Acts 16:9-15 "Out There and In Here"

         Because we choose our Scripture readings each week from what is called the Common Lectionary, once again we find ourselves in the midst of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.  Our reading this morning is the kind of passage that the Deacon for the day generally tries to pass off to someone else to read – mainly because it has all those hard to pronounce names of ancient places – unfamiliar cities and regions in lands that we know next to nothing about. 

         Face it - much of this passage reads like a travelogue because it is a rather detailed account, first, of all the places God told Paul and his sidekick Silas not to go - followed by a recitation of their actual route which eventually landed them in Philippi.

         When we meet Paul today, he is itching to be on the move – intent on spreading the Gospel message to Gentiles all over the ancient world.  However, when the story begins, he is also at a loss about just where to go next because God seems to be putting up roadblocks left and right. 

           “Shall we go into Asia?”

           “No” directed the Holy Spirit. 

           “Then how about Bithynia?”

           “No go” replied the Spirit of Jesus. 

         “OK – God only knows there is not much else around.  Guess we’ll head to Troas,” figured Paul.

         And so they did, which proved to be a wise and God-like choice.  Paul’s GPS provided concrete directions this time instead of only divine static.  And it was in Troas that Paul had yet another vision.  Not Jesus this time, but rather a man from Macedonia standing on the far shore of the Aegean Sea, beckoning and begging him.

         “Who?  Me?” Paul queried.

         “Yes, of course, you!  Come over to Macedonia and help us.”

         Paul, who knew enough to take these visions seriously, and Silas, who knew enough to trust Paul’s judgment when it came to that particular form of divine intervention, both hopped the next boat to Macedonia, which would be in modern day Greece, and so the Gospel made its way into Europe. 

         However, the travelogue is not completed yet.  It continues to chronicle Paul’s route on the other side of the ocean – Samothrace, Neapolis – and onward until he and Silas reach Philippi, a stronghold of Roman power in the area – and a town more familiar to some of us because it was the site of an early Christian worshipping community – to whom a letter was once written – the letter to the Philippians.

         It was also in Philippi that Paul and Silas met Lydia, a woman whose tiny tale is wedged in at the end of this Biblical trip advisor.  We do not know much about Lydia, and Scripture only allots her these couple of verses in the Book of Acts.  However, the few details that we can tease out are enough for us to outline a very intriguing 1^st century woman, one who was strong, smart, independent, and most definitely walked her own path. 

         Lydia was a businesswoman, not the usual occupation for a female in ancient times.  She was a dealer, a trader in purple cloth.  She bargained and negotiated with men who could afford such luxuries for themselves, their wives, their mistresses, or their favorite concubines.  Another way to look at Lydia’s business was that she sold purple, the color of power.  In that sense, Lydia was a power broker, a vendor of power, and she clearly had made her way successfully in a patriarchal world, in a society run by men. Lydia had clout.

         As Baptist pastor Randy Hyde describes her, “Lydia is a savvy, self-sufficient business woman and thus carries herself with confidence. You know the type, don't you? In a male-dominated world, she moves with authority, an authority granted by her position as a successful business owner. She is as comfortable in a boardroom, with her attache by her side, as she is in the trendiest of Philippian boutiques.”  

         Lydia hailed from Thyatira, a city in Asia Minor renowned for its textile industry.  There the finest linens were produced, including unusual and scarce purple cloth, the color of royalty and affluence.  There Lydia had built up her business and was a well-respected member of society – even if she was a woman.  When we meet her, she has relocated to Macedonia.  Business had been good in her hometown, but good sense and business acumen told her that it might well be better in the Roman colony of Philippi.

         Lydia was quite standout MBA grad.  However, this image of the successful businesswoman in her purple pants suit is only half of who she was.  There is more to discover about her, so the author of the Book of Acts also tells us that Lydia was a woman who worshipped God. Since she was not Jew, she must have been raised a pagan.  Lydia was a Gentile through and through. 

         However, when we meet her down by the riverside where Jews gathered to pray, we are told that she worshipped the Jewish God.  How unusual!  Now we do not know if Lydia gathered with her female companions in this secluded and quiet place outside the city gates regularly.  However, we do know that Lydia must have been a seeker, a searcher.  Lydia was a church shopper.  Imagine that!

