Michael Denton
May 13th, 2003
St. Paul UCC, Palatine
Acts 16:9-15

9During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
11We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 12and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district£ of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. 13On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. 14A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. 15When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.

- Greeting

- Prayer

Some of friends, if they’re trying to be polite, have been told me I have a somewhat unusual mind. At less polite moments, they just let me know they think I’m weird. So, yeah, I know I’m kind of a stream of consciousness type of guy and, if you get me at the right moment, I can go on for a bit about, well, anything. Frequently, somewhere in a conversation a story may come up that may or may not seem to be related, at the time. I kind of think in stories and, at about the same time I open my mouth, they seem to tumble out. Granted, when I start to tell the story, I confess I don’t always know exactly where it’s going to go but it usually helps me get around to a point. Now, this can mean a really strange conversation with me on occasion but it’s really handy when writing sermons.

So, while marinating on the lectionary text from Acts this week, I was thinking a lot about a certain bacteria than lives in the stomach called helicobator pylori (more commonly know as h-pylori). OK, maybe not as much the bacteria itself, but there is a great story about h-pylori. . . Oh, if I had a quarter for every time I’ve said that.

Anyway, it goes something like this: H-pylori was discovered in the late 1800’s but no one really knew what it did. It was nearly impossible to grow a culture of it outside the stomach so people kind of ignored it; assuming that it was either some benign or even helpful little stomach creature.

In 1979, it was “rediscovered” by an Australian researcher by the name of Robin Warren and a couple years later, he was joined by another guy named Barry Marshall. They figured out how to grow this stuff outside of the stomach in a Petri dish and, in their study of it, came up with an idea. Up to that point, it was pretty well accepted that stress, spicy foods and grease consumption were the cause of ulcers and chronic heartburn. If you went to any doctor up to this point, they’d subscribe antacids, relaxation and changes in diet in order to at least feel better but, overall, these were seen as a chronic condition that required lifetime monitoring and lifestyle changes.

Warren and Marshall had another idea. They were convinced that h-pylori was the cause of these gastric conditions and that stress, spicy foods and grease consumption simply exacerbated the problem. To say the wider medical community disagreed with this assumption was an understatement. First of all, what “really” caused these medical problems were “common knowledge.” Secondly, everyone “knew” the stomach was way too acidic to support bacteria. Thirdly, well, they were from Australia and there appeared to be the assumption that Australia was pretty much all Outback and crocodiles and very little else. Warren and Marshall were laughed at, derided and insulted. The more persistent they were, the more they were insulted as quacks and eventually, threatened with having their credentials yanked.

So, in and effort to prove a point, Marshall drank a Petri dish of h-pylori. Yum. Soon afterwards, as they predicted, he developed symptoms of gastritis. The researchers also experimented with treatments for a couple other patients and discovered that antibiotics seemed to take care of the problem. They published another paper. This time, the medical community took notice and began to regard their theory as probable. In 2005, Warren and Marshall were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology.

Although more extreme than most, this is almost a story we may have heard before. It’s practically formulaic. Slightly offbeat discovers a new idea/way of doing things. Idea/way of doing things is presented to experts in field. Experts in field reject idea/way of doing things and are even threatened by it. The slightly offbeat scientist/artist/musician/entrepanur persists with new idea/way of doing things against great odds. Eventually, the idea/way of doing things catches on or is proven correct and everybody lives happily ever after. Outside becomes insider. It all makes a great story. It speaks to something in us. Its one of the reasons the story of Christianity is so compelling to so many. We relate to it as one of these outsider stories.

And, of course, Jesus was clearly an outsider. Although called “rabbi” by some, he said some pretty crazy sounding stuff. Love your enemies? Really? Turn the other cheek? Are you serious? Considering tax collectors and Roman soldiers redeemable? Really? This is clearly outsider thinking. Jesus, the outsider, took these disciples, other outsiders and called them to build a movement of yet still more outsiders. The religious experts of the time rejected the teachings and the organizing plan of this offbeat Messiah and derided him in public. In the most extreme example of rejection of a new idea, Jesus was killed. But the story doesn’t end there. Jesus is resurrected proving that there was something to this Jesus guy, after all. Jesus, in fact, turns out to be so right that, today, there’s folks calling themselves Christian running all over the place. The outsider has become considered the insider.

When we pick up the story in Acts, we’re reading about the disciples and their challenge to follow through on this Jesus directive and they’re finding themselves on the margins of traditional Jewish ethnic and religious culture. Last week, the lectionary reading from Acts talked about Peter tossing off centuries of tradition after having this vision that no one was unclean; this vision that all people were worthy of being reached out to and invited to become a part of this movement. This vision changed a reform movement within Judaism into something more radical. There is this other vision of another kind of faithfulness that takes the religious ideals of the time and, out of them, expands them and forms new ideas. This week, Paul’s has a vision.

Paul’s vision isn’t nearly as grand as big sheet with all the animals of the world in it but, still, some guy appearing in front of you, pleading with you to come to Macedonia is pretty good. That word, “pleading,” does make me laugh a little. You have a vision of some guy in the middle of the night and he has to plead? I mean, come on. But, then again, this is Paul and, well, he had an issue or two. . .

Anyway, so Paul has this vision and takes off for Macedonia. If Paul was there early enough, he probably did what he usually did when visiting a new place and found some of the city’s Jewish folks and spent some time with them. If there was a synagogue, he probably had spent some time there, too; getting to know people and sharing words about Jesus and the movement of the Holy Spirit among these disciples of Jesus.

Somewhere along the way, Paul heard about this place of prayer outside the city gates. Now, we really don’t know why there was this place of prayer outside the gates of the city. Scholars have lots of guesses but no one’s really sure. Some think that this was possibly a meeting place for those who’d been rejected by the authorities residing within the walls. Others scholars, knowing that there is a tradition of something like baptism in early Jewish practice, suggest that maybe this was a place for prayer and baptism. A few have suggested that maybe this was a place outside the city that those who had been considered unclean (because of something they did) had to go when they were in the process of fulfilling certain purification rituals. It was a gathering of women and women weren’t welcome in every synagogue. Some suggest that maybe these women started and established a gathering place of their own. Maybe it was just a really pretty, quiet place for these women to gather, look at the river, look at each other, pray together and be together without the same pressures of the common culture of the city bearing down on them. Heck, no one’s really sure any more. We don’t know.

All we know for certain is that for some reason, these folks either had to meet there or chose to meet there. Even though we don’t know why they were there, we do now that they were somehow outside the understood boundaries of a differently ordered kind of life.

We don’t really know specifically why Paul wanted to meet the women gathered here, either. The scripture just isn’t clear. Again, some there are a variety of reasons that have some have suggested he decided to be present. Maybe it was because he’d heard that these folks were more open minded than most. Maybe he’d received some sort of invitation. Maybe it had been made clear to him that he wasn’t really welcome at the synagogue after what he’d said in the city and he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Maybe, there may have been reasons that would have been clear to those who heard this story but those reasons have been lost over time. We don’t know. Regardless, for whatever reason, he met with this group of outsiders and, obviously, Lydia stood out.

Purple cloth was good money and Lydia was probably well off, financially. Purple cloth was the cloth used by royalty. The fact that she was named without a relationship to a husband means that she probably was without one. Again, more conjecture: maybe she was widowed, maybe she was never married but her family business bought her enough privilege that she was OK. Maybe, simply because she was connected to royalty, she got a pass on many social conventions. We don’t know. We don’t know why she was by this place of prayer by the river, either. Maybe, she was from another city and passing through to sell her wares or pick up something she needed. Maybe she was there to meet other women whom she considered to be similar to her. Maybe she just happened to stumble across this place. Again, we don’t know for sure why she was at this place at this time.

We do know that she was, apparently, quite convincing; a good salesperson. I mean, Paul was not always an easy man to convince. Remember, at the beginning of this story, someone who appeared in a vision had to plead with Paul to come to Macedonia. Now, this woman was standing in front of him and we all know from others writings attributed to Paul that this society’s relationship to women was complicated, to say the least. This woman heard the story Paul told, these words of Paul, and found something in them she found important. This woman, the presumably rather well off business woman, was with several members of her household and was so moved by Paul’s message that she and her entire household were baptized by Paul in that river. This woman, so moved by what happened that day, invited Paul and those traveling with Paul, to stay in her home. In Paul’s acceptance of this invitation, he wasn’t just recognizing Lydia’s acceptance of him, it was also his acceptance of her and his acknowledgment of Lydia as a sister in this new movement.

There was a change. There was this outsider’s message shared with an outsider community that was another part of this story of outsiders. One of the reasons this story is so appealing to the Church and is told so many times is that it fits right in to the idea of this outsider to insider transition. Conversion and the story of the growth of the church becomes the ultimate way to tell the story of an outside faith, first rejected by many, becoming more and more accepted. This outsider faith is justified by the acceptance of its ideals. It’s a story that gets told a lot from lots of pulpits. Outsider faith becomes insider faith and, eventually, one of the largest movements in the entire world. It’s the perfect outsider story.

Or, maybe not. Maybe its not that easy. When I look at this week’s text and last week’s text, maybe it was actually the disciples who were converted. In both this week’s and last week’s text, it was those who the disciples really didn’t see as part of the community who invited Paul and company or Peter and company in to their homes. Today’s scripture talks about the opening of Lydia’s heart to this message that Paul brought but maybe it was Paul’s heart that was opened Lydia. It was Lydia that asked Paul to judge whether or not she was worthy. Sure, there can be a level of humility seen in this but imagine it another way.

If you were someone, like this saleswoman who sold cloth for executives, you would have figured out how to convince people of a thing or two. When you add to this the fact that Lydia was not in a relationship with a man, she’d probably had to frequently struggle to be accepted. She was a survivor. She knew she had to do things differently sometimes.

So, here she is, a strong woman among a group of women and she doesn’t tell Paul she’s worthy to be recognized as faithful by him, she makes it up to him – in front of her household and this group of women – to say whether or not she’s worthy. If he said “No,” he might lose credibility with this group of people. If he said “Yes,” he had the opportunity of starting a whole new base community in Macedonia as well as Lydia’s city, Thyatira. I’m guessing Lydia had a pretty good idea what Paul was going to say before he said and, by doing so, at least two new communities were formed.

Sisters and brothers, we in the church frequently talk about “sharing the gospel” in a spirit of outreach and evangelism with the idea that those “out there” are in need of what we have “in here.” I think that’s true but it’s really only half the story. We who are in the church are desperately in need of the conversion that is offered and suggested by those who outside the church. Where are those places that the outsiders, the rejected, the forgotten, the marginalized and the doubted go? We really need to be there both to offer what God’s given to us as well as to receive what God continues to offer in other places, in other ways.

There are ways we continue to be in need of conversion. It’s not a one time thing that we consider, accept and finish but a lifetime process that means seeking out God in all those places God may seem to be hiding. The saddest part about some in the church insisting that there are those among us who are not worthy to be within the church is that this very thought makes us less worthy and more in need of not praise for uprightness, but mercy for our small mindedness and diminished faith. The invitation to become a part of our communities of faith shouldn’t just be a gift that is seen as being offered but a gift that we’re pleading for, that we’re welcoming, that we’re accepting. Moving beyond the gates of our own cities and walls, those places where there is this sense of being protected and safe, needs is an opportunity for our churches and the members of our churches that needs to be encouraged, expanded and explored. We all know that God is present in more places than just this one. We have to seek out those places faithfully and carefully.

As much as we may try to put our faith in the context of a story that is typical, God just doesn’t act typically. God is bigger than any definition and any absolute model of our understanding. This God loves us, deeply, constantly and fully in ways that far, far beyond human understanding. Regardless of whether or not we see ourselves as inside or outside our communities love and car, we’re always in the love of God. Always and this God is always offering us ways for some of the most unexpected conversions through some of the most unexpected people. This God of stomach bacteria, mystery, hope and every single one of us. . .