On a scale of one to ten, how open are you to the gospel? Let’s say one is closed up tight. Yes, you’re in church, but that’s just because it’s what you’ve always done on Sunday mornings or it’s what you are supposed to do. But really, your expectations are lower than low. You’ve already heard the gospel and are pretty sure it’s got nothing new to say to you. On the other end of the spectrum, let’s say ten is wide open and eager, you are ready for God to come to you, ready for the Spirit to work in you, you are hoping and praying that today is the day you will meet God face to face and live to tell us all about it. You are ready for something different, a change from the routine that has you bored to tears, ready for God to shake things up.
On a scale of one to ten, how open are you to the gospel?
In today’s text, we meet characters who would undoubtedly rate themselves pretty high on the openness scale. First, we have Paul and the other apostles who are traveling around, spreading the gospel, wide open to the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit to tell them where to go and what to do. And sure enough, Paul has a vision in which he sees a man from Macedonia calling for help. They agree that this means they should head in that direction and so off they go. They spend a few days in the city, apparently without ever encountering that man from Paul’s vision. On the Sabbath they go outside the city gates thinking that there just might be a place by the river where people are open to the gospel.
That’s where they find Lydia. This self-sufficient woman, who makes a living selling expensive cloth, is clearly open to the gospel; the text tells us she is already a worshipper of God, which means she wasn’t Jewish but she had heard of the God of Israel and she was intrigued. She listens to what Paul has to say and right there on the spot decides that she and her whole family will be baptized.
It’s a story full of people open to God, and look at how all that openness pays off: because Paul is open to the vision leading him to Macedonia, because Lydia is open to the good news Paul shares, the gospel continues to spread throughout the land.
How open are you to the gospel, to receiving it for yourself and to joining in the effort to spread the gospel throughout the land?
Well, I don’t know about you, but these days, I can’t say I feel all that open. Maybe it’s because there are simply too many things in the world today that cloud our minds with worry and anxiety -- car bombs in Times Square, an oil spill that just keeps getting worse, chemicals that cause cancer, a stock market that swings wildly, two wars that won’t end. And when there’s all this to worry about, getting ourselves into an open and receptive state takes time. And who has that kind of time when there are family members and friends who depend on us, bills to be paid, meals to prepare, houses and gardens and, for that matter, church buildings and grounds that demand our attention?
In Anna Quindlen’s novel Every Last One, the main character, Mary Beth Latham, is the mother of three teenagers and the wife of a kind and stable doctor. She has several close friends, some new, some old. She runs a successful landscaping business. And yet at times she finds herself crying for no discernible reason: “I have no excuse for my own tears,” she says. “In the way of women my age, I increasingly count my blessings aloud, as though if other people acknowledge them they’ll be enough: three wonderful children, a long and happy marriage, good home, pleasurable work. And if below the surface I sense that one child is poised to flee and another is miserable, that my husband and I trade public pleasantries and private minutiae, that my work depends on the labor of men who think I’m cheating them—none of that is to be dwelled on. Besides, none of that has anything to do with my tears. If I were pressed, I would have to say that they are the symptom of some great loneliness, as free-floating and untethered to everyday life as a tornado is to the usual weather. It whirls through, ripping and tearing, and then I’m in the parking lot of the supermarket, wiping my eyes, replacing my sunglasses, buying fish and greens for that night’s dinner. If anyone asks how things are, I say what we all say: fine, good, great, terrific, wonderful.” (1)
Openness sounds like a good idea, but if we allow ourselves to be open and receptive, whether to God or the gospel aren’t we taking a big risk that other things might also find their way in as well, like those thoughts and feelings that lurk just below the surface of our daily lives,? Aren’t we afraid that opening our hearts to God might also mean letting in our deep loneliness, our fear of failure, the debilitating guilt over things we’ve done or haven’t done?
