What Church Looks Like
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series II, Cycle C
Object:
There's the story of the man who was lost on a desert island for a decade. When he was finally rescued people were astounded to discover he had built an entire town out of palm branches. There was a movie theater -- with no movies, of course -- a grocery story with empty shelves, an apartment building, a department store, several houses, and at each end of the little town he had built a church.
Why had he done it, he was asked. "To keep sane," he replied.
Why two churches?
"Well," the man said, "this church over here is the place where I worshiped my Creator. Though I was cast adrift, cut off from all human contact, I never felt alone because God is with me, and even though the pews were empty I felt that the communion of saints, believers both past and present, were never more than a breath away. I needed this church more than I needed life itself."
"So what about the other church?" he was asked.
"Oh, that," he replied curtly. "That's the church I wouldn't be caught dead in."
We all have different ideas about what makes a church. Christians disagree about what a church looks like. Is the small country church the benchmark, the little brown church in the vale? Is the megachurch the only true church? The seeker church. The suburban church? The urban church? The ethnic church? Is the house church the only real model? Do we need paid clergy or the free ministry? Is it the church where they sing praise choruses and perform dramas, or is the church with the full-time choir director and organist who produce the community's presentation of the Messiah each year?
The answer is probably all of the above. Each one has something to offer that the others can't provide. It's impossible to define church, because church is what it is. As long as two or three are present, then Jesus is present also, and that may be enough.
The house church was the basic model of first-century Christianity, though it would be difficult to give a generic description of house churches. Each one had its own characteristics and flavor. The Christian faith brought together individuals from different economic and ethnic backgrounds. Generally, a wealthier member supplied the home and sometimes the leadership, for the church. The church at Corinth, for instance, seems to have consisted of at least four house churches, the "Paul" church, the "Apollos" church, the "Peter" church, and the "Christ" church.
The first-century church was not only composed mostly of house churches, but it was also a city church. Many Christians are suspicious of the cities and see it as a place of sin and separation from God, yet pretty much all the letters of Paul are written to city churches. Christianity was a city religion for most of the first three centuries of its existence. Indeed the term "pagan" is taken from the Latin term for country folk. Pagans came from the country. Christians came from the city.
Certainly, the city is where all the people are. Although many Christians prefer the countryside and look on the city as the pagan place, the images of salvation in the New Testament are tied to the city. It is the New Jerusalem, not the New Eden that descends from heaven at the end of Revelation and the tree of life is transplanted from the old Garden of Eden into that new Jerusalem. The city is the center of salvation.
In the previous chapter of Acts (15), Luke paints a picture of triumph for the church (the Council of Jerusalem) followed by a disaster (the argument between Paul and Barnabas over Mark, leading to their separation). The trouble was, Mark had left a missionary journey before its completion and Paul no longer trusted him. Later the rift would be healed, for Paul mentions in 2 Timothy 4:11 how useful Mark had been for him.
In the passage for today, Paul and Silas, with their new traveling companion, Timothy, have arrived in Philippi, one of the great cities of the Roman Empire. Philippi was in Macedonia, north of the Grecian peninsula. It was a city of some 10,000 people on the Via Egnatia, a major east-west trade route, and it was a cosmopolitan city, with many different ethnic and racial groups.
More importantly, it was a Roman colony, and its citizens were also citizens of Rome. Even though Rome was over 800 miles away, the people there, many of them retirees from the Roman army who had never seen Rome but had served Rome all their lives, had all the privileges of Roman citizenship. They were used to serving a place they had never seen, living by the rules of a place they had never seen, and proclaiming themselves citizens of a place they had never seen.
The Apostle Paul was led to Philippi by a dream in which he saw a man from Macedonia begging him to bring the gospel to them. He found a people ready to serve a heaven they had never seen, to live by the rules of heaven though they had never seen it, and to become citizens of heaven though they had never seen it.
