University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

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A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Sixth Sunday of Easter                       May 9, 2010

It's just seven verses long, and certainly not one of the best known passages from Luke's second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, but this tightly-woven little story Anneke just read has captured the interest of students of scripture for a long time. For one thing, it begins with a vision, which may seem an oddity to our modern sensibilities. Presbyterians are not much given to talk about visions, unless we are talking about, say, a "vision statement" as part of strategic planning.[1] That kind of vision seems more manageable to us than the kind Luke says Paul had. Paul's was not something he conceived and scripted after careful planning and the weighing of data, but one which he received, dreamlike, from God...a vision that turned him around and sent him in a wholly new direction.

In the vision Paul sees a Macedonian man, who begs him to come to Macedonia, in modern-day Greece. At the time Paul was in Troas, an Asian port city located about ten miles south of Troy in what is known in modern times as western Turkey. So Paul sets sail for Philippi, his first foray into Europe. Luke makes no further mention of the Macedonian man in Paul's dream, but he does take note of a group of women Paul encounters one Sabbath just outside Philippi's city gate by the river. He makes special note of one particular woman in that group, a woman named Lydia. It is to Lydia that I want to direct our attention briefly this morning. Ronald Cole-Turner notes that

We know almost nothing about Lydia, but what we know fascinates us. Who was this woman making her way independently in a world run by men? Who was this Gentile who sought the God of Judaism? The text only tells us that she was "a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God." However, in just those two phrases, Scripture with its stunning brevity shows us that work and worship both had their place in the life of this remarkable, busy woman.

So she rises from the text and stands before us even today as a kind of narrative icon, contemplative Mary and active Martha in one, her heart set on God even as her work gets done.

She came to the riverside, to a secluded place of prayer. Perhaps she expected to meet other women, Jewish worshipers or Gentile seekers, for prayer together. Perhaps she came regularly. What she did not know was that on this particular day outside the city gates, she would be met by Paul and his companions, missionaries looking for anyone who was seeking God, in this hidden place of prayer. There at the riverside, Lydia found the God who was finding her.[2]

This is an encounter that might not have happened at all, Cole-Turner says. There had been the controversy in Jerusalem, described in the 15th chapter of Acts, when Paul was brought before the leaders of the early church to explain his interactions with the Gentile Cornelius - to face critique about his willingness to preach, baptize and engage in table fellowship with one who was unclean. There had been the Spirit's nudging and redirecting Paul to get him to Philippi in the first place. And Paul might have fixated on the man in the vision and never have met Lydia. So, this meeting might never have happened...and yet it did, the result, says Cole-Turner, of "the inexplicable convergence of human faithfulness and divine guidance."[3]

Paul would not have been guided to this place at this moment, were he not first of all at God's disposal, open to being guided, sensitively attuned to being steered in one direction and away from all others. Lydia would not have arrived at this place or time, had she not first of all been a worshiper of God, a seeker already on her way.[4]

We can thus learn much from both of these players in this divine-human drama, but let me suggest at least three things, in particular, that Lydia can teach us.

Lesson one: Stay close to the community of faith

Lydia can teach us, first of all, that by staying close to a community of faith, we can put ourselves in the trajectory of inspiration and wisdom. Luke describes Lydia as a seller of purple goods, of textiles and dyes that were a luxury at the time, and so her trade, along with her ownership of a "household of adequate resources to provide hospitality to the missionaries, suggests that she is a woman of substantial means."[5] Wealth and comfort can be hazardous to one's spiritual health, as Jesus warned, for they create sometimes a perception of self-sufficiency. But Lydia transcended such temptations. She was a worshiper of God and was still seeking God through the community of faith.

The poet Annie Dillard once said, famously, "I cannot cause light; the most I can do is put myself in the path of its beam."[6] That's what Lydia did when she came to the riverside with the Macedonian women that day when Paul paid his visit. Her example still instructs us.

Lesson two: Be open to the creative movement of God's spirit and ready to respond

The second thing Lydia can teach us is openness... openness to the stirring winds of God's spirit. Walter Brueggemann notes that Lydia "listened eagerly to what was new to her...even though she was already ‘a worshiper of God.'"[7] She was not locked into her categories of truth; she was humble, open, eager to listen for the new thing God was doing. By her best example, she urges us to such openness. Though the story is often described as "Paul's conversion of Lydia," the truth is, Paul is virtually invisible in the story. Instead, says Luke, "God opened her heart."[8] Here, says Ronald Cole-Turner, is "the center of the story, the moment of intersection between human obedience and divine initiative."

Longing and grace meet there on the banks of the river. The longing heart of a faithful woman is opened by the gracious impulse of a faith-giving God in an action that, like the incarnation itself, is at once fully human and fully divine. Like Lydia we are astonished when, looking back, we can only say that our steps were guided and our hearts opened.[9]

Now, openness is both a gift and a personal decision; but it is never a final virtue; it is a virtue on the way. Lydia is open, but also ready to respond. She is "decisive because she is discerning, able to see through the events on the surface to the deeper workings of God's Spirit."[10] The "ready to respond" part is no small part. I believe I've shared with you my friend Ted Wardlaw's story of an inquirers class he taught once in the church he served in Atlanta. The class was filled with young adults who had flirted at the edges of the church's life... folks who were articulate, open, curious about the church, and all relatively affluent. They enjoyed each other's company, and they particularly liked asking stimulating questions... about the Bible, about the church, about Jesus, about truth. It was a great class, Ted said, but after a while it began to dawn on him that all their good questions might simply be a means of their avoiding the point to which their discussions kept leading them... and that was their own calls to discipleship. And so one day, Ted said, "Now, I want you to consider becoming members of this church and pursuing the Christian journey we've been discussing, by taking hands with us and joining us in the ministry of Jesus Christ to and with this community."

Ted said it was as though a pall fell over the room. It was a quiet so heavy you could drape a coat over its drooping shoulders. Finally, one of them said, "But what about Judaism and Hinduism and Islam, what about all the other options?"[11] All the other options... we can't decide about this when there are so many other options.

Friends, Lydia teaches us that in the presence of the gospel, we need to be open...and we need to be ready to make some decision. We remain open to the Spirit's leading, but our lives cannot be lived forever in open-ended fashion, like insufferable P's on the Myers-Briggs scale, especially not in these days; the options can only stay open for so long. We do have to make some commitments in life. We do need to be ready to respond when God's claim is set before us. Lydia is our teacher in that regard.

Lesson three: The importance of embodying hospitality as a mark of the Spirit

There is one final thing Lydia can teach us, and it comes by way of her response to Paul's preaching. Luke records that when she and her household were baptized, she urged Paul and his companions, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home." And, Luke says, she prevailed.

One of the fundamental signs of Christian life blossoming in an individual's life is the practice of hospitality. Not hospitality as we define it here in the South, but a welcome embrace of all those God sends to us. It is one of the things that Jesus taught. Barbara Taylor explains: "Jesus did not have a home he could welcome people into. He could not cook anyone a meal nor offer anyone a bed, which may be what gave him such a hospitable heart. While others opened their homes to him, lending him a table to preside over for a night, his own [hospitality] was much more likely to take place in a field or a boat, on a road or a mountain - wherever people who felt like strangers happened to meet the person who made them feel like kin. It was a gift Jesus had, this divine practice of encounter, so valuable to him that he did his best to teach his followers how to do it, too."[12]

The New Testament Greek word for "hospitality," as you've heard me say before, is philoxenia, a word formed from two root words (philos, one of the several Greek words for "love," and xenia, which translates as "stranger)". Christian hospitality is the love of a stranger. And it's not just Christianity. Several months back I shared with you an observation by Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of Great Britain, who said, "the Hebrew Bible in one verse commands, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' but in no fewer than 36 places commands us to ‘love the stranger.'"[13] For Jews and Christians alike, it is our command...and our privilege: to make room in our hearts and our homes for the other. These days, it seems to me, this country... indeed, the church ... the world! ... could use a healthy dose of philoxenia.

So, consider Lydia, the first Gentile convert in Europe...in that sense, on this Mothers' Day, one of our mothers in faith. Even today she has much to teach us about staying close to the faith community, about being open to the Spirit and ready to respond, and about embodying hospitality rooted in God's grace.

Says Walter Brueggemann, Paul invites his listeners in Philippi "to generosity based on God's bottomless mercy." Lydia was thus "recruited for the new commandment of love. We only know of her immediate hospitality, but we may extrapolate a new obedience of life." Having been stirred by the gracious generosity of God, Lydia then became generous with what she had...a gracious stewardship of the gift she had been given.

I read somewhere once that only people who are basically at home, and at home in themselves, can offer hospitality.[14] Lydia found that home and that gracious peace in her own skin within the company of the community of faith. And that sense of home, by God's good grace, helped her to open her heart, as well as her home. It is, perhaps, her ultimate and most important lesson for us - her good reminder that the final act of grace is to help us become more gracious.

[2] Ronald Cole-Turner, Feasting on the Word, 474.

[3] Cole-Turner, 476.

[4] Cole-Turner, 476.

[5] Luke Timothy Johnson, Sacra Pagina: The Acts of the Apostles, Collegeville, MN, The Liturgical Press, 1992, 292-3.

[6] Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, New York, Harper's Magazine Press, 1974, 33.

[7] Walter Brueggemann, "Blogging Toward Sunday," Christian Century, May 13, 2007. Italics mine. http://theolog.org/2007/05/blogging-toward-sunday_07.html

[8] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts, Abingdon New Testament Commentary, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2003, 237.

[9] Cole-Turner, 476.

[10] Cole-Turner, 476.

[11] Ted Wardlaw, in remarks to the January 1994 meeting of the Moveable Feast in Holmes, New York. Walton also cites this story in his sermon.

[12] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, New York, Harper One, 2009, 98.

[13] Taylor, 96-97.

[14] Kathleen Norris, "Hospitality," Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, New York, Riverhead Books, 1998, 267.