Before Paul and Timothy arrive in Philippi, they had tried to make Jesus known in a couple other places.  Luke tells us “the Spirit did not let them” (16:6, 7).  We try to share the news about Jesus with others and we get a cold, indifferent reception.  We ascribe it to their hardness of heart or, more likely, to our total incompetence in sharing the Gospel.  Luke tells us the cause is with the Spirit.  If our efforts don’t succeed, it’s because the Spirit has other plans.  If we do succeed, it’s because it’s the right time, place, person, and occasion, according to the Spirit.  Wait upon the Spirit.  In the meantime, act.  The Spirit will teach us patience.  The Spirit will teach us perseverance.  The Spirit will encourage us in the face of obstacles.  In the Spirit there is joy and peace.

In the patience, perseverance, encouragement, in that joy and peace of the Spirit, Paul has a night vision of a man calling him to Greece.  As Paul and Timothy talk and pray about it afterwards, they conclude this is the message from the Spirit for which they had been waiting.

On their way from the Aegean coast of Turkey over to northern Greece, they depart from Troas, a chief port in the area.  Evidence suggests Troas might have had as many as 100,000 people!  Surely plenty of people were ready and willing to hear and receive the Good News there in Troas, but the Spirit hadn’t called Paul and Timothy to proclaim there.

They sail past the island of Samothrace, which means next to nothing to us.  The island was a major international religious center.  Surely, Samothrace would be a good place to proclaim the true God and the true way of salvation.  The Spirit did not call Paul and Timothy to proclaim there.  They sail on to the port of Neapolis, then journey inland, to Philippi.  This was a wealthy city: there were mines in the area; it was also, as Luke tells us, a Roman colony.  In all, Paul and Timothy sail about 200 miles, like from here to Marble Falls.  To heed the call of the Spirit, they pass many places and many people.

They “spent several days” in Philippi (16:12).  In a vision, the Spirit called them there; here they are, eager, ready.  Several days pass.  No healings.  No miracles.  No converts.  No response.  Have you ever showed up to the right place for an event, only to discover it was the wrong time?  Or have you ever arrived at the right time only to discover you were at the wrong place?  There Paul and Timothy are, and the sum of what Luke has to tell us is that several days pass: anticlimactic.  Only recall, the Spirit teaches patience; the Spirit teaches perseverance, and gives encouragement; in the Spirit is peace and joy.  Paul knows by now that the Spirit will provide the person and the occasion.  They just have to wait and keep themselves prepared.

In my limited experience, there is a sort of friendly banter between police and firefighters.  From the policeman’s view, firefighters sit around all day, watching TV, eating lasagna.  What a life!  What firefighters are actually doing is keeping prepared, because the alarm can sound at any time, and they need to be ready, at any time.  Yes, they wait—a lot!—and they keep prepared.  Maybe disciples are a sort of firefighter.  The flames of sin will do damage, but we arrive on the scene with the water: let’s pour it on!  Let’s pour on the water, before the flames become an inferno.

If I were there with Paul and Timothy, at the end of several uneventful days, I would probably be wondering why we were there, and whether it was time to move on.  Paul was called to take the Gospel to the Gentiles; he usually began with local Jews.  Maybe he felt better prepared for the truly unconverted by beginning with the partially converted.  Beloved, there are many people within our circles who claim Christianity, but Christianity hasn’t exactly claimed them.  To whom can you go to share Good News?  Go to the partially converted: talk with them, find out what they know about God, about Jesus, what they believe  about faith, and discipleship.  Invite them to a service.  Invite them for a potluck Sunday.  Invite them to Mah-Jongg, or Hand-and-Foot.

Paul and Timothy go to the Krenides River, outside of Philippi.  Scholars speculate that there weren’t enough Jews in Philippi for there to be a synagogue.  Still, the observant Jews would gather for prayer and worship, as Paul knew.  Paul thought there by the river would be a good place to try.  Luke now says something that should get our attention: the apostles “sat down and talked to the women who gathered there” (16:13).  The women?  What about the men?  Why not the men?  Where are the men?  Well, that’s a familiar question!  Not to slight any of the men here this morning—quite the opposite—I praise God for each and every one of you—but we know that when it comes to church, there are more women than men.  We know, and it’s a glory to the church but a shame to me as a man, that women are and have been the backbone of the church—and this congregation.  Why, the widow of Josiah Bell, who founded East and West Columbia, Mary Bell, was the driving force in getting Bethel organized in 1840.

