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Hespeler, June 1, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 16:16-34, Psalm 97, Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21, John 17:20-26
She had always been a very odd child. She never behaved like the other children. She didn’t play with them, often preferring to sit, staring at insignificant things for hours. She was almost two years old before she spoke a word.
And yet, she was not lacking in intelligence. In many ways, she was too smart for her own good. She often saw things about people that they didn’t quite realize about themselves. And when she spoke, people didn’t quite know how to handle it. She wouldn’t look people in the eye and spoke as if they weren’t quite there. It made everyone feel so uncomfortable. Her parents didn’t know what to do with her. They doubted that they would ever be able to marry her off. And what was a daughter for if not that?
Neurodivergent
They didn’t have the words to describe someone who was neurodivergent – whose mind didn’t work quite like everyone else’s. In fact, the only way that they had to describe someone like her was to say that she had a demon or a spirit in her.
It was a relief to her parents when the slave masters came around and offered to take her off their hands. Her mother and father agreed to sell her and told themselves that there was nothing else that they could have done.
Her new masters knew exactly what to do with her though. Though she was strange, she had abilities they knew could be valuable. It was just a matter of packaging those abilities in the right way.
A Python Spirit
And so, they put out the word that she indeed had a spirit. It was, they said, a Python spirit – the spirit of the Pythia. That was a key marketing term. The Pythia was the name of the famous oracle at Delphi. Traditionally a young girl like this one, the Pythia would breathe in the noxious fumes that seeped up from a chasm in the ground below the sanctuary at Delphi. She would then make strange and enigmatic statements about the future.
It didn’t really matter if her words predicted the actual future. She just had to say something that sounded perceptive enough. The reputation of the Pythia was enough for people to take it from there and turn the enigmatic words into a certain prediction of the future.
The Trick
For example, when King Croesus of Lydia enquired of the Pythia at Delphi, asking whether he ought to attack the Persians, the oracle answered back that, if he did, he would certainly destroy a great empire. And so, Croesus confidently attacked, assured that there would be victory. As predicted, the ensuing war did destroy an empire. It just happened to be Croesus’ own empire.
You see, that was the trick of the Pythia; she had a way of couching her predictions so that it seemed that she had predicted the future no matter what happened. And that is why the slave masters told everyone that this girl had the same spirit. With her ability to observe all kinds of details that no one else noticed, she picked up the trick very quickly and soon people everywhere were clamoring for her predictions.
Ergasia
Her owners were ecstatic. They could soon charge anything they wanted for her services. Nobody remembered what she had been called before she was sold, but her masters gave her a new name. They called her “Ergasia,” the word for profit and gain because they loved the profits she brought them.
But if Ergasia brought great gain to her owners, her life anything but comfortable. The work that she did was taxing. The large crowds she often drew frightened her, and working closely with people created a deep and uncontrollable anxiety within her. But, of course, she had no control over any of those circumstances. She was a slave, and she had to do whatever her owners desired. They had no care for her well-being.
Paul and Silas
When Ergasia first spotted Paul and Silas in the marketplace of Philippi, she could immediately see that there was something different about them. Everyone that she had ever known in her entire short life had been the same. Everyone had only ever been interested in anybody else in terms of what they could get out of them. Her masters were only interested in the profits she produced, and her clients were only interested in the promises for the future she could offer them. And she had never been given any reason to think that anyone was any different.
But, as she watched Paul and Silas talk with people, she could see none of that attitude in them. They freely offered to people whatever they needed most: hope, encouragement and even the promise of new life. She kept watching them, kept expecting to discover what their game was and what they were trying to get out of people. But all she saw was how they offered nothing but good news to people in the name of this man they called Jesus.
How She Reacted
And you might think that she would have seen this in a positive way, but she didn’t. It troubled her deeply because, as far as she was concerned, that was not how the world was supposed to work. The world was divided into two sorts of people, those who were exploited and those who exploited them. These two men did not fit into her worldview. They seemed to see people as having value apart from what could be extracted from them. That was deeply disturbing to her.
The situation became unbearable. She had to make it make sense. And so she pointed to them and cried out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” Like with all of her special prophecies, she knew that she was speaking a truth, that she had observed something true in these men, even if she herself didn’t understand it.
