Loading...A Sermon taken from Acts 16:9-15,
with a little help from John 14:23-29
and Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
A Sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter
Today we celebrate the 6th Sunday of the Great 50 Days of Easter. Christ is risen, and what better reason could there be to celebrate?
I am also mindful that while we observe today as the 6th Sunday of Easter, this is for a large segment of the Christian world, Easter Sunday. The Churches of the Eastern tradition, known also as the Orthodox Churches, still follow the old Julian calendar, with its different way to determine the date of Easter.
In the Western Churches, we keep Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring.
In the Eastern Churches, however, Easter, or the Holy Pascha, falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring, after Passover.
The Easter greeting among Greek Orthodox Christians is “Christos Anesthi,” which means “Christ is risen.” The reply is “Alethos Anesthi,” “He is risen indeed.” In honor of our Greek Orthodox brothers and sisters, let us greet one another in this way. Your response to my greeting is “Alethos Anesthi.” Try that with me. “Alethos Anesthi.” Good. Now here comes my greeting.
“Christos Anesthi.” (Alethos Anesthi!). May we all join in wishing a joyful Pascha to our Orthodox brothers and sisters in Christ.
Now back to the Western Calendar. The 6th Sunday of Easter is known also as Rogation Sunday. From a Latin word meaning ‘to ask,’ the Sunday through Wednesday before Ascension Day,
which comes this Thursday, have long been a time dedicated to asking the Lord to bless the fields, the crops planted therein, and the people who farm the fields and whose labor brings forth the fruit of the fields that feed and clothe us. You will hear petitions with these themes in mind during the Prayers of the People.
I developed an appreciation for those who make their livelihoods in agricultural pursuits during the years we spent in the Mississippi Delta. Greenwood, where I served before coming to San Angelo, is the “Cotton Capital of the World,” although now there are also fields of corn, rice, and soybeans planted in the rich alluvial Delta soil. Not only are farmers, especially the smaller, family run operations, at the whim of rising or falling crop prices, they are also subject to the whims of the weather. One year in Mississippi the spring was so wet that the rice literally drowned.
Then summer turned so hot and dry that the cotton was stunted and the corn was withering on the stalk. Then came the fall, with more than 30 rainy days in a row, which helped the cotton, but brought on a rot in the soybeans that turned a crop that was looking like about $10 a bushel into less than $1 a bushel. What I learned from my Mississippi Delta farming friends is that farming is a real adventure.
The Acts of the Apostles, which we have been reading during Eastertide, tells the story of a kind of Christian faith that is a real adventure. My first memory of reading the Acts of the Apostles is from the 8th grade, when it was the Bible curriculum for the entire school year at the Christian school I attended. It was really the first realization I had that being a Christian could have a flare for adventure, rather than being a long list of do’s, an even longer list of don’ts, and oh yeah, Noah built a big boat and filled it with animals. At the heart of this adventurous faith I discovered in the 8th grade was going along with Paul on his three missionary journeys, and then the long journey under guard to Rome. From the moment of his conversion on the Road to Damascus, Paul is intensely focused on serving the Lord Jesus by obeying his Great Commission to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” devoting the whole of his life’s energy to doing just that.
Paul’s first journey took him from Syria to the island of Cyprus, and then back to the mainland
and the interior of modern day Turkey. The second journey was more extensive, and it is on that second journey that we join Paul and his companions. We find them in Troas, on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea. This is as far from home as they have been. They are pushing at the frontiers of the Gospel, and are not quite sure which way to go. The Spirit of the Lord has blocked them from two planned courses, one into the Province of Asia, western Turkey, and its main city of Ephesus. The other course blocked by the Spirit was up into the Province of Bithynia. So, they have come to Troas not exactly sure what their next move will be, until Paul has a vision in the night, in which a man from Macedonia says, “come over to Macedonia and help us.”
Paul takes that to be a sign that God is calling them to Macedonia, so they book passage on a ship that takes them from Troas into the northern reaches of the Aegean Sea, past the island of Samothrace, crowned by Mt. Saos, where it was believed that the god Poseidon perched to watch the Trojan War, and then to the port of Neapolis. The missionaries then make a 12 mile walk
to the leading city of the district, Philippi, founded in the 4th century B.C. by Phillip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. Philippi became an important Roman city when Caesar Augustus decided it was a good place for Roman army officers to retire, which gave Philippi a special status among the communities in the surrounding area.
