As the season of Easter progresses, we continue to read from the book of Acts. We journey with the apostles as travel from place to place, spreading the good news of God in Jesus, the Christ.

Today’s reading begins with a dream; Paul’s dream. In this dream a man from Macedonia pleaded for his help. “Come to Macedonia and help us.” Macedonia was to the north-west , across the Mediterranean, in eastern Europe, on what is now known as the Balkan peninsula.

It seems that the man in the vision was an identifiable person, but we are never really told who it was. In the end though, it does not really matter; the dream sparked a mission that was part of the grand scheme of taking the gospel to the ends of the known world.

This is not the first time a dream has been used as a means of the Spirit’s intervention. In last week’s reading we are told how Peter’s mind about the value of Gentiles was changed by a powerful vision. In Paul’s case, the Spirit had already intervened to put a atop to plans he had made; plans that he had thought were appropriate. The Spirit had other ideas. It is clear that the Holy Spirit is in charge of both Paul’s missionary activities and the timing of them. So Paul and his companions immediately set sail for Macedonia and end up in Philippi. We are told that on the Sabbath they went outside of the city and found some female believers on a riverbank, which was apparently a place of prayer. Some have speculated that this was an informal synagogue which lacked the ten men needed for a “quorum” to hold an official worship service. It seems that the leader of the group is one of these women, a dealer in purple cloth, named Lydia. Her vocation, a seemingly insignificant fact, actually tells us a great deal. Because the dyes used to make purple cloth were rare, Purple cloth was very expensive. It was reserved for royalty and for the rich, and it was instantly recognized as a sign of power and influence. She was most likely very well off and would have rubbed shoulders with the powerful and wealthy people of the area.

She has the means to be able to invite Paul and his companions to stay in her home and it becomes a base for their operations in this area.

Many in that place would have thought that Lydia “had it made”, yet the message of the gospel is that she lacked one very important thing; Christian faith. Her conversion drove home the message that wealth, power and prestige are nothing without a relationship with the living God in and through the risen Christ. In the expansion of the church the conversion of influential people gave credibility to the gospel message; it was not just for the poor, or the illiterate; it was universal.

In the book of Acts, the call of God seems always to be very clear. The Spirit speaks to a follower:

“Come here!”

“ Go there!”

“Do this!” Or in today’s case, “Stay away from there!”

I suspect that it was not always quite that simple. There must have been a great deal of doubt and struggle involved in the process of listening, hearing and understanding. What is clear though in these readings, is that the plans of human beings, were constantly being challenged and CHANGED by the intervention of the Spirit.

In this season of Easter, liturgically speaking, we are coming to terms with the presence of the risen Christ in the early church and looking forward to marking the day of Pentecost, on which the Holy Spirit’s presence was unmistakably felt by the assembled believers. This experience of the Spirit tuned fear-filled disciples into fearless proclaimers of the Good News. So even though we are not yet at Pentecost, the Acts passages, give us a glimpse of that Spirit fuelled action of the church.

This is the season for graduations. Parents and grandparents endure long, tedious ceremonies in order to see a specific person cross that stage. Graduation is an ending but it is also beginning. For those who have gone straight through from High School, it is, in many ways, the beginning of ‘real adulthood’. I assume that most of this year’s new graduate started looking for work long before convocation. These days, if a graduate is lucky, he or she has found work in the field for which they have trained. If a graduate is lucky, he or she has a choice between several jobs. The graduate asks, “ Where shall I go”, or, “ For which of these jobs am I most suited?”

Sometimes the decision is clear cut; sometimes it is very difficult. Often, it is only with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, that the wisdom of the decision becomes clear.

I suspect that it was something like this for those first apostles. Yet it seems clear that they desired to do the will of the Spirit. I wonder if we are as willing to let the Spirit guide us; as individuals, or as a province or nation, or even as a community of faith. When we sit down to make our decisions how often do we ask, “What is the will of God in this situation? Or do we usually ask, “What is it that WE want?” or. Let us look at the way that many organizations make decisions, “Why change? We have ALWAYS done it this way.”

In order to answer this question it is necessary to delve into the question of how one knows the will of the Spirit.

For those who are seeking to be Ordained and Commissioned this year at annual Conference meetings, United Church of Canada this is the season of “transfer and settlement”. The process began about two months ago when candidates for ordination were interviewed and then were assigned to a conference according to the needs of various conferences from coast to coast. Problems arose for Maritime Conference when it was realized that there were more ordinands assigned to us than places to which to assign, or settle, them. The conference and pastoral Relations networks scrambled to encourage Pastoral Charges looking for a minister, to apply for Settlement and let the Settlement Committee assign one. In the end, two ordinands were offered transfer to another conference and five were settled in the Maritime Conference. In case you haven’t heard, Pam was settled in PEI Presbytery, in the Bideford Pastoral Charge. Pam is a candidate for ordination from the Rexton Pastoral Charge

When I went through transfer and settlement in 1988 there was much time spent in discussion, prayer and reflection, many forms to complete, several interviews, an audio tape to record, and then restless nights, even though I thought I had decided that it was up to the Spirit or at least the Conference and the Spirit! For the committees charged with this work, the essential dilemma is: “how is the will of the Spirit discerned amongst the needs of Pastoral Charges and the needs, gifts and wants of ordinands?” It is a difficult task; most of the time it’s a good match, of ordinand and settlement charge, sometimes it is not!

