Acts 16:9-15
One night Paul had a dream: A Macedonian stood on the far shore and called across the sea, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” The dream gave Paul his map. We went to work at once getting things ready to cross over to Macedonia. All the pieces had come together. We knew now for sure that God had called us to preach the good news to the Europeans.
Putting out from the harbor at Troas, we made a straight run for Samothrace. The next day we tied up at New City and walked from there to Philippi, the main city in that part of Macedonia and, even more importantly, a Roman colony. We lingered there several days.
On the Sabbath, we left the city and went down along the river where we had heard there was to be a prayer meeting. We took our place with the women who had gathered there and talked with them. One woman, Lydia, was from Thyatira and a dealer in expensive textiles, known to be a God-fearing woman. As she listened with intensity to what was being said, the Master gave her a trusting heart—and she believed!
After she was baptized, along with everyone in her household, she said in a surge of hospitality, “If you’re confident that I’m in this with you and believe in the Master truly, come home with me and be my guests.” We hesitated, but she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
In the weeks immediately following Easter the readings tend to focus on the earliest Christians and the founding of the Christian churches ... and I have to stop right here before I even get going and point out that my opening statement is not accurate. First, the people then did not call themselves “Christians” - nor did anyone else – not for several decades – and it would never have occurred to them that they were founding a new faith, a new “church.”
For most of them, Jesus was a teacher - a marvelous teacher who taught them that they could experience God’s plan for the world right here and now. They were, at first, simply living a new way of being good Jews ... God’s people. They were followers of Jesus’ Way. They hadn’t left off being Jews to go be something else. They were just following a new path within Judaism. It was a long, slow process while they figured out who Jesus must be to be so “alive” in their midst when he had clearly been crucified.
And they would not have called their gatherings “church.” They met to share their lives. They gathered to share their worldly goods. But most of all they met to talk about Jesus. There was no liturgy as we know it. If they sang hymns they were the Psalms they had sung all their lives. Our use of the words “Christian” and “church” are for our linguistic convenience and have nothing to do with historical fact. These words are anachronisms and subconsciously lead us into inaccurate ideas about those earliest years - so probably we should just stop doing it.
Today’s story comes from one of Paul’s missionary journeys – specifically a journey occasioned by a dream, a vision, that moved Paul and those traveling with him to go to Macedonia, in northern Greece. It is the story of who and what he found there. And what they did together.
Before we get into Paul and Lydia, there is one more point I need to explain. We’ve talked recently about Luke’s Gospel and Acts being one story bisected into two books but what we haven’t mentioned yet is that Luke’s gospel – regardless of where it sits in our Bibles – is the last of the four gospels to be written. Traditional thinking until recently has been that Luke-Acts was written around 90 AD but more current thinking is leaning toward as late as 110 AD. That means these books could have been written down a full 80 years after the life of Jesus.
You can take about 15 years off that 80 years for the time of Paul’s visit in Macedonia - making it perhaps 65 years from Paul’s part of the story to the writing, but the things written about Jesus were still from 80 years in the past. My point being that the stories we read in the New Testament were carried in the communal memory for anywhere from 25 to 80 years before they were written down. Some of Paul’s letters were written earlier – the earliest dating put the first writings at about 70 to 80 AD with the last dating as late as 130 AD.
So what we have here is less an historical record than a narrative telling what various groups of people remembered and experienced in these years. These were also not universal writings. When they were written down they were written by one group for one group with one group’s particular understanding and point of view. The letters and gospels that make up the NT are stories of various communities and their growth in understanding in who Jesus was and who they were in response. I keep hammering on this because it truly does make a difference in what we hear within our own minds when we read these writings.
Now – after all that, we can finally get to Paul and Lydia. Paul and Luke and the others arrived in Philippi and just hung out for a few days but then, on the Sabbath, found their way down to the river where a group of people, apparently largely women, were holding a prayer meeting. It’s interesting that they didn’t go into the heart of the city and immediately beginning preaching in the civic center, as it appears they did in other places and times. Here they simply joined the group, listened for awhile, and then talked with them. The story they had to tell was so powerful, so honest, that Lydia was converted and asked to be baptized - right there on the spot.
It doesn’t require pomp and circumstance and massive church structures. It doesn’t require high liturgies. It doesn’t even require choir singing. The truth that Jesus taught us all is so simple yet so incredibly moving and powerful that it can touch hearts and changes lives in a moment.
So, if simply being themselves and telling their honest stories about Jesus was all that was necessary in those early days – what does that tell us about our responsibilities today?
Peter and Paul and Silas and Barnabas and Luke and all those who traveled far from their homes – as well as those who stayed closer to home in Israel and Judah – had no written texts or special vestments, no hi-def multi-media screens – they had no tools at all except the love they carried in their own hearts and their bone deep conviction that Jesus had somehow touched something in them, changed something in them, and they could never be the same again. And that “something” moved them so they were compelled to tell others about it.
They freely gave their stories and sometimes they gave healing, or reassurance, or comfort and hope. When they gathered they shared whatever food they had with each other. And they shared all this with any who came to them seeking, with any who came with minds and hearts open to receive. They didn’t check credentials. They didn’t check bank accounts. They didn’t check gender or race or nation of origin. They just shared this amazing Jesus who had somehow ended up touching their lives.
We today are called to do the same – nothing has changed. We are called to be the people God created us to be – to be ourselves. We are not called to raise armies or build monster churches that seat thousands. We are called to share who we are and what Jesus has done in our lives. We are simply to share the amazing fact that we are – each of us – loved.
