May 5 2013 “Mission
Possible: Pick Me!” *Acts 16.9-15 Rev. Jacqueline Hines
There we go again! Paul is going on with his spiritual
adventures. He sees a vision of a man begging him to come to Macedonia which
today is a region near Greece and Eastern European places like Bulgaria. Paul
trusted that the vision was from God. That’s why he changed his whole direction
all based on a vision. What faith!! What readiness to quickly answer God’s call
to go wherever he was sent. How many of us are ready to be deployed at a
moment’s notice. Paul did not hesitate. He sailed to a major city in Macedonia
called Philippi. Philippi was a colony of the Romans in Italy, just as we in
Pennsylvania were one of the 13 original colonies under British rule until the
Revolutionary War. Currently some might
say the United States of America has two colonies – Puerto Rico and Guam.
History shows that it is the nature of rulers to build
powerful armies and attempt to conquer others. We know persons who are products
of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ethiopian Empire or the Spanish
Empire. Today our attention is drawn to those working to create empires based
on religion.
Paul was Jewish. His encounter with Jesus convinced him he
needed a savior. So he converted to Christianity. When Paul got off that boat,
he could not be totally certain who was who and what was what from a cultural,
political, and religious perspective. Is it not the same in our day? In a sense Paul was out of his element. He was
face to face with people who were very different, but he was convinced that God
had sent him there with a purpose and a plan.
One preacher from Louisiana tells a story of how he was in a
nightclub when the Lord saved him. God can show up anywhere? Hopefully, we are
ready to meet God anywhere.
The Lord met Paul while he was on the way to Damascus to persecute
Christians, legally. After that, Paul clearly understood the power of God’s
love given through his son. Although he probably had few doubts that his vision
to come to this Roman colony in Philippi Macedonia was really from God, he had
to wonder at times. After all, there were few if any Jewish families there to
teach about Jesus. He could not preach or teach or share his testimony at a
church because there was no church yet. My guess is that for the first few days
he was there he was getting settled, praying for guidance and getting to know
people and sharing the love of God to all who would listen.
It seems there was a tradition that people would go outside
the city limits to worship. They would gather down by the river side. Rivers
are important in scriptures. They are always a source of life, freedom,
healing, and cleansing.
It was down by the riverside that Paul met a wealthy woman
named Lydia. Lydia was a business woman. She made and sold clothes dyed with the
color purple, the color every king, Queen and royal child wanted to wear. Lydia
got the purple from snails and dyed cloth with it. Getting the dye was time
consuming and expensive because it took thousands and thousands of snails to
get barely an ounce of dye to trim an edge of fabric. Her items were popular
because it was known that the color did not easily fade, but seemed brighter with
weather and sunlight. Lydia was willing to do the work. As a result she was
wealthy.
Though a hard worker, we find her worshipping at the river,
alongside Paul and his coworker Silas and a young missionary minister named
Timothy whose mother was Jewish and whose father was Greek. According to the story, Lydia was simply a
God-fearer. She saw these strangers, listened to Paul’s sermon and decided to publicly
commit her life to Jesus. Her heart was hungry for the things of God. She must
have been a tremendous influence and example for her family, because they all got
converted too. They were all baptized. That family was a blessing waiting to
happen.
Lydia was no superficial sister. She was deep in her
convictions. She even asked Paul to
judge her, to see how she came off, to decide out loud if he thought she was
really a Christian now, and if she measured up to the highest standards. She
said, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my
home.’
What a place to be in our spiritual lives to ask someone to
judge us, to evaluate our attitude, our aura, or our lifestyle! What a high
standard it is to open our heart to the Word of God, to the servants of God,
giving them rest and refreshment. That is part of what we hope will happen when
we finish the renovations. We hope to achieve God’s highest standards for
hospitality, for being welcoming, comforting, supporting. We want our hearts to
be as loving and kind and holy as God’s heart. We want to move at the impulse
of God’s love which he has for each and every one of us. May it be so. Amen.