The Pew Research Center’s 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study produced numbers that reflect what we know, at least intuitively: “More than seven-in-ten U.S. Christian women (72%) say religion is ‘very important’ in their lives, compared with 62% of the country’s Christian men [and] Roughly eight-in-ten Christian women also say they are absolutely certain God exists and that the Bible is the word of God, compared with about seven-in-ten men who say this.”[1]  Now, the difference between 62% and 72%, and 80% and 70% is statistically significant, but I don’t want to make too much out of it.  More telling for me as a pastor is the finding that “Christian men and women in the U.S. also differ in their private devotional habits [. . . .] 62% of mainline Protestant women say they pray daily, compared with 44% of men.”[2]  Of still greater interest to me is the finding that women on average spend more time reading the Bible than men.[3]

Why?  Why the gap?  Where are the men?  Author David Murrow sums up a common attitude among men: “church is something for women and children, not men.”[4]  Tell me if the following picture maps onto what we see here at Bethel: “Women comprise more than 60 percent of the typical adult congregation on any given Sunday. At least one-fifth of married women regularly worship without their husbands.”[5]  Those men who regularly attend here probably know that church is just as much for men as for women, that church is for those who need God, man or woman, for those who want to grow in their knowledge of and love for God, for God with us in Jesus Christ, and for God at work within us in the Holy Spirit.  If we are truly here, present, rather than just occupying pew space, it’s because, as Murrow puts it, we “desire to be transformed by Christ.”[6]  That desire is from the Spirit, brothers and sisters.

We know, deep inside, that we aren’t who God means for us to be.  We know, deep inside, that Jesus is the one who makes it possible for us to begin to become the people God means for us to be.  We know, deep inside, that it’s the Holy Spirit that accomplishes this good work in us, through Scripture, preaching, the Sacraments, through the different dimensions of our life together, including sharing the Good News with others: the partially converted, the unconverted, and our husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers who think church is fine and all, for the women and the children.

Paul and Timothy talk to many women, that morning.  Luke mentions only one by name: Lydia, “from Thyatira, who was a dealer in purple cloth” (16:14).  Thyatira is a town in western Turkey: Lydia was a transplant in Philippi, too, just like Paul and Timothy.  Purple cloth was something of a luxury item—a wealthy mining town would be a good place for such trade.  Thyatira was known for the purple dye produced there.  Lydia maintained connections in her hometown.  They shipped her the dye, which she used to make and sell purple cloth: a sign of wealth, status.  Anybody here have a Coach bag?  Italian shoes?  Tom Ford sunglasses?

That information about Lydia is interesting, in its way, but we hear two things even more interesting.  First, Lydia is “a woman who worshiped God” (16:14).  Luke doesn’t say she is a Jew.  A number of Gentiles, in being exposed to Jews, to Jewish faith and the God whom Jews worshiped, began to gravitate towards this God.  These Gentile believers were called God-fearers.  Lydia was almost certainly one of these God-fearers.  She had discovered truth among the Jews, discovered the God who had water for her thirst for transformation.

Here is the Spirit at work, beloved: Paul and Timothy go to Philippi in search of Gentiles open to the Word; after several seemingly fruitless days they go to a place where Jews are likely to be gathered, and they end up talking with a Gentile!  When we go in search of someone we think might be open to God’s Word, God puts in our way someone who actually is.

The second especially interesting thing in what we hear about Lydia is that “the Lord opened her mind to pay attention to what Paul was saying” (16:14).  Paul didn’t open her mind.  Timothy didn’t.  You’ve tried, by direct and indirect means, to reach someone for Christ, and no success, so far.  The Lord must open that person’s mind, beloved.  When?  When?!  The Spirit teaches patience.  The Spirit teaches perseverance.  The Spirit encourages.

The Lord opened Lydia’s mind “to pay attention.”  A seminary professor of mine was working on his computer.  His little girl came to him and was talking to him about something, something that mattered to her.  He was focused on his computer with the usual, mm-hmms and ohs: “Daddy, you’re not listening to me,” she said.  Vaguely guilty and somewhat absently, he replied, “I am listening, sweetie.”  To which she said, “But I need you to listen with your eyes.”  Pay attention.  It’s the Lord, again, in the Spirit, that causes us to pay attention.  Apart from the Spirit, we will remain distracted: distracted from what really matters.

The Lord opens Lydia’s mind to pay attention to what Paul is saying.  Paul is saying something.  He isn’t serving a meal in a soup kitchen.  He isn’t packing a box to go to some far-flung corner of the world.  He isn’t writing a generous check.  He isn’t praying alone in his room; he isn’t praying with other believers in the church.  All those things are helpful and blessed.  Disciples are called to do them, and more.  He is talking to someone about Jesus.  He’s working on a relationship.  Paul has no idea what sort of reception he’s going to get.  They’ve spent several days talking and getting nowhere.  Paul keeps talking.  He hopes for welcome, for receiving and believing; above all, he places himself in the hands of the Lord, trusting God for the result.  The words are coming to Paul from God, going to this other person for God.  Paul has no control over the outcome, but as a believer, he has a role in the proclamation, in telling others about Jesus.

And to his delight, and to her salvation, and to the glory of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, Lydia says Yes, Amen to what Paul says to her.  Beloved, Paul was rebuked, rebuffed, rejected more times than he could count.  He wasn’t always rejected or refused.  Not always.  The Spirit is with us, among us, in us, to teach us patience, perseverance, and to encourage us.  In the Spirit, sisters and brothers, in the Spirit there is joy, and peace.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.  

                [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/06/christian-women-in-the-u-s-are-more-religious-than-their-male-counterparts/

                [2] Ibid.

                [3] Joe Carter, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/christian-women-religious-christian-men/

                [4] David Murrow, qtd at https://www1.cbn.com/churchandministry/why-men-hate-church

                [5] Ibid.

                [6] Ibid.