Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · May 9, 2010

Litany of Praise

From Psalm 67

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make God’s face to shine upon us

            So that the way of God may be known upon earth,

            And God’s saving power among the nations.

Let the people praise our God!

            The earth has yielded it increase and God, our God, has blessed us.

            May God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the earth revere our God.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

World without end. Amen. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Jacob Thorne

Gracious God and Loving God, just as a mother comforts her child, we give thanks this morning that you comfort us. You, O God, are our mother, our father, our helper, our advocate, our very present help in times of trouble. Your Spirit never leaves us, even though we may test you.  At every turn, you are still here.

We thank you this morning, O God, for the children that are growing by leaps and bounds among us. With your unconditional love, may we gather these children into your Church and share with them your story again, and again, and again, until they imagine it, paint it, sing it, act it, dance it, and write it out. Remind us every day that the children among us are precious gifts made in the image of you, our Creator and Sustainer. As we, too, grow along side our children, let us demonstrate to them what it means to be a follower of Christ. Let us show your children that they can trust in your tender love now and forever. For you are the one who enters our hearts with a peace that passes all understanding.

Hear us now, O God, as we say together the prayer that your Son taught us…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, the power, and glory, forever. Amen.

New Testament Lesson

Acts 16:11-15

We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the Sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.

Message

Purple Lady

Tim Carson

Perhaps you have had a friend like I had, who was so strange, so adventurous, so risk-taking that he just headed out into the wilderness all by himself. I’m talking about the Canadian Rockies. I’m talking about Alaska, going to remote places where there isn’t anyone else. He would stay there by himself for extended times. Well one time, when he was on one of these little fandangos, he was sleeping in his tent, and he started awake to the voice of his little brother, who was about seven-years-old at the time. The voice was asking him and pleading with him, “Come home!” Now you’d have to know my friend to catch just how unusual his response to this voice would be. This was no superstitious, new-agey, supernatural-believing person. He scoffed at anything church-related. Prayer was for sissies. He was a pragmatic, rationalistic, make-it- happen-by-yourself kind of guy. But at the very moment he heard his little brother’s voice, he arose, packed, and headed out of the wilderness back home to be with his little brother. He told me that the voice of his brother calling to him was the only thing that could have persuaded him to leave.

That’s the way the story before us this morning begins, with a cry in the night – from Macedonia. “Come be with us, Paul. We need you. Please, come!” 

We have had those times before. Haven’t we? If it is not us, who will go? If not now, when? We just can’t stand by and do nothing. This is me; I have to do something. We can’t sit idly by and do nothing. I was created for this moment in time. “Come to Macedonia, or Columbia, or the Gulf Coast, or back home. Come.” And we have to go.

So, Paul goes. He gets on a ship. He leaves the port side of Turkey, where he is at Troas. He sails across that part of the Aegean Sea to, what is now, Greece, making pit stops along the way until he arrives at Philippi, which is a Roman colony.

Do you know what I truly love about this story? After Paul and company sail from Troas to Philippi, they don’t go to city center where you normally go. Remember the cities where you have traveled to for your vacations or business travels. Where do you go first? You go to where the action is. All the signs are heading to city center. But that’s not where Paul spends his time. He doesn’t check into the downtown Hilton in Philippi. Rather, we hear that he goes outside the city walls.

Outside the walls has a different meaning for us than it did for the ancients. We might think leaving the District, leaving downtown, means going to the suburbs. Leaving city center and going outside the walls in those times meant going out where the Barbarians might roam, where it is not safe, where power is diffused, or where the poor or disenfranchised might live because they cannot afford to live inside the walls. Unlike our geography, outside the walls is not the suburbs. Outside the walls is outside of where life is happening, or we think life is happening.

Most of our lives we are trying to color inside the lines, establish ourselves, find where we fit in the social puzzle, make a living by being a part of the system. Church life can be like that, too, an exercise in establishing the walls and staying inside them. But here, Paul has a distinct call to go where you would least expect.

It so happened that he went down to the river, which makes sense, really. Rivers provided modes of transportation. People got their drinking water there. They fished. There was no synagogue in Philippi and, since it was the sabbath, perhaps the Jews of the community had gathered to worship outside, by the river.

In the Greco-Roman empire, there were often springs and rivers to which people attributed healing properties. They often established a temple by them. They were sacred spaces, enchanted spaces.

So, it doesn’t surprise us that Paul goes down to the river to find, perhaps, a gathering of people. Today, when you are trying to go to where the people are who have spiritual impulses, where do you go? Where do you go where they gather? Where do they open up emotionally? Where do they find beauty and creation and other attributes of the sacred life? And where might we go outside the walls to connect with them?

Would that be by worshipping in an art gallery? Gardening together in a community garden? Biking the Katy Trail? Sharing with another congregation in the city to feed the poor? Hanging out in the coffee shop where people are discussing what life means? Attending a film festival as people ask how culture and Spirit intersect? Meeting with students on campus as they explore pathways to God? In our place of work where someone is always searching or questing for something and we can provide one of the missing pieces of their spiritual puzzle? With an online presence so that church goes outside the walls to where people are rather than expecting them to first come inside the walls to us? (An estimated 80-million Americans have some experience of spiritual life on-line. Why aren’t we there where they are?) Where is outside the walls for us?

Paul goes outside the walls to a place by the river, a place where he might find people in spiritual search. He goes to where the spiritual searchers and worshippers might be. In the story, we are told that he meets a certain woman by the name of Lydia. Now Lydia is very special. For one thing, she is a merchant dealing with purple cloth – a very up-scale product in the ancient world, the specialty of her hometown of Thyatira. Not just anybody trades in purple cloth, and she is obviously very well-to-do. As a merchant, she is very well healed. She is fixed! She is a person of prominence. She has position. So, here is a person of means, and her influence extends to her network of peers and people who have gathered around her.

It’s all about networks; isn’t it? And if you want to know about networks of influence, just think of the women of stature you know and how they are connected and how they connect others. Come on, if you want to get it done, whom do you call? Not Ghostbusters. It’s those women. We could call this the Lydia principle – spiritual influence multiplied. And that’s right where Paul goes. So what are your spheres of spiritual influence? We all have them.

There’s special language for the kind of spiritual woman that Lydia was. She was called a God-reverencer. That’s about as close as it gets in the Greek language. You find God-fearers in the synagogues – not Jewish by birth, but worshipping God. Sometimes they are converts. And you find them in the stories of the early Christian movement – people who love God and search for God but who haven’t found the way of Jesus yet. So as a God-reverencer, Lydia is already predisposed to matters of the Spirit. She’s already in love with God. She is already looking for God. She is already desiring and wanting God. And desire of God is the first step on the way to God. So, Paul is having a conversation with a person who is ready to hear, and readiness is the precondition of a serious spiritual conversation.

Unless we are spiritually and emotionally ready, we can be hit with the proverbial two-by-four, and it won’t make any difference. And at some times in our lives, we’re ready, and at other times, we’re not. When we are at God’s tipping point, when God opens hearts and we are ready, the right conversation or event or insight can suddenly turn us around. “Why didn’t I see that before? It is so clear now.”

That’s why we have to be so in tune with where people are at the moment. That’s why we have to be so in tune with where we are at the moment. Readiness is that important. And therefore, waiting is equally important. We wait patiently not only for the Lord but also for our neighbor. We wait patiently for ourselves, waiting patiently for the flower to open to the sun.

Lydia is more than ready. This woman of means, this God-fearer, gathered in perhaps a sacred spot by the river, networking with her small group, is ready to hear something world-shattering, and that’s what Paul shares. He shares the story of how God stepped into our lives in the flesh in this person of Jesus, and that through him, God is no longer far away, but is now near at hand. He emptied himself all the way to the cross, so that there is no doubt how God loves the creation – every single created being. You see… What Paul gave her was the rest of the story that she had been waiting for, the completion of the path she had already started.

So often, we start with the wrong assumption, that people aren’t experiencing God, or that God is absent. What’s usually closer to the truth is that God is already there and already with them, but the particular path of Jesus has not yet been revealed. Like Lydia, the God-fearer, they are waiting for another puzzle piece.