How do we as a church community listen for the guidance of the Spirit? Can we expect visions? Writing on the wall? The balancing and engagement of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience is one of the ways of discerning the will of the Spirit that comes from our Methodist tradition.

The early church received guidance from the Scriptures of what we know as the Old Testament, as well as writings and traditions that, eventually, were accepted as inspired scripture, and are now known to us as the New Testament. Yet, even Paul and Peter were persuaded by their experience of the faith of the Gentile converts that they encountered, that their previous reluctance to proclaim the Gospel to non-Jews was challenged and then discarded altogether. Last week’s story of Peter’s vision of all the un-clean animals and today’s story of the vision which called Paul into gentile territory are prime examples of this flexibility and willingness to change.

Of course we can never totally separate the social, the political and the spiritual; we are kidding ourselves if we think we can!

It has been many generations since slavery was considered an acceptable social institution. Even though its acceptable to Paul and other biblical writers, we would be hard pressed to find a church which proclaimed this today!

When I was in theological school we spent a great deal of time, looking at the churches positions on Apartheid, the system of segregation and oppression of non-Whites in South Africa. We learned that some churches were able, to justify it biblically and theologically. Other churches went so far to name the theological justification of Apartheid as a heresy. Apartheid is gone, but South Africa has a long way to go before true equality is achieved. It took a lot of people of faith, and of political savvy, risking a great deal, and great international pressure to change this system. I suspect that the theology of those who supported it will take much longer to change.

We can look at our country and say smugly that we, through our churches and governments, helped to change this terrible situation of injustice, but we have to take a long and hard look at how we treat natives, immigrants and other visible minorities. We need to look at the spiritual lessons learned by others, and open ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit as we look to the future of our country.

We as a culture cannot, and should not, try to ignore the great cultural differences that exist between our world and that of first century Palestine. We don’t even look a the world the way OUR ancestors did, let alone the first Christians. Yet, the faith of the ages challenges our total reliance on human reason alone.

In any process of discernment of the will of God and the guidance of the spirit we need to be open to the reality and power of the spirit. We must actively seek the will of God, and be able to place our own wants, ideas and needs beside what we are told by scripture, tradition and the prophetic voice of those who present a different vision. We must be prepared to change, or to do the hard thing, to follow the narrow way and to risk everything for the God we have met in Jesus of Nazareth.

We are called to follow. We are called to listen for the Spirit’s guidance. We are called to trust in the One who has named us Beloved Children.

Amen.

Acts 16: 16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22: 12-14; 16-17, 20-21
John 17: 20-26

“We Are Not Alone!”

It was Washington, DC, and the Date was August 28, 1963. A march for jobs and civil rights had reached its climax. As he stood at the base of the Washington Monument, The Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr., unofficial leader of the civil rights movement, gave the most famous speech of the decade, perhaps even of the century. King’s words rang out “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ … I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” A great deal in his country has changed since that time, and discrimination against someone because of his or her race is prohibited. Of course, the reality does not always match the hope of the law, as is also the case in Canada, but the law is still there as a beacon, a guiding star, an ideal towards which to move. It is a vision that calls us toward what we can be, a vision of what our creator desires of us all.

In a certain sense, the scripture readings for today speak of the life of faith in this ideal kind of way. The scriptures speak of a vision, a hope, a way of being in the world that is free from discrimination and fear, and bound only to the law of God’s unconditional love.

The story from the book of Acts is like a great stage drama in several acts.

Act 1, Scene 1: Paul and Silas encounter a slave girl who is earning her owners a great deal of money because of her extraordinary gift. Annoyed at her outbursts, Paul heals her.

Act 1, Scene 2: Her owners are most upset at this turn of events and have them thrown into jail on charges that they were disturbing the peace and advocating unlawful behaviours and beliefs. The text implies, of course, that they were angry because Paul and Silas had interfered with their means of making a quick buck.

Act 2, Scene 1: Based upon a suspicion of being potential jail-breakers they were sent to the innermost cell and their feet bound in stocks.

Act 2, Scene 2. It is midnight and these two men of God were were praying and singing hymns, no doubt to the surprise of the other prisoners. It’s not the stuff of prison movies, at least! Then, amazingly, an earthquake shook the prison and the walls came tumbling down. Even more amazingly, the prisoners did not go anywhere. When the jailer arrived, he was ready to commit suicide, in order to escape certain torture for allowing the prisoners to escape. Paul presents this by assuring him that they are all present and accounted for.

