The lectionary texts for this week are:
Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 21:22 - 22:5
John 14:23-29
OR
John 5:1-9
Surprising God, surprise us into loving in the exact ways, times, and places that you would have us love. Amen
It seems to me that the texts we have been reading and studying since Easter have a sort of a pattern to them. Of course, they have all come from the book of Acts so they are all part of the same story in the same book, but when I took a step back this week I noticed this:
Easter – Resurrection – SURPRISING!
Easter 2 – Peter declares to the church leaders that Jesus is more powerful than they are, so he and his pals are going to follow Jesus - SURPRISING
Easter 3 – Paul is knocked off his horse and makes a very surprising turn from the life he had been living - SURPRISING
Easter 4 – Peter raises Tabitha from the dead – a woman whose widow-friends remembered for her textiles, not for her kindness or goodness. We don’t get the whole story, but could it be that Tabitha was not the “perfect woman” and it was just a little surprising that she is the one Peter ended up raising from the dead? - SURPRISING
Easter 5 – Peter has a vision and ends up ministering to <gasp> GENTILES. Because apparently God does not think that God is only for the Jews. That was quite a twist for the Jews, but the twist for us today might be that the Jews REJOICED that those outsider Gentiles had been brought into the fold - SURPRISING
It’s as if, in the aftermath of Jesus doing the most unimaginably surprising thing that a human being could do (because it had never been done before), God just keeps on raining surprise after surprise after surprise down on his followers.
And then today we have Lydia.
Lydia is characterized as a maker of purple cloth. You may have learned at some point that purple was the color of royalty. It was, and being a maker of purple cloth meant that Lydia had some highly specialized skills that put her work in demand by the richest folks in the land.
The reason purple was such a big deal is that all cloth was handwoven, usually from flax, so it had kind of a natural color – somewhere between white and beige. To make it colorful, the weavers had to use dyes that occurred in nature. Indigo for blue, a plant called madder for red, clay for an orangey-red sepia color. Natural dyes tend to result in a muted, “earthy” tone. But combining “ordinary” blue and red natural dyes is as likely to produce kind of a muddy brown color as purple. Instead, purple came from tiny little mollusks that were available from the port city of Tyre, clear on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. To be a maker of purple cloth, then, meant that Lydia had skill at turning flax or other fibers into cloth, and then having the wherewithal to get mollusks and do the intricate set of things required to turn it into purple dye.
Lydia was no slouch.
But Lydia was a woman, so it might not be totally intuitive that when a man from Macedonia appears in a vision, Paul and the others (including Luke, most likely) would end up finding and relying on Lydia.
And yet… that is exactly what happened. They obediently went to the area of Macedonia known as Philippi. They hung out for a few days, and it doesn’t say, but I am guessing that they were pretty confused and frustrated. WHO were they supposed to help? Where was the man in the vision?
It seems that things were not going well.
So, what do you do if you have been knocked off your horse, your life turned upside down, and you went to Macedonia because of a dream? If you are Paul, you go find a place to pray. And apparently the place to pray was outside the city.
Apparently the place to pray was where the women gathered.
Paul and his buds didn’t have anything else going on, so they sat down to talk to the women. If Gentiles could worship the same God as the disciples, and if you have been literally knocked off a horse and interacted firsthand with Jesus, and if you have gone to Philippi (Macedonia) based on a vision, then talking to women had to seem just… one more thing.
Maybe they were so tired and confused and discouraged that they were willing to talk to anyone who would listen.
Or maybe they sensed Lydia’s authority.
Or maybe… maybe Lydia and her friends were so interested in the story that the apostles loved so much – the story of Jesus – that it seemed foolish not to talk about it! Because in the end, Lydia prevailed (e.g. insisted in a most authoritative way) upon Paul and Luke and the others to stay with her.
Lydia was the person they were called to see.
Given that the Christians at Philippi ended up being one of Paul’s most beloved congregations (see the Book of Philippians), it seems that things worked out! And it all started because Paul was not afraid to talk to women.
It makes me wonder:
Where were the men?
What about the patriarchy?
Could it be that women were not as oppressed as we think?
OR… was it just that God (through Paul et al.) did not give a fig about the patriarchal rules that guided the society of the time?
What if the Gentiles, and the women, and the religious leaders, and the guy who was intent upon finding men and women who followed Jesus and putting them in prison were all as much a part of Jesus’ ministry as anybody else?
What if, like Lydia, God picked those people because they would hear the word and live the life, not because of who they were in some human-created social order?
How might ministry be changed today if, instead of identifying as denominations or members or people who fit some system that is geared to human characteristics rather than those pesky unpredictable calls from God… we did what my friend Amy suggested and wander around and talk to whomever we run into who will have the conversation about God?
Peter and his pals were outside of the religious system of the day, and the jail could not hold them.
Paul was determined to punish those outside of his view of religious propriety, and was knocked off his horse and turned into a high-energy apostle.
Tabitha was outside the world of the living, but was brought back to life.
The Gentiles were outside of… everything they disciples and apostles knew and thought about God and Jesus, but were called to be inside the circle of God’s love.
And today, Lydia and her friends were literally OUTSIDE THE GATE. They were outside the town, with it’s male-dominated structures. They were at a prayer place, outside the city.
And in each of those cases, the social surprise was no reason to stop sharing. The surprises were because of how human beings had arranged the world… not because of God’s arrangement.
What do you suppose they talked about?
They didn’t have hymnals or liturgies or committees to write rites of worship. What they did have was a story – the story of Jesus, and all the smaller stories that Jesus told. The stories of their lives with Jesus (in the case of Peter and the other apostles) or a dramatic encounter with Jesus (in the case of Paul.)
What they had was stories – including the most astonishing story of Jesus Resurrection. And in light of the Resurrection, I wonder if they backtracked to make sense of it all:
* “Remember what he said about being raised in three days?”
* “Remember when he turned over those tables?”
* “Remember that guy who kept breaking chains? How Jesus calmed him down?”
* “Remember when those pigs went running off into the lake?”
* “Remember how that dove came down, and there was that voice, when John baptized Jesus?”
There was baptism, and there were stories.
I suspect they talked about healing, and raising from the dead. Loving. Sharing meals.
… about their personal interactions and how different it was to be around Jesus.
… about the broiled fish after the Resurrection, and maybe the whole story of Thomas.
Did they mention that Jesus didn’t even have a house, but he always had a place to be because he cared so much for everyone he encountered?
I wonder if the stories were more about the Jesus who loved than about the Jesus who bucked the system.
I wonder if the stories focused on the Resurrection rather than the crucifixion.
As we see in the Bible today, there are so many stories! Because they were about 2000 years closer to the time Jesus actually walked the earth, I imagine Paul and friends had even more stories than we have today.
What we do see is that the people at the center of the power structure did not want to hear the stories. They just kept throwing the storytellers in jail. Sometimes God took them out of jail (as in Peter’s case) and sometimes God broke the jail and the people stayed behind (Paul). But in every case, the laws of the religious and political leaders did not seem to hinder God at all. God did what God did.
And in the face of that new world, Peter and Paul, Luke and all the other apostles and disciples, must have felt a wild disorienting sense of freedom. So much freedom that anything seemed possible and ok.
Even talking to Gentiles, and women outside the gate, and ignoring the Powers That Were.
The apostles and disciples did not sit in their buildings waiting for people to come join them in worship. They went out to tell. They went out to be what eventually became church.
But their church was not a formal liturgical business organization. Their church was about telling the stories of Jesus and living like Jesus had lived.
Which meant… wandering around and doing whatever there was to do.
It is not the kind of life we encourage people to live today. We worry about money – what if God can’t provide enough? We worry about safety – what if the political powers want to hurt me? The apostles and disciples had all that but still… all they could do was go find people who would listen to the stories. The stories of Jesus. The stories that culminated in Resurrection.
So today I ask you: will you join me in the quest to go wherever people are?
* To pray?
* To talk about the Jesus who loved in completely counter-cultural and incomprehensible ways?
* To go where you are invited because people see in you the love that Jesus has put on your heart?
It is an uncertain life. You may wander around a bit. You might have to sing different songs or pray in different places – even places outside of the gates of where you feel safe.
But if you are following Jesus, this promise of Jesus will echo in your heart:
Peace I leave with you… but not like the worldly peace. Don’t be troubled! Fear not! Because I may not be here but I’m also not gone. You’ll be ok. You can love like I did. With anyone who shows up needing that love. And then… then they will know you are mine.
Amen.
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