The Haunting in Philippi

The Haunting in Philippi

Written and Delivered by Rev. Ashley Bair

Scripture: Acts 16:16-34

This has been a tough week. Prayer - Be with us. Hold our hearts, hear our prayers, heal our wounds. Find us in our place and move us to where we need to be. May these words be guided by the Spirit and bring the words you want spoken and heard today. Amen.

I remember my first encounter with a ghost. I’m going to call it a ghost because I don’t know what else it could have been. At the time I was living in a ranch style house with a basement and one day I was home alone on the main floor cooking lunch for myself in the kitchen. I put the water to boil on the stove, heard the clicking of the gas turning on, dumped a handful of salt into the pot, checked the clock and went down into the basement to move my laundry. A few minutes later, when I came back upstairs to the kitchen, two of the cupboard doors were open.

I called out to see if anyone had come into the house and there was no response. So, I checked every room on the main floor; pushed back the shower curtain and kept it there. Then, I got a little freaked out and checked every room in the basement, too. No one was home but me. Then, I had a moment where I second guessed every move I had made. I must have left them open? But no, I didn’t, but did I? What happened? As I stood in the kitchen and stared at the open doors, I felt a chill quiver through my body as I realized it must have been a ghost. I slowly shut the cupboard doors. My ears, eyes, and entire body was on high alert, I returned to the water on the stove and made my lunch. That chilled feeling didn’t leave my body for hours. When I told this story to my friend later, she said, “Who is haunting you?”

Now, years later, I still remember that moment like it was yesterday. Not only the bodily quiver that accompanied those opened cupboard doors, but also the question: “Who is haunting you, Ashley?”

I don’t know if you have ever had a similar experience, but these ghost stories seem funny and unreal until they’re not as funny and very real. Then suddenly, every decision I’ve made and person I’ve known, and not known, comes to the forefront of my mind. What did I do? Who died in this house? What happened to the people who were here 300 hundred years ago and what message are they trying to send me? What wrong has not been righted?

Who is haunting me?

A haunting is a poignant and evocative encounter that follows us around, that lingers in the consciousness; it is something that is difficult to ignore or forget. A haunting is something that disturbs us until the reason for its presence is resolved. Sometimes, we get that resolution. If my roommate would have walked into the kitchen saying, “Hey have you seen my favorite cup? I’ve been looking all over for it.” That would have given me a breath of relief. A clear moment of closure would have offered me resolution. Sometimes, we don’t get that resolution and the encounters continue to haunt us.

With or without the presence of a ghost, we are haunted by things today. Past pains, relationships, unprocessed grief, and personal and collective traumatic incidents are so difficult to hold without resolution. If there is no movement, no recognition, no change, the sense of uncertainty that follows leads to fear and anxiety. It haunts us.
In today’s text Paul and Silas encounter a slave girl in Philippi in what theologian Dr. Willie James Jennings describes as a “haunting.”

In the book of Acts the disciples run into a lot of trouble. The book is traditionally called “the acts of the Apostles,” the book that contains the stories of the disciples in their journey, as called by Jesus to go out into the world, empowered by his presence through the Holy Spirit, to invite all nations into his ministry of freedom in love. We’ll talk more about that next week, but today we are with the disciples as they have traveled through Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Turkey, to Greece, where we find Paul and Silas in Philippi.

Now, right before this several disciples had gone back to Jerusalem to meet with a council of Jewish Christian leaders who were claiming that unless non-Jewish people became Jewish by practicing the laws of their faith, they could not become part of Jesus’ ministry. The disciples disagreed and, in this meeting, they shared passages of scripture and their experience with Jesus to show that God’s plan was always to include the nations. They write a letter inviting non-Jewish people, they ask them to stop participating in pagan sacrifices, but they don’t require anyone to adopt a Jewish identity or obey the religious laws.

This was huge. This was a declaration that membership amongst Jesus’ people is not based on ethnic identity or following religious laws, but rather on trusting Jesus and following his teachings. And it’s this multi-ethnic reality the disciples speak of that causes problems. It is the clashing of the Jewish Christian message of inclusion and the Grecco-Roman empire’s message of control.

When the disciples take this message on the road it is seen as subversive and Paul, especially, is seen as a dangerous social revolutionary for espousing a message that calls the practices of the empire into question. They continue, in each city, proclaiming the message of Jesus. They are guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit, as Jesus promised, to move and to act and react to the injustice that greets them. And there was a lot: greed, exploitation, manipulation, and fear were the main drivers of the empire.

Then, the disciples enter Philippi, and one day, “As the disciples journeyed toward prayer they gained a co-traveler, the slave girl with a spirit, who haunted their prayer walk….she “brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed [them], she would cry out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation." She kept doing this for many days.”

Paul recognizes a dilemma: That she is saying what they want to hear, offering them a chance to exalt her and her message, which surely, they would agree with. But, underneath her words are the realities of her circumstance: bound in slavery, her body and words are exposed for profit. A spirit is making use of her body just as her owners are making use of her. The demonic and the economic are bound together and it haunts Paul.

As Jennings writes, “Such haunting is necessary and of the Spirit, as the tormented cries of the enslaved must always encumber the pious actions of the faithful…. And it is no accident that she is drawn to those who are religious…as a hopeful possibility of her emancipation.”

Indeed, Paul casts out the spirit and with those words it is gone. The girl is released from the spirits' captivity, but, not from her owners. As the book of Acts displays, to free someone does not come without cost. Before Paul and Silas can do anymore, they are seized, dragged to the authorities, accused of breaking the law, attacked, stripped, beaten, and thrown into prison with the instructions to be put in the innermost cell and fastened with their feet in stocks.

In the middle of the night, no doubt feeling a sense of uncertainty, they hold fast to their prayers and song, and an earthquake opens the doors of the jail and frees the imprisoned, including Paul and Silas. But they don’t leave without freeing the jailer, too; they free his mind and his soul from what haunts him and invite him into the life and work of the faithful.

Their wounds are washed, and they are fed. And the disciples continue their journey, almost guaranteed to encounter another haunting like that of the haunting in Philippi. They didn’t continue because it was easy or because they always knew what to do, they did it because what Jesus taught them was love found in freedom, and that freeing people and spreading that love to the nations was their call. These devastating moments were not easily lived through nor forgotten. They felt the chilling quiver. Haunted and disturbed by the wrongs around them that hadn’t been righted.

They could do this because they were guided by the Holy Spirit, as Jesus promised, to move and to act, rooted in prayer and song that empowered them to remain strong in the call of their faith. That calmed their fears and anxieties in the uncertainty. No matter what lay ahead for them, there was more to them and what was possible in their lives with this calling than whatever trouble met them.

Today, our work as disciples looks a little different, but it is still the call of our faith to invite everyone into the love and freedom of the teachings of Jesus, and it is no less risky. There are certainly times we notice the dilemmas around us. There are certainly times we hear the words of the oppressed and must decide how to act given the potential consequences. There are certainly empirical forces in the greed and fear of the mighty at work in our world. Injustice greets us, too.
I again hear the voice of my friend asking, “What is haunting you?”

At this time, in this empire, my haunts are inescapable. We are living in a time of collective fear and anxiety. We don’t know what will happen with climate change. We are in an economic crisis we haven’t seen the likes of in decades. We are witnessing war all over the globe. In the past 14 days: 10 people in Buffalo, 1 in a Presbyterian church in Laguna Woods, 19 children and 2 adults in Uvalde have been killed by the hands of a gun. As a person who has lived through a school shooting, this is haunting me. There have already been 213 mass shootings in the US in 2022. We buy more than 50,000 guns a day.

It seems never-ending, almost guaranteed that we will encounter another haunting. We can offer our thoughts and prayers, put our hearts in a good place, but I hope that we, like Paul, also recognize a dilemma: That we are offering what we feel we can but underneath our words are the realities of a circumstance bound in tragedy, exposed for a profit, that we could change. The empire brings their owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. The demonic and the economic are bound together and it should haunt us.

This dilemma should call us to do what we need to do to continue the work of Jesus on earth: which is to free ourselves and those around us bound in this empire. Are people looking at us as a hopeful possibility of emancipation?

We are now the disciples. And as Jesus’ first followers showed us, no matter what is ahead, there is more to who we are and what is possible in our lives with this calling than whatever trouble will meet us. In our lives as a community of disciples of Jesus Christ, called to be his body in the world, this happens not by trying to outmaneuver the empire, but by freeing and by loving. By acting and reacting to the demonic and economic sham civilities of the world with repeated acts of compassion, care, generosity, and mercy to all the nations.

As Paul, writes himself, later in his life, from another jail cell: "If I speak in the tongues of mortals or angels, if I have prophetic powers, if my faith is great enough to move mountains, but I do not have love, then, I am nothing, I gain nothing! ...Faith, hope, love abide, but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-13, NRSV)
Do I believe in hauntings? Yes. There are certainly many things I am haunted by - some of them live in my kitchen cupboards, some in my memory, and some of them are bound by the greed, exploitation, manipulation, and fear of the mighty in our world.

Let us feel the chilling quivers of those hauntings. And let us be the disciples here on earth, now, that hold the encounters of those being haunted because we represent a hopeful possibility of emancipation. Let us pray and sing to join those who are haunted, both past and present. Because we do need that to stay rooted in who we are, as Dr. Jennings reminds us. “Each time we gather in the name of Jesus and lift our voices, it should shape our reverence and drive us to see and learn and know and change the situations of those who suffer, especially in God’s holy name.” Let it calm our fear and anxiety in the uncertainty and root us in our faith. From this place, the Holy Spirit will guide us on our journey.

Amen.