Sermon May 25 2025 Acts 16 Lydia                                                          Rev. Betsy Hogan

What’s the best place to start a story? Most of us would probably say… at the beginning. So that we’re not just randomly dropped in to whatever’s happening. So that we’ve got some broader sense of how the story started, and what its unfolding might actually mean.

What’s the Wizard of Oz without the tornado in Kansas? Or Cinderella without the ball? And if we don’t know that Ebenezer Scrooge was miserly, selfish, and cruel, can we really get the import of those three Christmas ghosts and their warnings to him?

It helps to start the story at the beginning. It does give us the full context and the full meaning of how things unfold.

Which is why it’s so weird, or so interesting, or so telling even, that in the lectionary cycle of Bible stories that’s laid out for churches to be read, Sunday by Sunday – THIS Sunday’s story from the book of Acts doesn’t actually start from the beginning.

The lectionary cycle of readings actually drops us in, midway through. When during the night, as Janet read for us earlier, Paul the Apostle has a vision of a man from Macedonia. Pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”

Which Paul, and the others in his group – including Luke, who is the author of the Book of Acts – immediately proceeds to do. And it sounds like the beginning of the story. It certainly can be read as the beginning of the story.

Paul and Luke and the rest of them immediately try to cross over to Macedonia. They’re convinced that God has called them to preach the good news there. They set sail from Troas, take a straight course to Samothrace, then to Neapolis, and finally they arrive in Philippi – the leading city of Macedonia.

And they’re ready. And days later… they’re still ready. But nothing seems to be happening.

A few more days later, and it’s the sabbath. So they wander down by the river thinking that maybe it’s become a place of prayer. Like an outdoor Jewish synagogue. A place where the local believers in God – those who’ve left behind their Greek and Roman religions to worship the God of the Bible, to become Jewish – where the local believers in God now come to pray on the sabbath.

And so it seems to be. Sort of “ish”. 

I say that because at the time, and traditionally, what would be described as ‘a group of Jewish people, believers in God, gathered in a place of prayer’, like this group that Paul and Luke and the others have found on this riverside – in order to “officially” call this a place of prayer, the group would have to include at least ten men. In traditional Judaism it’s called a minyan, it’s like a quorum for public worship.

But this group they find doesn’t have ANY men. It’s all women. We don’t know how many, but it’s all women. So it’s not officially a place of prayer. It’s just a bunch of women, believers in the God of the Bible… sitting at a riverside. 

But it’s pleasant and it’s the sabbath and it’s as good a place as any to sit for a while, so Paul and the rest sit down with them, and begin talking to them, and one of them in particular – Lydia, a business owner, affluent, a dealer in purple cloth, expensive –

Lydia begins to listen eagerly to them. God opens her heart to what Paul says, the passage tells us, and she believes. Already she believed in the God of the Bible, but now she’s learned of God poured out into Jesus, and she seeks to be baptized as a follower of Jesus’ Way and she urges the others and all of them are baptized. 
 
It’s how the Christian community in Macedonia begins. “Come over to Macedonia and help us,” the man in Paul’s vision had said, and Paul did. It didn’t transpire in exactly the way that Paul might have imagined it would, but it did transpire. A Christian community in Macedonia has begun.

And that’s meaningful in and of itself. Every time throughout the Book of Acts when one of the Apostles feels called to go somewhere, sees a vision or however it happens, and they do, and they share the good news and it lands and Christian community begins – that’s meaningful in and of itself.

But the way our lectionary carved this story out of the Book of Acts to be read on the sixth Sunday after Easter, it actually dropped us in part way through. Because in fact, if we just go back three little verses before this passage happens, what we discover is that by the time Paul receives that vision – “Come over to Macedonia and help us” – he’s pretty much desperate. 

Because for months, everywhere that he and the others have tried to travel, they’ve met nothing but roadblocks. They’d left Lystra, thinking to go to Asia, but they were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit”, so instead they doubled back through Phrygia and Galatia and they’re all ready to cross over to Mysia – but no, not what the Spirit has in mind --  

So instead they tried to make inroads to Bithynia, but “the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them”, so eventually they wind up in Troas. Seriously discouraged and not sure what to do next. 

And we have no idea what it actually means that “the Holy Spirit forbade them” or “the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them” – it sounds very much like just how they decided to understand the presence of very scary guards at various border crossings – 

But the upshot of it is that they’re sitting in Troas and deeply discouraged and uncertain what to do next. And THAT’S the context in which Paul has the vision calling him to Macedonia. “Come over and help us.”

THAT’S the context, that sense of discouragement and desperation to feel useful again, of their arrival in Macedonia. Where initially at least, days go by and nothing happens.

Until they find themselves, on the Sabbath, wandering down to a riverbank because probably it’s at least a place of prayer, and then it isn’t.

But it’s something. It’s a bunch of women, believers in the God of the Bible – at least it’s something. And they’ve been so discouraged. And they want to feel useful. And this isn’t exactly what they pictured when Paul had that vision, but maybe this is where they’re supposed to be. 

And so Paul begins to speak with these women and it wasn’t a place of prayer… but then it was. It became a place of prayer for Lydia and for this group of women who begin to follow Jesus. Who create the first Christian community in Macedonia, and Lydia in fact becomes one of its key leaders.

It isn’t just meaningful because it happens because they’re led there by a vision. It’s meaningful because by the time they’re led there by a vision, they’re pretty much open to anything. Anything to finally feel useful in sharing the good news. Even just a group of women and no men, with only ‘believing in the God of the Bible’ to recommend them. 

That church in Macedonia, it was a revelation. It blew the doors off Paul’s assumptions, it cemented the radical newness of Jesus’ Way as truly non-patriarchal, for everyone, not centred on men. “Now there is no male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus,” is how Paul puts it in a later letter. The church in Macedonia, begun as a group of women, was a revelation. “Always be open to anything,” I sincerely hope and have to assume was Paul and Luke’s operative principle from there on in.

It’s good to know the story from the beginning. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, as we prepare to celebrate the 100th anniversary of The United Church of Canada in two weeks’ time. I’ve been thinking about the church in Macedonia, generations after its founding that day on the riverbank. Maybe a century after its founding.

When probably all of those Christians in Macedonia love their church and love the good it does in the community and are happy it’s been around for a hundred years – 

But they maybe don’t know how cool it was. What a revelation it was. Started on a riverbank by a group of women who heard the Way of Jesus preached and knew it was for them, that they were fully included, that they were fully beloved, that they were Christian community just themselves already. And they could go from there.

So in a couple of weeks we’re going to celebrate the 100th birthday of The United Church of Canada. And that might not feel very meaningful. All of us dropped in midway through the story. We love our church, we love the good it does in the community, we’re happy it’s been around for a hundred years –

But we need to realize how cool it was. What a revelation it was. How completely the United Church and its people shaped so much of what’s good in this country. From its very first years, leveraging its new national infrastructure to transport literal TONS of food aid and clothing to the Prairies during the Depression. 

Because the revelation of the United Church was that different kinds of Christians could get past the fussy details of doctrine, and just make it about love and service. Trusting in God and following Jesus’ Way. 

Was the United Church from its beginning grounded in the perspectives of British colonialism and WASPy Christian nationalism? Oh yes, it sure was. It absolutely was. 

But it built this place. It shaped so much of what’s good in this country, raising up the gospel of Jesus’ Way of love and service and justice for all God’s people. The United Church and its people were pivotal in proclaiming and demanding basic human rights, in demanding workers’ rights and fair wages, in the establishment of welfare and unemployment benefits and disability benefits. 

The United Church advocated hard for Medicare, established downtown missions to serve impoverished communities, ran boys and girls clubs to teach English and job skills and leadership skills. United Church people went overseas – to India, to Asia, to Central America – and brought their experiences back to do advocacy for justice and for peace during the tumultuous 1970s and 80s, just as they still do now in partnership with the churches in Palestine.

It was in United Church basements and parlours and halls that people learned how to do governance by consensus, long before their hipster grandchildren thought they’d thought it up. It was in United Church women’s groups that girls and women honed the leadership skills with which they’d eventually break into the workplace. The United Church began ordaining women in 1936, campaigned for family allowance and maternity benefits, badgered Brian Mulroney incessantly until Canada finally boycotted apartheid South Africa. The United Church hauled the question of gay rights out of the closet in the mid-1980s, in the middle of the AIDS crisis, forcing the conversation onto the national stage, laying down the foundation for eventual full Charter rights and marriage access for LGBTQ+ persons in Canada.

We built this place. Out of the gospel of love and service: trust in God and follow Jesus’ Way of peace and well-being and justice for all God’s people. We maybe built it in our image so well that it kind of lost track of needing us at all – and it’s not difficult to draw a very straight line between the church’s loss of influence and the dismantling of the welfare state in Canada –

But it’s the beginning of our story. That getting dropped in midway through we might not know, we might not appreciate. 

Because if we don’t know how desperate Paul was to finally feel useful, by the time he sat down on that riverbank, after months of his ministry being blocked, then we don’t realize how much effort the Holy Spirit had to put into it – for Paul to preach Christian community into a group of only women. We don’t realize what a revelation the Macedonian church was. How cool it was at its beginning, and how meaningful that was.

We’re going to set aside all the fussy details and differences in doctrine, and just make it about love and service, trusting in God and following Jesus’ Way. It really was a revelation, a hundred years ago. And it’s still what the United Church is about, it’s why we’re still here.

So to any metaphorical lectionary police who don’t think it matters to drop us into the middle of the story? The Holy Spirit would like a word. That’s overlooking some of its very best work. That should definitely be remembered. And celebrated. With pleasure and with gratitude. 

Because what the Holy Spirit is capable of is very very cool. Thanks be to God. Amen.