Acts 16:9-15 • Psalm 67 •Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 • John 5:1-9
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.” 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. We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 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. 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. 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. 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."
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Let’s be honest: we Christians don’t have the best of track records. Our history is replete with countless examples of what I’ll call “the mission impulse gone awry.” The list could go on and on: the Crusades of the Middle Ages seeking to Christianize Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land through violence…the Christian missionary conquests and subsequent annihilation of native cultures in North America, South America, Asia and Africa… We have a track record of taking the good gospel news of Jesus and demanding and imposing that others experience the gospel as we understand it. But even among those whom we so desperately want to share Jesus…among those we desperately want to go out and change…God can disarm our emotionally charged expectations with surprising graces in those very people. God can open our hearts to realize God could be at work in the most unexpected of places.
Desmond Tutu, the former bishop of an Episcopal Diocese in South Africa, a man who is a faith hero to many, a man who led the successful fight end discriminatory separation of blacks and whites in South Africa, said in a radio interview last week: “…if those white people (that is, the Dutch colonizers of South Africa) had intended [to keep] us under, they shouldn’t have given us the Bible. Because, whoa, I mean, it’s almost as if it is written specifically just for your situation.” Through God’s Word, God’s mission found a way not to oppress the black people of South Africa, but to liberate them from believing they were biologically inferior. When they heard in God’s Word that everyone is created in the image of God, that everyone is a “God-carrier”, it put joy in their hearts.
The apostle Paul had that zealous mission impulse to share the risen Christ: to go to new lands and bring God to them. When Paul receives a vision to go on a mission to the Roman colony of Philippi, his appetite is starving to share God’s love and forgiveness in Jesus because he had just been shut down and forbidden by the Holy Spirit to go on two other missions. Paul was ready! He was going to make it happen…or so he thought!
But in Philippi, Paul’s mission draws him to a place of prayer by a river. And there, as Paul preaches and proclaims the good news of Jesus, he discovers that God’s has already been at work in Philippi! It is no accident that God opens the hearts of Lydia and her household to be baptized at a place of worship by a river… God has a long history of doing missionary work through rivers.
It was a river that began the Holy Scriptures, as the last scene in Genesis of the garden of Eden. This was a river that nourished Creation, but because of Adam and Eve’s turning away from God they were denied access to that river of Eden. But it is at that same river that God concludes the testimony of the Scriptures, in today’s vision from the Book of Revelation. Through God’s river of life, God invites us to drink from God’s nourishing waters, to see them flowing bright as crystal, coming down from the throne of God, right through the middle of the city of Jerusalem. (Rev. 22:1-2) This is a river of God’s life given for the sake of the world…the river of salvation history…and this is a river the flows under our feet as we sit here today. This river of God, this river of life, flows among us today—because Jesus places us in this river without us taking one single step. But this river of living water is Jesus Christ himself…who lived, died and rose again for the whole world, he floats us into the ever-flowing, continuously moving story of God’s mission: a river that flows through the life and history of Israel, that flows through Jesus’ saving work, that flows through the mission of the early church, that flows through our very own worship here today!
It is no accident that Jesus finds a way into the heart of Lydia through Paul’s preaching…at a place of worship by a river. God’s mission shows up at rivers. God’s mission shows up at places of worship like where Lydia and her household hear Paul preach. But wait. Mission—in worship? Does that make sense to us? Isn’t mission supposed to happen outside of a place of worship? Often we think of Paul as a missionary, or other missionaries as people going out to evangelize and proclaim the gospel overseas…or somewhere else. But mission is not only the work of evangelists. Mission does not only happen in other places. God’s mission happens here. Now. We are missionaries here, today. As one of my colleagues says, “Worship is mission.” Worship is mission just as much as the worship at Philippi was God’s mission that reached the open heart of Lydia to receive the gift of new life in Christ.
Mission is not about what we do…it’s about what God does. Being a part of the river-flow of God’s mission—that’s about recognizing and being aware of what God is up to…and giving God the credit for the amazing work God does! When God gathers us together, we believe that something missional will happen. When we worship, God moves our hands to extend peace with a stranger, or an estranged brother or sister in Christ we disagree with. When we worship, God speaks words of life into our lives through the Scripture texts that may just happen to be appointed for that day, and that touch right at the heart of what’s happening in our lives or in our world. When we worship God uses our hands to put offerings in a plate that reach missions—like this month’s mission that God will use to bring together in reconciliation incarcerated parents and their children.
It’s about time God starts getting credit for all the missional work God is up to. We often say that coincidences, or things that happen that we don’t expect are “lucky”, they’re “fate”, or “meant to be.” I say those moments…are God moments. It’s time luck, fate or destiny don’t get the credit…and God gets some worship for all that God’s up to! This week in our congregation God’s mission brought people home from the hospital! This week God’s mission comforted people who were facing life-threatening illnesses! This week God’s mission brought food to the table of hungry people in our community through the PADS program! All because of God! When we get surprised by God in these ways, instead of saying we are “lucky”…we can say, “That’s God!” or “I love when God does that!” When we start noticing all the ways God’s mission is alive in the world, it’s hard to find where the river of God’s saving, healing, reconciling mission is not happening!
We’re in the midst of a busy capital appeal called Building Faith and Future. It’s busy with activity right now. But when we look back at this time years later, and see where God’s missional river took us…we will see that God’s mission was not something we imposed on others—but something that God did in us to show us what God was up to all around us. We will see God’s mission did not just happen in other countries. God’s mission did not just happen in Tutu’s South Africa. It did not just happen through evangelists or pastors or chaplains. We will see that the river of God’s mission flows also through the heart of the worship of this faith community—where we give praise to God because of Jesus who lives among us. In this community, worship is our heartbeat, it is our lifeblood, is the river through which our lives, and the life of God’s love for this broken world flows. It is a love that flows deeply and widely. It is a love that takes us to places we never dreamed of—all without moving a single foot. And looking back we may ask, “How did we get here?” “How did we make it through that period?” And the answer will surprise us then as much as it does today. “It was God! I love when God does that!” Amen.
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