At the Table with Prisoners

Paul is annoyed. He and Silas are trying to work in Philippi. They had just landed a big conversion with Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. Paul feels like he is on a roll.

But this girl keeps yelling at him. She just follows them day after day and yells about how Paul and Silas were “slaves of the Most High God!” And out of his annoyance, Paul calls the spirit out of her.

Here’s the problem. This girl is a slave-girl. She who makes money for her slave owners, pimps who exploited her. When she loses her power, she also loses money for her owners. So, the owners lock Paul and Silas up.

“These men are disturbing our city,” they say. “They are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” This sounds to me like the cry of “We didn’t have trouble here until these outside agitators came and disturbed our way of life!” The owners rile up the gathered crowd to strip, flog, and imprison Paul and Silas.

Outside agitators. You hear that in the word Jews. That was the phrase used by the city of Birmingham against the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was put in jail for participating in demonstrations in that city, and a group of eight prominent clergymen published an open letter calling him just that. An outside agitator. To which King responded, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.”[1]

The thing is… Paul and Silas aren’t outsiders. We find out later in the chapter that they’re Roman citizens. The law said a Roman citizen should walk in safety from one end of the empire to the other, so the government of Philipi is in big trouble. Furthermore, they were staying with Lydia, a prominent business woman in town. The same with MLK. He wasn’t an outsider, he was invited by the movement in Birmingham to address the injustices of the Jim Crow South there.

Disturbing our city! By talking about the injustices we just accept and have learned to live with as if they don’t affect us directly. And we aren’t always aware of the indirect ways they affect us. We are a selfish people. It takes a little bit for us to get it. To wake up. To truly perceive the injustices that others live with each and every day. I won’t blame anyone for not “seeing” until they realized they had skin in the game. The question isn’t “why didn’t you wake up earlier?!” it’s, “Now that you perceive, how shall we get to work?”

We often forget the scandal of Christianity. Jesus states that his family is anyone who hears the will of God and does it.[2] Jesus redefines family and home.

Diana Butler Bass writes, “Jesus’s followers made a great deal of trouble when they redefined home to include women and slaves, upsetting the traditional Roman family everywhere they went. Ancient Christian practices of family shocked good Romans. Early believers created such an inclusive understanding of home that it resembled a form of spiritual communism.”[3]

Paul and Silas sing songs in jail. Suddenly, the ground begins to shake, and the doors are flung open, and the prisoners can just walk out. The jailer is about to kill himself but Paul stops him. The jailer can’t believe it. He asks about being saved and Paul refers again to Jesus. Paul says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

The jailer is so moved that he takes these prisoners, Paul and Silas, to his house. There are prisoners at the table.  Table fellowship. In this fellowship, all are free. The jailer, free from holding the prisoners, and the prisoners, free from being held. All are free. They tell their stories, they laugh, they break bread. They answer Christ’s prayer, “That they all may be one.”

Paul and the early church were unencumbered by power, by business, or by social order. They were always at the table. Praying, singing, and worshiping together. It was radical. It was disturbing. It was exciting! Fresh and new!

It has been 2,000 years and now our radical faith is in the position of the gate keepers. The church dispenses goods and services like any other secular nonprofit. We can become a social program or distribution center of excess food and clothing and never have to open up our homes, our beds, our dinner tables… We don’t question this. I sure didn’t until I sat with this text for two weeks.

That’s the thing with our sacred stories. They get at you. They get under your skin and seek transformation of the heart. They convict and liberate. They open us up. Lift our heads. Challenge us to look at our behavior and routines. We are called to both the Lydias and the slave girl we’re annoyed with. We cannot settle for rich and poor being kept in separate worlds where inequality is carefully managed but never dismantled. Where straight couples don’t see the harm policies do to gay couples. Where men don’t listen to women and the battle of the sexes continues. Where black folk aren’t treated with dignity and with the benefit of the doubt most of us in this room expect. Those who can’t see how their life is supposed to go from here now that they have lost their purpose, those who struggle with suicidal thoughts like the Jailer… All of these folk are our folk. There are no outsiders.

When we speak out for them, they will call us outside agitators. They will forget that we’ve been on the Square for 200 years. They will say, “Whoa! Wait! This is too soon” which means “Never mention this again.” Or “this isn’t really a problem” which means “It’s not really a problem for ME.” Privilege can be defined as having the option of walking away.

I often have the option of walking away. When a friend of mine expressed her worry over the restrictive abortion laws being passed in the south and Ohio’s own Heartbeat bill, I can walk away. I could act like these laws don’t affect me. When my friend Sage Lewis stands up for folk without a home in Akron, I can walk away. I could act like the homeless aren’t my brothers and sisters. When my LGBTQ+ friends and family talk about their stories, when my own Dungeons & Dragons middle schoolers talk about how they’re bullied and misunderstood by their own families, I can walk away. Look. I’m not always the best listener. But I’m trying to stay and listen. I’m trying to be converted to God’s glorious kingdom where there are no outsiders. Just fellow friends of God, each with a seat at the table, trying to tell their stories, name their worries, and to show love as best they can.

Let us be the answer to Christ’s prayer, “That they all may be one.” To look upon another person and to be excited to listen to their story, no matter how tragic or anxiety-producing. May we be the place where chains are broken and folks are free to tell their stories; their full story. May we all look at one another and see each other as God sees us, “These are made in my image. Hey! I got kin in that body!” Amen.

Works Cited

 Martin Luther King Jr, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, from I Have a Dream, Letters and speeches that changed the world. Edited by James M. Washington. Page 85.

 Luke 8:21

 Grounded, Finding God in the world, a spiritual revolution. Page 171.

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