         Of course, what Lydia did not herself know was that on this particular Sabbath of searching, she would meet the Christian missionary Paul who was himself on the lookout for anyone who might be open to learning about Jesus and the Gospel message. 

         And so the two seekers found each other on the riverbank that Sabbath. And we are told that because Lydia was blessed with the gift of being a good listener, she paid attention to what Paul said.  And so, as UCC pastor Ronald Cole-Turner remarked: “ There at the riverside, Lydia found the God who was finding her.” And she, along with her entire household, was baptized that afternoon.         

         There we have it.  As Presbyterian pastor, Robert Dunham sums it up: “We know almost nothing about Lydia, but what we know fascinates us. Who was this woman making her way independently in a world run by men? Who was this Gentile who sought the God of Judaism? The text only tells us that she was ‘a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God.’ However, in just those two phrases, Scripture with its stunning brevity shows us that work and worship both had their place in the life of this remarkable, busy woman.” That work-worship, temporal-spiritual, secular-sacred balance is an important point in this story for us who struggle as we try to juggle those same dichotomies. 

         When I read Lydia’s story, I cannot help but draw comparisons between Lydia and two other Biblical women.  For me, Lydia is an astounding combination of Martha and Mary.  Do you remember those two in the Gospels? 

         Martha was the one who was always “out there” doing something.  She was the action taker. She was the one rattling around in the kitchen preparing a meal for Jesus. Martha was always busy.  Serving others – working - was who she was.  Her life was rich and full of activity. 

         Mary, on the other hand, was the one who sat at Jesus’ feet and listened attentively.  Compared to Martha’s high energy, Mary was quite different.  She was still – though not passive.  In her stillness, Mary was strong.  In her own quiet way, Mary stood up to all the men in the room who thought she had no place among them. 

         Martha was the “out there”, on the go, busy one. Mary was the “in here”, reflective seeker. Lydia was both. Think about it!  Lydia was the “out there”, on the go, successful businesswoman – as well as “in here” reflective seeker. 

         UCC pastor Lillian Daniel recently wrote an article in which she said “Mary and Martha are not two different people, one getting it right and one getting it wrong.  Mary and Martha are two halves of the human spirit, two parts that complement each other.  Martha and Mary aren’t fighting out there.  They are fighting in here, inside each one of us.”  (excerpt from “When Spiritual But Not Religious is Not Enough”)

         Lydia is such a wonderful role model when that battle rages within us.  Lydia illustrates that it is possible to be both “out there” and “in here”.  It is possible to carry both a briefcase and a Bible. It is possible to be both on the go like Martha even as you are seeking, listening, and learning like Mary.  It takes work.  It takes practice.  It takes discipline and commitment.  But it can be done, and I would assert that the melding of the two is better that way.

         Why?  Because that is what being an effective Christian is all about.  It is about that unique combination – some would say balancing act – of being “out there” living in the world – and being “in here” seeking God in community, experiencing the sacred while learning from, and listening to, one another.

         Being an effective Christian means reconciling the Martha and Mary in us all.  And there to help us is Lydia, that marvelous role model whom Paul discovered only by happenstance one Sunday afternoon down by the riverside.  However, it is surely a blessing for us that he did.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.), Raymond, Maine

Revelation 21:1-6 "A Message of Hope"

         It begins in a garden and ends in a city. It begins in Eden and ends in the New Jerusalem.  It begins with Genesis and ends with Revelation.  Our Bible, I mean.

         Most of us are pretty familiar with the beginning, with the garden part.  We remember Adam and Eve, the serpent, and the apple.  We also remember the leafy canopy of trees, all measure of blooming plants, and seemingly infinite numbers of creatures great and small.  We remember the cool rushing streams and the quiet pools, and, most of all, we remember the innate sense of goodness and newness.  Yes, most of us know by heart those certainly mythological, yet profoundly true, stories of creation.

         However, most of us know far less about the end, about the city part.  What I mean is that Revelation (whose climactic image is that of the New Jerusalem) is a Biblical book that either we take too seriously because we insist upon putting our own stamp of literalism on it, or we do not take it seriously enough. 

