Acts 16:9-15
May 25, 2025
The official title of the book we
call Acts is really The Acts of the Apostles. I imagine the
shortening of the name to just Acts probably happened centuries ago, and
most likely for the sake of convenience. It would be an awkward mouthful, even
in theological circles, to constantly refer to The Acts of the Apostles.
Eventually, you just abbreviate it down to Acts, which even though that shortens
the title, the contraction of the name does not condense the importance and
meaning of this book to believers like us.
But every once in a while, I think
that it is good to dust off the full title and put it out for folks to see,
hear, and think about: The Acts of the Apostles. Hearing this full title
is a good reminder to us that these are not just a random collection of stories
that we read most often in the time between Easter and Pentecost. The whole of
this book is dedicated to telling the story of how the apostles, from the
moment they receive the Holy Spirit at the beginning until the end when we read
of Paul living and preaching in Rome, grow in their faith, their confidence,
and their call to preach the good news of the gospel. The whole of the book of The
Acts of the Apostles relates the astonishing way gospel of Jesus the Christ
spread from Jewish Jerusalem to Gentile Rome and so many places in between.
Although it is more a historiography than a complete historical record, the
book of Acts lives up to its title and so much more. It is about the acts of
the apostles. They receive the Holy Spirit – the story that we will read in its
fullness on Pentecost Sunday – and they were off! They were off preaching,
teaching, healing, baptizing, persuading, exhorting, and encouraging. Whatever
they lacked in courage and understanding when they were living with and
learning from Jesus in person, they have now found in abundance through the
power of the Holy Spirit. In that sense the title is somewhat misleading. Yes,
these are the apostles’ acts, but these are also the acts of God working
through the Holy Spirit. These are the acts of the Spirit blowing through
families and communities and towns and villages and cities, opening hearts to
the Word of God. These are the acts of the apostles, yes, but everything they
do is because of what God is doing in and through them.
I have been thinking about this
title as I have been preaching through many of the Acts passages this season,
and I realized that if I were given the opportunity to title the book, I would
keep Acts of the Apostles, but I would add a subtitle. It would read Acts
of the Apostles: Expect the Unexpected. Because if you can count on
anything in this book, it is the unexpected. Acts centers around the unexpected
– unexpected journeys, unexpected places, unexpected people. Expect the
unexpected.
We have another example of this unexpectedness
in today’s story from chapter 16. I doubt that this story is as well-known as
other stories in our book of the unexpected, but it is an important one. At the
end of chapter 15, Paul and Barnabas, have gone their separate ways. Paul
wanted to go back to every city where they had preached the word and see how
the believers in those cities were doing. Barnabas did not say, “no,” to this
but he wanted to take Mark with them. Paul did not want Mark to come along,
because Mark apparently had “deserted them in Pamphylia and had not accompanied
them in their work.” This caused an intense disagreement between Paul and
Barnabas; so intense that they believed it was better to part company than to
try and work it out. So, Paul chose Silas to journey with him, and they set
off. As chapter 15 ends, Paul has also met Timothy and invited the young man to
travel with them as well.
If we were to go back and read the
opening verses of our chapter, chapter 16, it would seem that Paul and company
originally wanted to go to Asia and preach the gospel there, but the Holy
Spirit forbade them from doing that. So they go a different way, through
Phrygia and Galatia. They came opposite a place called Mysia, and from there
they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit stopped them once again.
Instead of going to Mysia, they went down to Troas. That night Paul had a
vision – something that seems to happen quite often in this book of the
unexpected. In the vision a man of Macedonia stood before Paul and pleaded with
him to come to Macedonia and help them. This was all Paul needed to know that
God was calling them to Macedonia. FYI: this is the moment when the good news
of the gospel spread to the continent we know as Europe. So Paul and Silas and
Timothy sail from Troas and eventually reach the city of Philippi. This was a
Roman colony, which meant that it was occupied by mostly Gentile people. But
even with this unexpected diversion in their travel plans, more unexpected was
around the corner. .