Paul's pattern when arriving at city was to go first to its synagogue to meet with those whose faith he shared. In Philippi there was no synagogue, perhaps because there weren't the ten men required as a minimum for worship. He had heard, however, that there was a prayer group that met by the river, and he went there instead.
Although we associate rivers with the countryside, cities depended on rivers for commerce, for beauty, for water, which is the stuff of life itself. There's something mysterious and beautiful about rivers, about the way they become the lifeblood of people, taking folks different places, providing food and recreation, providing water for the trees that line their banks.
Rivers run through scriptures. Water is life, after all. The rivers that define Eden, the river Jordan that runs through biblical narrative, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, and of course the river that runs through the New Jerusalem. The rivers of Psalms, by the waters we wept as we lay down our harps. Namaan is cured in a river. Elijah takes flight near a river. John the Baptist calls people to repentance in a river. And Jesus is baptized in that river.
Psalm 46 says: "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High" (Psalm 46:4). And where is that river? "... in the midst of the city," of course (46:5).
In the movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? the Christians coming forward for baptism step into the river singing the old traditional folk song:
As I went down in the river to pray,
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good Lord, show me the way!
Oh, children, let's go down, let's go down, come on down.
Oh, children, let's go down, down in the river to pray.
In this text Paul goes to the river to find believers because there is no synagogue in this town, and that's what he finds -- believers who cannot form a church because they do not conform to the standards of that time. They are Gentiles, they are single women, they are believers whose belief is not accepted by others.
This prayer group consisted of that class of people known as God-fearers. These were Gentiles who believed in the God of Israel, but for one reason or another were not able to take the next step and become part of God's people. This could have been for one of several reasons. It was not easy to convert to Judaism in those days, and converts were actively discouraged. Some men would not have wanted to undergo circumcision, which they would have considered mutilation of a body whose beauty came from God. Women whose husbands were not also converts were probably not welcome to join on their own. But these individuals would have been fairly familiar with the scriptures and with the practices of the faith.
In this instance, the prayer group consisted entirely of women, and their worship leader was also a woman. Lydia, perhaps named after the region from which she came, was a wealthy individual with a business in purple cloth, a highly prized commodity in the ancient world. The purple dye might have been part of an imperial monopoly granted to Lydia's family because of service to Rome in times past. She would have had a great deal of social importance, for normally in that time women were not named in public, but what she seems to have craved more than anything else was acceptance into the family of God.
The original Greek text makes it clear that these women did not gather together by accident. They gathered together in a structured manner to worship. The women had active church lives, but their church could never meet under the strictures of Judaism.
There was nothing to stop them from becoming Christians, however. They did not need to be attached to a male to join. Lydia and her household, including servants, were baptized, and as the head of a house, she probably became the worship leader for the house church. This was evidently not unusual in early Christianity. Frescos illustrating the ancient practice of the love feast show women, presumably the homeowners, administering the rite.
Lydia's home becomes Paul's home. She wants to give back, and Paul has the good grace to receive. Her response to her baptism is to open her home as a church. Make no mistake. This is not a case of a lonely single woman who wants to have a couple of men share the house with her. On the contrary, as a head of household there would have been layers of relatives and servants who lived in her large-scale villa. Paul and Silas would have had quarters of their own, which would become the base of operations for Paul and his company as they began the evangelization of Macedonia.
Something that is easy to overlook in this passage is a very small word -- "we." Starting in this chapter the author, Luke, makes it clear that at certain times he is part of the group that travels with Paul. He is the source for these parts of the book, an actual eyewitness of events.
He doesn't make a big deal and say, "Hey, look! I'm here." But he is definitely part of the picture.
Some wonder if Luke was a proud native of Philippi. Certainly he was referred to by Paul as "Luke, the beloved physician," (Colossians 4:14) and Philippi was famous for its medical school.
Luke, though a participant, is not as interested in what he is doing as what God is doing, and that is why he wants to tell us about Lydia, and the river, and the good things that come when we push ourselves beyond the comfort zone and reach out to those who others aren't interested in. Because when we act as God's ambassadors among the lost, there is no telling what will happen next.
