We’re already almost at the end of this Easter season, next week we will celebrate the feast of the Ascension and the week after, we’ll have Pentecost! It also means that we are almost done with the lessons from the Book of Acts every Sunday. Now we have been reading this Book for a few weeks, we may realize that it can be a little difficult to approach and I think there are two main reasons. One reason we’ve already talked about, and it’s because there is a lot going on in the Book of Acts, a lot of extraordinary stories, signs and wonders, miracles and as of today, again, visions. And it’s difficult because of course we have become rational enough and we’re not always sure we believe this is exactly how it all happened. And then maybe, behind that, there is also another reason it’s difficult to read and it’s because we feel far away from the world of Acts, when most of our churches are in decline. We can be tempted to look at the Book with a little bit of skepticism or maybe, even, with a little bit of bitterness. And yet it is with the Book of Acts as it is with all Scriptures: When it becomes difficult, if we keep pushing forward instead of shying away, we may discover something new and receive something that will be comforting, encouraging and also, hopefully, a bit challenging to keep us going.
So let’s have a look at what we have today.
First we see that Paul is traveling with his companions, Silas and Timothy and, at this point, they is probably with them Luke, who is writing the story. Notice how the text does not say “They” anymore, but use the “We”. And so the men are on a missionary journey, and they plan to go to Asia but the beginning of Chapter 16 tells us that “The Spirit of Jesus didn’t allow them“. Quite the opposite actually, Paul has a vision at night (a dream?) where he is called by a man asking him to come and help them in Macedonia (the hilly part of Greece, the door to Europe from where Paul and his companions came from). It may be a detail, but I think it’s interesting Paul sees a man in his vision and then he ends up meeting with a group of women. In some of the Jewish Scriptures, there is this belief that develops that each nation had their guardian angel, and so I am wondering if this man Paul saw in a dream wasn’t the angel of Macedonia, since later there is no mention of Paul meeting with the man and recognizing him. What’s important though is that the man or the angel does not call for help for himself, but for all others. More important maybe is that we see how, another time,God asks his people to change their plans. Again, Paul and his companions were ready to head to Asia, and now they understand they have to re-think things.
Well, we know that, don’t we? Sometimes things just don’t work out, but in our culture we have been used to try to push through because we think it’s important to put all our efforts into getting what we want or what we think we need to do. Well, okay, but when it comes to God and things don’t work out, even if we are sure that what we try to do is God’s will and we want to do God’s will, we may want to listen to God even more closely: I think that’s what Paul and his companions were willing to do. We always have to surrender our plans to God, not just our personal, somewhat selfish plans, but also our plans for our church, our plans for God and then follow where the Spirit leads us.
I have a friend priest who, right after she was ordained, was hired by a church that didn’t get a lot of people, and most of them were elderly. I bet they tried everything before to get new members, but it wasn’t working out. So what the vestry did, because they were sitting on a valuable piece of land, is that they decided to surrender their land to the city asking only that the land would be used to build affordable housing in place of their church, and they would keep only a small lot to rebuild a smaller church. The thing is, it took many years to get there and in the process they made so many connections, so many people heard about them that now they have to do three services on a Sunday because they don’t have enough room for everybody in their new, tiny sanctuary!
What I love about this though is not so much that now they’re big again, rather is that they draw all these new people to God by their willingness to surrender and even to sacrifice, to die not only to their dreams but even to their dreams for God, to what they thought God wanted them to do: Fill up the pews of their good old church. But when they started questioning that and think about the needs of their community instead, that’s when the Spirit started moving with them! I see that with Paul and his companions and the work they wanted to do for God and I think that’s the first thing we can notice: We may have our own plans, and that’s important, but we also have to be willing to surrender to God even if it does not seem so exciting, even if sometimes it feels like dying a little. Maybe Paul thought that Asia was the place to go to evangelize, but he heard about the needs of the people in Macedonia and so he started evangelizing them, Lydia converted and we know of course how Europe has been a center for Christianity ever since.
The second thing I notice in this passage is that, indeed, we can witness how the Spirit works, this hidden, discrete work of God. Many have noticed we call the Book “Acts of the Apostles”, but it’s rather the Acts of the Holy Spirit, the Acts of the Holy Spirit through people who are not necessarily very different from us. Actually the group of believers Paul meets in our reading today reminded of our own church here at All Souls! Let me explain. You may have noticed that when Paul arrives in Philippi, after they have spent a few days in prayers, they head out outside the gate towards a river where they suppose is a place of prayer.
Now that’s a bit surprising because usually when Paul and his companions arrive somewhere, they would go to the main synagogue in town and start proclaiming that the Messiah Jewish people were waiting for had come in the person of Jesus. We have seen this pattern many times before. We have to assume that the reason they don’t go to the synagogue this time is that there probably was none. Yet there were still prayers on the Sabbath day, so we can also assume there was a small group of Jews and actually the text says it was a group of women. According to Jewish laws indeed, you couldn’t have a synagogue if you didn’t have at least ten men to sit on the Council. And so it really made me think of us, because I don’t think that most Sundays we have ten men attending our church! And yet, Jesus knew about the faithfulness and the devotionof those people who kept showing up. Jesus chose Lydia and her friends to be the doorway of Christian faith to Europe! God is not necessarily attracted to big assemblies that make a lot of noise, but God sees what’s in the heart of every congregation.
Of course, I don’t know how big the church in Philippi ended up being, but it’s actually not really the point. What we know about the church of Philippi is that it became a place of refuge for Paul and his companions, a place to stay at dangerous times (when they were sought after by the Roman authorities, see later in Chapter 16) and it was also a church that had a big place in Paul’s heart. If you read the Epistle to the Philippians, it’s actually one out of not so many letters of Paul where he does not get mad trying to solve conflicts or have a lot of recommendations for what his people should do! Rather, Paul seems only happy about them and he says very lovingly this: “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1: 3-8) Paul loved them with the affection of Jesus Christ! I think this is so beautiful to think that the reason they had such a big place in Paul’s heart is because they had a big place in Jesus’s heart.
So maybe it should be our wish for all of us that we would bring joy to God’s heart, that, even when we’re a small church, we would take a big place in God’s heart. A place where the Spirit can rest as Paul and his companions did at Lydia’s house, a place Christ can look at with affection and joy, like he did through Paul’s eyes with the church of Philippi! The example of Lydia and her friends shows us what it really takes to be a church according to God’s heart: We do not have to go big, what Lydia and her friends had in common is that they kept an open heart, they were listening and listening eagerly, and they responded by being faithful and hospitable. It is nothing we cannot do, and yet we may overlook these simple things because there is this ready made idea about what a church needs to be. Maybe we could look again at Paul and see how he let the Spirit remodel what he had in mind, and we’ll see that the Book of Acts if for us, right here, today.