And, like often happened with her, once she had become fixated on something, she just couldn’t let go of it. She began to follow them around everywhere they went and calling out her prophecy for anyone to hear.
Paul’s Reluctance
In his recent travels, Paul’s companions had been admonishing him. He had just been too disruptive in too many places, and it had become exhausting. That was why, when they crossed over into Europe, he had turned over a new leaf. He had promised his companions that he would be good and that he would stop provoking opposition.
And he had been doing so well ever since they had arrived in Philippi. He had kept things very low-key. He had found a group of women who worshipped in a place down by the river and had quietly started making disciples among them. Everyone had been relieved to see him staying under the radar.
That is why, when Ergasia started to cause disruptions wherever they went, Paul tried to ignore it. He understood that she was a slave and that anything he did that made her question that status would be seen as a real provocation. To threaten any master’s hold over a piece of property was to attack the very foundation of society. He knew that it was wiser for him not to respond to her.
Paul Snaps
But before long it began to really bother him. Here she was, a child of God, and one who had been given a certain insight into God’s truth, and yet no one had ever stood up for her. No one had ever seen her as anything other than something to use for their own profit. Eventually he could not bear it anymore and he realized that he had to do something, even though it might be costly to him and his companions. And so Paul finally snapped one day. He turned and he said, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.”
He was speaking, of course, to the Python spirit that he and everyone else understood was the source of both her torment and her abilities. I realize that we would understand it differently. We would see, perhaps, someone who was strange – whose mind worked differently – who had been exploited because of it for the profit of others. But they, of course, didn’t have that kind of language to help them understand it. They could only speak in terms of spiritual forces. And so, Paul had to address the problem in those same terms.
But by speaking to her in those terms, he did get a message across to her. He had just told her, in the name of Jesus, that she was more than just a condition that someone could profit from. He had told her that she herself had value. That is a powerful message for anyone who has never heard it before.
What This Did for Ergasia
It did not change her status as a slave. But it did affect her abilities. The way she had looked at people and their stories, she had only been able to do that because of how she could look at them in a totally disconnected way. But now, she had seen the possibility of connection. And she continued to connect with Paul and Silas and some of the others in ways that made her feel as if she had some value apart from the profit she generated for her masters.
And so, while her masters had not lost their property, they had lost the ability to continue to exploit their property by using her. They may have owned her body, but they no longer owned Ergasia, her extraordinary spirit that generated extraordinary profits. Many of those who earn great profits in our world without actually doing any of the labour themselves do so by taking everything from those whom they exploit. They no longer had access to everything, and that enraged them.
“These men, these Jews,” they shouted out to all who would listen, “are disturbing our city and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us, being Romans, to adopt or observe.” And what were the customs that they were overturning? The custom of counting profits as more important than people.
Slavery and the Early Church
Paul’s interaction with the slave girl in Philippi is fascinating. He doesn’t do for her what we, as modern people, might like him to do. He does not denounce the institution of slavery and set her free from her masters.
Of course, the reality is that he had no way of doing any such thing. If he had attempted to challenge the most central institution of that society, he would have changed nothing for her, and he would have immediately ended up in a much worse position than the local jail.
Slavery, at that moment in history, was absolutely foundational to the entire society. That is why we do not see the earliest church challenging its existence. No one could conceive of a society functioning without it.
Challenging Dehumanization
But, though they did not challenge the institution, they seem to have been willing to challenge the essential dehumanization that went with it. In one of his letters, Paul cited an early creed of the church that said, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:27-28)
This was a radical statement. The earliest church recognized that the divisions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female existed in the world around them and that that was not going to change. But they also embraced the truth that the new identity that was given in Christ did allow people to overcome the limits put upon them by such categories. And that meant that slaves were not defined by the profits they produced for their masters.
A Different World
We live in a different world. But we do still live in a world where various divisions matter – racial and ethnic differences, gender, rich and poor. And just because we no longer accept institutional slavery doesn’t mean that we don’t tend to reduce the value of someone to the profits that they can produce. In fact, we do it all the time.
Paul disrupted the way in which people profited from someone’s spirit. By doing so, he disturbed the city, threatening the very foundations of the way that it worked. We still live in a world where there are people willing to break the spirit of some to feed their own profits. I only hope that we could be as bold as Paul in setting people free from any hold that such ways of doing things places upon people.