Paul shared what he had - his knowledge of Jesus, and he used the rhetorical skill he possessed to make people stop and hear him. Paul has a reputation in our day (mostly undeserved) as a grumpy, misogynistic hard-nosed so and so. From the descriptions we have of him, he was not a beautiful person, not the guy anyone would expect to draw a crowd. And yet his love for and faith in Jesus - the one he acknowledged as “Lord” – shone through his rough exterior and moved hearts wherever he went. And because of what they saw in Paul, others were moved to meet Jesus for themselves and begin to live in “the Way” Jesus showed us.
That’s our calling too. To say what is in our hearts and to live in the way Jesus lived. To share what we have with others. To be kind in all situations. To love without judgment - especially those who are the least lovable. To do what is in front of us with what we have to hand. In the words of the prophet Micah, to “do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God.”
For most of them, Jesus was a teacher - a marvelous teacher who taught them that they could experience God’s plan for the world right here and now. They were, at first, simply living a new way of being good Jews ... God’s people. They were followers of Jesus’ Way. They hadn’t left off being Jews to go be something else. They were just following a new path within Judaism. It was a long, slow process while they figured out who Jesus must be to be so “alive” in their midst when he had clearly been crucified.
And they would not have called their gatherings “church.” They met to share their lives. They gathered to share their worldly goods. But most of all they met to talk about Jesus. There was no liturgy as we know it. If they sang hymns they were the Psalms they had sung all their lives. Our use of the words “Christian” and “church” are for our linguistic convenience and have nothing to do with historical fact. These words are anachronisms and subconsciously lead us into inaccurate ideas about those earliest years - so probably we should just stop doing it.
Today’s story comes from one of Paul’s missionary journeys – specifically a journey occasioned by a dream, a vision, that moved Paul and those traveling with him to go to Macedonia, in northern Greece. It is the story of who and what he found there. And what they did together.
Before we get into Paul and Lydia, there is one more point I need to explain. We’ve talked recently about Luke’s Gospel and Acts being one story bisected into two books but what we haven’t mentioned yet is that Luke’s gospel – regardless of where it sits in our Bibles – is the last of the four gospels to be written. Traditional thinking until recently has been that Luke-Acts was written around 90 AD but more current thinking is leaning toward as late as 110 AD. That means these books could have been written down a full 80 years after the life of Jesus.
You can take about 15 years off that 80 years for the time of Paul’s visit in Macedonia - making it perhaps 65 years from Paul’s part of the story to the writing, but the things written about Jesus were still from 80 years in the past. My point being that the stories we read in the New Testament were carried in the communal memory for anywhere from 25 to 80 years before they were written down. Some of Paul’s letters were written earlier – the earliest dating put the first writings at about 70 to 80 AD with the last dating as late as 130 AD.
So what we have here is less an historical record than a narrative telling what various groups of people remembered and experienced in these years. These were also not universal writings. When they were written down they were written by one group for one group with one group’s particular understanding and point of view. The letters and gospels that make up the NT are stories of various communities and their growth in understanding in who Jesus was and who they were in response. I keep hammering on this because it truly does make a difference in what we hear within our own minds when we read these writings.
Now – after all that, we can finally get to Paul and Lydia. Paul and Luke and the others arrived in Philippi and just hung out for a few days but then, on the Sabbath, found their way down to the river where a group of people, apparently largely women, were holding a prayer meeting. It’s interesting that they didn’t go into the heart of the city and immediately beginning preaching in the civic center, as it appears they did in other places and times. Here they simply joined the group, listened for awhile, and then talked with them. The story they had to tell was so powerful, so honest, that Lydia was converted and asked to be baptized - right there on the spot.
It doesn’t require pomp and circumstance and massive church structures. It doesn’t require high liturgies. It doesn’t even require choir singing. The truth that Jesus taught us all is so simple yet so incredibly moving and powerful that it can touch hearts and changes lives in a moment.
So, if simply being themselves and telling their honest stories about Jesus was all that was necessary in those early days – what does that tell us about our responsibilities today?
Peter and Paul and Silas and Barnabas and Luke and all those who traveled far from their homes – as well as those who stayed closer to home in Israel and Judah – had no written texts or special vestments, no hi-def multi-media screens – they had no tools at all except the love they carried in their own hearts and their bone deep conviction that Jesus had somehow touched something in them, changed something in them, and they could never be the same again. And that “something” moved them so they were compelled to tell others about it.
They freely gave their stories and sometimes they gave healing, or reassurance, or comfort and hope. When they gathered they shared whatever food they had with each other. And they shared all this with any who came to them seeking, with any who came with minds and hearts open to receive. They didn’t check credentials. They didn’t check bank accounts. They didn’t check gender or race or nation of origin. They just shared this amazing Jesus who had somehow ended up touching their lives.
We today are called to do the same – nothing has changed. We are called to be the people God created us to be – to be ourselves. We are not called to raise armies or build monster churches that seat thousands. We are called to share who we are and what Jesus has done in our lives. We are simply to share the amazing fact that we are – each of us – loved.
Paul shared what he had - his knowledge of Jesus, and he used the rhetorical skill he possessed to make people stop and hear him. Paul has a reputation in our day (mostly undeserved) as a grumpy, misogynistic hard-nosed so and so. From the descriptions we have of him, he was not a beautiful person, not the guy anyone would expect to draw a crowd. And yet his love for and faith in Jesus - the one he acknowledged as “Lord” – shone through his rough exterior and moved hearts wherever he went. And because of what they saw in Paul, others were moved to meet Jesus for themselves and begin to live in “the Way” Jesus showed us.
That’s our calling too. To say what is in our hearts and to live in the way Jesus lived. To share what we have with others. To be kind in all situations. To love without judgment - especially those who are the least lovable. To do what is in front of us with what we have to hand. In the words of the prophet Micah, to “do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God.”
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