There is something else about Philippi that deserves our notice. Being in Macedonia, the northern province of Greece, Philippi is on the continent of Europe. Up until this point, the good news of Jesus has been heard only on the continent of Asia, but that is about to change. After a few days in Philippi, Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath day, arrives. There are not enough Jews in Philippi to form a synagogue, which would be something like a parish in Episcopalian vocabulary. With no synagogue in town, Paul heads outside the city gates where he hopes to find a Jewish place of prayer, which in our jargon would be like a mission. Perhaps Paul has his earphones in
and the music shuffling on his iPod comes to Robert Lowry’s great spiritual, “Shall we gather at the river,” because that is where Paul goes to look for the place of prayer, and that is where he finds it.
Then something remarkable happens. Paul sits down. And nobody gives him that, “you’re in my seat stare.” You know that feeling. You’re visiting from out of town, and you come into a new to you church, the usher gives you a bulletin, you find an open seat, bow to the cross, enter the pew, sit down, then pull down the kneeler to pray before the service starts, and while you’re on your knees you feel those eyes burning a hole in the back of your neck, and you know you’ve done it,
you’ve sat in somebody’s long-held, beloved, and in their mind at least, reserved for them seat.
But at this place of prayer in Philippi there are no reserved seats. And I daresay, in this place of prayer in San Angelo, there are no reserved seats, except maybe for the Bishop, and the organist! Being a Christian, dear friends is an adventure, and maybe there will be some days when the adventure will be to experience worship from a different vantage point than one that has grown familiar.
As remarkable as not getting “the stare” is, the next thing that happens is even more remarkable.
Paul speaks to the women gathered there. From this we infer that there are no men present. What is it about men and matters of the Spirit, anyway? So, it’s just a group of women and Paul speaks to them. That just doesn’t happen in a typical Jewish setting in that day. Men do not speak publicly to women, but this man does, and he tells them about a Jew named Jesus, his marvelous life, his saving death, his glorious resurrection.
Among the women gathered is one named Lydia. She is not Jewish, but a Gentile ‘worshiper of God,’ someone who is attracted to Judaism, but not quite ready to make the full commitment to it. Paul’s words ring especially true to Lydia, so much so that Luke tells us that the Lord opens her heart to listen eagerly, so eagerly that she makes the commitment to follow Christ as Lord right then and there, being baptized, probably in that river, along with her entire household.
And in that phrase, “her entire household,” might be the most remarkable thing about this passage, and the reason why the Holy Spirit directed Paul away from his previous plans
to come to Philippi. Lydia is a successful businesswoman in a day and age when “business” and “woman” don’t usually go together. She is a dealer in purple cloth, which is very costly, and can only be worn by the elite class of society. Lydia apparently has no man in her life, and is doing well enough in her business that she is the head of her household, someone with dependents who live with her and rely on her provision, who join her in making this new commitment of faith. These are the first Christian converts in Europe, and their home becomes, at Lydia’s invitation and insistence, the first missionary outpost on the European continent. She has the means to help Paul and his missionary partners, she has the desire to help them, and the Holy Spirit prompts her
to join the adventure in faith.
Think about your adventure in faith. Have you experienced that sense of pathways that seemed to make sense being closed off? Have you been left wondering what your next move is to be? If so, you’re not alone. It happened to St. Paul. Instead of pushing through onto those closed off pathways, he waited until a new sense of the Lord’s direction came to him. His patience in waiting and then alacrity in obedience led him to Philippi, to that place of prayer by the river, to Lydia,
and to the establishment of a missionary base of operations that would bring the good news of Jesus to the continent of Europe, and the addition of countless names of European derivation into the Lamb’s book of life.
So, on this day when we pray for fields and crops and farmers, I add intercession for each of us,
that the Lord will bless our adventure in faith, adding also a petition that we may be inspired to allow our faith to be touched by a spirit of holy adventure.