And when we're finally in a place where there's no telling what will happen next. That's when we're really in a church. Amen.
Why had he done it, he was asked. "To keep sane," he replied.
Why two churches?
"Well," the man said, "this church over here is the place where I worshiped my Creator. Though I was cast adrift, cut off from all human contact, I never felt alone because God is with me, and even though the pews were empty I felt that the communion of saints, believers both past and present, were never more than a breath away. I needed this church more than I needed life itself."
"So what about the other church?" he was asked.
"Oh, that," he replied curtly. "That's the church I wouldn't be caught dead in."
We all have different ideas about what makes a church. Christians disagree about what a church looks like. Is the small country church the benchmark, the little brown church in the vale? Is the megachurch the only true church? The seeker church. The suburban church? The urban church? The ethnic church? Is the house church the only real model? Do we need paid clergy or the free ministry? Is it the church where they sing praise choruses and perform dramas, or is the church with the full-time choir director and organist who produce the community's presentation of the Messiah each year?
The answer is probably all of the above. Each one has something to offer that the others can't provide. It's impossible to define church, because church is what it is. As long as two or three are present, then Jesus is present also, and that may be enough.
The house church was the basic model of first-century Christianity, though it would be difficult to give a generic description of house churches. Each one had its own characteristics and flavor. The Christian faith brought together individuals from different economic and ethnic backgrounds. Generally, a wealthier member supplied the home and sometimes the leadership, for the church. The church at Corinth, for instance, seems to have consisted of at least four house churches, the "Paul" church, the "Apollos" church, the "Peter" church, and the "Christ" church.
The first-century church was not only composed mostly of house churches, but it was also a city church. Many Christians are suspicious of the cities and see it as a place of sin and separation from God, yet pretty much all the letters of Paul are written to city churches. Christianity was a city religion for most of the first three centuries of its existence. Indeed the term "pagan" is taken from the Latin term for country folk. Pagans came from the country. Christians came from the city.
Certainly, the city is where all the people are. Although many Christians prefer the countryside and look on the city as the pagan place, the images of salvation in the New Testament are tied to the city. It is the New Jerusalem, not the New Eden that descends from heaven at the end of Revelation and the tree of life is transplanted from the old Garden of Eden into that new Jerusalem. The city is the center of salvation.
In the previous chapter of Acts (15), Luke paints a picture of triumph for the church (the Council of Jerusalem) followed by a disaster (the argument between Paul and Barnabas over Mark, leading to their separation). The trouble was, Mark had left a missionary journey before its completion and Paul no longer trusted him. Later the rift would be healed, for Paul mentions in 2 Timothy 4:11 how useful Mark had been for him.
In the passage for today, Paul and Silas, with their new traveling companion, Timothy, have arrived in Philippi, one of the great cities of the Roman Empire. Philippi was in Macedonia, north of the Grecian peninsula. It was a city of some 10,000 people on the Via Egnatia, a major east-west trade route, and it was a cosmopolitan city, with many different ethnic and racial groups.
More importantly, it was a Roman colony, and its citizens were also citizens of Rome. Even though Rome was over 800 miles away, the people there, many of them retirees from the Roman army who had never seen Rome but had served Rome all their lives, had all the privileges of Roman citizenship. They were used to serving a place they had never seen, living by the rules of a place they had never seen, and proclaiming themselves citizens of a place they had never seen.
The Apostle Paul was led to Philippi by a dream in which he saw a man from Macedonia begging him to bring the gospel to them. He found a people ready to serve a heaven they had never seen, to live by the rules of heaven though they had never seen it, and to become citizens of heaven though they had never seen it.
Paul's pattern when arriving at city was to go first to its synagogue to meet with those whose faith he shared. In Philippi there was no synagogue, perhaps because there weren't the ten men required as a minimum for worship. He had heard, however, that there was a prayer group that met by the river, and he went there instead.
