The felling of countless prejudices | a sermon

A sermon by Jamie Howison on Acts 16:9-15 and John 14:23-29

Sometimes when I sit down early in the week to look at the readings for the coming Sunday, I think, “well, there’s got to be something here… I’m just not really sure what it is yet.” This was one of those weeks, when on Monday I read this brief snippet from the book of Acts that introduces this woman Lydia, and then the Gospel reading from John in which Jesus talks about the coming “Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name.” That piece from John is part of the very long five-chapter scene in the upper room before Jesus is arrested, in which Jesus talks at length to his disciples about a whole array of things that lie on their horizon. Sometimes that section is brilliantly clear and straightforward, and sometimes it weaves in and out with wording in the Greek that came seem more than a little elusive. Those chapters are a long, long way from things like the parables or the sermon on the mount, and they often require both patience and persistence.

So at that point I always turn to various commentators, pulling down various books from my shelves and taking a look at what different writers might have to say in the online platform called “Working Preacher.” As I read, I’m generally struck by how those commentators will help pull together things that I’d skipped right past when I first looked at the passages. That’s after almost thirty-five years of preaching, and I still need that kind of help from folks who spend their lives immersed in these texts.

So for instance with this Gospel text, which I think is quite brilliantly summarized by the Lutheran New Testament scholar Mary Hinkle Shore, who writes:   

While the world will not see Jesus any longer, it will see his followers. The words that follow are for his followers, yet it is probably not a coincidence that as his followers keep loving him, the world will see those followers keeping his word. To keep the word of Jesus means to keep his commandments (cf. John 14:15, 21). It is to wash one another’s feet, to love one another (John 13:24).

Which, as I said last Sunday in the context of a sermon that dealt with his new command to “love one another”, really strikes to the heart of John’s understanding of Jesus. There are but two clear commandments in John’s gospel; first to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and second to love one another, and to demonstrate that in this humble act of being prepared to be servants, one to another. These simple acts of obedience to the words of Christ the master are meant to be the things that will speak to the wider world, and speak with the great power of humility. 

And then when you turn to the reading from the book of Acts, you get a glimpse of what that might actually look like in the real world. Now the lectionary does jump us all over the book of Acts, so it is easy to lose the thread of the full story if all you consider are the Sunday readings. For instance, we have skipped right past a story in the 15th chapter of Acts, which speaks of a rather serious breach between Paul and his companion Barnabas. In that incident Paul is wanting to head out and visit the churches in all of the cities where he and Barnabas had already gone. Barnabas was quite keen, but wanted to take with them the young man, John Mark. Problem is that John Mark had gone out with them once before, but had ended up leaving them partway through the journey. Barnabas is keen to give the young man another chance, but Paul? Not so much. The description in Acts is short and to the point: “The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas..” (Acts 15:39-40)

I think that it is notable that scriptures like these ones don’t try to sugar coat things, making it look like no one ever failed or disagreed or whatever. They did mess up, and I find oddly comforting.

“But Paul chose Silas,” and in time he would also add Timothy along with one other figure who is not actually named, but who quietly appears in this reading tonight. Listen to the wording of the text, after Paul had dreamt that they were to go to Macedonia:

When Paul 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.

We, us, and then further along, “We set sail from Troas,” “We remained in this city,” “we sat down and spoke to the women,” “she prevailed upon us.” There has been a shift in the narration of the book of Acts, and from here on it will be told from the perspective of someone traveling with Paul. That someone is Luke, the author of this book. This is the moment when his long narrative of the Gospel that bears his name and this book of Acts become, in a sense, personal. These two books are both addressed to someone named Theophilus, quite probably a Roman citizen of high rank, and together are meant to communicate just how transformational is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; not just for the Jews, but for the Gentiles as well. And Luke was quite probably a Gentile, and one who’d been brought to faith through the ministry of Paul.

In short, the book has now become far more personal than it previously was, and while Luke does keep himself somewhat out of sight in all of the ups and downs of what will follow, it is always “we” and “us”.

And then beyond that there is the matter of what begins to happen for this little group of gospel people, as they make their way toward Macedonia and its capital city of Philippi. As Brian Peterson notes,

Paul received the vision, but verse 10 says that “we” concluded what it meant and what to do about it. The vision must be interpreted, and that task does not fall to Paul alone. The small community contained in we is involved in discerning that this is God’s call not just to an individual, but to us… 

 And so they arrived in Philippi, and “On the sabbath day,” Luke writes, “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.” Philippi, you see, had no formal synagogue, but in such instances it was not unusual for Jews and seekers to meet together in a public but quieter space. There in that gathering they meet this woman named Lydia, who is described as “a worshipper of God,” which indicates that while she is a Gentile, she is in a place of actively exploring the God of Judaism.

Well, you heard how it went. “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul,” which suggests that this is not all about how good or articulate or convincing Paul and the others might have been, but rather that God saw her as one ready to receive with an open heart. She just soaks it all in, and right away arranges to be baptized along with her household, and then invites Paul and the others to stay with her in her home.

Now in his commentary, William Willimon really fleshes out why this story is so very significant, and he does that by pointing to three significant points:

• She is a woman – “When compared to conventional Jewish and Greco-Roman ideas about women, the church must have seemed radical in the way it welcomed women and featured them as leaders and prophets.”

• She is a Gentile – “That Paul consented to stay in her house as the recipient of her hospitality indicates that barriers which sometimes divided male and female or divided Jew from Gentile convert within the synagogues do not hold in the church.”

• She is of the merchant class, and wealthy – “The mixing of classes is particularly interesting, given the context of the Roman world where there was virtually no movement out of the social class to which one was born nor any expectation of movement.” 

And in Lydia, one after another of these historic social prejudices are felled.

Imagine just how revolutionary this all was. If the primary directive given by Jesus to his followers was “is to wash one another’s feet, [and] to love one another,” that directive has just exploded in scale by the story of the conversion and hospitality of Lydia. Who do I love? Whose feet do I wash? Well, anyone who I might begin to see as a sister or brother, which in this reading from Acts turns out to be anyone and everyone.

Imagine just how revolutionary this not just was, but still is… and 2000 years later we can still feel it stretching and challenging us to learn to bypass the social and personal prejudices of this world, and to seek to see the other—whoever they might be—as a brother or sister. Granted, that isn’t always an easy thing to do, yet oddly, it is the one thing we are so clearly called to do.