"Opened"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE ACTS Acts 16:9-15 Click here to watch the Sermon – “Opened”

While it may not appear so on the surface, today’s reading from the book of Acts is something of a Comedy of Character. Here is what you need to know about the setup. The apostle Paul is on his first evangelizing tour of the region since splitting from Barnabas. It’s been said that if the first four books of Christian scripture are understood to be accounts of the good news of Jesus Christ according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the book of Acts is that same good news according to the Holy Spirit. Now, hold on, you might be saying to yourself. Isn’t the same person who wrote Luke widely considered to be the author of the book of Acts? And you’d be right in saying that. But if those first four books focus on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Acts is what happens next. Acts is what happens when the Holy Spirit puts that good news in the mouths of people like you and me and sends us into the world. Because according to the Holy Spirit, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus is only the beginning of where God is taking this thing. The resurrection and the ascension of Jesus announce the arrival of a new world order; one that doesn’t operate according to the dominant story of established empires and institutions. And as the book of Acts unfolds, at every turn we see a different dismantling of old assumptions and ways of doing things. We see practices that were considered to be law challenged, powers that were once hostile lend their support to the Way of Jesus. We see people thought to be untouchable and unclean and unacceptable hear a word of promise and hope and encouragement and respond with lives that are transformed as a result. At every turn the status quo of earthly Empire gives way to the realm of God’s powerful love that turns it all upside down to make all things new. And one of the people to have their lives transformed was Saul, who we come to know as Paul. Saul was a devout religious zealot. So much so that he stood by and watched as the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was stoned to death for talking about Jesus. He then went on to become the church’s number one enemy. It wasn’t enough for him to round up believers in Jerusalem, he began traveling the nearby diaspora. On one such trip to Damascus to nip this Jesus movement in the bud, God gets ahold of him. Which is a story for another day. Now, while Saul undergoes a profound transformation, some of his old habits die harder than others. One of those is his habit of silencing, or otherwise marginalizing women. His words to the church in Corinth about women are downright regressive, saying that a man is the image and reflection of God and a woman is the reflection of a man. Or suggesting that women shouldn’t be allowed to speak or teach to the community gathered in worship. His words often reflect the expectation in both Roman and Jewish cultures that women submit to the authority of men. It can be hard to teach an old dog like Paul the new reality of God’s expansive vision of human equality in Christ. 

So like I said earlier, Paul had recently split from his original travel companion, Barnabas. To give you a sense of how Paul hasn’t quite shed his old religious habits, on this journey he meets Timothy. Timothy comes from a mixed family, his mom is Jewish and his dad is a Greek Gentile. Paul wants Timothy to accompany him on this trip but he knows that a lot of their work will be in synagogues, so Paul has Timothy circumcised to avoid unnecessary complications with the Jewish community, even though elsewhere he will oppose the practice of circumcising Gentile converts to the faith. The truth is that Paul and his travel party are having some trouble finding their feet. The Spirit won’t let them speak in Asia. When they try to go somewhere else they’re blocked from entering there also. That’s how it goes sometimes. The way isn’t always clear. Finally, we come to where our reading picks up with Paul having a vision of a man who pleads with him to come to Macedonia. That’s all the invitation that he needs. They sail some 70 miles to an island in the Aegean Sea, then sail another 70 miles to the Macedonian coast, before traveling about 10 more miles inland to the city of Philippi.  

And this is where the whole situation gets funny, at least to me. Because you know that if Paul’s vision had been one of a woman pleading with him to cross the Aegean, he might have thought twice. But because it was a man, well, no problem. Only when they get to Phillipi, which we’re told is a Roman colony, and they go looking for some fellow Jews to talk to about Jesus, what they encounter on the sabbath is a group of women gathered outside the city gate at the river to pray. So just to recap. Paul has a falling out with his mentor Barnabas, sets out with some others to win Asia for Christ, only to be silenced by the Holy Spirit, and blocked in another direction by that same Holy Spirit. He heeds a summons to cross the Aegean only to be met by a group of women who are meeting outside the gate because there is little tolerance for their religion in Roman Philippi. This cannot be how Paul thought things would go. But you know the old joke, if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans. 

Which brings us to Lydia. Because if all that weren’t bad enough. This woman isn’t even Jewish. While she might worship with these Jewish women, the way she’s described indicates that she was from a Greek city and a Gentile. She also leads a life that is far from submissive. As a dealer of cloth, she is a business woman. As a dealer of purple cloth, her business included the kind of luxury good that only the very wealthy would have been able to afford, giving her additional social status. Now, our reading goes on to detail how Lydia’s heart was opened by God to hear what Paul and his companions had to say about Jesus. And this is instructive to a church and believers who somehow think it is their job to make people Christian. When we set out on a mission based on our agenda, whatever that agenda may be, chances are good that we’re going to find ourselves silenced and blocked by God. Chances are even better that we are going to be sent to places we hadn’t thought, or weren’t even sure that we could go. And if this gospel according to the Holy Spirit is any indication, we are going to encounter people it would never have occurred to us to speak to. There is NO WAY Paul would have sought out Lydia on his own. And there is little indication that Lydia would have sought out Paul, but here they are in a kind of spiritual meet cute in which God goes to great lengths to bring them together to get precisely what God wants, which is Lydia’s heart and a foothold in Philippi. 

Now the obvious result is that Lydia and her entire household get baptized right there in the river. Side note: in case we’re tempted to minimize the extraordinary witness of Lydia’s life by suggesting that she owes her status to a man, it is described as her household. Not her husband’s, either living or dead, but hers. This is an independent, single, successful woman with the power of her own financial agency and a whole household to go along with it. And what may be the less obvious, but equally important result of this encounter is that she prevails upon the missionaries to stay with her. I don’t think Lydia’s heart was the only one being opened by God. Paul’s heart is opened as well to receive the gift of hospitality from a strong and independent woman. Once again, the cultural borders and boundaries that we seek to patrol and enforce are erased by the expansive love of God that refuses to recognize such artificial constructs.   

The sad tragedy is how many of our siblings in faith continue to perpetuate structures that minimize and marginalize the gifts of women in leading the church the way Lydia does. That the women Jesus encountered and learned from, like the Syro-Phonecian woman seeking healing for her daughter, or the Samaritan woman at the well, or Mary of Bethany who anointed his feet, or the woman with the hemorrhage who touched the hem of his garment, or Mary of Magdala who was the first to preach the resurrection, or the women that Paul encountered like Lydia, women he named in his letters like Euodia and Syntyche, Lois and Eunice; that women like these are not represented at the table, or in the pulpit, or wherever discernment of where God’s Spirit is leading the church to go is a scandal to the work of the Holy Spirit and a betrayal of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To exclude them is to exclude Christ who dwells within them. 

But as our hearts are opened- opened by God, opened by the re-direction of the Holy Spirit to the people and places we might otherwise avoid, we discover that the kinship of God that Jesus invites us into is so much larger than our plans can envision. And in that kinship we find the kind of life that no earthly power can keep down for long, the kind of life that will always prevail in the end.