CEaster6 2019
The Conversion of Lydia, the first disciple in Europe.
In the name of God, the merciful, compassionate, and wise. Illumine us and breathe on us, Spirit of God, that we may like your apostles of the past bring the joy and truth of your blessing to all your creation. May all the peoples praise you and may we be glad in the pleasure of your world.
Have you ever been surprised by where you have fetched up: on an unexpected shore, in an unfamiliar place, with people you didn't know, with a job you did not want?
The companions of Paul, familiar with the eastern shore, were not prepared to cross from Asia Minor into Europe. But that is where the wind blew them; that is where the spirit led. They had been wandering all over Turkey trying to find their way — but the Spirit of Jesus was making other plans.
Philippi meant exposure for them - to a new part of the world: Europe. They are being drawn toward Rome.
Because the Roman world was so open for trade and travel, much more than past or even future times would allow, Paul and his companions were able to move freely.
But the movement was more than physical travel. They are moving from one culture, one language, toward another. Philippi had a colony of Roman veterans, veterans from a hundred years of war. So now they were bound to meet Latin speakers from the western part of the empire. They are in the empire now.
The spirit is way out in front of them, guiding them, leading them - like a pillar of cloud or light.
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Driven by the Spirit, Paul and his companions arrive in a principal city in Macedonia: Philippi. There they seek out people of prayer. And down by the river they find them: Jews — and Gentiles God-seekers worshiping alongside them.
Among them, and I believe prominently among them, is Lydia. She is a woman of means and substance, a business woman, a dealer in luxurious crimson purple cloth. She is leader of her household. Most importantly, she is a God-fearing woman, worshiping God as best she knows how, and seeking to know more.
So she listens closely and attends to what these travelers are saying. They come, Paul and the others, from across the seas, where they have followed - or been guided - by the Spirit of Jesus to a new continent, a new scope of adventure for the message they carry.
The message they carry brings fulfillment, a completion for God-fearing men and women like Lydia of what they had sought without knowing the name of what they sought.
God-fearers like Lydia were Gentiles, not converts entirely into Judaism but close - wanting to be close enough to learn what this teaching from now-Roman Palestine had that would fill the empty place that was left unfilled by what they had known before.
Lydia, a woman of piety and hospitality, invites into her household and under her roof, these travelers. They bring as gift what they know of Jesus, of the Way, the Way that she will now follow. She is the first Christian in Europe, the first person to turn and take steps on the Way that the Spirit marks out.
When the women went down to the river to pray, they encountered the bearers of the message of Jesus. For them it was liberation and fulfillment. Fulfillment of long awaited promises - they could sense something they had been looking for - a key to how to live, a completion of all they knew, as people who sought God and served God's creation as best they knew how.
Now they knew. It was Jesus who they had been looking for - and Jesus who had been looking for them. And so they followed the way.
Lydia - following a pattern the apostles knew in Palestine - welcomed them into her home, and there they dwelt while they stayed in the place. And so the message spread to a new continent.
The Spirit continues to mark out the way, for her, and for these travelers. For Philippi was on the Via Egnatia, a major Roman road that led from Byzantium, at the eastern edge of Europe, west across Macedonia and Greece; and from there, by sea and by land, to Rome.
From this small beginning, from her hospitality, and the house church established in her home, comes the beginning of the church in Europe. Her house becomes the home base for teaching and worship; and from that home base and that city, the word spreads.
What if the disciples had failed, turned back? What if Paul had simply rolled over, "it's only a dream" …? What if Lydia had not opened her heart and her home?
Perhaps the word would not have reached us. But it has… What if we…?
The story is told as if the disciples did it all.
“Do everything as if it all depends on you,” Mother Teresa of Calcutta advised, “then leave the rest to God.” (Malcolm Muggeridge, “Something Beautiful for God”, BBC, 1969)
But what paved the way?
This was an empire that, like none before it, allowed the movement of goods, capital, and people freely from the Euphrates and the Nile to the far shores of Europe. Jewish people of the Diaspora, for one, spread out across the Roman Empire.
By road or by sea travel was unrestricted like never before. That freedom of movement, with relative safety, was unprecedented. And now along its paths, its roadways and seaways, came the Christians with their message. And Lydia was the first to know.
But who paved the way?
The Spirit had made Lydia ready - her heart was open.
* * *
In the gospel Jesus warns his people that he is going away and they will not see him anymore. In the book of Acts none of the people in the conversation have ever seen Jesus in the flesh.
And yet they have come to believe that in him God was fully present as in no other human being. In him was embodied the fullness of divine life. God with us.
And this is part of the gift of the Incarnation. God comes to us. In the person of Christ God is present. And through his Spirit he is present to us. No longer need we learn another language or go to another place to seek God. God reaches us here in our own heart language and speaks to us - and we to each other.
This is the moment of transformation: of conversion, of translation, of incarnation. God becomes present in us, dwells within us and among us… if we, like Lydia before us, open our ears and our homes and our hearts, and invite God to make his dwelling place in us.
***
Visions led these messengers into new lands, perhaps not the ones they'd have chosen for themselves.
Often and again the spirit leads the people of God by a way we do not know to a place we do not expect. But the spirit is way out ahead of us. And the Spirit is our guide and teacher and comfort.
That is what Jesus promises when he promises the disciples: I am going away but I am coming to you. An Advocate, a comforter, will accompany you, will guide you, will teach you and remind you all I have said, and you will come to understand it, as you came to know me in the breaking of the bread.
For that is how we experience God, isn't it? in the guiding of the Spirit, of the breath of God. For the Father is unseen and (we anticipate an upcoming feast here) Jesus ascends and is seen no more. Then comes the Day of Pentecost, the day of flame - of inspiriting power - when people from all over the world begin to hear the word in their own tongues. Not the tongues known by the speaker, but the languages of the hearers; foreigners in a foreign land having brought home to them the universal message of freedom.
And that is one meaning of Incarnation. That God is present to us and we to God not by our becoming strangers to ourselves, learning a new language that is not the language of the heart, but that God speaks to each of us in our own heart language, as God came to us in the flesh in a particular person, not abstract but oh so human: Creation is good and God is with us.
* * *
Jesus says, “Peace I leave you, bequeath to you, the peace of God I give you.” This is no simple greeting, no casual Aloha and farewell: Jesus is telling his disciples that shalom, the deep peace of God, is present with them. Whether he is there in Spirit or in flesh, that peaceable kingdom is already finding its place in them.
There are no limits to the spread of Christian faith, to territories of the heart. Peace, deep peace, is available to all.
A sister wrote: “I find it comforting to think God comes to each of us in our own ‘heart language.’” The good news comes to us each in our own language - that is part of the message of Pentecost. The rest is - now go and spread the word. And now go - and live the life. The life of freedom and grace — and ADVENTURE.
He is the Way. Follow him through the land of Unlikeness;
you will see rare beasts and have unique adventures.
He is the Truth. Seek him in the Kingdom of Anxiety:
you will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.
He is the Life. Love him in the World of the Flesh:
and at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.
(Hymn 463/464, W. H. Auden, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio (1942))
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God-fearers: A class of persons mentioned in the Acts (e.g. 10: 2) as religious, probably adherents of the synagogue but not yet proselytes (who had been admitted to full membership by circumcision).
[“God-fearers.” In A Dictionary of the Bible. , edited by W. R. F. Browning. Oxford Biblical Studies Online, http://www.oxfordbiblicalstudies.com/article/opr/t94/e769 (accessed 25-May-2019). ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbgfQ48hWuY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XElGDuCUUd4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX7M9psH0rM
https://www.saintpatrickcentre.com/st-patricks-confessio
2019 May 26
Year C
Grace Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, Tucson, Arizona. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts and the works of our hands be acceptable offerings in your sight O God.
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