Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who serves the people of Los Angeles. He works in the poorest neighborhoods with the highest gang activity in a city that is considered the capital of gang activity. His parish is the epicenter of hopelessness. To be born in such a place is not really any different than to be born in prison.
The likelihood that a boy born in these neighborhoods will spend time in prison is almost certain – if he lives long enough. Father Greg spends a lot of time visiting the jails, the detention centers, handing out his business cards. He tells them all to look him up when they get out. He knows they will need his help when they get out.
He has been doing this for more than 30 years. He started a tattoo removal service early on because of a young man he met, recently out of prison. Ramiro had an obscene phrase tattooed across his forehead, covering every square centimeter of real estate. He told the priest he was having trouble finding a job. No wonder.
Father Greg learned early on that one of the best things he could do for these guys was to help them get jobs. So, among other things, he did just that. This was the beginning of Homeboy Industries.
He has accomplished an incredible amount in his ministry there. Into the hopelessness he brings hope – no small thing. Father Greg wants these guys to stay out of prison, but he wants much more than that for them. He wants them to be free.
He wants them to be free.
These two back-to-back stories in Acts 16 highlight the idea of freedom, in different ways. The girl with a spirit of divination that Paul and the other apostles meet in Macedonia is a slave. Afflicted with a spirit that gives her power to tell fortunes, she is held by this spirit. She is in the chains of this spirit; she is a slave to this evil spirit.
And, of course, she has owners – people who have, apparently, paid for her as if she were a piece of property, so they could profit from her affliction. She tells fortunes, they make money. This girl is a slave twice over.
When she encounters the Apostles, she seems to immediately perceive the Spirit of God in them – spirit recognizes spirit – and she begins following them, announcing to all within hearing range, who they are and who they serve and what they are there for.
By the power of this spirit that is within her, she is speaking the truth. And she continues following them around, speaking this truth at the top of her voice for several days. Understandably, it becomes an irritation. Eventually Paul snaps. He stops, turns, and orders the spirit to leave her.
Which is good for the girl –she has been freed from one master. But not good for her owners, who see their source of revenue instantly dry up. They take the apostles to court. Paul and Silas are jailed and chained – not the first or last time for Paul.
We know from Paul’s letters and other writings that he spent a good deal of time in jail. He was often pushing the boundaries of what is customary and acceptable in the places where he traveled, and as a result, sometimes landing in jail as he did here. Here in Macedonia, he was charged with disturbing the peace by bringing new and unlawful ideas and habits – namely, this: Paul wants to show the Macedonians how to live in the freedom of Christ.
It is not easy for us to understand this idea – freedom in Christ. In this world, freedom often means simply being able to do whatever we want. You are free to come to church – or not. You are free to choose. You are free to choose how you spend your time, how you spend your money, how you use your voice, and so on. Freedom means do what you want.
But we also know that being a Christian means you can’t just do whatever you want; that some things are just not okay. It matters how you spend your money, how you spend your time. It matters what you say, it matters what you do.
There is certainly a paradox on display here. The slave girl announced that Paul and the others were slaves of the most high God – slaves! In one sense, they were not free – they were servants, even slaves, of the one true God. Yet, in Christ, they were free.
Free of the burden of sin, free of death, free for this new life, a life that leads to life. Paul traveled to Macedonia and everywhere else he could go, to share the good news, to offer freedom – but that message of freedom was not always welcome.
It really isn’t any different today. Even for those of us who have accepted this message of freedom in Christ, we sometimes choose to live as though we are not free. We allow ourselves to become slaves to all kinds of things – jobs, possessions, unhealthy relationships or addictions. But we might also become slaves to fear. To hate. To anger. There are so many ways we may become slaves to sin.
In the neighborhoods of Los Angeles where Father Greg works, there is a particular kind of slavery that tends to afflict the people. People are slaves to vengeance. They are slaves to anger and hatred that demands revenge. They talk about their own death as though it is almost inevitable. But they say to their brothers, their closest friends, “I know if anything happens to me, you’ll take care of it.” Meaning, you will avenge me.
To bring a message of freedom, a message of hope, into such a place as this is a holy and radical thing.
Father Greg tells a story about George, who was serving time in juvenile detention. While in there, George made the decision to be baptized. Father Greg had known George on the outside, he knew George and his brother Cisco as gang members in the neighborhood. But now, in prison, Greg watched George become transformed. During the months of his imprisonment, something happened. He gradually turned away from his gang persona – which always needed to project a kind of hardness, dangerousness – to becoming a man in possession of himself and his gifts. He developed a degree of thoughtfulness and self-control and real confidence that he could never afford to have before. George was becoming free to be himself.
The night before George’s baptism, his brother Cisco was walking home. Rival gang members were waiting for him. They snuck up on him with their guns and they shot him as he was walking down the street, half a block from his apartment. Cisco died instantly, leaving behind a girlfriend, eight months pregnant with his child.
The next morning, Father Greg arrived at the detention center and saw George, positively beaming. This was the day he was going to be baptized and there was joy in his heart. Greg decided he would not tell George about Cisco – yet. Let him get through his baptism before telling him what happened the night before.
After mass was over, he put his arm around George and walked outside with him so they could be alone. He held him and said to him gently, “George, your brother Cisco was killed last night.”
George was transfigured by grief. He fell onto a bench – sobbing, rocking, heartbroken. His grief was there for all to see. But what was not there is just as important. There was no anger, rage, vows to avenge Cisco’s death. The old life has gone. The new life in Christ is his. George is free. Even while he is imprisoned, he is free.
And this is the freedom we see in the second story of this passage of Acts. Paul and Silas are chained in their cell when an earthquake hits, shaking the foundation, opening the cell doors, breaking the chains. It happens while they are praying and singing hymns – you could almost think that the earthquake was the divine answer to their prayers. A true act of God.
But now the jailer is overcome with despair and hopelessness. He knows that all the prisoners will escape, and it will somehow be his fault that they do. In his hopelessness, he is ready to take his own life. Until he becomes aware that no one has moved.
Not one prisoner has left their cell. Paul shouts loud enough for the jailer to hear, “We are all here.”
Paul does not need to run, because he knows what freedom is. He knows the freedom he has in Christ is a freedom that must be shared, and that even though he would prefer not to be in a jail cell, he will be less free should his escape lead to his jailer’s death. Paul knows that he is a little bit less free when others are enslaved. He knows that freedom in Christ is less about living for oneself and more about living for others.
The jailer and his family are baptized that very night. Then all of them, with Paul and Silas, sit at table and break bread together. Friends. Family.
In Christ we are offered freedom. Freedom to end cycles of vengeance and patterns of violence. Freedom to break out of old habits that might bring harm to others. Freedom to choose to respond in a new way – with love, with patience, with generosity.
In Christ we are offered freedom to make our swords into plowshares, to tear down walls instead of building them up, to reach across aisles and across borders and seek to know one another, because as Father Greg says again and again, you can’t demonize someone once you know them. In Christ we are offered the freedom to love one another and live for one another, to live in Christ by the grace of God.
Thanks be to God.