         Either way, we tend to focus on the middle chapters of the book, that is, on the Armageddon images and the horrors – the dragons and wild beasts, the smoke, the fires, the lightening, the earthquakes, and all those puzzling numbers. We seek to understand this troubling book much as James Denney, a Scottish preacher and theologian, did when he described it as “a tunnel with a light at the beginning and a light at the end, but in the middle, a long stretch of darkness through which lurid objects thunder past, bewildering and stunning the reader.”

         If we take this Biblical book too seriously, in tandem we read such pseudo-scholarly works as “Left Behind” and “The Late Great Planet Earth”, convincing ourselves that the author of Revelation surely had us – you and me - in mind when he wrote his apocalypse nearly 2000 years ago.  Yet, as theologian Bart Ehrman wrote, “In every generation since the book [of Revelation] was written, Christians have argued that its vivid description of catastrophic events would happen in their own day. So far, none of them have been right.”

         And if we do not take this Biblical book seriously enough, we still look to its middle chapters, like our fundamentalist counterparts.  However, instead of matching its images with current events, we “pooh pooh” it all,

bothering neither to discover its historical context nor to search for more promising reasons for its inclusion in the Biblical canon.  If truth be known, we disregard it as the work of man named John who was probably on some hallucinogenic substance at the time of writing.

         Today, I am suggesting that we put aside all those prejudices and pre-judgments, however, and take a few moments to look with new eyes at this Book of Revelation.  First, we will figure out why it was written, and, second, we will reflect on what today’s verses, which come near the very end of the book, might say to us in the present time.

         Like all of the books in our Bible, Revelation was penned at a specific time in history, and it was penned to a particular group of people.  The book is attributed to John, but we really do not know the author’s name.  We do know that he wrote to a community of Christians who were suffering and feared for their lives. 

         What we have here then is a letter of support and encouragement written to people in hardship in the literary style of an apocalypse.  It was designed to bring comfort by relating the dreams and visions of its author, an author who himself was apparently also victimized and suffering because he was a prisoner and in exile.  Going forward then, let us entertain the possibility that John wrote this book, as one blogger maintains, as a “document that describes the attempts of a community to deal with unspeakable loss.” (Magdalene’s Musings”)

         The community that first heard this letter, this Revelation, was in the midst of a world rife with persecution.  Life had changed on a dime and was spinning out of control.  Nothing was the same anymore. John’s listeners were desperately afraid – for themselves, their families, and their communities. 

         It was the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  It was the hours after 9/11. It was the kind of world that made you ask all those questions you never in your wildest dreams ever thought you would have to ask.  What do we do now?  How can we be safe?  How can I protect my family, my children?

         As the author of the blog “Magdalene’s Musings” writes:  “For the early Christian community, which we must remember was also, largely, a Jewish community, there was at least a twofold trauma: first, Roman armies had destroyed both the Temple and Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. And second, in the aftermath of that destruction, Romans especially singled out followers of Jesus for persecution.

         This was a time of tremendous loss. The loss of the Temple was a kind of death. It was the symbolic destruction of more than 500 years of sacred ritual and prayer. It was the death of a way of life…It was the loss of a place that had been central to Jesus and the culmination and goal of his ministry.

         And the losses continued, extended into each home, each life. Parents, children, spouses, friends… everyone was touched by death. Everyone was touched by loss. Entire communities were struggling daily with the question of how to face yet another day of persecution, yet another day of uncertainty, yet another day of loss. The early followers of Jesus were suddenly living in a different, frightening world, a world that caused them to ask all sorts of questions they’d never faced before. What do we do now? My family, my community, those I love… are we safe?”

         Who can blame this little Christian community for its apparent crisis of faith?  And in response to this historical context, the author of Revelation wrote his apocalypse. That is the setting to which he directed these words that we read this morning.  What he wrote was not a particularly new idea. Clearly, he had looked to the ancient writers for inspiration, in this particular passage drawing heavily from Isaiah, the great prophet of hope.

         Listen to those words again, this time in “The Message” translation:

“I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.  I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven….I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: “Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone.” The Enthroned continued, “Look! I’m making everything new. …Then he said, “It’s happened. I’m A to Z. I’m the Beginning, I’m the Conclusion.

         What powerful words of hope on which to conclude our Holy Scriptures!  What powerful words of hope for all of us even today, because surely, like John and the community to which he wrote, we are all in exile in some form or another; we are all prisoners, and we all live in fear and insecurity. 

         We may not have had our legs blown off in Boston or lost a child in Newtown, but we are all victims.  Yet, as we read this passage, it is as if we have been invited to an immense sacred gathering where John gives us a glimpse of what God has in mind.  And the author does it in order to– what?  Simply in order to restore our hope. 

         And how does the author understand this hope being restored? Well, guess what!  It is not that we will be beamed up to heaven in a glorious rapture.  We do not need to sit on some desert mesa and wait for the end times – and that is surely a good thing! 

         No - instead God is descending to earth, moving into the neighborhood (as The Message translation puts it), making a holy home with us, ready to wipe away our tears and embrace us in our pain.  “When we are oppressed by a sense that our losses are too much for us, Revelation beckons us to that place where we can find that we are already part of a new heaven and a new earth.” (Magdalene’s Musings)

         God has a long history of using the world and all that is in it to make new things happen.  Remember that! There were the Hebrew slaves that ended up a chosen people.  There was the Jesus’ crucifixion that ended up in resurrection. 

         And so, if we insist upon looking for signs, then maybe the signs we ought to dwell upon are these:  that God has chosen to come among us as a fellow traveler, a sojourner, that we are not alone, that in Jesus, all the sacred promises of the past as well as our hopes for the future have already begun to take shape. 

         It is what we remember every time we share communion together in our imperfect world.  It is what we remember when we take all those parables of Jesus as seriously as he hoped we would take them.  It is the Gospel message oozing into our crazy lives, whispering to our fearful hearts, and seeping into our jaded souls. 

         Oh, we know all to well that we do not live yet in the New Jerusalem.  We do not reside where heaven and earth are one. We live in a nation where over 32,000 men, women, and children were victims of gun deaths in 2011, where there are nearly 89 firearms to every 100 people.  We live where life is cheap, and the innocent often suffer. We live in Newtown, in Oklahoma City, in Aurora, Colorado, in downtown Boston. 

         To me, those statistics are as horrifying as some of the Armageddon images in this Book of Revelation. However, I feel, as Methodist pastor David Haley remarked, “Having seen John’s vision of the world God will bring, of the new world God is struggling to bring, is it too much to ask that we work for it as best we can, by seeking justice and peace? Where, in emulation and anticipation of our God, we dry the tears from human eyes, in the name of Jesus Christ?” Is it too much to ask that we seek to love, to serve, to forgive?

         A Benedictine nun remembers when her own mother lay dying in a hospital. The sister bent down to her mother and ventured to reassure her saying, “Mother, in heaven everyone we love is there.”

         And the older woman replied, “No, in heaven I love everyone who’s there.”  (Kathleen Norris)        

         Maybe hope – the hope of which the author wrote in his Revelation – is not so much a hope that is merely intellectually seized upon, but rather a hope that is shared, given away in fearful times, and above all, a hope that is lived, day to day, hour to hour, in our committed attempts to love, to serve, and above all, to forgive. 

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.)

         

Acts 9:36-43 "Resurrection Runners"

         The Bible is filled with stories of little known but talented, courageous, sometimes simply good, and sometimes wily women.  Frequently overshadowed by the tales of their men, they often fade into the background and are skipped over. 

         There was Leah, Rachel’s older and physically less attractive sister, who over time bore Jacob six sons, one of whom was an ancestor of the great King David. 

         There was Miriam, who put her baby Moses in that woven reed basket and kissed him goodbye even as she pushed his floating cradle into the Nile River, a courageous move that saved his life and, one could say, the lives of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt as well. 

         There was Anna, who was the first to recognize the infant Jesus for the Messiah he was, when Mary and Joseph brought the child to her husband, Simeon, to be blessed.

