Our family was invited to
attend church with some good friends this morning. We enjoyed our experience getting to see a
lot of people we get to see everyday at school.
In our Bible class this morning, the text was Acts 16. My friend did a great job leading the
conversation. This gave me a great
opportunity to retrieve my knowledge on Paul’s second missionary journey. It is true, at least in my experiences that
when reading the Bible new observations and connections frequently occur. This morning was one such experience of a new
observation and connection.
Paul’s encounter with Lydia
the seller of purple and the slave-girl with the spirit of divination in Acts
16 is a text that has anchor points that usually take my attention to some of
the obvious themes in the text (Paul’s first convert in Europe, Paul and Silas
put in jail for causing an uprising, and late night singing that led to a
jailbreak), but this morning my mind wondered down a slightly different path
investigating more subtle details of this narrative. I guess when I say “more subtle details” it
is because I was taught this text multiple times with a focus on the latter
themes that developed a particular lens or a model of prior knowledge
(intentional Bayesian brain reference) that allowed me to continually read over
some details and only focus on others. This morning I found myself focusing on the
lesser details that may actually be the more significant details than Paul and
Silas’ song induced, divine jailbreak.
So, Acts chapter 16 gets off
to a distracting start, especially, if you have just finished reading chapter
15. The few verses leading to chapter 16
is Luke, the writer of Acts, describing the relational split between Paul and
Barnabas. Probably providential, Paul
decides to take Silas and pick up Timothy on the way and head in a different
direction than Barnabas and a young John Mark.
Paul has his Macedonian vision redirecting his itinerary to
Europe. While in Europe, the sequence of
events seems to loosely parallel a few events from Jesus’ ministry. It is important to know that my mental anchor
or “prior” was reading again the ways the slave-girl was being trafficked by
the men in her life. This is much more
than a jailbreak text!
By way of an exegetical
disclaimer, I am not suggesting that my thoughts and literary parallels in this
essay are either original or necessarily required in reading Acts 16. With that said, the scene in Acts 16 conjures
up literary and contextual parallels with Jesus’ ministry and events in John 4
and Mark 5. I will be toggling between
Acts 16, John 4, and Mark 5 for the remainder of this essay.
 |
| Lydia Seller of Purple |
Paul gets a divine redirection
from a vision to travel to Europe. We
find out later it is because God has two particular women in mind for this
redirection. Lydia is already a
believer, but God opens her heart and she and her family are baptized. Undoubtedly, Lydia is already an influential
and wealthy woman. However, prior to
Paul’s encounter with well-respected Lydia, he has a juxtaposing encounter with
another kind of woman.
The text says the slave-girl
was under the spell of an evil spirit as well as the trafficking control of the
men of power in her community. What is
interesting is the spirit of Python controlling this woman immediately
identifies Paul, “These men are servants of the Most High God.” Apparently, the
slave-girl persisted in following Paul and Silas around identifying them. After much frustration, Paul casts the spirit
out of the slave-girl. This created a
major
problem since this girl was bringing economic gain to the male power
holders in the city. As well-connected, powerful men often do, they conspire with the rulers of the city and have Paul
and Silas beaten and thrown in jail.
 |
| Oracle of Delphi |
Side bar conversation, this
is actually a great text on the power of God over the established powers of
evil. Time and again in this story, the
power of God overwhelms the power of evil.
While it is exegetically consistent to identify this text as a baptismal
text with Lydia and her family in the opening scene obeying the Gospel and
being baptized and the closing scene a baptism of the Philippian jailer, there
is another sub-narrative taking place as it relates to race, class, and
gender. The gender piece is of
particular interest to me. I will
discuss later in the essay. Also, don’t
miss the metaphoric connection between the Philippian jailor’s attempted
suicide, physical self-inflicted death, which leads to his baptism (spiritual
death of self). Theologically, baptism
is not a work per se. It is a spiritual
suicide of sorts with the individual making the profession to no longer allow
self to govern but to submit to the Savior for liberation from the enslavement
to sin.
 |
| Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well |
In some ways, this parallels
Jesus itinerary change in his travel from Judea back to Galilee by targeting
Samaria in John 4. From both the text and extra
biblical evidence, we learn that Jews when taking that same route circumvent
Samaria. But in Jesus’ case, he has a
particular woman in mind that compels him to break from the social and cultural
norms of his day (Jews do not associate with Samaritans, especially, Samaritan
women) to bring salvation to a lady that was trafficked by the men in her
community. John’s description of Jesus’ conversation reveals this woman’s
potential social utility among the men in her town, “The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus *said to her,
“You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now
have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” 19 The woman *said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a
prophet.”