Act 2, Scene 3. The jailer took them outside, and they spoke to him of the Christian faith. The jailer cared for the prisoners’ wounds and he and his household were baptized.

The book of Revelation, written to a church enduring heavy persecution, is given in the form of a vision to strengthen their faith in those uncertain times. It is a vision which assures them that they are rooted in the faith of their ancestor, the great King David; a vision which assured them that their thirst would be quenched with life-giving water, a gift from the one Jesus Christ who called them as his own.

The gospel passage, part of a prayer of Jesus, speaks of his desire for unity among those who will come after him. While it sounds like a lot of convoluted mumbo-jumbo, it speaks of Jesus’ earnest desire for unity. This unity is almost a precondition for the witness of love; the love which will show that the followers of Jesus are in fact his followers.

Unity is NOT the same as uniformity. There is nothing wrong, as far as I am concerned, with diversity of religious beliefs, even within the same community. From the beginning of the church there have been disputes which have promoted division. Where the divisions become a deterrent to the proclamation of the Gospel, is when Christians lose sight of the belief that it is the same divine spirit that is in each one.

The United Church has its own statement of faith and mission, known to many as “A New Creed.” Revised slightly several times, it remains a concise statement of faith and mission for our denomination , and in a sense, a goal and vision for which to strive. In many ways this week’s readings speak to the same issues addressed in this statement of faith.

The biblical passages are about faith and trust in the midst of trial, adversity, and uncertainty. The statement, “We are not alone, we live in God’s world” is, in fact a radical statement of faith. We are living in a world which increasingly isolates people from one another, especially as a result of intense competition, as each one tries to get ahead of all of the others. The downsizing of corporations leaves former friends in intense competition fro fewer jobs even as the measure of success becomes how much one has. The size of one’s house, the number of high priced recreational toys and the age of our cars is supposed to tell the world how successful we are. Yet, deep down many successful people are driven by their feelings of failure and many try and try to find happiness in seeking more and more. The message of the gospel is that this kind of seeking can never bring happiness; this kind of happiness can only come from the life of faith ad trust.

The degree of understanding of our universe is rapidly increasing, but with each new discovery there seem to be more and more things we can no longer know with any certainty. As cures are found from one disease, new stains of old viruses confound the conventional treatments.

Yet, it always was and still is God’s world. No matter how much more we understand, no matter how much more we realize there is to learn, we cannot ultimately replace God with our knowledge or our understanding. That is not to say that we should not seek understanding, by no means. The only ultimate answer, as we seek truth and understanding of our world, is to trust in God.

As peace comes to one troubled situation, war and bloodshed break out somewhere else. We wonder when it will all stop. The message of the gospel is that human beings cannot find true peace without the peace that comes from God, the peace that passes all understanding.

The creed and the scriptures go on to describe the nature of this God. This is the God that we know in Jesus of Nazareth. This Jesus of Nazareth was the one who lived 2000 years ago, who called ordinary people, into relationship both with God and with other humans, despite differences of race and belief system. This Jesus was seen by the church as the window to the Holy in a way that no other human had ever been. His call was to unity, to reconciliation, to a radical new kind of faith community. It was this reality of the Holy, this experience of God that could not be killed, even by the crucifixion.

It was the living presence of this God who sustained them and compelled them into the community which became known as the church. As Paul and Silas and countless other apostles and evangelists went about proclaiming the Good News, they proclaimed this power which could defeat all kinds of evil, even the power of death.

So as we reflect on they lives of Paul and Silas and the other apostles; as we reflect on the words of Jesus himself, we are challenged to walk that same walk of faith.

Like Paul, when we see sickness and poverty and injustice and exploitation, we are called, in the words of our creed, to ‘seek justice and resist evil.

When we are tempted to abuse the goodness of creation and claim it all for ourselves, we are called to “live with respect in creation.”

When we are tempted to look the other way, as Paul and Silas must have been, when we know that our stand will have a great cost for us, we are called to look into the eyes of the powerless and the needy and see reflected there the love and mission of Jesus and in his Spirit, to “love and serve others”. We are called to show this love even when the cost to us seems to be too great.

For we are not engaged in a mere social experiment; we are following no one less than the living God. This is the God with the power to bring what is out of nothing and the power to bring life out of death and despair.

This is the God who can pick us up when we do not have the energy to go on. This is the God who cares for us when the world has left us behind as road-kill on the super-highway of life. This is the God who can give meaning to our lives when we have come to that place where we have achieved everything we ever wanted, except true peace and true happiness.

This is the God who goes with us on all of life’s journeys and who gives them meaning and purpose. This is the God who has the power to give us life and to give it to us in great abundance. We only have to stop chasing the dreams of the world and live into the dreams of faith.

We live on God’s world. We are called to be the church. Thanks be to God. Amen. -