Amy and “These Men are Disturbing the Peace”
These Men are Disturbing the Peace
Today’s reading from Acts 16 finds Paul and Silas on their missionary journey.
They meet Lydia, a woman of wealth and privilege, who converts along with her household and then hosts the traveling missionaries, feeding and clothing them, offering them shelter and a place to rest.
They meet an unnamed slave girl. This girl is possessed by an unclean spirit and her owners are using it and her to make money telling fortunes and reading people’s fates.
This slave girl follows Paul and Silas, crying out to them, shouting at them a mix of religious language and hawking her skills as a psychic. After a few days of this, Paul turns to her and rebukes the unclean spirit and frees her from her enslavement – her enslavement to the spirit, and also her enslavement to her owners.
Did Paul and Silas commit a crime?
Or are they following Jesus?
What if following Jesus is committing a crime?
Jesus in his first public sermon preaches: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. (Luke 4:18-19)
In direct response to Paul and Silas’ act of liberation of the slave girl, her owners seize Paul and Silas, bring them before the civic authorities, attracting a crowd, telling the police and the judges, “These men are disturbing the peace – dangerous Jewish agitators subverting our Roman law and order.” (Acts 16: 20 MSG)
Paul and Silas are tortured and thrown into jail.
Did Paul and Silas commit a crime?
Is keeping the peace more important than justice?
As Paul and Silas lay in their shackles, praying and singing, an earthquake reduces the prison to rubble. They are free. Their jailer, fearing the prisoners have escaped and he will lose his job, resigns himself to end his life, yet Paul calls out to him, and, badly shaken, the jailer kneels, asking them Sirs, what do I have to do to be saved, to really live? Put your entire trust in Jesus, and then you will really live, Paul and Silas respond. (Acts 16: 27-31 MSG)
How do you hear this story today?
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