Acts 16:6-15 6 They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. 7 When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; 8 so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, Come over to Macedonia and help us. 10 When 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. 11 We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 12 and 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. 13 On 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. 14 A 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. 15 When 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. 1
2016 05.01 The Best-Laid Plans One of my favorite movies is a comedy called Bottle Rocket. The movie is about a gang of aspiring but inept thieves. Most of the comedy comes from the fact that they are not very good at being criminals. The two main members of the gang are childhood friends. Ever since they finished school, about five years earlier, they ve drifted through life without much sense of purpose. They attempt to find purpose for their lives in robbing. Because they have no experience, they start small and with what they know: they rob one of their own homes. The plan is to eventually build up to robbing a real store. In fact, the plan is much bigger than that [SLIDE]. The leader of the gang devises a detailed 75-year plan for their lives which he keeps in a spiral notebook, like the high school student that he emotionally still is. He doesn t plan for them to be lifelong criminals. The robbing is meant to be a stepping stone to their building successful lives as adventurers, investors, and philanthropists. Because the movie is a comedy, things don t go according to plan in fact, far from it. I love the fact that the gang leader has a 75-year plan for their lives. It both amuses and fascinates me because it s not something that I would ever do. I m not someone who likes to plan. I prefer to be spontaneous. Rather than planning each step of my life, I allow life to come to me. This was reinforced for me at seminary. At seminary there are generally two types of students those fresh from undergraduate schools and still in their mid twenties, and second-career students who felt a calling to attend seminary later in life, after working for years in a different career. The younger students are the majority. Many of them knew from a young age that they wanted to serve the church as pastors, chaplains, teachers, and counselors. They had always planned to attend seminary. 2
There is a certain comfort when your life goes according to plan, as the lives of these younger seminary students could testify. But I was intrigued by the second-career students those for whom seminary was not part of the plan. I met people who, in the middle of their life, left behind careers to become students once again: they were school teachers, business men and women, a lawyer, an opera singer, and even a doctor. The doctor was, in fact, a surgeon. He was the one that really fascinated me. He retired as a surgeon and then, in his fifties, became a seminary student. He went from the operating room to the classroom. It takes a long time to become a doctor, and even longer to become a surgeon. In all those years that he spent in medical school, I doubt that he ever pictured himself one day returning to school in a completely unrelated field. My own path to seminary was not a straight line. Seminary wasn t at all in my plans. I spent my twenties trying to make a living as a musician. When that didn t work out, in my thirties I settled into a career as a copywriter. I enjoyed it. I was good at it. And it paid well. But as I was approaching forty, I began to sense that the Spirit was leading me in a different direction than the one I had chosen for myself. I imagine that is how the Apostle Paul felt when God changed his plans, which happened on more than one occasion. Paul, of course, starts out as Saul, staunch defender of Judaism and proud persecutor of Christians. He does a 180 after he experiences a vision of Christ on the road to Damascus. Paul then becomes the greatest proponent of Christianity the world has ever known. He travels throughout the Mediterranean region planting churches and spreading the Gospel. Here in Acts 16 we see that Paul plans to take the Gospel to Asia. This is not Asia as we think of it today, as in Korea, China, or Japan. To the Romans Asia meant what is essentially modern-day western Turkey [SLIDE]. Much of what is today Turkey was once the Roman colony of Asia. That is where Paul wants to go. He s sure of it. Paul, you might have heard, is not a man of half measures. When he puts himself to something, he puts his whole self into it. Paul is determined to go to Asia. The Spirit, 3
however, has other plans. Luke writes that Paul and his companions, Silas and Timothy, were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia (Acts 16:6). They were forbidden. God blocked their way. Alright, Paul thinks to himself. Then we ll go to Bythnyia, which would have taken him north and east. Not so fast, Paul! The Spirit has other plans. Verse 7 says that the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go to Bythnia. Instead of going north and east, as he intended, Paul travels west to Troas, a port city in the westernmost part of Asia. Let s regroup, he is probably telling his companions. We ll figure this out yet. While Paul is trying to discern his next step, he has a vision. He sees a man from Macedonia pleading with him to come there. Now, Macedonia was in the opposite direction from where Paul had been planning to go. Paul wanted to go north and east, but Macedonia lies to the west. To get there, he ll have to travel by boat across the Aegean Sea [SLIDE]. We ve all been in Paul s boat. Of course, I don t mean that we were there with him two thousand years ago crossing the Aegean Sea. To be in the same boat is an expression that means that we re in the same unfortunate situation as someone else. When our plans go awry we experience the same confusion and disappointment that Paul did. Like Paul, we may stop to regroup and try to figure out our next move. That s what happens to the main character in the movie Bruce Almighty [SLIDE]. Bruce Almighty is a comedy about an aspiring broadcast journalist who has a firm and definitive plan for his life. He works at a TV station as a field reporter covering human interest stories, which he thinks is beneath him. He has greater ambitions. He wants to be the anchorman of the evening news program. That s the plan, but things don t go according to his plan. His rival wins the job that he coveted. He has a fight with his girlfriend and storms out of the apartment. He s angry, confused, and frustrated. Nothing is going right. He wants a sign from God some clear indication 4
of the direction that he s supposed to go. That s his state of mind in the clip that we re about to see [VIDEO]. It would be nice, wouldn t it, if God would show us the plan for our lives in some obvious, unmistakable manner. Lord, give me a sign! I know that many of us want a clear sign from God to point us in the right direction. Should I change jobs? Should I go back to school? Should I move to another city or country? More often than not, however, that s not the case. We don t get the big sign in the sky. There s no thunder or lightning. This is why people still go to fortune tellers. They want an immediate answer. If God s not giving it, the fortune teller will. We see a similar concept at work in the Bible. When the Israelites had to make an important decision and needed to discern God s will, they cast lots [SLIDE]. They would throw stones on the ground and then interpret the way that they fell as indicating God s will. That is what the disciples do when they must decide between two candidates to replace Judas. They cast lots. I did something similar when it came to applying to seminary. I wasn t sure if I had a call, so I applied to only one school, and promised God that if accepted, I would attend. If I wasn t accepted, I didn t plan on applying anywhere else. I tried to force God s hand. Come on, God. Going to seminary is a major life change. I m giving up a salary, retirement benefits, health insurance. If this is really your will and not just a midlife crisis, then you have to make it clear to me! We want clarity. Crystal clarity. And clarity is what Paul gets. Heeding the call of the man in his vision, Paul heads to Macedonia, eventually reaching the city of Philippi [SLIDE]. Philippi was, as verse 12 notes, a leading city in that region. It was a commercial city because a major highway passed through the city and connected it to the larger Roman world. This part of the world was distinctly Roman. Intellectually, culturally, spiritually, it was a pagan society. There are no synagogues within the city gates. Paul has to go outside the city gate to find a place to pray. 5
When Paul and his companions find a place, they meet a woman named Lydia [SLIDE]. She is a Gentile, but like Cornelius the centurion, whom we read about last week, Lydia is a worshiper of the God of Israel. Lydia is an interesting person. In a world dominated by men, Lydia has her own business. She buys and sells purple fabric. That may not seem significant to us. We can go to a clothing store and buy an entire wardrobe of nothing but purple. But in the Mediterranean world of the first century, colored fabric, especially purple-colored fabric, was a rare and precious commodity. The purple dye came from one particular region on the Syrian coast. It was expensive to make because it had to be extracted from a mollusk ( 연채동물 ) that lived only in that one region. Because of its expense and its rarity, purple was the color of royalty. Curiously, no mention is made of Lydia s husband. Perhaps she s a widow, as some scholars have speculated. Whatever her marital status, she in effect acts like a man. She has her own business, and she is the head of her household. Clearly she is an independent woman, and not just financially independent. In an overwhelmingly pagan environment, she has converted to Judaism, a foreign religion. That is a mark of independence! Lydia is her own woman. When Lydia hears Paul s preaching, the Spirit moves her heart to receive the Gospel. Right there on the spot, she and her entire household become baptized. Her household would have included her children, extended family, and slaves if she had them anyone who depended upon her financially. Lydia even insists that Paul and his companions come and stay at her home. The last words of the passage are that she prevailed upon us, which is another way of saying that Lydia wasn t taking no for an answer. Lydia is a remarkable woman. Her independence and assertiveness make her a rarity for her time and place. But beyond her individuality, Lydia is also remarkable for what she represents: she is the first European Christian. Some scholars have even 6
speculated that, because she was a wealthy woman, the Philippian church may have met in her home. The early Church did not have buildings to worship in. They were small communities. They met in the homes of wealthier Christians. Lydia is the first seed from which the European church will grow. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin these great theological minds of the Church and many others they all descend from Lydia. European Christians will eventually bring the Gospel to North America. They ll send missionaries to South America, Africa, and Asia, including Korea. In this way we re all connected to Lydia. I have a relative who does genealogy for a hobby. Genealogy is the tracing of family ancestry. He was able to trace the roots of the Schneider family tree to a young widow in the Kingdom of Bavaria (now part of Germany) who came to America in the 1840s after her husband died. For that branch of the family tree, we all have our roots in that one woman. It s similar for us as Christians. In our spiritual family ancestry, Lydia is our great (x25) grandmother. All of us have our roots in Lydia, this first-century Gentile convert, first to Judaism and then to Christianity. Who could have imagined what her importance to European and even world Christianity would be? In recording her conversion, I doubt that Luke, the author of Acts, had any idea. Nor, do I think, did Paul, who encountered her only because his own plans didn t work out and God sent him in the opposite direction of where he wanted to go. Like Paul, our plans too sometimes go awry [SLIDE]. The sermon title today references an expression we have in English: the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. It s a line from a poem written more than two hundred years ago by a Scottish poet. The line acknowledges what we all know to be the truth: that despite our best attempts to plan, things often don t go according to the plan. Sometimes we end up going in an altogether different direction than we intended. 7
How do we know if we are going in the right direction? How do we know if it s part of God s plan? Will there be a sign? If so, how will we know it when we see it? Paul received a sign. He had a vision of a man calling him to Macedonia. Why can t it be obvious like that for us? I m going to propose something that might seem a little strange. While Paul did have a vision, I m not so sure that his vision was the sign that he was on the right path. At least, it wasn t the only sign. The ultimate sign that affirmed Paul s course was Lydia herself. It was this woman whom Paul met, seemingly at random, while he was preaching in the outskirts of town to whomever would listen. Lydia left her home that day and went to the synagogue to pray. It was just an ordinary day. But it wasn t, for what she heard that day in Paul s preaching would change her life and the lives of countless people after her. I wish I could tell you that there is a simple way to recognize a sign from God so that you can know without any doubt what God s will is. But I can t because I don t think there is one. But what I do know is that wherever we are wherever we find ourselves that is where God wants us to show God s love. That is where Jesus surrounds us in his grace. That is where the Spirit works through us and the people we encounter. Wherever we are, that is where our lives are meant to bear witness to the love and grace of Jesus Christ. 8