The man who wasn't there
Commentary
In his history of the early church Luke gives prominence to dreams and visions in order to underline the significance of certain pivotal events. Prior to his conversion Paul has a vision of Christ on the road to Damascus. Before Peter receives Cornelius into the church, thus removing barriers of race, he has a dream. Before Paul sets foot for the first time on the Greek Peninsula, as today's reading from Acts tells us, he has a dream. These dream sequences are Luke's way of affirming Divine action and guidance in each breakthrough of the early church to new people or places. Today's reading opens up some imaginative paths for the preacher without straying beyond Luke's overall theme. In the epistle reading we are again surprised with the dazzling beauty of the language of the prophet, John of Revelation, as we read the hope-laden conclusion to his letter to the congregations in harm's way. In the gospel reading John the Apostle uses the farewell discourses of Jesus to prepare the members of his community for what they can expect as the gospel clashes with the ways and values of this world as it is.
Sermon Seeds In The Lessons
Acts 16:9-15
Yesterday upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Gee, I wish he'd go away.
This anonymous bit of doggerel comes to mind whenever I read this passage. Paul in his dream sees a man from Macedonia calling to him. "Come over and help us." Paul didn't need a second invitation. Luke, who it seems was with Paul, comments, "We at once set about getting passage for Macedonia." I get a human picture here of a missionary ready for another success story, maybe even hungry for one. Paul had recently experienced some disappointments in Asia Minor (Acts 16:6-7). Now, someone is urgently calling him. Someone wants what he has to share. I picture an expectant Paul on his way to Macedonia. But there is something about their entrance into Philippi that contrasts sharply with their departure from Troas. They enter the city and just drift around for a few days. Nobody seems to care that they are there. Why should they? Where is the man in the dream? He is certainly not anywhere in sight. There is a congregation to be birthed in Philippi, but obviously that is not going to be an overnight affair. Imagination can roam here. Paul met the man who wasn't there in a dream. Sometimes we meet him in the flesh. He's the fellow who talks a good game. He can sit on a committee and get everyone fired up with all sorts of ideas for projects. He can be persuasive, but when it's time to get to work he is a no-show. We can all entertain dreamy expectations. A television commercial shows a proud mother watching her daughter receive her college diploma. The young grad's head is filled with thoughts of scientific accomplishments with the company that has just recruited her. "I just can't wait," she says to herself. We hope she doesn't become like the person who said, "When I was 20 I wanted to save the world. Now that I am 40 I am glad just to save part of my salary." Imagine a new seminary grad. She is filled with idealism, enthusiasm, and commitment. In one way or another she has heard the call from Macedonia. She has not only heard the call, she has also heard from the chairperson of the Search Committee of Old First Church who assures her that Old First is a great opportunity for the right person. Soon she arrives in her Philippi and there is Old First soundly asleep on the village green. She will wake it up. She has a head full of new ideas, but Old First hasn't entertained a new idea in over 100 years. Soon our young minister will experience the gap between rosy expectations and reality. She will recover and settle in for the long haul. Some do not recover. Someone asked a veteran pastor, "Of all the churches you have served, which is your favorite?" With a wistful look he replied, "The next one." Paul made no dramatic splash in Philippi. His undramatic start was at a riverside prayer meeting with a small group of women. But what better way to start than with a small group of persons who can be enlisted for the long haul? Another homiletic path suggests itself right here. This is ironic: the call to Paul comes through a man in a dream, the response to Paul comes through some flesh and blood women. Most of them seem to have been Jewish. Stifled by rules that forbade women to speak in the synagogue, they found support and stimulation in their own prayer meeting. At least one was a Gentile pagan attracted to Judaism, Lydia, an independent business woman, a rarity in those days. Paul could not have fallen in with a more interesting and promising group. We know Luke's theological conviction about the reality of God's guidance and providential encounters. Does Luke in this narrative fire a shot at the misogynist culture? Lydia is one of the grand Lukan ladies who became a leader and financial supporter of Paul as Joanna became a benefactor of Jesus (Luke 8:3). She and her anonymous companions merit a sermon. Here's an historical note that may or may not lead anywhere. The Great Seal of the Salem Colony that came to the Massachusetts Bay in the early 1600s showed an American Indian and bore the inscription, "Come Over And Help Us." Our spiritual predecessors did not prove to be exactly God's gift to native Americans.
