Reflection by David for May 9, 2010

Scripture Text: Acts 16:9–15

The Easter season is a wonderful time of the Church year for telling stories. The Scripture readings are chalk full of stories about the risen Christ, about the first Christians, about fishing and water and new life. The Book of Acts alone, had we read all of the Scripture passages each Sunday, would have had us reading stories of Peter preaching about Christ risen to life, the conversion of Paul, Peter raising Tabitha to life (or Dorcas in Greek, which means Gazelle), Peter's famous dream about what is acceptable to God and the baptism of Cornelius, and next Sunday is the dramatic story of Paul and Silas freed from prison. We read the story of Peter fishing and then having the risen Jesus question his love and loyalty.

What links all of these stories is four things: the first is that they are vividly told with lots of detail; the second is that they are about the risen Christ directly or the Holy Spirit; the third is that these stories are about being found by God—not found out, but being found; and the fourth is that people respond to the risen Christ and to the Holy Spirit with changed lives.

Since it is Mother's Day, let's focus on the story of Lydia, the businesswoman who dealt in purple cloth. I don't know if she was a mother or not; we do know that she was a wealthy independent businesswoman in a time when there were very few businesswomen. She operated on her own and sold expensive purple-dyed cloth. For this sermon, I'm indebted to the reflections of Ronald Cole-Turner that I found in Feasting on the Word.

As the story goes, Lydia had gathered by the river with companions to pray. She was likely Jewish, and because there was no synagogue in the city of Philippi, she and others, as was typical when there was no synagogue, gathered by open, living water in order to engage in the ritual baths or as a secret place to pray. While here at the riverside—down by the riverside, we might say—in this hidden place, she encountered Paul and his companions. As Cole-Turner puts it, "there at the riverside, Lydia found the God who was finding her." (Page 474)

And it almost didn't happen. As we all know hindsight is 20-20. When we look back on events, we can sometimes see the invisible hand of God guiding and prompting us to choose life as Moses encouraged. When we read the Scripture stories we can see the hand of God, the breath of the Spirit, the insistent risen Christ blowing gently (or sometimes howling wildly) to get us to sit up and take notice. Paul was nudged gently and sometimes not-so-gently to get to Philippi. Twice we hear that the Spirit intervened because Paul was going the wrong way. The whole journey of Paul and his companions was likely a thousand miles and it is dismissed quite simply in the story as the Spirit directing Paul to go a different route. There are shades of Jonah in this story; perhaps Paul was not as directly opposed to God as Jonah was, but Paul, like Jonah was going in the wrong direction. Fortunately for Paul, there was no large fish to swallow him! And then, there was this odd dream that Paul had about a man needing his help in Macedonia, modern-day Greece. Was it Lydia that the dream was really about? Who was this man in Macedonia?

Again, Cole-Turner puts it better than I about this convergence of Paul and Lydia down by the riverside: "It almost did not happen, this meeting of the businesswoman and the missionaries, and it surely would not have happened were it not for the inexplicable convergence of human faithfulness and divine guidance. Paul and Lydia and the Holy Spirit all work together in this event, this "chance" encounter by the river." (Page 476) Paul would not have arrived had he not been attentive to God's nudging and Lydia would not have been at the riverside at all had she not been a seeker on her way, a worshipper of God in the first place. Here in this moment, divine initiative meets human longing. Or, in that wonderful quote from Fred Buechner, a Presbyterian writer in the US, "it is the place where your own deep gladness meets the world's deep needs." Buechner's quote is all about listening for the Spirit to nudge us, to know where God is in the deep gladness of our lives and to know where God is in the world's deep needs. It is this same intersection of divine initiative and human longing. God finds us in the midst of our seeking to be found by God.

I like this idea of seeking to be found by God. This is divine initiative and human longing intersecting to change lives and to change the world. On the surface it sounds rather passive; we just need to sit quietly and God will find us. But that's not it at all. We have an important part to play in our being found. In a time when the social classes were well defined and one did not cross the boundaries that separated the social classesÑmuch more than snobby Britain at its snobbiest, the wealthy in the Roman world did not cavort with lower classes; but instead of this, Lydia's world was defined by grace, generosity, love and justice; it was NOT defined by privilege, elitism, snobbery, arrogance and exclusion. Lydia's heart was open; she actively engaged in a prayerful discipline. She sought out those who might help her know more about the God of life. She was a leader who lead by servant-example as was evident when she insisted that Paul and his companions stay with her for an extended period of time. She was a Christ-figure waiting for Paul, who like John, baptised her in the river. Lydia sought—prayed, lived, worshipped, and looked—to be found by the God who found her.

When I lived in Ontario, at my last congregation, I was often invited to attend the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that were held in the church basement. I was often asked to share some thoughts around some of the 12 steps and just to offer whatever wisdom they thought I might have. It was more often the case that I would listen to the wisdom of THEIR lives and learn from them rather than the other way around. I remember one person who told a story about being found; it was kind of like the story of John Newton coming to write Amazing Grace. This person had been abused as a child and had learned to escape facing the horrors of memory through the bottom of a bottle. He wrote poetry, beautiful poetry I was later to find out, as a means of searching for sanity. He spoke of how he would give his poems away and how people would be amazed at the kind of healing they would find in the poems; they were also amazed that the man himself could not see the healing images and provocatively spiritual intent of the words. It was like God was speaking through him except that he couldn't see it and he couldn't hear it. He talked about searching for God and knowing that God was searching for him, but he couldn't see God's love. Until, of course, he hit rock bottom and went for treatment. It was while he was in treatment that someone helped him discover the healing quality of his own words in his own poetry. He finally realized that God had found him long ago, but that he hadn't been able open his eyes enough to see the God who spoke through his own words of poetry.

We need to get out of the way more. Lydia didn't let social niceties get in the way of being found and seeking to be found by the God of life; she didnÔt let an inflated ego get in the way. My friend from AA finally was able to get out of the way, to see through his hurtful and shattering memories, past his ego which wanted to protect him through alcohol, to see into the heart of God. When we get out of the way, when we can set aside our ego, which arrogantly thinks it is in control of our lives, we can be found by the God who seeks to find us. When we can get out of the way, resurrection happens, the Spirit dives in where angels fear to tread, into our very human and sometimes troubled lives, to seek us out. I believe that we want to be foundÑdeep down in our heart of heartsÑwe want to know the God of life. The Spirit helps us see through the struggles of life into the love of God that has been here right from the very start.

And that was true of Lydia; the love of God, the healing compassion of God, was present with her always; she just needed Paul to help her see that God had found her long ago. She needed to find the finding in her life, in her heart, and in the world around her. Like the spiritual we sang a minute ago: Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, God's a gonna trouble the water. God's troubled the waters of our lives so we might as well wade in and find the new life promised. Lydia did. Paul did. Peter did! And we, too, are found by the God who seeks to find us!

Amen.