Grief erupts. It interrupts. It disrupts.

Grief can’t be infinitely ignored or forever contained. Grief will rear its head and cause chaos in its demand to be expressed. We can only suppress grief for so long, and that suppression wreaks havoc on our body. From our neurology to our autonomic nervous system to our somatic memory, the body really keeps score, marking every day we suppress grief.

Until the body can’t suppress grief anymore.

This is the point that the eruptions, the interruptions, the disruptions happen. And there are always consequences.

I think the apostle Paul experienced this very situation in Phillipi. After baptizing Lydia, Paul and company spent some time in her house and daily accompanied her to the place of prayer outside the city.

One day, they met a slave girl as they were going to pray. This wasn’t just any slave girl though. This particular girl was possessed by what literally translates as a Python spirit. This particular spirit was associated with Apollo, the god of prophecy and healing. This spirit was associated with the Oracle at Delphi. And this spirit was the reason for this slave girl’s exploitation.

Acts 16.16-24 states that the owners of the girl brought in a great deal of money for this slave girl’s fortunetelling and divination. The girl remained a slave, never seeing a single coin for her talents, and her owners grew fat from using her. This was oppression and exploitation.

So, the divinating slave girl meets Paul and company, and immediately she begins following them, shouting, “These people are slaves of the most high god. They are telling you a way of liberation.”

As a child, I never understood Paul’s reaction. The text says he got “annoyed” and cast the demon out. Just like that. Paul gets annoyed at the repetitive, constant, disruptive shouts of this slave, and casts out the demon that was possessing her, shutting her up.

Why would Paul shut down free publicity though?

Wasn’t it true that he and his companions served the Most High God? And weren’t they proclaiming salvation? What was wrong with the statement the slave girl kept shouting?

Turns out, I was asking the wrong questions.

See, Paul wasn’t simply “annoyed” and bothered by the slave girl and her demon. The word in Greek is much different. It means, “to grieve oneself, to be tired by labor, become wearied or grieved at the continuance of anything.”

Paul wasn’t bothered by her actions and words. Paul was grieving over her situation.

Here was a young girl, enslaved and exploited physically and spiritually, caught in a system of oppression and subservience. There was no way out for her. Her owners made a lot of money off of her divination. They weren’t about to set her free. Even if they did, she still had no land, no home, no money, and no one else to care for her. She would still be plagued by the python spirit that brought her into fortunetelling trances. She had no hope. She was just something to be used. Her personhood had been denied her, and the image of God ignored in her. She was exploited and commodified.

And Paul was grieved by it.

Day after day, he heard her cry out after them and again was brought face to face with her position, with her suffering. Paul was reminded about the oppressive system she was caught in, how she was exploited and used, commodified and abused.

Maybe he prayed day after day that God would intervene. Perhaps he shed tears over her plight. Could be that he felt her suffering long before he understood it. Whatever his response was, there was pain Paul was working through around the ongoing presence of this girl and her suffering.

From that inner turmoil, that working through the pain, that exhaustion at the continuance of her situation… it was from there that Paul’s grief erupted in an emotional outburst. Turning mid-step, Paul squared off and looked the slave girl directly in the face. “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.”

People were stunned. He didn’t tell the girl to stop bothering them. He didn’t ask her owners to keep her under control. Paul went for the throat of her oppression: the demon.

When Paul addressed the demon, he spoke to the root of the problem. Paul didn’t try and treat the symptoms. He didn’t try and softly help in a little way. Paul committed and went out all or nothing. Either she was going to be free or she wasn’t. There was no compromise or holding back in his approach. It was because of this demon that this young girl was caught in this system of exploitation. This demonic presence kept her oppressed, contained, and languishing. Her spiritual oppression was intricately intertwined with her physical oppression.

Oppression and exploitation don’t exist in a vacuum. The truth is all suffering is intersectional. The commodification of this girl’s body and spirit was intricately tied to greed, and her ongoing captivity was wrapped up in a patriarchal class system. She didn’t have one force against her. Every part of the system of powers and principalities that her masters helped uphold was set on her exploitation until there was nothing left of her. Then, it would be time to move on to the next victim, throwing this girl on the refuse pile of the world.

When Paul identified, confronted, and exorcised that demon, he effectively moved into solidarity with her suffering and did everything in his power not just to alleviate her suffering, but to stop it all together. This wasn’t annoyance at her; this was a broken heart lashing out with righteous anger at the entire imperialistic system that brought its crushing weight down on this girl. Paul stood between her and her oppressors for the sake of her liberation.

But liberation doesn’t come peacefully. When the beast has its belly ripped open and the suffering ones are set free, it lashes out at the freedom fighter, redirecting its energy toward the liberators.