Revelation 21:10, 22--22:5 Think here of the little girl who said, "The Bible ends with revolutions." The Sunday school teacher had asked the class to name the last book of the Bible so technically the girl's answer was incorrect, but her theology was right on track. The Word from beyond brings change and transformation. The closing chapter of the last book of the New Testament affirms the ultimate passing away of the old heaven and the old earth and the coming of the new heaven and the new earth. At the heart of the vision is the new community. Note how John ties together universality and diversity, the individual and the social body. This vision brings vocational imperatives to us in the here and now.
John 14:23-29
John's unique word for the Holy Spirit is the word Paraclete which has been variously translated as Advocate or Comforter or Strengthener. No one title is fully adequate, for the Spirit is the mentor, guide, strengthener of the community in its precarious journey in a world whose dominant values it does not share. It is John's vocabulary for affirming the mystery of presence and guidance. The Paraclete is One who walks beside us. T. S. Eliot's long poem, The Wasteland, has within it the haunting lines: "Who is the third who walks always beside you, gliding soft in a white mantle hooded, I do not know whether a man or a woman?" The lines were inspired by Sir Ernest Shackelton's account of a dangerous trek he made across South Georgia in Antarctica. The full story of that dangerous journey by the famed explorer is told by R. B. Robertson in his book, Of Whales And Men (Knopf, New York, 1954). Robertson was a Scottish psychiatrist who for a change of pace signed on as doctor to a whaling expedition. Shackelton in 1915 was leading a group of scientists across the Antarctic continent from Weddell Sea to Ross Sea to get a general picture of its formation. Disaster struck even before the trip could start. Shackelton's ship was crushed by packed ice in the Weddell Sea and lost. He and 27 others found themselves sitting with three tiny whale boats in the most frozen sea on earth. Shackelton left 22 of the party at the nearest point of land (called Elephant Island) and with five others set out on a fantastic trip to seek help. The climax of this trip was the decision to slide down a sheer wall of ice in the darkness. They did end their impossible journey in the safety of the whaling office in Stromness. Someone spoke of Shackelton as one of a breed of people who go out because "they know there is something else that can be felt but not quite understood in this world. And they get closer to that thing, that Fourth Man who marched with Shackelton across South Georgia." Shackelton himself wrote: "When I look back at those days, I have no doubt that Providence guided us .... I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three." His other companions confessed to the same feeling that there was a presence with them. "One feels," said Shackelton, "the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech in trying to describe things intangible, but the record of our journey would not be complete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts."
Sermon Seeds In The Lessons
Acts 16:9-15
Yesterday upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Gee, I wish he'd go away.
This anonymous bit of doggerel comes to mind whenever I read this passage. Paul in his dream sees a man from Macedonia calling to him. "Come over and help us." Paul didn't need a second invitation. Luke, who it seems was with Paul, comments, "We at once set about getting passage for Macedonia." I get a human picture here of a missionary ready for another success story, maybe even hungry for one. Paul had recently experienced some disappointments in Asia Minor (Acts 16:6-7). Now, someone is urgently calling him. Someone wants what he has to share. I picture an expectant Paul on his way to Macedonia. But there is something about their entrance into Philippi that contrasts sharply with their departure from Troas. They enter the city and just drift around for a few days. Nobody seems to care that they are there. Why should they? Where is the man in the dream? He is certainly not anywhere in sight. There is a congregation to be birthed in Philippi, but obviously that is not going to be an overnight affair. Imagination can roam here. Paul met the man who wasn't there in a dream. Sometimes we meet him in the flesh. He's the fellow who talks a good game. He can sit on a committee and get everyone fired up with all sorts of ideas for projects. He can be persuasive, but when it's time to get to work he is a no-show. We can all entertain dreamy expectations. A television commercial shows a proud mother watching her daughter receive her college diploma. The young grad's head is filled with thoughts of scientific accomplishments with the company that has just recruited her. "I just can't wait," she says to herself. We hope she doesn't become like the person who said, "When I was 20 I wanted to save the world. Now that I am 40 I am glad just to save part of my salary." Imagine a new seminary grad. She is filled with idealism, enthusiasm, and commitment. In one way or another she has heard the call from Macedonia. She has not only heard the call, she has