Opened Hearts

 Acts 16:9-15  NRSV

 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.

***************************************************************

We hosted a workshop here yesterday, Ethics Training for Clergy, a mandatory training for Disciples and United Church of Christ ministers.   Because ministers were coming from all over Northern California, some drove down on Friday to avoid a long drive followed by a 6 hour workshop and another long drive home.  One stayed at my house Friday night.  Over coffee Saturday morning we were talking about how much fun we had in seminary learning about the various occupations and relationships in Scripture. 

Take Lydia, for example.  She was a dealer in purple cloth, which may not seem like a big deal, until we learn that purple cloth was very rare.   Purple dye was made from the shells of sea snails and it took about 12,000 snails to make enough dye to color the trim of a single garment, making purple dye prohibitively expensive.   Sometimes too expensive even for royalty. It is said that one emperor wouldn’t allow his wife to buy a shawl made from purple silk because it literally cost its weight in gold!   So Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, would have been a very wealthy woman, with plenty of room in her house for Paul and his companions on the journey.  At some point on that Sabbath day, Paul baptized her and her household, so she was most likely a widow who was the head of both business and home.  Unusual perhaps, but not unheard of.  

Lydia is described as a worshiper of God, a Gentile believer like Cornelius.  She had gathered with others by the river to pray and worship, and when Paul spoke, “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said”.    

The thing about Gentile believers is this.  Although they had learned the Law and the Prophets, and some of the history of the Hebrew people, they did not have centuries upon centuries of certainty about who and what the Messiah would be.  They had heard what the Prophets said of the coming Messiah, but their expectations weren’t formed by a lifetime of study and preaching.  They could open their hearts and minds to the idea that a wandering rabbi who was executed as a criminal could be the Messiah much more easily than someone who has been taught from birth to expect a Son of David - a warrior king who would liberate the Jews.   Lydia, a Gentile believer, had her heart opened by God to hear about Jesus, and to accept what she heard as Truth.   

It can be very hard, maybe close to impossible, to accept a new truth over something we have been taught was true our whole lives.  Very often we are quite fond of the things we believe to be true, to the extent that we may be unwilling to listen to anything that would suggest our truth may not, in fact, be totally accurate.  I sometimes see perfectly reasonable conversations on Facebook and blogs degenerate into name calling and rudeness over whether certain statements are factual.  It almost always reminds me of a story my mother told - entirely too frequently - about walking into the room where my sister and I were supposed to be napping only to find us standing up in our cribs yelling at each other, one saying No and one saying Yes.  No one ever knew what that was about.  But we were toddlers.  We didn’t know how to discuss things rationally.    We had to grow up and learn to allow new ideas help inform our decisions.    Thirty some years later, when I realized I had serious issues with alcohol and drugs, God pointed me in the direction of the Twelve Steps in order that I might change my life entirely.  And, I believe, in order that I might even change what I believed to be true about God.  According to the Basic Text of Narcotics Anonymous, “To improve ourselves takes effort, and since there is no way in the world to graft a new idea on a closed mind, an opening must be made somehow.”  (NA  White Booklet  pg. 10)  For me, that opening came through the words of other people who had come to believe in a loving and forgiving God.  

Making change is difficult and requires more than just a decision. It requires action.  I imagine that the slogan “All means ALL” was discussed pretty thoroughly before this congregation adopted it.  And if all we had done was tell ourselves that we believed this to be true, nothing would have changed.  But when we started advertising it on our website, some amazing things happened.  Because we didn’t just say it.  We embraced that truth - that in this place, All means ALL.  We were able to welcome more new people who brought with them incredible gifts of music and prayer and artistic talent and babies and ministries of all kinds.  We found ourselves producing a new generation of loving Christian people, who don’t allow minor differences like race or ability or orientation or gender identity or sex or marital status or age get in the way of seeing Christ in each other.  But before we could go forward with this new thing, we had to allow an opening in our hearts and minds.  

In Lydia’s case, that opening was made by the Lord.   In the case of a young man from Indiana, the opening came in a less direct way.  Vince Amlin, co-pastor of Bethany UCC and co-planter of Gilead Church Chicago, tells this story.  “My first Sunday in Bloomington, I signed up for a small group at First United Church. It met weekly for a year, which, at age 21, seemed like the most radical commitment to Christ one could make.

When we came to the story of Lydia, the curriculum taught that we can be faithful wherever we are. While Paul gets shipwrecked and thrown in jail for his evangelism, Lydia and her family are baptized and keep selling purple cloth. It's enough, the book said, to do our work—whatever it is—faithfully.

"I don't believe that!" I declared. "I think God wants something more. I think God wants us to give our whole lives to ministry!"

To their credit, no one called me an arrogant twerp. Instead, my pastor said, "If that's what you're hearing, maybe you should listen."

Three months later I took my first job in ministry.

But you know, that curriculum Rev. Amlin talks about was right. We Christians, all of us, are called to serve God the best we can doing whatever it is that we do - faithfully.   We are not all called to the ordained ministry, which is good, because we need people to be in the pews and the choirs and out doing God’s work in the community.  But we are all called to make whatever we do a ministry, a way to serve God.  Whatever it is that we do - teaching or social work or law enforcement or building septic tanks or massage or cooking in a restaurant or landscaping or nursing or housecleaning or helping people look beautiful  - what ever we do, we do it the very best we can as an offering to God.   We may believe that we aren't good enough, or don't have the right gifts, or don't have time, to serve God.  But we are good enough.  And our gifts are the right gifts.  And we have every moment of every day in which to serve God.  So let us all open ourselves to letting God use us in our daily occupations to bring God’s kingdom to life, here.   Let us open our hearts to God, and offer ourselves to God, just as we are.