         And there was Tabitha (or Dorcas as she is known in Greek).  Her story, almost like a Biblical afterthought, is wedged in between the very dramatic conversion of Paul and the equally dramatic vision of Peter – a vision of animals suspended from heaven that caused the apostle to expand his diet to include a whole bunch of previously prohibited impure and unclean animals, a very big deal for one who had been a devout Jew.

         And in between is the story of this Christian woman.  In fact, if you were to read Tabitha’s story in Greek, you would find that she was referred to as a disciple, the only instance in the Bible that a named woman is specifically given that title.  One can presume then that Tabitha was a leader in her church, which would necessarily shoot down the notion by the way that women were relegated to making the coffee and washing the communion cups in these early faith communities.

         Apparently, however, Tabitha did not care for all the haggling and arguing that inevitably goes on among the leadership of any organization.  What I mean is that, according to a sermon preached by Presbyterian pastor Thomas York, “earlier in the book of Acts (in the 6^th chapter actually) we know there had been a problem in the Jerusalem congregation when Greek speaking and Aramaic speaking Jews argued over the distribution of the welfare checks for the widows, the Greek speaking Christians complaining that their widows were being neglected.”

         One gets the feeling that the men spent a great deal of time quarreling over the exact formula for this early social security system and ended up creating what might have been the first church committee to explore the issue.  Tabitha, however, perhaps intuitively knowing that more important than all the task forces on which she might serve and more critical than all the discussions in which she might participate, recognized that she was now the hands and feet of Jesus in the world – and so spent her time “doing good and helping the poor” rather than deliberating on the issue of entitlement programs for the destitute. 

         However, in spite of all her good works, one day Tabitha became quite ill and died.  Amidst rivers of tears, her body was prepared for burial.  However, so loved was Tabitha and so crushed was her faith community by her passing that it sent for Peter, “Please hurry and come to us.” 

         What did they expect him to do?  Pray with them?  Weep with them?  Raise her from the dead?  What an interesting similarity we have here between this little story and the one about Jesus being called to heal the daughter of Jairus, who had also died. 

         And the likenesses between the narratives continue.  Just as Jesus went into the room with the young girl, accompanied only by Peter, James, and John and closed the door behind him, so Peter went into the room where Tabitha lay in state, shooing out the scores of weeping widows and impoverished ones who showed him all the shirts and coats and tunics and prayer shawls that Tabitha had made over her time of ministry. 

         Now alone, what was Peter thinking – being new in the resurrection business himself?  Of course, we have no way of knowing what was going through his mind.  However, we do know that, in the end, he did what Jesus did. 

         He prayed and then, just as Jesus had commanded Jairus’ daughter (“Talitha Kuom, which means “Little girl, get up”), so Peter, with an authority he was not even sure he had, changed one letter and commanded the dead woman lying at his feet likewise: “Tabitha Kuom - Tabitha, get up!” There was that endless moment that followed when Peter held his breath, but then Tabitha’s chest began to move, and she opened her eyes.

         In doing so, Tabitha had the distinction bestowed upon her of being the first person – man or woman – raised from the dead following Jesus’ resurrection.  As evangelical pastor Peter Loughman notes, “Now, for us, Tabitha is one of those people who is almost a footnote in Scripture. She is someone who many of us pass over when we read the Bible. For us, Tabitha is a minor character in the building of the early church, a person of no real significance. But for God, Tabitha is so significant, that (God) raises her from the dead.”

         Why Tabitha?  Why does the writer of Acts choose to include the story of someone who makes this single appearance in the early Church’s narrative history? The writer of Acts could certainly have included a lot of other stories.  Why is Tabitha’s story particularly worth remembering? 

         As one blogger wrote, “What was it about her life that made her death the occasion for this miracle? (After all), Tabitha was not an eloquent preacher or theologian. She didn’t make her mark by performing brave deeds or giving major financial gifts.

She wasn’t out in the forefront or in the limelight where all her actions could be seen and admired.”

         I think there are two reasons that the writer of the Book of Acts chose to include this tiny tale of Tabitha, this little vignette that I believe lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.

         First, the story of Tabitha is a marvelous example of how we who call ourselves followers (disciples) of Jesus should be spending out time.  That is, we are not here in the church to talk about service and to dialogue about mission and outreach.  As St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel, and when necessary, use words.”  Words have their place, to be sure, but they are not the be all and end all of Christianity.  As the church, we are here to do mission.  We are here to serve.  

         And there are opportunities.  There are so many opportunities.  That is why Polly invited all of you to come and make school kit bags this past week.  That is why Tom and Bonnie have invited all of you to be a part of our summer mission trip to Maine Seacoast Mission in Cherryfield in July – whether you can be there for the full week or just for a few days.  

That is why Sarah and Judy and Carol and others of you and even people who do not come to worship here continue to knit literally hundreds of prayer shawls, some of which we blessed this morning.  That is why our Youth Group went to HOME last fall and plans to go to the Common Cathedral this Spring. 

       And if what we do seems small, insignificant, and hardly worth doing (What difference can a single prayer shawl make?), then remember that story of a man who was walking on the beach and saw someone in the distance throwing something into the ocean. As the man got closer, he saw that there were starfish – thousands of them - on the beach, stranded by the outgoing tide. A child was tossing them far enough out, so they could swim away.

       The man asked, “What are you doing?”

       The child replied, “I am throwing the starfish back out to sea. If they don’t get back into the deeper water, they will die.”

       The man replied, “I understand that part, but look at this beach. It is covered with starfish. There must be tens of thousands stranded out here. You cannot make a dent into the problem, and you certainly can not make a difference.”        

         The child bent over, picked up another starfish, hurled it out to sea, and with a smile on his face said, “Made a difference to that one!”

         We are the hands and feet of Jesus in this world, called and committed to making a difference, as Theresa of Avila recognized in the 16^th century.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours; (she wrote)

No hands but yours;

No feet but yours;

Yours are the eyes

Through which is to look out

Christ’s compassion to the world;

Yours are the feet

With which he is to go about

Doing good;

Yours are the hands

With which he is to bless now.

         The other reason why Tabitha’s story is important is because it reminds us of the continuous and ongoing power of the resurrection, a power that, in some ways, is placed in our hands.  In the movie, “Bruce Almighty”, a TV reporter named Bruce continually challenges God. “You're not doing your job!” he complains.

         Finally, God calls Bruce's bluff: “You want the job – you got it.”  Bruce (now) has the wondrous working power. However, it does not help; it fails to change the world.     

         So God tells Bruce, “Your problem is that you spend too much time looking up. All the things you've been doing with the power I gave you – they're not miracles – just magic tricks….Stop looking up all the time,” says God, “and stop looking to me all the time. Look at yourself – you be the miracle!”

         We are all still reeling from the bombs that exploded this past week at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  As usual, there has been some amount of finger pointing – conservative and liberal pundits both using this tragedy to take pot shots at each other (no pun intended). 

         However, there are also the folks who were in Boston, the ones who took people in, who found water and food for exhausted runners, who jumped over barriers even as they prayed there would not be another explosion that would claim their lives as they helped the fallen, the bloodied, the severely injured.

         Those acts of kindness, that selflessness, that reaching out and really serving one another - that is the power of resurrection entrusted to us – you and me - that courage we sometimes do not even know we have and that faith in something bigger than us that enables us to say no to death and all it symbolizes –

fear, terror, hatred, a world without love.  In the Koran, the Islamic Holy Scriptures, there is a verse that says “If you find evil, do good.”

         That is what the story of Tabitha is saying to us.  As Lutheran pastor Eric Barretto wrote, “In these weeks after Easter, it may be that our wonder over the resurrection (has) abated somewhat. Perhaps we have heard the story repeatedly… and our hearing has grown dull.” 

         However, remember, as he goes on to say:  “The gospel looks out over a world characterized by death…and loss and yet declares that…life is the new order of the day, that Jesus himself embodies and assures us of the promise that death will not have the last word.”  We should all be out training for the 2014 Boston Marathon – as participants for peace, as resurrection runners.

         Oh, Tabitha, you may be small.  You may only appear this single time in our Bible, but you are one of the mighty ones.  You show us how to live as followers of Jesus, and in your death, you remind us of God’s promise of life, in the end, always life.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine