Eventually Paul can ignore her no longer. We’re told that being “very much annoyed,” he turns toward her and addresses the spirit, saying, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And right then and there the spirit leaves her.
This story is problematic on a couple of levels. First of all, there’s the whole “spirit of divination” thing. Our rationalist culture would never accept at face value a story of possession by spirits. Mental illness, maybe, or some kind of epileptic seizure would be go-to explanations.
Second, Paul doesn’t come off well here at all. When he does finally address the slave girl, he does so not because he’s moved with compassion for her, either because she is controlled by a spirit or by her slave masters. What compels Paul to address her is not compassion but aggravation. He’s fed up with her for following and interrupting him. He frees her from the spirit not to restore her to wholeness but to silence her incessant yapping.
But here’s the thing: it’s because of Paul’s very human reaction to being continually harangued that we can trust the writer’s account of what happened. The author of Acts does not attempt to smooth over some of Paul’s rough edges to make him appear more likable, especially for a modern audience, but rather shows him to be the flawed human being that he no doubt was.
We see the same thing happen with the depictions that the Gospels present of the disciples. They are an unruly lot. Peter denies, Thomas doubts, James and John scheme for positions of honor, and they all repeatedly fail to understand or accept Jesus’ teachings about a messiah who must suffer, be rejected, and killed. A less trustworthy narrative would valorize them, erasing or rationalizing their flaws and frailties.
What’s more, while it's natural for us as modern readers to focus on the supernatural elements of this story (Was the girl really possessed by a spirit? Could she really tell fortunes?), people in the first century would have considered these a given. What would have caught their attention is the ease with which Paul dispatches the spirit. There’s no elaborate ritual. No candles. No prayers. No incantation. No struggle. No drama. Paul simply says, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” Get out of here, spirit! Scram! Beat it! Hit the road! Paul is practically dismissive. And just like that, the spirit obeys.
Paul is not shown to possess any power himself. The power resides solely in the name by which Paul commands the spirit…the name of Jesus.
Paul is not shown to possess any power himself. The power resides solely in the name by which Paul commands the spirit…the name of Jesus. The name of Jesus has the power to free this slave girl from her spiritual captivity. And with her spiritual oppression lifted, her owners can no longer exploit her condition for financial gain.
This fact infuriates them. They seize Paul and Silas and drag them into the marketplace before the authorities. Note the accusation the girl’s owners bring against Paul and Silas. It’s not about the loss of income they’ve just suffered. It’s goes much deeper than that. Just listen. “These men, these Jews, are disturbing our city and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us, being Romans, to adopt or observe.”
These men. These Jews. These foreigners. These outsiders. These people who are not like us, who don’t share our values, who don’t belong here. Is this biblical history or current events? Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. While we in this nation are in the midst of a re-emergence of nativism, the impulse to fear and distrust outsiders and view them as a threat is an ancient one, older even than the Bible. And whether it comes from the pages of history or from today’s headlines, lurking just beneath that fear and distrust is the real threat of violence.
The slave owners, preying upon the people’s fear and loathing of Paul and Silas’s otherness, successfully whip the crowd into a frenzy, and the now unruly mob joins in the attack on the men. The fact that the civil authorities take charge of the situation by having Paul and Silas stripped and flogged right there in the street may even have saved them from the hand of the mob.
They are imprisoned and placed in the innermost cell, their feet fastened in stocks. You’d think, given the extreme security measures, that Paul and Silas were violent insurrectionists, not evangelists. But we see here an example of what I mentioned a few weeks ago—the gospel is political. By that I meant that the gospel has real-world implications. The gospel is not about just the sweet hereafter but the here and now as well, not only for individual souls but for our society.
Note again that the mere mention of the name of Jesus liberates the oppressed. A girl who was spiritually captive and economically exploited is set free from powers and from people who wanted to keep her in chains. We don’t know whether she remains a piece of property in the eyes of the law, but her days of being trotted out in public and compelled to tell fortunes are over. And, as irony would have it, for liberating her from captivity, Paul and Silas are now held captive.
And you know who else is a captive in this story? This nameless jailer, for he is imprisoned as well by this unjust system in which he plays but a small part. His entire sense of worth is tied up in keeping prisoners of the state locked up. When an earthquake shakes the ground such that the doors of all the cells are opened, he assumes that the prisoners have all escaped. Unwilling to live with the shame, he prepares to take his own life.
No doubt he asks himself, “What is my life worth if I’ve failed in my duty?” The owners of the enslaved girl likely ask themselves a similar question about her. “What is this girl worth to us now that she can no longer tell fortunes?” The answer in each case is “nothing.”
“I’m worth nothing if I fail.”
“She’s worth nothing to us if she can’t earn.”
But the gospel of Jesus Christ says something radically different. Something countercultural. In a culture like ours that tries to measure human worth by putting a number on it—how many hours we work, how much money we earn or have saved, how many followers we have, etc., the gospel says that your value as a human being cannot be reduced to a number. Your worth has nothing to do with your worthiness.
The gospel frees us from all such material estimations of our worth. To the enslaved girl and to the jailer alike, and straight from God’s mouth to your ears, the gospel says “you are priceless.” You are priceless because the Son of God would pay any price to save you—even at the cost of his own life. This is what salvation looks like. Salvation is not a hard-fought goal that we strive to achieve; it’s a gift that we hold out our hands to receive.
Salvation is not a hard-fought goal that we strive to achieve; it’s a gift that we hold out our hands to receive.
You can see this reality slowly begin to dawn upon the jailer. When an earthquake shakes open the doors of the jail cells, something else is opened as well—the door to his salvation. What he thinks is the worst moment of his life is precisely when the light of the gospel breaks through. At the moment he is prepared to take his own life for having allowed all the prisoners to escape, he hears the voice of Paul say, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” We are all here. No one has tried to flee.
We see yet more gospel irony here. Paul and Silas, although imprisoned, were free in Christ, and this jailer, although a free man, was in chains that he could not see until he saw what true freedom looks like.
Stunned to find Paul, Silas, and all the other prisoners still sitting in their cells, the jailer falls at Paul’s feet and asks, “What must I do to be saved?” What must I do to be saved? That is the key question. Surely, I must have to do something to experience this freedom, to know that I am saved. Tell me, what must I do?
“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved,” Paul says.
Yes, that’s fine, but what else? What do I need to do? Isn’t there a test to take? A 12-step program to complete? A ritual to undergo? It’s almost like we don’t want the gospel to be so simple.
You may have heard of the acronym KISS, which stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s a principle about valuing simplicity and avoiding unnecessary complexity. It can apply equally well across fields, from engineering design to communication strategy, including preaching.
Keep it simple, stupid. Don’t make something needlessly complex. Don’t try to say something in 5,000 words if five will do. Don’t think that you have come up with a list of accomplishments to prove your worth to yourself, to others, and certainly not to God. Don’t think that the way to salvation is Jesus plus some other thing that you have to do.
What must I do to be saved? Keep it simple, stupid. No, wait! Let me modify that. Keep it simple, sinner: Believe in the Lord Jesus who so valued your own life that he was willing to offer his.