The Downtown Presbyterian Church

Sermons

The Problem With Scripture

Acts 16:11-21

Rev. Kenneth M. Locke

May 16, 2004

Not too long ago I watched a video about the integration of Central High School in Little Rock AR and how it took 1000 US Army soldiers to escort 9 black children to school in September, 1957. Having gone to High School and College in Arkansas I’m familiar with this event and have seen pictures of it all my life: angry, white adults shouting and yelling at a handful of black children going to school.

But the video I saw also included interviews with some white students at the school just a few days before the integration. Clean cut, all-American, very attractive, white teenagers saying, “when they walk in, we walk out. We won’t study with them. They need to be with their own kind, it’s only natural.” I was absolutely floored. I had never thought of the students being that way. But of course they were. They had learned what their parents and other adults taught them. And their parents and the other adults were the ones hurling abuse at the black children.

I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if those white teenagers had been able to set aside their parents’ prejudice and see the black teenagers as fellow students and citizens with inherent dignity and worth.

Like all of us I’ve been watching the news from Iraq. I do not mean to suggest President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld are personally responsible for the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. But I do think calling Sadam’s army “evil” and “a band of thugs,” taking a “dead or alive” and a “bring ‘em on” attitude, gives some people the impression anything goes because these individuals are less than human. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if our administration had talked about the glories of Arab civilization and how much the West owes the Arab world for our knowledge of mathematics, navigation and philosophy. Even the script we use for representing numbers is Arabic. If they had talked about those things would the abuse have been as bad?

We humans learn what we hear or don’t hear. We pick up and imitate the attitudes of others, whether we learn those attitudes consciously or unconsciously.

Which brings us to our Scripture this morning. Paul and his colleagues are in Philippi. It is a commercial town and woman named Lydia sells purple cloth there. Remember purple is a royal color and back then anything purple was very expensive, what we call “luxury goods” today. So Lydia must be a reasonably well-to-do merchant woman. And it is good that Paul speaks to her and converts her. Not only for Lydia’s sake, but now Paul and his companions have a place to stay. Lydia can introduce them to the cream of society. She can vouch for them and be their patron. Indeed, the conversion of Lydia would have jump-started Christianity in Philippi.

But notice though the writer talks about Lydia converting, we hear nothing about what Lydia can do for the church.

And then there is the slave girl. Nowadays she would be in a mental institution. But at that time she was a valuable piece of property. Like a singer or a magician she can be rented out for entertainment at business dinners and children’s birthday parties.

But this slave girl has a habit of following Paul around and shouting at him until finally Paul has a hissy fit and cures her. Only notice Paul doesn’t say anything about curing the girl. His only concern is removing the demon shouting at him. Nor does he berate her owners and insist they treat her better. He does not preach the Gospel to her. But then, she’s not a merchant. She’s a slave-girl. She’s property. Paul’s concern for her seems to be about as caring as her owner’s concern for her.

My point here is though the writer talks about minorities and the powerless, he only does so when they effect the main events and the main characters of the story. Lydia and the slave girl are not so much individuals as means of advancing the plot.

I can’t help but wonder if the world would be different today if our Holy text spoke differently about minorities and the disempowered, if stories like this one had actually given a voice to these quiet characters.

We human beings learn what we are taught, whether we learn it actively or passively.

Now please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying our Scriptures are bad. Not at all. Our Scriptures are the Word of God for us. But they are the Word of God recorded and shaped by well meaning but sinfully human persons. Most if not all of whom were men.

During this season of Easter we are talking about living as Christians, living as people who know they are loved, who know they are forgiven, and who know they are offered eternal life in Jesus Christ. As Presbyterians we understand living in God’s love this way means being “Reformed and Always Reforming.” That’s our motto. “Reformed - Always Reforming.”

And part of always reforming is looking critically at our Scriptures. Part of reforming is saying “this part of Scripture honors what we know of the life of Jesus.” And it is saying, “This part of Scripture does not honor the life of Jesus. This part of Scripture holds down, oppresses, minimizes the people Jesus died to save.”

I can’t help but wonder if we were reading Scripture with an eye and an ear for hearing the voice of the powerless and the oppressed, would we then be more likely to really hear the junior partner in our firm, the secretary at the front desk, the illegal immigrant washing dishes in the restaurant where we just ate, the wall-flower at school always sitting alone at recess and at lunch?

And if we did that, if we read our Scriptures and heard the muted voices of Lydia and the slave girl and so many others, do you think if we did that then the immigrants getting their health care at the Siloam Clinic because it’s free, do you think then they might have access to the same healthcare we all get? Do you think if we read our Scriptures that way, do you think the mentally ill walking our streets and getting into shouting matches with the tourists, Ridley Wills and I saw a great one in front of Starbucks Thursday, do you think they could have access to the same mental health care I can afford? Do you think if we read our Scriptures that way, do you think children would not have to go to the Martha O’Bryan Center for lunch all summer long so they can get enough to eat?

I can’t help but wonder about these things.

May God grant us the grace to read our Scriptures well. Amen.