Would you be surprised to learn that after the terrorist attacks of September 11, the business for security consulting firms skyrocketed? It turns out that in the face of the fear and insecurity generated by the attacks, people wanted to reinforce the locks on the doors of their houses. It’s not like having a stronger lock on your front door is going to protect you from terrorists, but still, when people were feeling afraid, they closed up, they locked themselves away. It happened ideologically, too. Yes, there was that time just after 9-11 when Americans were more closely united than ever before, but then we began to drift apart again, closing ourselves off into ideological camps, refusing to be open to the ideas and opinions of those whom we are already certain are wrong.
The writer Anne Lamott grew up in the Bay area of California, the daughter of atheist intellectuals. She went to college on a tennis scholarship but spent too much time partying and after two years, she dropped out. She worked as a writer and even had some success -- articles in magazines and two novels. But still, she struggled and continued drinking and doing drugs.
Then, one night she was at home, drunk again, feeling awful, and that’s when it happened. She writes, "I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner. ... The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there — of course, there wasn't.
“But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this. And I was appalled--I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, 'I would rather die.' " (2)
Instead, she started attending a tiny church and began to think about turning her life around. She kept drinking, though, especially when her third novel got bad reviews. The low point came when she was to speak at a benefit in front of 150 people who had paid to hear her. She drank so much that she passed out...right in the middle of her speech. After that, she decided to get sober, and slowly, slowly, she did and has been ever since. She found strength and support in that tiny church, especially when she became pregnant and the baby’s father left her. She began to write nonfiction books about motherhood, her conversion to Christianity, and her stumbling, irreverent, and persistent faith. These books got rave reviews and opened up many people who might not have been able to hear the good news of the gospel any other way.
Of course, Anne Lamott is just one of many people who were completely closed off to God. That includes Saul, whose conversion to Paul we heard about two weeks ago -- he was headed to Damascus to persecute Christians when he met the risen Christ and discovered that he was going in the wrong direction. Then there are the disciples, the very ones who saw, heard, and touched Jesus in person and yet still struggled to be open to his teachings. When he told them that he would have to suffer and die and rise again, they refused to believe him. And when he did die on a cross, the first thing they did was lock themselves away in a house, as scared and insecure as those who got new locks for their doors after 9-11.
The point of this sermon is not to get you to go home today and fling open all the doors in your life -- the doors to your house, the doors to your heart. Don’t get me wrong: we could all benefit from spending time daily in the kind of prayer that doesn’t just tell God what we want but in which we truly open ourselves to God and attend to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. But when I look at this text, this story of how the gospel continued to spread across Asia and into Europe, the good news I hear is this: “The Lord opened [Lydia’s] heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” You could argue that as a God-worshipper who had gathered for prayer that morning, Lydia had done everything she could to open herself up to God, but at the end of the day she could have been Anne Lamott, drunk and miserable; or Mary Beth Latham, desperately lonely beneath the veneer of a blessed life; or the disciples, locked away in their grief and confusion over Jesus’ death...Lydia could have been any of us and still -- STILL -- God would have opened her heart to listen eagerly to the good news Paul shared.
Our God is undeterred by whatever obstacles to openness we put up. Again and again, God shows up in the most unlikely places to the most unlikely people and pries open hearts that had been closed up tight.
After Lydia hears and believes the gospel she opens her house to her fellow believers, insisting that Paul and the apostles come and stay at her home. God opens her heart and she, in turn, opens her home to strangers. Anne Lamott does the same thing through her writing: by sharing her experience of God’s grace and her ongoing attempts to be faithful, she extends gospel hospitality to all who have read her work. Openness breeds more openness...and the gospel continues to spread throughout the land.
On a scale of one to ten, how open are you to the gospel? Well, the good news is, it doesn’t matter whether you are a one or a ten, whether you are wide open or closed up tight: our God can open any heart, even yours and yours and yours and yours, even mine. (3) Thanks be to God. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Anna Quindlen, Every Last One. Random House, 2010.
2. The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, April 10, 2010, read it here.
3. I am indebted in this sermon to the homiletical work done by the Rev. Mark Ramsey in his sermon “Locked” preached at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, NC on April 11, 2010. Listen to or read Mark’s sermon here.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment