In the Parish where Rob and I raised our family
The Easter Season was taken very seriously
On every Sunday of the Easter Season
Fr Steve, our pastor, would begin his homily…with
“Happy Easter Church!”
Now this wouldn’t go over very well if there were half dead lilies all over
And we know how notoriously short-lived they are in dark churches;)
So the trick was trying to keep Easter Flowers fresh through the 7 Sundays of Easter.
And that job was my very first “inside the church” ministry
Of course, every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection
Every Sunday is Easter
But in the Easter season we sharpen our focus
It’s kinda like birthdays
We celebrate the birth of people we love on a particular day
But we are grateful all year long…
We are glad they were born every day…or at least most days;)
but ONE day we set aside ONE day so that we can sing and eat cake and ice cream!
The best way that the Church helps us focus comes from the lectionary
The Gospel selections tell of Jesus making his presence known
He pops in and out of rooms…never mind the locked doors
He sneaks up beside us on the Road
He cooks breakfast on the beach
And for the last three Sundays we are revisiting Jesus’ final words to his disciples…
…today focusing on the gift of the Advocate…the Holy Spirit…the presence of Christ promised to be with us to teach and remind and give peace
And the first readings in Easter all come from the Acts of the Apostles
And many of these first readings tell of the miraculous growth of the early church…
Myriads and myriads of joyful converts…and miracles too!
But today is different
Today we have the concise but important story of Lydia
Biblical Scholars usually refer to the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles as one book: Luke-Acts
Written by the same author
They mirror each other
Just as in the Gospel, Jesus moves from Galilee to Jerusalem
So, in Acts, Paul moves from Jerusalem to Rome
The story of Lydia
Placed as it is at the hinge of the story of Acts
Is the pivot point
This is a significant episode
Midway through Luke’s gospel
Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem
And midway through Acts
Paul gets deliberate about Rome
But Paul is not Jesus.
Before today’s happy meeting between Paul and Lydia…
Paul had been having his share of trouble
He had some relationship trouble with Barnabas
And then some directional trouble with “where to go next”
In fact
He tried every other compass direction
He tried
And he was blocked
The text says “the holy spirit put up roadblocks”
So here’s the picture in my head:
You know when you are trying to get somewhere new
And you are relying on your google-maps?
Then you make a wrong turn and that little circular crank starts to turn and turn???
Paul goes through that re-routing thing until…finally…
There are no other options…which is when he has his dream;)
Why is Paul reluctant to go west to Philippi?
Well…because it is hard, and dangerous, and…well totally ROMAN!
The city of Philippi is a mini-Rome
The people who live there are the children,
ancestors, or slaves of the original conquering soldiers.
The natives are long-gone.
The success and vitality of this town is directly related to Rome
I bet every one of us would have saved Philippi for last;)
Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem
It wasn’t going to be easy
The Holy Spirit
Finally gets through to Paul
IMAGE: One hand on either cheek…
The Holy Spirit, with one hand firm on each of his cheeks
sets Paul’s face to Philippi and toward Rome
…where the story will end with Paul’s martyrdom
He is going.
But even then, Paul can’t escape his unchecked-cultural-assumptions
He sets sail believing that he is journeying to meet the “Macedonian Man” of his dream
Instead, just outside the city, he comes upon a group of women
He meets Lydia, a Woman from Thyatira!
Quite simply…NOT a Macedonian man;)
(I love that he gets things so wrong
It makes me feel better about my sometimes-wayward discipleship)
The Lord opened Lydia’s heart
And Paul spoke into it
And like those disciples on the road to Emmaus
Lydia “prevailed upon” Paul and Silas and they enjoyed her generous hospitality
This is only part 1 of the story…in part 2 Paul and Silas get into trouble in the city
They end up beaten and thrown into prison.
And after a swift conversion of the jailer and his family
…the section ends with Paul and Silas back at Lydia’s
Back to her comfortable, lively, re-juvenating house-church
Lydia signifies something important
In the dramatic story of Acts
With its powerful sermons
And myriads and myriads of conversions
Lydia begins tending to the inside of the growing church
I am comfortable supposing
That the newbie Christian Church
Didn’t need a Macedonian Man
The Church needed a Lydia
The Church always needs Lydias
There is a lot going on in the lives of the people of St Stephens
1-Young people finishing College and transitioning to an uncertain world of work and Career. Where will I live, what will my work be like, will I have friends?
2-and young people moving on to college from High School
To being away from home…away from the familiar…
For the first time
3-on the flipside there are parents wondering what it will be like after he/she leaves
Will we like having a quiet house?
4- And among us there are many dealing with the slow creep of aging and the debility that often accompanies it
5- And one rests in a hospice bed while her beloved keeps vigil beside
And I’m sure there are more…
These…shall we say…transitions
These Philippi experiences…
Where there is plenty of anxiety and fear
lots of questions
And hard to come by answers
Well…wouldn’t having a Lydia nearby make a difference?
I began with an emphasis on Easter
And an Easter message is always a message of promise and hope and presence
We are an Easter people
And being an Easter people takes us all—Pauls, Silas’, Macedonian men, and Lydias…it takes us all
Some of us here today are coming up against road-blocks
Some of us are in the midst of a little re-routing
And maybe some of us are in a place
To take on the role of Lydia
To step into some inside-the-church ministry of caring
Even though I would never say that Church is the only place to rest in the presence of the Holy Spirit
I am comfortable saying that it is a privileged place
Especially here at St Stephen’s
Where both Pauls and Lydias seem to surface when needed
Each one of us
On this Easter Day
Made our way here
Perhaps some of us made our way in response to God’s love for us
And others did so in search of it
And the Easter Word
Gives us Paul and Lydia and the Holy Spirit
In the power of the Holy Spirit
Christ is present among us
Helping us to be Christ for each other
It starts here…
Or better yet…here is a point on the ongoing pattern of Christian Life
THIS/HERE is both refuge and prompt
Paul was nourished and comforted
In the house-church that was Lydia’s home
That pattern continues
It is the Easter Pattern
It is our pattern