As soon as the girls’ masters saw that this demonic force they held her in captivity with was banished from her, they realized that she wouldn’t bring them any more money. She was no longer commodifiable. They couldn’t continue to exploit her, even if that exploitation brought them a means to live on. Money brought in at the expense of the dignity and humanity of another person is worthless. It is only good for business in the very system that bleeds that coin from each and every one of us.

The exploiters of the girl—that’s what they were, and we need to call evil by its specific name—brought their fear and anger down directly on Paul and company. They took them before the magistrates of the city with twisted accusations, and as a result, Paul and Silus were flogged with rods and put in chains and shackles.

They gave up their freedom for the sake of this young girl. They traded their peace and freedom for her oppression and suffering. They entered fully into solidarity with her, taking her pain upon themselves, and in that process, gave her liberation.

I don’t know what happened to the young girl. Her oppressors probably discarded her because she was now worthless to them. I like to think that the budding community of Jesus in the city, led by Lydia, took her in, gave her a home, fed her, valued her, and showed her the truth of her liberation. Maybe they took her into themselves, bringing her in as one with them, the way Jesus prayed we would all be one with each other (John 17.20-26).

Jesus’ vision of community as expressed in what’s known as his High Priestly Prayer—John 17—stands in stark contrast and as a witness against the imperialistic, commodifying system of powers and principalities that profited from the suffering of the girl.

Were the economy and society didn’t see the young girl as part of the human family, but rather as nothing but a tool to be used, the Jesus vision enfolds her into a belonging, a place, a home. She is no longer a slave girl. She is beloved. The system that was oppressing her was hierarchical, patriarchal, and stratified by class. She was only as good as what she could give to the people who ranked higher than her. But the Jesus community is built on the reality of the Trinity as a social way of being in community together, not above each other, but in service to each other. The system of commodification that turned the young girl’s gift of prophecy into the means of her captivity would never let her go as long as it could squeeze something more out of her. In the kingdom of God, we glorify each other, praising the good each of us inherently carries and expresses in a wonderful variety of ways.

In every way, Jesus’ vision of the community of the kingdom of God stands diametrically opposed to the ways of this world.

And that is disruptive.

When people are loved in true, real, and tangible ways and are not exploited, it disrupts the power balance. Paul’s eruption of cruciform love and the freedom and liberation of the young girl stood as a disruptive witness against the powers and principalities of oppression and exploitation. It spoke to the truth that life doesn’t have to be defined by hierarchies and power grabs, by commodification and subjugation. Life can be defined, shaped, and lived according to the love of God that we see expressed fully in Jesus’ act of self-donation on the cross. Love that gives itself away and chooses the good of other people, even at its own expense. This is the kind of love Jesus wants to draw us into, wants us to build communities around, show us so that we can show others so the world might believe and be liberated from power structures, avarice, commodification and subjugation of the human body and heart.

This is our story.

We are the young girl, commodified, abused, exploited. We are trapped in a system of oppression and suffering, a system that threatens our worth and our humanity. The demons of white supremacy, violence, capitalism, patriarchy, and greed threaten to possess each of us on a daily basis, and that possession will transform us into the crowd, the slave owners, the ones actively participating in the suffering of others. In some ways, we walk a thin line between these two identities: oppressor and oppressed. We all have privilege and blind spots that keep us participating in the lies of the powers and principalities of this world, and we all are under the thumb of the demonic forces of oppression all around us.

But we also have a choice we can make to break the binary: we can choose to be Paul.

We can choose lament and grief, toiling and working through the emotions that the suffering all around us causes.

Do we see ICE taking away people because of their skin color?

Do we see black bodies murdered in the streets?

Do we see the corruption and white supremacy of our government?

Are we paying attention to legislation that takes away the rights of LGBTQ+ people?

Are we paying attention to the power grabs of Christian nationalism?

Are we paying attention to the billionaires who get tax breaks and accumulate wealth beyond comprehension at the expense of everyone else?

Will we grieve at these demons we see possessing the people, systems, and very landscape all around us? And will we let the grief erupt in love that liberates by naming the demons, casting them out, and giving the suffering we sit in solidarity with the community of Jesus?

Will we become the community of Jesus, dedicated to being one, together, and serving Christ in all people?

If we are going to be people that sit in solidarity with people and do everything in our power to liberate each other from the commodification and exploitation that stalks us all, we are going to have to be people who know lament… and focus on hope.

And our hope is that we will not be stuck in this cycle forever. The omega, the end, the final statement is Jesus. Jesus invites us to come into his community even as we lament and pray for his coming to set all things right. Christ is near to us because he is the suffering God. As we enter into the suffering of each other, we enter into the space Christ is, lamenting with us, grieving with us, erupting in love with us. We will all be set free because Christ’s grief came out in love that in gathers us together and offers us a taste of a way to live that is different, that is new, that is free. And someday, that way will overthrow every empire and exorcise every demon.

Someday, grief will set us all free.