also heard from the chairperson of the Search Committee of Old First Church who assures her that Old First is a great opportunity for the right person. Soon she arrives in her Philippi and there is Old First soundly asleep on the village green. She will wake it up. She has a head full of new ideas, but Old First hasn't entertained a new idea in over 100 years. Soon our young minister will experience the gap between rosy expectations and reality. She will recover and settle in for the long haul. Some do not recover. Someone asked a veteran pastor, "Of all the churches you have served, which is your favorite?" With a wistful look he replied, "The next one." Paul made no dramatic splash in Philippi. His undramatic start was at a riverside prayer meeting with a small group of women. But what better way to start than with a small group of persons who can be enlisted for the long haul? Another homiletic path suggests itself right here. This is ironic: the call to Paul comes through a man in a dream, the response to Paul comes through some flesh and blood women. Most of them seem to have been Jewish. Stifled by rules that forbade women to speak in the synagogue, they found support and stimulation in their own prayer meeting. At least one was a Gentile pagan attracted to Judaism, Lydia, an independent business woman, a rarity in those days. Paul could not have fallen in with a more interesting and promising group. We know Luke's theological conviction about the reality of God's guidance and providential encounters. Does Luke in this narrative fire a shot at the misogynist culture? Lydia is one of the grand Lukan ladies who became a leader and financial supporter of Paul as Joanna became a benefactor of Jesus (Luke 8:3). She and her anonymous companions merit a sermon. Here's an historical note that may or may not lead anywhere. The Great Seal of the Salem Colony that came to the Massachusetts Bay in the early 1600s showed an American Indian and bore the inscription, "Come Over And Help Us." Our spiritual predecessors did not prove to be exactly God's gift to native Americans.
Revelation 21:10, 22--22:5 Think here of the little girl who said, "The Bible ends with revolutions." The Sunday school teacher had asked the class to name the last book of the Bible so technically the girl's answer was incorrect, but her theology was right on track. The Word from beyond brings change and transformation. The closing chapter of the last book of the New Testament affirms the ultimate passing away of the old heaven and the old earth and the coming of the new heaven and the new earth. At the heart of the vision is the new community. Note how John ties together universality and diversity, the individual and the social body. This vision brings vocational imperatives to us in the here and now.
John 14:23-29
John's unique word for the Holy Spirit is the word Paraclete which has been variously translated as Advocate or Comforter or Strengthener. No one title is fully adequate, for the Spirit is the mentor, guide, strengthener of the community in its precarious journey in a world whose dominant values it does not share. It is John's vocabulary for affirming the mystery of presence and guidance. The Paraclete is One who walks beside us. T. S. Eliot's long poem, The Wasteland, has within it the haunting lines: "Who is the third who walks always beside you, gliding soft in a white mantle hooded, I do not know whether a man or a woman?" The lines were inspired by Sir Ernest Shackelton's account of a dangerous trek he made across South Georgia in Antarctica. The full story of that dangerous journey by the famed explorer is told by R. B. Robertson in his book, Of Whales And Men (Knopf, New York, 1954). Robertson was a Scottish psychiatrist who for a change of pace signed on as doctor to a whaling expedition. Shackelton in 1915 was leading a group of scientists across the Antarctic continent from Weddell Sea to Ross Sea to get a general picture of its formation. Disaster struck even before the trip could start. Shackelton's ship was crushed by packed ice in the Weddell Sea and lost. He and 27 others found themselves sitting with three tiny whale boats in the most frozen sea on earth. Shackelton left 22 of the party at the nearest point of land (called Elephant Island) and with five others set out on a fantastic trip to seek help. The climax of this trip was the decision to slide down a sheer wall of ice in the darkness. They did end their impossible journey in the safety of the whaling office in Stromness. Someone spoke of Shackelton as one of a breed of people who go out because "they know there is something else that can be felt but not quite understood in this world. And they get closer to that thing, that Fourth Man who marched with Shackelton across South Georgia." Shackelton himself wrote: "When I look back at those days, I have no doubt that Providence guided us .... I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three." His other companions confessed to the same feeling that there was a presence with them. "One feels," said Shackelton, "the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech in trying to describe things intangible, but the record of our journey would not be complete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts."