Although we associate rivers with the countryside, cities depended on rivers for commerce, for beauty, for water, which is the stuff of life itself. There's something mysterious and beautiful about rivers, about the way they become the lifeblood of people, taking folks different places, providing food and recreation, providing water for the trees that line their banks.
Rivers run through scriptures. Water is life, after all. The rivers that define Eden, the river Jordan that runs through biblical narrative, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, and of course the river that runs through the New Jerusalem. The rivers of Psalms, by the waters we wept as we lay down our harps. Namaan is cured in a river. Elijah takes flight near a river. John the Baptist calls people to repentance in a river. And Jesus is baptized in that river.
Psalm 46 says: "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High" (Psalm 46:4). And where is that river? "... in the midst of the city," of course (46:5).
In the movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? the Christians coming forward for baptism step into the river singing the old traditional folk song:
As I went down in the river to pray,
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good Lord, show me the way!
Oh, children, let's go down, let's go down, come on down.
Oh, children, let's go down, down in the river to pray.
In this text Paul goes to the river to find believers because there is no synagogue in this town, and that's what he finds -- believers who cannot form a church because they do not conform to the standards of that time. They are Gentiles, they are single women, they are believers whose belief is not accepted by others.
This prayer group consisted of that class of people known as God-fearers. These were Gentiles who believed in the God of Israel, but for one reason or another were not able to take the next step and become part of God's people. This could have been for one of several reasons. It was not easy to convert to Judaism in those days, and converts were actively discouraged. Some men would not have wanted to undergo circumcision, which they would have considered mutilation of a body whose beauty came from God. Women whose husbands were not also converts were probably not welcome to join on their own. But these individuals would have been fairly familiar with the scriptures and with the practices of the faith.
In this instance, the prayer group consisted entirely of women, and their worship leader was also a woman. Lydia, perhaps named after the region from which she came, was a wealthy individual with a business in purple cloth, a highly prized commodity in the ancient world. The purple dye might have been part of an imperial monopoly granted to Lydia's family because of service to Rome in times past. She would have had a great deal of social importance, for normally in that time women were not named in public, but what she seems to have craved more than anything else was acceptance into the family of God.
The original Greek text makes it clear that these women did not gather together by accident. They gathered together in a structured manner to worship. The women had active church lives, but their church could never meet under the strictures of Judaism.
There was nothing to stop them from becoming Christians, however. They did not need to be attached to a male to join. Lydia and her household, including servants, were baptized, and as the head of a house, she probably became the worship leader for the house church. This was evidently not unusual in early Christianity. Frescos illustrating the ancient practice of the love feast show women, presumably the homeowners, administering the rite.
Lydia's home becomes Paul's home. She wants to give back, and Paul has the good grace to receive. Her response to her baptism is to open her home as a church. Make no mistake. This is not a case of a lonely single woman who wants to have a couple of men share the house with her. On the contrary, as a head of household there would have been layers of relatives and servants who lived in her large-scale villa. Paul and Silas would have had quarters of their own, which would become the base of operations for Paul and his company as they began the evangelization of Macedonia.
Something that is easy to overlook in this passage is a very small word -- "we." Starting in this chapter the author, Luke, makes it clear that at certain times he is part of the group that travels with Paul. He is the source for these parts of the book, an actual eyewitness of events.
He doesn't make a big deal and say, "Hey, look! I'm here." But he is definitely part of the picture.
Some wonder if Luke was a proud native of Philippi. Certainly he was referred to by Paul as "Luke, the beloved physician," (Colossians 4:14) and Philippi was famous for its medical school.
Luke, though a participant, is not as interested in what he is doing as what God is doing, and that is why he wants to tell us about Lydia, and the river, and the good things that come when we push ourselves beyond the comfort zone and reach out to those who others aren't interested in. Because when we act as God's ambassadors among the lost, there is no telling what will happen next.
And when we're finally in a place where there's no telling what will happen next. That's when we're really in a church. Amen.