Back to Paul’s encounter
with the slave-girl in Acts 16:16, we read in the text that this was a woman
that was trafficked by the men in her town for economic gain. She was inflicted with a spirit of divination
as described by most major translations. After consulting the original language,
the literal rendering should be “the spirit of Python”. Thanks to my Bible scholar friend Dr. Curtis
Elliott, he provided some useful context that the spirit of Python was closely
connected to the priestesses that supported the pagan temples and priests of
the Oracle of
Delphi. These priestesses were ladies
who possessed a prophetic spirit that was deployed after the temple frenzy of
animal sacrifices and sexual orgies.
Similarly, the Samaritan
woman in John 4 quickly identified Jesus as a prophet. Later in John 4 the woman proclaims, “27 At this point His disciples came, and they
were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do
You seek?” or, “Why do You speak with her?” 28 So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and
*said to the men, 29 “Come,
see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not
the Christ, is it?” 30 They
went out of the city, and were coming to Him.”
Here are a few literary and theological connections to consider between the texts:
- · In both passages, there is a divine itinerary redirection.
- · In both passages, the central character is a woman forced into a social caste system that renders her marginalized by the men in her community.
- · In both passages, the women make identifying proclamations that reveal the presence of God. In both passages, the messenger of the Good News (Gospel) brings salvation to the ladies usurping the power structures of human trafficking. There are overt sexual overtones in the Samaritan woman and covert sexual connotations with the role of the slave-girl and her potential utility to Delphic temple practices with her spirit of Python.
- · In both passages, the messenger of the Good News is admonished and or punished. Jesus is admonished by his disciples for his elicit encounter with a “dirty dog Samaritan women,” and Paul and Silas are beaten and put in prison.
- · Cure ball connection, in Mark 5 the man possessed with a legion of demons immediately recognizes Jesus and identifies him as “Son of the Most High God.” Jesus casts out the demons and sends them into a herd of swine. Notice the literary connection between the slave-girl in Act 16 identifying Paul and Silas as servants of the Most High God and the demoniac identifying Jesus as the Son of the Most High God.
Conclusion:
The literary connections are
interesting, but the theological connections are most important. In all three passages, we see the power of
God to bring about freedom from enslavement, value to the marginalized,
destruction of systems of human trafficking that serve to lessen and devalue,
and hope for the weak over the strong.
These are the same themes that resonate today. It would seem that humanity has advanced
beyond the systems of gendering for the purpose of trafficking and enslaving
over the course of 2,000 years, and yet, we see some of the evil power
structures at work today. The
difference, today we seem to be a bit more sophisticated in masking these
systems. Further, unlike Jesus and Paul,
the Christian community today struggles with both identifying these evil power
structures as well as not syncretizing with such structures. This last statement requires some
explanation.
At least in our culture,
we continue to directly and indirectly support systems of economy that
specialize in sexualizing our girls.
While today’s places of trafficking are not ancient pagan temples with
priestesses serving as prostitutes and engaging in orgies of sin; instead, they
are every major NFL stadium across our country.
I am thinking of the NFL environment in my own city that prominently
features pole dancers and plenty of libations to keep the crowd in frenzy status. The experts that specialize in fighting human
trafficking tell us one of the biggest sporting events in our country for
trafficking is Super Bowl weekend.
Thankfully, the message of the
Bible still resonates today. The same
God that put on human flesh to rescue humanity from sin’s slavery continues to
provide the same salvation given to two unlikely ladies in our text. Similar to both ladies featured in Acts 16 and
John 4, in the kingdom of God, gender is not an excuse to enslave, dehumanize,
or marginalize. While sin’s bent is to possess
for the purpose of re-imaging humanity away from God’s original design, Jesus
entered our world to restore humanities image to holiness and relationship with
the Creator. It is no coincidence Satan corrupted and confused Eve and Adam in the Garden for the purpose of trafficking humanity for sin. That original spiritual trafficking continues today. There is only one source of salvation and liberation. Jesus, Son of the Most High God!!
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