Today’s
scripture lesson from Acts is the story of Paul, Silas, the writer of
the Book of Acts (probably same guy who wrote the Gospel of Luke) and
some others in Phillipi. They are beset by a slave girl with a spirit
of prophecy, who after a couple days of haranguing our band of
evangelists, annoys Paul so much he casts the spirit out of the girl.
This upsets her owners because they relied on the income they
received from her ability to see the future, and Paul and Silas end
up in jail. While in jail, they sing hymns, and after an earthquake
opens the bars to their cells, they refuse to escape. Instead, they
tell their jailer about Jesus and he and his family are all converted
and baptized.
In
this sermon, I explore the question, “But what about the slave
girl’s story?” and do that in dialogue with the abduction of the
school girls in Nigeria (and the stories they all have), and our
current inability in the U.S. to listen to one another’s stories
and instead just shout at or demean one another, or think that if we
disagree on one thing we ought not respect each other.
Some
questions for you to answer in the comments section: Does telling
your story or listening to others have power to you, or importance to
you? How so? How is it valuable, if at all, to our social discourse
and ability to live together as people? Feel free to answer those, or
answer your own questions, or make your own observations. Thank you
for reading, and God bless you in your faith journey.
“What About Herstory?”
Sermon, Year A, Easter 4, March 11,
2014
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau
Claire, WI
© Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: Acts16:16-34
This passage from Acts I have read many
times over the years. I was always really impressed by this incident
in the jail, how the doors opened and Paul and the others stayed
inside and didn’t try to escape. But I found this week in reading
it something else has struck out at me. I found it difficult to read
this story without focusing on the encounter with the slave girl. It
caught my attention this week. Especially, I think, because of the
abduction of the Nigerian girls. The girls abducted from their
school The girls who were basically taken by Boko Haram who said thatthe girls’ crime was that they wanted to be educated.
So the connection between the two
stories, the slave girl and these Nigerian girls, caught my
attention. There are similarities between them. There is certainly a
lack of respect shown to the girls in Nigeria. To abduct people
because you think that you have power of them simply because you are
a man and they are women or girls. There is also a lack of respect
shown to the slave girl here in the Book of Acts. A lack of respect
shown (or not shown) by a number of people. Paul doesn’t show
respect for her or appreciate her. He sort of heals her. Maybe. He
casts the spirit out of her, but we don’t know that she wanted to
have it cast out of her. He just does it. And he doesn’t do it
because he wants to make them better. He casts out the spirit because
he is annoyed by her. He wants her to be quiet. That was the only
motivation he had. And Paul doesn’t even speak to her. He speaks to
the spirit. In a sense, he has violated her. Violated her being by
doing this thing to her as though he had the power to do to her
whatever he wants without having to ask permission first.
She has no say in the matter.
And then her owners are upset because
they were making money off of her. She was a good source of income
for them. And perhaps her customers are upset. So they’re upset.
The magistrates are upset. Other people are upset. But in this whole
passage the girl’s story never gets told. We don’t hear from her
at all. No one speaks to her. She is ignored by Paul. She’s ignored
by her owners. She’s ignored by the magistrates and others. She’s
even ignored by the person who wrote this book. The writer didn’t
feel a need to tell her story except to use her as a foil to set up
this story about Paul, to get to this conclusion that ends with this
wonderful conversion and baptism of the jailer and his family. Which
is a great story! But where is her story?
I’d like to think that she has one.
She must have had one. And even if we don’t know it, or get to read
it or hear about it, God knows it. God knew her story. I think of
those Nigerian girls who were abducted. They have names. They have
stories. We don’t know their stories, but they have them.
We don’t often hear the stories of
slaves, or the oppressed, or the people on the bottom of the social
hierarchy. Even the Bible’s writers had their blind spots. They
were products of their time. I’m not going to fault the writer here
for not thinking much of a slave girl. Slavery was so common at the
time, such a normal part of life, it wasn’t even really questioned
as to whether it ought to exist. It just did. It was a part of life,
nothing strange. So no fault for them being products of their time.
We have evolved and come to think that slavery is not a good thing.
But we do have that question, Why is this slave girl’s story not
told?
There is nothing in the Bible that is
anti-slavery. But we have come to accept a position over the years,
most people around the world (though we know that slavery still
exists – Jodi Emerson from Fierce Freedom spoke about it here in
December) that slavery is bad. One thing I’ve found interesting
about Fierce Freedom’s presence in town is how so many churches,
that otherwise argue over many things, have come together on this.
Liberal, conservative, Evangelical, mainline, Pentecostal, have come
together on an anti-slavery position. We have, Jacob’s Well, Peace
Lutheran, First Lutheran, Calvary Baptist, all claiming that slavery
is evil. Perhaps this is a first step of finding some common ground
to work together on those things we are in agreement on, even as we
disagree on others. To come together, even if we disagree on some
things.
I had another experience on Monday of
this coming together. A couple gentleman down at the Senior Center
have put together a series of lectures/classes called “The Faith of
My Neighbors” about religions and religious issues. Tomorrow they
are having a class on the difference between Sunnis, Shi’ites, and
Kurds, and in a few weeks they’ll have a Hmong spiritual leader
talking about Hmong animism/spirituality. This last Monday they
invited me, and Roger Galstad from Grace Communion Church, to talk
about science and religion because we have different perspectives.
You might remember back in February I had an article in the religion
section about faith and science, from a pro-science perspective. That
same day, Roger had an article in the editorial page about the same
topic, but from an anti-evolution and anti-climate change
perspective, coming from his Biblical literalism. The two men at the
Senior Center thought it would be interesting to have the two of us
come and talk about this topic from our two perspectives. Not to try
to convince anyone of our correctness, but to speak to our own
stories. So Roger told his story, and I told mine. We disagreed.
Disagreed quite a lot, really. But we agreed on certain things of
faith: Easter, the empty tomb; Jesus as savior; God incarnate in
Jesus; the command to love our neighbors. We had common ground there
on the essentials of faith. But what was really interesting is what
happened a few times while we were speaking, and after we were done.
People were not impressed, overall, so much by what we said about
science, or how we read the Bible, or biblical authority. They were
impressed, they said, with how Roger and I spent an hour and a half
sitting right next to each other and disagreeing on so much, and yet
we never attacked one another, never belittled each other, said men
things, denied the humanity of the other... we were quite civil. And
I thought how sad that we are in such a time, with so much toxicity
in our public dialogue among politicians, pundits, even churches, so
much nastiness that people were surprised that two men would be civil
to one another while they disagreed.
Wow! What a powerful moment that was,
not even about science and religion, but that the two of us offered a
model that you don’t have to hate each other just because you
disagree on something. It’s not an all-or-nothing affair. You can
hear each others’ stories and affirm one another even if we don’t
agree with all of it. When we don’t let someone tell their story,
or when we don’t listen when they do tell it, that’s a problem.
Whether it’s politicians not listening to one another. Or some of
the back and forth shouting we’ve had on the Confluence project
here in Eau Claire. Other issues on a national level, like our long
debates on homosexuality, abortion, the environment, corporate
regulation, where it seems no real conversation is going on but it is
just shouting back and forth. Then I think of how powerful the
experience has been when we do listen to one another. Think of our
own church tradition, how good it has been for us and for the world,
once we started listening to the stories of women, and affirmed that
women could have viable and important spiritual stories, or social
stories. Or when we started listening to the stories of slaves. And
when we started listening to the stories of African Americans during
the 40s, 50s, and 60s during the Civil Rights movement. Listening to
the stories of migrant workers. Or our LGBT brothers and sisters. Or
like in our Street Ministry, listening to the stories of people who
live on the streets, who struggle, who are having difficulty. To
listen to their stories, to let them be told: that’s the power of
the Church! That’s what the church is about and ought to be about!
Lifting up the stories of those who are otherwise silenced, so that
their stories can be heard. So they have a voice. To speak on their
behalf, or hopefully find a way to let them speak. Even if we
disagree. To hear each others’ truths.
And so I’m bothered by this story in
Acts. She’s the pivot point in this story. She doesn’t make
anything happen or set things in motion, but everything happens
because of her. And she gets ignored like so many women, and so many
others, even today get ignored. Get used for something and then are
ignored. Like the Nigerian girls abducted for no reason other than
that they thought they ought to have an education equal to the other
half of the population. A thought which threatened some people.
Simply because they thought they had a right to an education, that
they had a right to life, they were abducted. As Boko Haram has said,
they did so with plans to sell them into slavery as though they
aren’t people with stories, but are just females, just girls, they
don’t matter. Just objects, things to be used by men as tools or
commodities to be bought and sold with no more than thought than you
might trade in a car or rip up the old carpeting to replace it with
new.
And so we lift up their stories here in
the church. Many are lifting up the Nigerian girls today. And we lift
up the story of this unnamed slave girl, who shows up in scripture,
even though it tells us very little. We lift up their stories even
though we don’t know much about them. To remind the world that they
do have stories. As followers of Jesus, as Christians, we can say to
them as God to says to us, that even if we don’t know them
personally, “You matter. You are important to God, you are
important to us, you are important to me because you are also God’s
creation. You are God’s son or God’s daughter. You matter.”
And though we don’t know all their
stories, we want their stories to be heard and to tell the world to
listen to their stories. Listen to them, and say to them, “Though
we know little of your story, we are in solidarity with you. We are
in solidarity with you as we are with all people whose stories do not
get to be told.”
Amen.