On the Sabbath, Paul and his
companions went looking for a place to worship. Maybe there was no synagogue
within the city gates. Maybe they wanted the peace of sitting by the river.
Maybe they wanted to sing their version of “Shall We Gather at the River” as
part of their devotionals. Whatever the reason, they apostles went outside the
gates of the city assuming there would be a place to pray there. When they got
there, there was a group of women gathered, and one of those women was Lydia.
She was a God-worshiper, which can be understood as a Gentile who is not a
Jewish convert but still worships the true God of Israel.
Even though we only have a few
sentences about Lydia in this passage, we learn a lot about her. She was a
dealer of purple cloth. To dye fabric or cloth purple was a time-consuming and
expensive process. This means that only people of wealth and means would have
been able to afford it, which also implies that the people who could afford it
had power and influence as well as money. The folks who had the most wealth,
influence, and power at that time were royalty, so purple was often reserved
for that rank. If Lydia was a dealer of purple cloth, that meant that
she rubbed shoulders with those same wealthy, influential people. And we can
also assume that while she may not have been counted as royalty, she too had a
certain amount of wealth and influence. She was most likely an entrepreneur,
something that we don’t tend to associate with women from this time in history.
And she was gathered with other women at the river, praying, when the apostles
approached them.
Lydia listened eagerly to Paul’s
message, but it was God who opened her heart. God opened her heart to not only
accept the gospel but to embrace it with her whole being – mind, body, spirit,
heart. Her open heart led her and her entire household to be baptized right
then. Again, this tells us that Lydia was the head of her own household – a
reality we don’t often encounter. Lydia’s response to baptism, to God opening her
heart, was hospitality. She insisted that Paul, Silas, Timothy, and any others
who were traveling with them, stay with her. She welcomed them into her home,
both in this moment and after Paul and Silas are released from prison later in
the chapter. Lydia’s home became a spiritual and physical hub for all the
believers in that place. Lydia not only offered hospitality in the moment, but
her hospitality was ongoing, generous, and expansive.
This is a nice, quiet story about a
nice, quiet conversion. But what is the “so what” for us in it? What I mean by
that, is what does this mean for us today? So what does it have to teach
us? So what does it reveal to us about
our own faith and following? Does it call us to respond to God’s grace and
goodness with our own hospitality? Certainly. But what is the unexpected? Paul
and his fellow travelers certainly did not expect to end up in Philippi. They
were planning on taking a very different route, but God had other plans. When
they left the city gate and went to the river to pray, did they expect to meet
a group of women gathered there? Probably not? And I suspect that they
certainly did not expect to meet a female entrepreneur of means. I also suspect
that they would not have expected her to have her heart opened by God, being
baptized and welcoming them into her home and into her life.
I think what this story teaches us
is that God really does not respect the barriers and boundaries we erect
between us and others, whoever those others happen to be. God is working
outside of the gates we construct and calls us to step outside of the
boundaries of those gates as well. This story is also enlightening about the
status of women in the early church. Women were more than just unmentioned,
unnamed people in the crowds. They were members, leaders, supporters, and
influencers. Women may have been considered subservient by the culture, but not
by God, and this would have been a revelation to those at that time just as it
may be to us.
This story demonstrates that God
would not be bound by any other divisions, categories, or labels humans devised
to separate one from another. Perhaps this is what is most unexpected of all –
God opened the hearts of Jews and Gentiles, insiders and outsiders, men and
women, poor and rich, young and old, and so on and so on. Whatever plans the
apostles made, whatever expectations they may have had about their work, their
call, their ministry, God reminded them again and again, that they were
following God and not the other way around. When we follow God, truly follow
God, trusting in the Holy Spirit to guide us, we should always expect the
unexpected. And we should always follow with an open heart, because we just
never know to where or whom God is going to lead us, but if it is God leading
us, wherever we find ourselves is the place where we most need to be. And
whoever may be placed in our path is the person or people we most need to
encounter. If we are following God, following in the footsteps of Christ, and
trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit, we should always expect the
unexpected. And that is good news indeed. Thanks be to God.
Let all of God’s children say,
“Alleluia.”
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment