Faith - Sermon at St Matthew-in-the-City

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Where is Lydia? Acts 16.9-15

Acts 16:9-15

On Mothers’ Day, the Día de Madre, its appropriate that our Bible reading is about a famous woman from the New Testament. Acts 16 has three conversion stories, examples of a larger number of converts in Philippi. As well as Lydia, the trader in purple cloth, we meet the slave girl and the jailer. It is a diverse group of characters, which in itself shows how God breaks down barriers and unites people in Christ. But why focus our attention on Lydia, who is only mentioned in three verses in the Bible?

·         She is the first recorded convert to Christianity in the first church to be planted in Europe.

·         She was the hostess and perhaps the leader of that church.

·         Her journey to faith may give clues which will help us reach the Lydias of today with the good news of Jesus.

I’d like us to think about Finding Lydia, Saving Lydia and Including Lydia.

Finding Lydia

You may remember that St Paul had sailed to the region of Macedonia in response to a vision of a man pleading with him to “Come and help us”. Now when Paul and his fellow missionaries arrived in a new place, his usual plan was to start at the local synagogue and try to convince the Jewish people about Jesus. That doesn’t seem to have happened in Philippi, and one theory is that there was no synagogue because there weren’t enough Jewish men in the town to have one.

So, having stayed there a few days looking around, Paul goes outside the city walls, on the Sabbath day, to a place by the river where it is rumoured that women gather to pray. There he meets Lydia’s group and joins in conversation with them. It is probably a very mixed group including Jews and non-Jews, with various levels of belief and interest in God, at least some inclination to pray, at least some courage to join in with this subversive activity, but as yet no knowledge about Jesus.

We notice then how in answering God’s call, following the Holy Spirit’s leading, Paul steps outside his comfort zone, looks for these people, meets them on their familiar ground and talks to them about Jesus.

My first question for us is simply this; Where do today’s Lydias gather, and how good are we at getting alongside them and gossiping the gospel?

Coming to church services may not be a priority for most people, but I believe there are many women and men in our society who have an interest in spiritual matters, who sometimes have an urge to pray but no idea who to pray to. Where are they? In the bars, shopping malls (the new cathedrals!), at the gym, on the beach, looking for work or cheap food and clothing, chatting online with strangers.

Think about this for yourself – where is Lydia? And who is doing something about finding her and helping her discover the Lord who longs to meet her? Is this your job, or mine, or somebody else’s? Can we become a church which is good at finding and contacting Lydia?

One thing is certain: God wants Lydia to be found.

Saving Lydia

Verse 14 tells us that one of the women listening to what Paul, Silas and Luke were saying was Lydia, a dealer in expensive cloth, from Thyatira, who was a worshipper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message and she and her whole household were baptised.

Now we’d all love to know what Paul’s words were – the wonderful persuasive words which immediately convinced this woman and others about Jesus. But his words are not recorded, even though Luke, the writer of Acts, was an eyewitness. This is frustrating!

Which reminds me of when I was a shy and awkward teenager, discovering the attraction of girls but having no success at all in getting to know any. I always believed that my more confident and successful friends had some amazing ‘chat up lines’, guaranteed to win the affection of the loveliest girl. If only I could discover these magic words, this formula, I too would enjoy romantic success with girls!

Of course there is no catchall formula for romance, nor indeed for evangelism. We know from our Bibles that Paul, like Jesus himself, treated each person as an individual, with respect for their culture and their circumstances. He knew that he owed his life to the undeserved grace of God, and he never treated others as conquests to be gained.

What is interesting is how God works with Paul in a kind of partnership. It is Paul who speaks, his voice that is heard by Lydia, yet it is God who opens her heart to listen eagerly and enables her to understand and receive Jesus. God is the one who initiates the contact. Paul obeys and seeks, finds and speaks to Lydia, and God reaches her through Paul’s words.

I think we sometimes forget that God always operates in this way, working in partnership with obedient people who will take his love and the good news of Jesus to others.

Question: Do we speak to others about Jesus? And do we believe that when we speak about Jesus God will open people’s hearts to believe? Or are we too polite or too shy to do this? Do we think it is best to stay quiet about our faith and not take the risk? Are we a church that is good at finding Lydia but not so good at helping her find salvation?

Another thing to notice is God’s priority to reach outsiders, people who are different from us. Lydia was an outsider in a number of ways – a female head of household in a very male dominated society, she was also a successful businesswoman and an immigrant from Asia making her way in Europe.

Question: Who will be God’s mission partner in reaching female heads of household, Asian immigrants, business people? What about homeless people, drug users, mentally and physically handicapped people, prisoners and other minority groups? Who will reach them and how?

God seeks mission partners to reach all kinds of people because he wants the Lydias to be found and to be saved.

Including Lydia

The baptism of Lydia – and noticeably of her whole household is a sacramental act confirming their acceptance and inclusion in Christ and in the church. Equally important is the way in which Lydia opens her house, in response to God opening her heart, and her hospitality and generosity are accepted by Paul and his companions, after some persuasion.

Lydia’s gifts and abilities are recognised, affirmed and included by Paul and these qualities of hospitality and generosity become characterisic of the Philippian church (see Phil 4:15-17). The final verse of Acts 16 shows that Lydia’s home became the meeting place of the church and hints that she was its first leader. Being host or leader was a brave thing to do in a place that could be suspicious and hostile towards new religious ideas.

Question: How good are we at fully including those who have been found and saved in the life of the church? How good are we are at making space for them to use their gifts, especially in the case of people who don’t fit the usual pattern or type?

From my own experience and from talking to other church leaders I would say that many of the Lydias ‘out there’ are people who have been part of churches but have become disillusioned and fallen away. They were found and saved but never really felt included. Many others keep on coming in hope or out of loyalty, but actually feel unvalued, unloved, unrecognised and excluded. If that sounds like you, come and see me!

Conclusion

Finding Lydia, Saving Lydia and Including Lydia were all vital steps in the founding of the Philippian church and the spread of Christianity into Europe. God wants today’s Lydias to be found and saved and included in his church and he calls Christians to be his mission partners in finding and saving and including them. Who will answer God’s call?

Sermon - Acts 11.1-18 An Extraordinary Development

Acts 11.1-18

Something EXTRAORDINARY happened in our reading from Acts, something you very rarely see happen today. Did you notice it?

·         I’m not talking about the apostle Peter having his deepest prejudice challenged and his mind changed by a combination of the Holy Spirit’s prompting and a pastoral encounter – that happens.

·         I’m not even talking about God reaching out beyond and ahead of the church to pour out his grace and mercy on outsiders – that happens too.

·         The thing I occasionally see happening in local churches but hardly ever in the national or denominational headquarters of churches these days is the extraordinary thing that happens in Acts 11.18: the church changes its mind on a fundamental matter of membership and the sacraments.

The change from this:

When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticised him and said, ‘You went into the house of the uncircumcised and ate with them.’ Acts 11.2-3

… to this:

When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, ‘So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.’  Acts 11.18

… is a big and a hugely significant change. For the first time, non-Jewish people are accepted as having a rightful place in the church. The church has changed its mind and redefined itself and its membership criteria.

If we look only at Acts 11 the change appears to have happened easily and quickly. We know from Acts 15, the account of the Jerusalem Council, that there was in fact more resistance to the change and more debate, but the decision of that Council confirmed that Gentile members were not only welcome but that membership was to be made easy for them; rules and definitions were altered to accommodate them.

What I would like to do this morning is to encourage you to think about why and how this remarkable change happened as easily as it did in the early church. Then I want to go on to contrast the way in which a comparable issue is being faced by the Church of England today: the issue of whether or not marriage should be redefined to include same sex partnerships. If time allows I will be happy to respond to a few questions, before winding up with some conclusions and suggestions.

First, the easy part …

·         Peter was praying in the middle of the day when God gave him a vision which opened his heart to the possibility of taking the good news to a Roman centurian’s house. Even though Peter was enjoying great success as an apostle, including the healing of a paralysed man and the raising to life of a dead woman, which we heard about last week, he still gave priority to prayer and not just asking prayer but waiting, listening, meditative prayer (10.9ff). This made him open to being instructed by God, even as far as being challenged at the level of his deepest beliefs and prejudices.

·         Peter thought about the vision God gave him and on his way to Cornelius’s house he realised God was not just showing him something about food but about people:

“You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with Gentiles” he told the crowd of gentiles assembled by Cornelius, “But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.” Acts 10.28

·         God did the rest and it became obvious to Peter and his Jewish Christian companions as soon as he began to speak about Jesus, that God was already baptizing the whole crowd with his Holy Spirit. Peter and those with him recognised straightaway and without doubt that the same gift which he and the apostles had received on the day of Pentecost had already been given by God to these people, without the church’s prior authority.

·         Now even though in Peter’s own sermon at Pentecost he had proclaimed that God was at this time pouring out his Spirit on all people, fulfilling the prophecy of Joel 2.28, as far as that prophecy applied to Gentiles, he had to see it to believe it. He remembered that Jesus had said “John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1.5) He concluded “So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”

·         So the Church’s baptism in water was given after the Spirit baptism given by God – the Church’s representatives responding to what God had done (Acts 10.47-48). Peter may well be considered to have been overstepping his authority, and indeed was initially criticised by the other leaders of the Jerusalem Church. But crucially, these Church leaders recognised God’s hand in what had happened and gave their approval, affirming that God had clearly given salvation and new life to Gentiles.

·         If we were to look ahead to Acts 15 we would see how the church even eased its membership requirements so that Jewish festivals and food laws and ritual washing laws and even the rite of circumcision were dropped to make it clear that Gentile Christians did not also have to become Jewish.

In Contrast – the current crisis over same sex partnerships

·         Let me make a comparison with the way the Church is currently handling the crisis over same sex marriage. There is a crisis because nation after nation are passing laws redefining marriage to include same sex partnerships. Spain was one of the first countries to do so, New Zealand the most recent. Similar legislation is currently passing through the UK Parliament.

·         The problem with this for the Churches, including the Church of England, is that Christians are deeply divided on this issue. Some of the most vociferous opponents of this change in the law are Christians, and some of the strongest voices in favour are Christian voices.

·         You can make a biblical, Christian argument either way. People I love and respect can be found on opposite sides on this issue.  Personally, as I’ve made clear before, I have become convinced that the Bible passages traditionally thought to  condemn homosexual orientation and to prohibit same sex partnerships actually do no such thing, when properly understood.

·         If we look at the message of Acts 11, we see God changing things while the church was cautious. I wonder if we aren’t being overcautious today? Is the Church of England, despite our new Archbishop’s comment last week that he supports loving, stable same-sex realationships, just too bound by its traditions and political divisions?

·         Perhaps the Church needs to take Gamaliel’s approach – if this movement is from God, it won’t go away; if it isn’t, it will fail.

·         If only we were facing this dilemma in the 1st Century and not the 21st Century perhaps we would be more flexible, less inhibited, and more in agreement about what the Holy Spirit is saying and willing to respond.

·         The fact is we are not in the 1st Century and we can only start from where we are, with all the baggage that we individuals, our church and our society have. Even so perhaps we can at least try to recover the priority of prayer, real, open, meditative prayer.

·         And perhaps we can open our hearts and our churches to give love, friendship and support to everyone who comes in response to God’s love, without being judgmental.

Sermon - Acts 5.17-32

Acts 5.17-32

Intro and Context

·         A question preachers sometimes ask is “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” If we are honest the answer is all too often “No”. Well in Acts 5, all of the apostles, Jesus’ closest followers, are arrested and there is plenty of evidence!

·         The disciples of Jesus we see in Acts 5 are completely different from the confused, demoralised, fearful little group we read about at the time Jesus was executed. Now in Acts they have suddenly become a powerful, confident, fearless force for change in society. They are completely different and yet the same group of people.

·         One reason for the change is the presence of the Holy Spirit within and amongst the disciples. That takes some explaining and we’ll come back to it in a few weeks on Pentecost Sunday.

·         The other big change for the disciples was the way they had been affected by the things they had witnessed, specifically the resurrection of Jesus. Two sentences in our reading sum up just how greatly changed the disciples were and what they did about it, as an absolute priority, for the rest of their lives.

“Go, stand in the temple courts, and tell the people the full message of this new life.” (v20)

·         It is all about the resurrection, about this new life.

·         The resurrection is not a trick or a myth but a demonstration of God’s victorious power and love.

·         The disciples are to trust this new life, to live it, show it and tell it to everybody – including all the people previously excluded by religion, even including the enemies who had plotted to have Jesus and the disciples killed.

·         The Temple is where the message is to be told to begin with – the scene of dispute/controversy between Jesus and the chief priests = The place where people had been shut out from God, or only allowed tightly controlled access  = The building Jesus was replacing as intermediary with God. A significant place to proclaim the message of new life.

·         Religion is so often about what we are not, what we hate, who we are against. Perhaps we need to get back to the refreshing, positive, life-giving message of new life; this New Life which Jesus won for us and for everybody else.

 “We must obey God rather than men.” (v29)

·         Whenever God is doing something new and good, influencing positive change, there will always be people who oppose it. Usually people with power and influence and a vested interest in keeping things the way they are.

·         For instance there have been movements in recent years, amongst christians and many others to deal with Environmental protection issues and debt cancellation/inequality issues. Perhaps God is at the root of these movements. There has certainly been resistance from governments and multi national corporations with interests in keeping things as they are.

·         Sadly, religious groups, which should be leading the way in recognising what God is doing in the world and joining in with it, are often the most reactionary, inflexible and resistant to where God is leading.

·         The Disciples’ rule was “We must obey God rather than men”. Which is probably what all of us would say we want to do, But what God wants is not always clear. We are right to be cautious when somebody claims “God told me to say or do this”, or “God says this …”

·         But I think it is also fair to say that people (especially religious groups) are sometimes too quick to criticise and try to discredit or stamp out ideas we don’t think are from God. Gamaliel’s advice to the Jewish court later in this chapter is very wise but not often followed – “let’s wait and see how thi new thing develops. If it is not from God it will die out. If it is … we don’t want to be opposing God!”

·         Generally we can be very clear from the life of Jesus and the Bible’s teaching what kind of world God is trying to build, what God’s priorities are etc. It is usually not too hard to see how God wants us to live.

·         Actually doing it is harder – and needs determination, resiliance and the help of spiritual resources only God can give us. We should not expect an easy ride, but the apostles’ example (and many others down the ages) show us it is possible to rejoice when we have the privilege of suffering pain or loss of reputation because of our relationship with Jesus.

Leadership criteria for church and world

How can we (and the new ABC, the new Pope, governments etc) relate the new life of the resurrection to the daily decisions and challenges we face and the needs of the world? Transformed by their witness to the resurrection (and the lliving presence of the Holy Spirit, they followed these 2 simple rules to great effect.

How about us? How about you? Can you think of situations where obeying God would put you in a difficult position ..?

And how do you deal with this? Especially if the values of the people you live or work with are different. Its not easy and this is where we need each other’s support. So if you are having struggles talk to me or Billie or someone else in the church. Living God’s way, living this new life which is his gift to us, is not easy. We need to love and support and pray with each other and together we can become what God brought us together to be.