Once upon a time, in a not-so-far-away land, there was a community of acorns, nestled at the foot of one side of a massive, old oak tree. They went about their business like the modern, sophisticated, enlightened acorns they were. It was, as you would expect from such acorns. They engaged in a lot of self-help courses, watched Oprah in the afternoons. There were seminars called, “Getting the Most out of Your Shell,” “Getting in Touch with Your Inner Nut,” and even “The Purpose-Driven Acorn.” There were woundedness and recovery groups for those acorns bruised from their original fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling their shells and acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. On Sunday, most of them attended worship services wherein they gave thanks to their creator and read ancient texts in an attempt to be better acorns.

One day in the midst of an acorn prayer service, there appeared a knotty little stranger, whose cap was askew and chipped in several places. His shell was a bit splotchy. He made an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. Crouched beneath this massive old oak tree with the other acorns surrounding him, he stammered out an incredible tale – “We…are…that!” he said, pointing upward toward the oak tree.

After a moment, the other acorns began to look at each other and giggle. Delusional thinking, obviously, the acorns concluded. One of the acorns decided to play along.  “So tell me, smart guy, how exactly would we become that tree?”

“Well,” he said, “it has something to do with going down into the ground and cracking open our shell.”

“That’s so morbid!” said one acorn.

And another said, “What? If we did that, we wouldn’t be acorns anymore!”

“Precisely,” said the knotty, little stranger.

(The Wisdom Way of Knowing, Cynthia Bourgeault)

So, Lydia goes down to the river to die in order to be born, but she does not go alone. Did you catch that? She took her whole household with her. Unlike our own culture of individualism, in the ancient world, the individual was understood only by virtue of being part of a group. They have a collective identity. Because she is an individual of means and has influence, when it comes time to be baptized, she takes the whole household with her. I bet she took her small group with her, too. I bet everybody went with Lydia.

God isn’t just interested in saving me, but God is all about saving all of us, and me as a part of that whole. And people of power had sway over their entire households. 

The Spirit moves people, and then people share Spirit with people so they can find it for themselves. All the great movements of history worked this way. God brings together messengers who are willing to go outside the walls, like Paul, and people of influence who long for God and who are ready, like Lydia, so that the whole household goes to the waters.

You might think that the story ends there, but no. The last thing we see is Lydia inviting Paul and his friends to stay with her, offering them food and shelter. The first thing that this woman of purple does is to embrace the ancient practice of hospitality. There is no fear in her, only openhearted welcome. Her home has now become a mission station so that even more people might be invited into the joy of the kingdom.

Isn’t it funny how the cycle of giving and receiving does its magic? And when we’re open to it, we experience both sides of that equation.

I remember Tom Long talking about a young man who went jogging with his father in their urban neighborhood. About at the halfway mark, a homeless man approached them and asked for some change. The father dug into the bottom of his pockets, scraped out all the coins, and held them out in two hands to the man: “Here, take what you need.” Well, that was beyond good fortune and the man said, “Thanks, I’ll take it all!” And he scooped the coins into his own hands and went his way.

It only took a second for the father to realize that, with no cell phones on the jog, he now had no change to make an important phone call. So he ran after the homeless man, and when he caught up to him, he said, “I’m sorry, but I really need to make a call. Can you spare some change?”

At that, the man dug down deep in his pockets and pulled out two handfuls of coins, and said, “Here, take what you need.” (Christian Century, March 14, 2001)

Lydia received with a glad and open heart, and then, with the same heart, she gave back to those who had given to her. By that hospitality, she insured that the cycle of giving and receiving would continue, blessing all who were touched by its love. “Here; take what you need.”

On Friday, I was driving to an early-morning meeting, and it was 7:00 a.m. I was heading south on Forum, just past Chapel Hill, heading downhill, when I saw this tall, young man walking along the side of the road, heading my same direction, playing his guitar and singing as he went. I wondered to myself, “Where is that young man going this time of morning, singing and playing like that. If he keeps going, he’ll end up clear down at the river.” I wonder if someone called for him, who said, “We need for you to come.” And was Lydia there waiting, as she always is?

Benediction

And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.