Sermon: Do the Easy Thing

First Presbyterian Church

July 6, 2025, Pentecost 4C

2 Kings 5:1-19a; Luke 4:21-30

 

Do the Easy Thing

 

The prophet Elisha doesn't get nearly the acclaim that goes to his prophetic predecessor Elijah, but he does have his moments. He has his quirks, to be sure; when a trio of kings came to him for an oracle in 2 Kings 3, he refused to speak until a musician was provided to play – perhaps making Elisha the first beat-poet prophet. (That scripture reading tells us that once that musician began to play, "the power of the Lord came on him." Maybe some of us preachers today ought to give that a try.)

In today’s reading from 2 Kings, Elisha remains almost a background character, only appearing in person at its close but deeply involved in events nonetheless. While a powerful army commander and multiple kings are involved in the story - people who expect to be important - some of the biggest roles in the story are played by people who are anonymous to us, utterly insignificant in the social strata of the time; the servants of the general Naaman and his wife. 

Take the young servant girl who served Naaman’s wife, for instance. She had been taken captive from her home in Israel, presumably during one of many skirmishes between Israel and Aram. Probably she was homesick for the land of her birth. In her servant role she would have been aware both of Naaman’s military prowess and of the skin condition that threatened his stature, no matter his successful in the field. It would have been easy for her to rejoice in Naaman’s potential downfall; after all, he might even be the reason she had been taken from home. 

Is it possible that this servant girl remembered her first calling? Maybe such gloating, or even simple refusal to offer help in that time of suffering, simply was not reconcilable with what she knew of Israel’s God. Yahweh was a God who heals, and she remembered the prophet of that God in her homeland who healed others. With all of this in mind, she spoke up to her mistress, telling her about that prophet and setting in motion the events of today’s story. To her, it was the right thing and the easy thing to do.

Elisha himself also shows us what it is to remember whose we are. Like any good prophet, Elisha has had a testy relationship with the monarchy so far, apparently getting along better with Jehoshaphat, then the king of Judah, than with the ruler in his own land of Israel. Nonetheless, Elisha reached out to Israel’s king at a moment when that king was apparently forgetting whose he was. By his intervention, Elisha helps avert a potential disaster between Israel and Aram, and incidentally reminds that king that there is indeed a prophet of the one true God in the land (Israel's king Jehoram was an idol-worshiper like his father Ahab). Later in the story Elisha will also demonstrate whose he really is as well, refusing Naaman’s very generous offers of reward for his healing.

For Naaman, though, first he has to learn whose he is, which goes against everything he has been taught to believe. He was a man of power and accustomed to wielding authority over others even as he also served his king. The humiliating spectre of his disease threatened that. Being so desperate as to take the advice that a foreign servant girl gave to his wife was bad enough, but to get shuffled off from the king to some prophet out in the Samarian backwoods, only to be handled by some messenger boy, was too much. I am the general of a great military power, he must have thought. Who are these people, these mere Israelites, these nobodies, to treat me this way? He might well have started thinking about how to bring these insolent people down once and for all. 

Fortunately, more of those anonymous servants are there to save the day, persuading Naaman that it only made sense do the extremely simple thing that the prophet asked of him. Finally he takes his Jordan River bath and is “over-healed”, his skin being made like that of a young boy.

It seems that a lot of people overlook an important point in this story: Naaman converts! He declares his profession of faith in verse 15 – “there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” He’s still a little confused about some things, not realizing that that same God would be with him even in Aram and wanting to take along some Israelite dirt, but it’s a start. After Elisha rebuffs his attempts to pay, Naaman confesses his dilemma; his job required him to support his master, who still worshiped that foreign non-god, even physically in that act of idol-worship. He seeks pardon of Yahweh through Elisha, who sends him on his way in peace. Whatever else he may have had to learn, Naaman had picked up one important thing: he knew whose he was, he knew the Lord who held not only his healing but his very life in his hands, and that this Lord would still be whose he was, first and foremost.

But let's not overlook just how much Naaman's pride almost undid everything. Look again at Naaman's ranting after Elisha has first given him the instruction on how to be healed. First, this one: 

"I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy?

 

Naaman was expecting a big production number, something of a spectacle to be made over a Very Important Person like himself. It's not hard to imagine that Elisha's predecessor Elijah might have given exactly that kind of spectacle if he had deigned to intervene at all. But Elisha doesn't even leave the house; he sends these instructions via messenger - another servant, in other words. How in the world could a general who could crush Israel if he so chose be expected to take instruction from a mere servant?

Then there was this bit of ranting:

"Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters in Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?"

 

Here's where his Aramean nationalism is showing. Why do I have to dunk myself in this podunk river when there are great and mighty rivers back home I could immerse myself in? Who does this jerk think he is, anyway? Fortunately, those servants talked some sense into Naaman, and he went to the river and obeyed the instructions he had been given.

It's worth noting that a kind of nationalism attaches to our gospel reading from Luke. Jesus tells this story in his first visit to his hometown during his public ministry. All he has to do is mention this healing, along with Elijah's help to a widow in Sidon, and the crowd literally tries to throw him off a cliff. Elisha's intervention here might have gotten Israel out of another battle with Aram, but it won him no fans in Israel.

Anyway, not only was Naaman healed by the time his seventh dip was done, but he was even over-healed; his flesh was cleaned "like the flesh of a young boy" which Naaman was not. It's enough to cut through all the pride and bluster and bring Naaman to a completely different understanding of ... well, of everything. All because a man who was looking for some great thing to do was finally talked into doing the easy thing he was given to do.

Do we fall into this trap sometimes? Does the church get obsessed with doing some big public spectacle of a thing to the detriment of carrying out the work God gives the church to do? 

One of the initiatives of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is the Matthew 25 Initiative, taking its inspiration from the well-known parable at the end of that chapter known as the "parable of the sheep and the goats." The three focus points developed from that scripture for this initiative are:

·      Building congregational vitality.

·      Dismantling structural racism.

·      Eradicating systemic poverty.

That sounds rather intimidating, to be sure; but go back to the source and look at those things Jesus talks about in Matthew 25:

"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

 

How much of that do we already do? Not all, but a good bit.

There will be times when the church, or maybe some of us as individuals, are called upon to do harder things. But the first thing is to do the basic, easy things that God has set before us, some of which we do almost by reflex here. 

Sometimes the hardest thing is to do the easy thing. Naaman almost ruined everything by being unwilling to go dunk himself in a river. Let us never get so caught up in anything that would distract us so that we fail to do the most basic things God has set before us.

For the obedience to do the easy thing, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #331, God of the Ages, Whose Almighty Hand; #442, Just As I Am, Without One Plea; #700, I'm Gonna Live So God Can Use Me

 

Sermon: Wisdom and Trinity

First Presbyterian Church

June 15, 2025, Trinity C

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5

 

Wisdom and Trinity

 

It's an almost stereotypical image, one found in comic strips or editorial cartoons or any number of other visual media. In it you see a lone sojourner, or maybe a pair, hiking or even climbing their way up a mountainside or cliff. When they get to the top, they find a lone figure, typically an elderly man, probably seated with legs crossed, appearing as a guru or sage of some sort prepared to dispense wisdom. 

The scene is often used for comic effect, but it trades on something of a traditional image of a seeker of wisdom as being one who is cut off from society, engaged in solitary contemplation in that withdrawn setting. The writer of today's reading from Proverbs would not necessarily agree with this image of withdrawal in search of wisdom.

Today's reading is part of a more extended rhapsody (my word) on wisdom, briefly touched on in chapter 7 and then taking up most of chapters 8 and 9. It follows a discourse on a different character, one who would lead astray (in many different ways) the young student to which Proverbs is directed. In this rhapsody Wisdom is personified; most of chapters 8 and 9 are depicted as wisdom speaking to that young student. 

Let's go ahead and make this clear: yes, Wisdom really is personified in this rhapsody as a woman. Take that, guys. In context, the character in the previous discourse who would lead the young student astray is also a woman, so the passage works as a clever literary device to present the two different paths set before the young student. Still, Wisdom (divine wisdom, clearly, as the rest of the discourse makes clear) is personified as female. Right out of the Bible, folks.

The opening four verses of the chapter set forth the character (sometimes called Woman Wisdom in the scholarly literature), and our author's depiction of Wisdom at work doesn't quite square up with the mountaintop guru of comic-strip notoriety. Far from having to be sought out in some isolated place, Wisdom is out in the world, calling to anyone who would listen:

At the highest point along the way, where the paths meet she takes her stand; beside the gates leading into the city, at the entrance, she cries aloud...

 

This isn't wisdom in hiding or in secret. She's out there, calling out for all to hear. 

"All fine and good," you may say, while either being excited or offended to see something of the divine being portrayed as a woman. "All fine and good," you may say, "but what does any of this have to do with Trinity Sunday? Why aren't you preaching on something more obvious like that reading from Romans where all the persons of the Trinity are mentioned? Why is this Proverbs bit in the readings for today?" That's where verses 22-31 come in. 

That section opens with Wisdom's declaration that "The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old." It may surprise you to hear that this description was the subject of heated debate at no less than the Council of Nicaea, the first meeting of which took place way back in the year 325, and which was the initiator of that statement of faith we know as the Nicene Creed (we tend to say it in worship on Sundays when the Lord's Supper happens). In their extensive and often testy debates over the nature of the Trinity, this passage, with its confusing Hebrew about being "created" or is it being "begotten" or "made" or "born" became a shorthand for discussing whether the second Person of the Trinity - the one we call God the Son, or Jesus - was "created" or "begotten" or "made" or "born" in John 1. Indeed, for some years, this character of Wisdom was sometimes discussed as a foreshadowing of the Son of God (notwithstanding Wisdom being personified as a woman here!) and of that Son's being "in the beginning with God," as John 1 says, or being one through whom "all things were made" as the Nicene Creed ends up saying.

If that's how the second Person of the Trinity is involved here, the largest part of the reading names the first Person of the Trinity as the great Creator of all. Most of the text describes Woman Wisdom's bearing witness as God engages in the various acts of creation and even being God's "delight, rejoicing before Him always" and also "delighting in the human race." 

While the third Person of the Trinity is less directly invoked here, it has not escaped notice that the way Wisdom is described in this rhapsody looks and sounds a lot like the way the Holy Spirit gets described in various other corners of scripture. All that business about not being hidden off on some mountaintop but being out in the streets and at the gates of the city is awfully similar to the doings of the Spirit, after Pentecost in particular.

None of this should be taken as a "proof" of anything. Obviously, this was written many, many years before the Nativity or Pentecost. What this quite exuberant passage does show us is that God's people have been, literally for centuries, even millenia, seeking ways to understand and comprehend how God moves in God's world. We aren't the first to struggle with it. The Council of Nicaea wasn't the first to struggle with it. And no doubt even the writer of Proverbs wasn't the first either. Outside of the more dramatic interventions revealed in scripture - say, the Exodus, or Pentecost, or the very life of Jesus - God's people have been challenged by the work of putting together all that we have been shown and instructed in order, not to have God completely figured out, but at least not to get God egregiously and harmfully wrong. 

In the end, perhaps such words as "wonder," or even the "delight" that Wisdom herself invokes in today's reading, might be at the last the best place to end up in such pursuits. To borrow the Apostle Paul's words from 1 Corinthians, we are still in that place where we see "in a mirror, dimly"; the time when we "will see face to face" is not yet here. Would that this age of contemplation would be, rather than a source of dispute and anger over the nature of God, be a source of delight, perhaps with the help of good old Woman Wisdom.

For wisdom and her delight, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #1, Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty; #8, Eternal Father, Strong to Save; #2, Come, Thou Almighty King

For those who miss the non-heretical kittens...

acts 2

we couldn’t understand anybody 

we were alone in the city

this great big city by itself 

but now

with so many visitors 

from so many nations 

speaking so many languages 

we truly couldn’t understand anybody 

we were alone

when we tried to speak the local language 

nobody could understand us either

we would try to find food 

or a shelter 

and people would look at us 

like we were aliens

which I guess we were to them

but still

we kept getting lost

and were alone and hungry

and we didn’t know how to find the festival 

even with all the crowds 

or maybe because of them 

there was some commotion 

in a building 

maybe a house

off to one side

a lot of voices

many people crowded around 

we came closer

there were people speaking 

a lot of different languages 

but amazingly 

as clear as could be 

we heard a voice speaking our language 

we stood gaping

at this new word we could hear and 

understand

then

one of them stepped forward to speak 

to say they weren’t drunk at 9 a.m.

and then to quote a prophet 

and to talk about 

a Spirit being poured out on everybody

and then to talk more about someone 

named Jesus

others came through the crowd 

to help us 

one of them asked us 

not in our language 

if we needed anything 

I said 

as best as I could in their language 

we were hungry 

and somehow she understood 

and took us in

and gave us food to eat 

so we were fed twice that morning 

we knew then

that we would not be returning to 

our homeland alone

even if 

we would be traveling 

by ourselves

Sermon: The Spirit Poured Out

First Presbyterian Church

June 8, 2025, Pentecost C

Acts 2:1-21

 

The Spirit Poured Out

 

 

Here we are again, at one of those passages of scripture that we may not hear very often, but we do hear it at least once every year. It's the kind of scripture reading that we recognize almost immediately upon hearing, but that, if we're honest with ourselves, we don't really know all that well.

We know the basic beats of the story:

ü All of Jesus's followers, gathered in a room, waiting for...who knows?

ü The sound of a great wind, "divided tongues as of fire", suddenly speaking languages they'd never learned or known before;

ü The great crowd, in Jerusalem but from everywhere (a detailed list follows, representing the entire known world); that crowd hearing all the commotion and wondering what was going on up there;

ü Some terminally clever oaf in the crowd cracking wise about their being drunk;

ü Peter responding that it's only nine o'clock in the morning, and that nobody's drunk, but here's what's happening; and then quoting some spooky stuff from the prophet Joel, launching into a sermon from there (that we only get part of in today's reading).

Sometimes those familiar phrases, though, can get a little bit dull from repetition, so familiar that we don't really hear them. We might just slip into the thought, "oh, yeah, the Pentecost story" and go on autopilot, not really hearing.

For example: what does it suggest when Peter, following Joel 2:28-32 pretty directly, quotes God as saying "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh"? Does that strike up any particular image in your mind? Or has it become so familiar that it doesn't really strike up anything? 

Sometimes when I find myself in this rut I turn to the Cotton Patch Gospel, the work of biblical scholar Clarence Jordan, who not only translated much of the New Testament but created a version set in the Georgia of his day, namely the late 1950s. Jerusalem became Atlanta, the baby Jesus was born in Gainesville (Georgia, not Florida), and so forth. Being born and raised in Georgia, this naturally got my attention. Jordan's colorful and evocative language can be at times illuminating. It's not a substitute for a more straightforward translation, but it can be an interesting supplement at times.

And for this passage, Clarence Jordan offers "I will share my spirit with all mankind." OK, there's the dated language "mankind," as if women weren't included, but the main verb is "share." It's an effective enough verb, to be sure, and it's definitely accurate enough in this context, but for those who respond to imagery and vividness of language, it perhaps doesn't offer as much help. 

Another, much more recent reading of the scriptures in a different cultural context is First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament, published only four years ago. This work, produced by a council of Native religious leaders and teachers and scholars, sought to perform a task not unlike Jordan's Cotton Patch Gospel, but not exactly the same; the setting is not changed, but the names of places and persons are given in a Native idiom and the style of the account is rendered as much as possible in the style of a storyteller in the oral tradition of the many nations and tribes of North America. 

In this reading, after the "sound of a great windstorm" and "flames of fire" have come and the crowd is hearing in their many languages, Peter's reading of Joel is rendered as "'In the last days,' says Creator, 'I will rain down my Spirit upon all human beings...'."

Now there's something. 

The thing about something being poured out is that if you're not directly under whatever is being poured from, you might well miss it. Rain, on the other hand, is not so easy to escape. If you're outside when it starts to rain, you get wet. There's no sidestepping the rain or jumping out of the way of it. You get wet. 

Maybe this helps drive home the fact of the Spirit being poured out on everyone. No one is left out. Everyone gets wet. 

This doesn't go down well for a lot of people. It's been true in every age and it's most definitely true now; too much of the church wants this pouring out of the Spirit to be for just us, or maybe more specifically not them. We're the "special" ones, they insist; we're God's chosen, God's favorites. Not those people who don't look like us, who don't sound like us, who don't flatter us or cozy up to us or make us feel important. Not them. The Spirit doesn't pour down on them. That's how an awful lot of people want it to be.

But when we think of the Spirit raining down? As the old verse says, the rain falls on the just and the unjust. It doesn't miss anybody. There's no getting left out, there's no Great Replacement anything, there's no "for me but not for thee," none of that. The Spirit rains down on everyone, whether we like it or not. Everybody gets wet.

Does everybody respond to the Spirit the same way? No, they don't. Think again about the rain; your first impulse is to seek shelter, yes? Or perhaps pull out an umbrella? For some people, the Spirit is a disruption, maybe even a threat. You never know what's going to happen when the Holy Spirit gets loose. Life might get uncomfortable. We might be led places we're not comfortable going. Best get out of the rain before you get too wet. But then there are those lovely souls who, when the rain comes down, will take it all in and maybe skip about and kick around a few puddles when they form. The Spirit truly soaks them with all that it is.

This is one rainstorm from which we don't need to take shelter. The Holy Spirit, raining down on all humanity? In the dried-up wilderness that is increasingly the world in which we live, that raining down is nothing less than life itself. The church, big or small, local or global, dare not try to shelter against this rain, not if we want to live up to the label "Christian," or (even better) terms like "Christlike," or "follower of Christ." 

One more thing: the Holy Spirit didn't go away after Pentecost. It keeps raining all through the book of Acts (we've taken in a couple of such passages back in the month of May). Even more, that same Spirit is still raining down on all human beings. The Holy Spirit - third person of the Trinity, remember; in other words, God - continues to rain down upon humanity, seeking to wash us and renew us and fill us with what we need to do Christlike things in a decidedly non-Christlike world.

This is one rain from which you don't want to seek shelter or pop up an umbrella.

It's time to let it rain. 

It's time to get wet.

For the raining down of the Holy Spirit, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #289, On Pentecost They Gathered; #286, Breathe on Me, Breath of God; #285, Like the Murmur of the Dove's Song

 

 

References:

 

Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch Gospel, the Complete Collection. Macon: Smith & Helwys Publishing, 2012.

 

First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021. 

Sermon: What Are You Looking At?

First Presbyterian Church

June 1, 2025, Ascension C

Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23;

       Luke 24:44-53

 

What Are You Looking At?

 

“What are you looking at?”

You can hear that in the voice of someone trying to keep something a secret, annoyed at being caught in the act; maybe in the voice of a stereotypical tough-guy movie or TV character (though a Robert DeNiro or Joe Pesci character might turn it around to say “you lookin’ at me?”); or a more casual, “hey, what are you looking at?” It’s a pretty flexible phrase. 

You don’t expect to hear it as angelic proclamation, though. 

But the end of the Acts account here features “two men in white robes” who suddenly appear beside the disciples (that’s a pretty characteristic way of the gospels describing angelic appearances) uttering a much more formal query: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” But really, they’re asking “What are you looking at?” Seriously, you have to wonder if one of the disciples was fighting the urge to turn on the two men in white and exclaim “are you kidding me? Did you not just see what happened here? People don’t just pick up and float off into the sky, you know…”

If one of the disciples did that (my money would have been on Thomas, with his contrarian attitude), Luke did not record it. Instead, the men in white issue a promise; the Jesus they just saw lifting up into the sky would, and will, return one day in the same fashion. Something to hold on to, I guess, in the now-inarguable absence of Jesus from his followers. 

Already Jesus had left this little band with plenty of instruction, and also a reprimand in the bargain. Luke’s account of the Ascension here at the beginning of Acts is a bit more expansive than that at the end of the gospel that bears his name, and there’s at least one really logical possible explanation for that: Luke learned more in the meantime. At the beginning of the gospel we call Luke the author admits very frankly that the gospel is not an eyewitness account. He advises his recipient, “most excellent Theophilus,” that he has set out to gather the best information he could to pass on an “orderly account” of the evens of Jesus’s life. The end of Luke’s gospel sounds frankly a lot like the end of Matthew, with an account of the Ascension thrown in. 

But by the time Luke started into the book we call Acts, he has a few things to add to the Ascension story. For one thing, we learn he was around for forty days, which the Luke account doesn’t really suggest. For another, there is more instruction included here. The disciples aren’t to rush off, but to return to Jerusalem and wait for the “promise of the Father,” wait to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit” before too many days have gone by. It turned out to be ten days until the event called Pentecost lit a fire in the disciples (almost literally) and initiated the work of the church on earth in a way that, quite frankly, none of the disciples could have anticipated.

As for the rebuke, one of the disciples (this could have been Thomas too) had to ask, as Jesus drew his remarks to a close, the most oblivious possible question in the context: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Even at the very end somebody is trying to press Jesus about when he’s going to Make Israel Great Again.

Jesus answers with one of the most ignored (and outright violated) scriptures in the whole book: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” For all these so-called ministers or biblical authorities spitting directly in the face of Jesus trying to work out some code or clue that tells them exactly when Jesus is gonna come back: it’s written right here, in Jesus’s own words: THAT’S NOT YOUR JOB. That’s not your place.

Your job is this: 

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

 

That’s the disciples’ job; wait for the Holy Spirit and then go! Go all over the world, says Jesus. And the church, in fits and starts, sometimes ruinously and sometimes beautifully, has been doing that ever since.

But what about the Ascension itself? What’s the point of this story with Jesus lifting off like a slow-moving rocket and being taken from the disciples’ sight? One of the best explanations in scripture is actually found in this passage from the letter to the church at Ephesus. Towards the end of today’s reading we get the rundown of why Christ’s ascension matters; the same Jesus who walked the earth with his followers now is at God’s side above – “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion,” not just now but for all time, with all authority over the church, and everything else under his feet. To be short about it, we have no business – at all – giving our allegiance to any authority but Christ. None. (For all we talk about wanting to be followers of Jesus, we sure do skip over a lot that scripture instructs us to do to be about that very business. Seriously, Christ’s church isn’t nearly radical enough.)

Still, though, you have to feel for the disciples, at least for those ten days. They’ve been told to go back to Jerusalem and … wait. What do you do when you wait for the Holy Spirit to overtake you (whatever that means)? 

You have to figure there was some remembering what Jesus said and did, maybe some arguments about those things, some impatience to be sure. You have to wonder if they gathered around a table for a meal at times (they needed to eat, after all) and were reminded again, and again, and again of that last meal with Jesus, the bread and the cup; or the encounter on the Emmaus Road, or back in Jerusalem; you have to wonder if picking up that loaf and that cup could possibly have ever been the same for them, especially now, with their Teacher and Lord physically gone for good.

This meal is handed to us even today, to remember; to take to heart and to remember the words and deeds of Jesus in our very beings. With the church in every age, from Ascension to now, we take this bread and this cup and show to the world the Lord’s saving death until, like the men in white promised, he returns that very same way, to be with us and us with him for all time.

For Jesus who departed, and will return, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #260, Alleluia! Sing to Jesus!; #---, When Jesus knew his time had come; #262; Since Our Great High Priest, Christ Jesus

Sermon: Macedonia

 First Presbyterian Church

May 25, 2025, Easter 6C

Acts 16:6-15

 

Macedonia

 

“Macedonia” is the name applied generally to a region of southeastern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. That more general region includes two current political entities with the same name: a region in northern Greece, and an independent nation once a part of Yugoslavia. Historically, Macedonia was perhaps most famous as the home and kingdom of Alexander the Great, from whence he set out to conquer the world. In later years the region was a significant province in the Roman Empire.

One of the important cities in that Roman district was Philippi. First founded by one of Alexander’s successors, the city was re-established during the Roman Empire. It was the site of the climactic battle of Marc Anthony and Octavian, successors of Julius Caesar, against his assassins Cassius and Brutus. Under Octavian (later known as Augustus) Philippi became a city for retired soldiers and was slightly modified by the addition of a Roman-style forum and the division of land among the soldier-colonists, becoming in effect a “miniature Rome.”

It was into this territory and this city that Paul and his fellow travelers were more or less forced by the Holy Spirit in today’s reading, an event which marked the first known foray of early Christian proclaimers of the Gospel into what we now define as “Europe” – a fact much more interesting to us today than to Paul and his co-workers. For us, a church like most Presbyterian churches made up of mostly white European stock, it’s an origin story. To them it was all Roman Empire, but Philippi, due to its unique origins, might have been just a little more Roman than other places on their journey.

To say that Paul and his company (which now included Silas and also Timothy, who had joined the group earlier in this chapter) were “forced” into Macedonia isn’t really a stretch. When the party had sought to move towards Asia (not the continent we know today, but another Roman province occupying what we would call western Turkey), Paul had been “forbidden by the Holy Spirit” from proclaiming the Gospel there. They tried to go to another region “but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” 

What does that even mean? Luke doesn’t give us any details here, but don’t you wish he had?? Whatever form these divine roadblocks took, Paul and Silas and the whole traveling group were stuck in a place called Troas, wondering what to do next. 

Think about this. They were prevented from moving forward. They were “forbidden,” they were “not allowed” to go. Those are very strong words. We modern Christians have this perhaps overly catchy phrase about how “when God closes a door, God opens a window” – maybe you’ve heard it? We tend to forget about the door-closing part of that phrase in our eagerness to get to the open window, but we do need to pay attention. If Paul and Silas – the great missionary team of the book of Acts, and most prolific proclaimers of the good news – had doors divinely slammed in their faces, we need not think we can just make up our minds and charge off in whatever direction looks good to us. Whatever path this church or any church seeks to discern for itself and for its future, that particular church needs to be ready for some doors being shut in our faces. (Apropos of nothing, this can also apply to pastors seeking a call.)

At this point comes the dream, or if you prefer, the open window. A “man of Macedonia” (you know how in a dream you just know who someone is, even if you have no reason to?) appears calling the group to come to that region and “help us.” It’s a fairly meager dream as Luke describes it, but given all the preventing and forbidding that has been going on so far it sounds like a great positive, and Paul and his party undertake the voyage. This was no short journey. The trip involved several ports of call and a couple of days’ sailing, before a short overland journey to Philippi, that leading Roman city and old soldiers’ home.

And once they got there … “we remained in the city some days.”

Again with the delay. Really, one might be excused for wondering if God is really with these folks or just messing with them.

Up to this point Paul’s usual practice had been to seek out a synagogue when arriving in a town to speak first to the members of that synagogue. Frequently many would be receptive to their word, but others would reject it, and sometimes violently. In Philippi, though, it doesn’t appear that Paul and Silas and company found one, hence they “remained in the city” for those several days. Finally, somehow, they got wind of a gathering, outside of the city gate and down by a river, that might be what they were looking for.

Well, sort of. What they found was a group of women led by Lydia, a wealthy woman (a dealer of purple cloth was inevitably wealthy) described as a “worshipper of God,” a term sometimes used to describe persons who were not part of the synagogue of the time but took an interest and directed their worship towards the God represented in the synagogue (similar to the centurion Cornelius from last Sunday's reading). So where was the man of Macedonia from the vision? Anyway, Lydia received the gospel with her whole household, and then pretty much took over, prevailing upon Paul and Silas and the whole party to stay in her home for the duration of their stay in Philippi. You know the folks who can do that kind of thing? They won’t take any of that nonsense about you staying in a hotel, we’re going to put you right up in the guest rooms and let’s make sure you’ve got everything you need while we’re at it? That was Lydia. Real Presbyterian Women energy.

So Paul and his party intended to go into Asia, perhaps cover some familiar territory with the familiar territory of the synagogue in doing the work of the gospel. Instead, they ended up in an entirely new place, much more in the heart of the Roman Empire, working without their usual safety net, and in the care of an independent woman of means. So much for best-laid plans. 

And yet, if we truly want to seek God’s vision for the church – this individual church or the church universal – we’d better be ready for something similar to happen. 

The hymn we will sing in a few moments, “Be Thou My Vision,” is rather dangerous if you actually pay attention to it. You know how it starts, right?

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that thou art...

 

 "Naught," (that is, nothing else) matters but God. If we’re truly going to give ourselves, our prayers, our time, our gifts, our energies, our very being to God’s vision, we run the risk of ending up in unfamiliar places, among people who are unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable for us, doing a work we could not possibly have expected. If we’re truly going to be about God’s vision, we have no idea where we will end up. And really, that’s as it has to be. We follow Christ, after all. Christ doesn’t follow us.

This week's lesson really is a lot like last week's account of Peter and Cornelius, but more so; Peter was after all still on that far end of the Mediterranean Sea, close to home, even if he was sent to receive Gentiles. Paul, in today's story, is being not-so-gently prodded to go to an explicitly Roman city, a place he never imagined going, with no safety net, and his group's well-being ended up in the hands of this group of previously unknown women. 

The Spirit gives us absolutely no assurance that our church in five or fifteen or fifty years will look anything like it did five or fifteen or fifty years ago. That’s not the point. The point is to be faithful, and to follow. The church doesn’t get to “go back to” anything. Our call is to be faithful and to follow, even if we end up in places we couldn’t have possibly imagined. We end up at tables with God’s children we’ve never met or never imagined, not necessarily comfortable for us but absolutely who God calls us to serve and love.

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, 

Still be my vision, O Lord of us all.

 

For the vision that drives us forward, even when we have no idea where we are going, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal) #375, Shall We Gather at the River; #450, Be Thou My Vision; #757, Today We All Are Called to Be Disciples