Sometimes you hear something that just sticks, you know? I heard something that stuck in the mid-1980’s (before I went to seminary) in a sermon by a wonderful priest named Palmer Temple. Palmer pointed out that we’re never given a last name for Jesus. "Jesus of Nazareth" — that just tells us where he’s from. We never get "Jesus Goldstein," or "Cohen," or "Schwartz." Palmer said he wanted to give Jesus a last name. He wanted to name him "Jesus Freedom."

Jesus Freedom. Because, Palmer said, Jesus frees us, frees us from bondages we sometimes don’t even know we’re in.

We have a great story of bondage and freedom this morning. The story begins when Paul and his friends encounter a girl who is in bondage. She is a slave, but she is also possessed by some disease or evil spirit. She’s loud and socially inappropriate, and she reads palms and provides the entertainment at parties. Bondage, a bondage that her owners exploit for a handsome profit.

Then she sees Paul. Somehow this exploited slave recognizes a fellow slave, but she perceives that Paul and his friends are slaves not to exploitation or bondage, but to freedom. They serve freedom. ("Mr. Freedom," Palmer would say.) Slaves to freedom, now there’s a paradox. This story is so full of irony — I love it. Anyway, being who she is, she follows them around shouting, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim a way of salvation." Paul and his companions were probably flattered at first. "Wow!" they probably thought, "a groupie!" That might have been flattering—for a while. Maybe an hour. Maybe even a day. But she kept it up day after day. She was driving them nuts! Now they were in bondage!

Sometimes we get hung up on thinking that we have to have perfect motives before we can be instruments of Christ. But listen to this: this is one of the strangest healing stories in the Bible. This woman is driving them crazy, following them around shouting day after day. So Paul healed her in the name of Christ. Why? Well, those of us who know Paul aren’t surprised (he was not greatly gifted with patience). He healed her because he was "annoyed," and not just annoyed, but "much annoyed," and not just much annoyed, but "very much annoyed." Now, Paul was hard to get along with on a good day. After many days of this woman following them around hollering, he was undoubtedly insufferable. I imagine that when he finally healed this woman and drove the spirit out of her, Silas and the others traveling with him thought, "Thank God." By that time I’m willing to bet that she was easier to take than he was.

These are strange motives for a healing. But whatever his motives, it’s a good outcome. She’s free of whatever illness or spirit was imprisoning her, and they’re free of her "very much" annoying behavior. Freedom for her. Freedom for them. Is good, right?

Not everybody thinks so. Now we see how imprisoned her owners are, imprisoned by greed. Paul has killed the golden goose. He has crossed the economic system, a very serious offense. I remember a friend who ran a pregnancy prevention program for teenage girls in a small mill town. Everybody was all in favor of it; she got lots of funding from local business — until the program started to work. Then they realized that if the teenage girls didn’t get pregnant, didn’t get trapped in the cycle of poverty, they would be free to go to school, free to live into their potential — free not to work in the mills. Oops! My friend’s funding was cut.

Like Paul, she had peddled freedom in the face of economic slavery. This did not go over well in either case. The Romans haul Silas and Paul before the Chamber of Commerce, and they haul out three very effective tools of bondage: (1) patriotism, (2) hatred, and (3) "old time religion." (1) "They’re not good citizens; they’re disturbing our city," they say. (2) "And they’re Jews," (not like us — foreigners, different), and (3) "they’re advocating things good believers in Zeus just don’t do."

Well, the reaction of Chamber of Commerce folks in that city (and in the town where my friend worked) shows that they were in bondage. They should have said, "Thanks be to God! She is free at last!" But they were in bondage to greed, and people who are free usually have a powerful effect on people who have embraced bondage—they scare them. A lot. So Paul and Silas are attacked by the crowd, and they get a severe flogging (and a Roman flogging could kill you), and they’re thrown into jail, bleeding and bruised, and they’re put in the innermost cell and on top of that, they’re put in stocks. BONDAGE.

"Now," the business people think as they imagine Paul and Silas in a dark, filthy hell-hole in the middle of the prison, wearing chains, bleeding, "Now, who is in bondage now?"

Good question. While they’re fearful over this threat to their bottom line, Paul and Silas are sitting, in chains, bleeding, in a dark hellhole—singing hymns. And praying. Freedom — in chains.

And then the story gets even more exciting. There’s an earthquake, and the prison is in a shambles, and all the doors pop open. Nothing is holding them anymore. What have they got? Freedom! But the bars couldn’t imprison them, and this is not the kind of freedom they seek. So they don’t leave. And, in a wonderful irony, they’re free in jail, and it turns out that the jailer is in bondage, bondage to fear.

The Romans had a very powerful incentive program for jailers. They didn’t say, "No escapes and you get a bonus." They said, "One escape, and you die." So the jailer lives in bondage to fear, and he gets ready to do the honorable thing jailers do when somebody escapes and kill himself when Paul says, "Hold it; we’re still here." By refusing to escape, they have freed him. And he says, "What must I do to be saved?" and they say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved." He stops acting like a jailer; he is free to act like a brother, and he takes them home and nurses their wounds and is baptized. FREEDOM!

Isn’t this a great story? It’s like a movie. We’ve got groupies, and attitude, and a healing, and a mob scene, and a beating, and jail, and singing, and an earthquake, and a conversion. But what I think is most wonderful about it is that everyone who appears to be "free," the slave holders, the authorities, the jailer as he turns the key, is actually in bondage, and everyone who appears to be in bondage, the slave girl who is healed, Paul and Silas singing hymns in prison, the jailer as he asks for salvation, is actually free.

We Americans sometimes say that our government makes us free; it doesn’t. Nothing can make you free. We have a wonderful, cherished form of government, but it only gives us the opportunity to be free. But there are a lot of things that call us into bondage. Greed says, "Wear these chains; it’ll be worth it," so, many of us sacrifice meaningful work, and family, and church, and friendships, and God, all the things that matter, so we can make more money, and have more things. As a culture, we treat capitalism as a god, and wear its golden chains.

"Freedom," we’re told, means individualism, self-reliance. We are of pioneer stock. The Marlboro Man. "You can just look out for yourself; you don’t owe anything to anyone." It’s a lie. You can’t be really free except in a community where you are bound by ethics born of love and concern for others. "Religion" means, literally, to be bound together. But our American heritage sings the virtues of individualism, so all too often we volunteer to wear the chains of isolation.

We are told that freedom comes in pills, powders, bottles. It’s a lie. Ask them at AA; ask them at NA. Ask them if their drug of choice made them free.

We’re told that freedom comes when we scare someone into saying that they believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior — so they won’t go to hell. It’s a lie. Many of those Christians are in bondage to fear; they’re prisoners of anxiety.

Our Lord calls us to genuine freedom, the kind of freedom that you can find in a prison cell. But in our world of so many chains, it’s hard. I think our only hope is to do what Paul and Silas did. Find people who want to be free, who understand that true freedom only comes from being a slave to God. And stick with those folks. And pray with them. And sing God’s praises together.

That’s what we do here. And that’s what we’re going to do right now. I want you to think of the one thing that most tries to keep you in bondage, that tries to keep you from freedom in Christ. Maybe it’s fear (fear of dying, fear of really living, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of financial insecurity, fear of not being in control). Maybe it’s drugs or alcohol, or disease, or shame. Whatever it is, think of one thing now.

Now, name that one thing "Pharaoh." Have you done that? Now imagine that we are in that prison cell with Paul and Silas. Please turn to hymn 648, and let us stand and sing to Pharaoh with the voice of freedom:

[The congregation sings.]

Amen.