Agents in God’s Sacred Service
Pr. D. Hewitt–May 8 & 9, 2010
One Sunday evening the humorist Garrison Keillor, on his popular radio show, shared with his listeners the secret to his success. “My mother,” says he, “is a true Minnesotan. She knows it is bad luck to celebrate good luck, or to enjoy it too openly. So, to protect our good luck, my mother has always contemplated disaster. If you don’t anticipate disaster, then your good luck will turn sour. My mother has seldom driven away from the house in a car but what she could see clearly in her mind the house burning up into flames [while we were gone.] And then later she comes home and the house is all right. A miracle. My mother,” he continues, “has used up much of her magic on me, the black sheep of the family, as she listens to this radio show. Every week she sees clearly in her mind a sandbag falling from high above the stage and hitting my head and leaving me a vegetable. But she is 80 now. How much longer will her magic work? The longevity of our parents,” Keillor goes on to say, “is a blessing; it gives us a luxurious long childhood, protected by their magic [he means protected by their love].
“My mother often imagines me in a barroom,” he adds, “drunk, soaked in self-pity, and in this way she enabled me to lead a fairly respectable and productive life. But when she’s gone, who will fear for me? Nobody. Everybody will tell me how good it’s going, tell me how good-looking I am, and the next thing you know, that sandbag will fall.”
Garrison Keillor contemplates his mother’s death. You know I’ve talked to many people who, years after growing up, have finally lost their parents. They haven’t lived with their parents for years, or relied on them for very much, materially speaking. But when they lose their last parent, suddenly they feel lost and alone. It’s like a veil of protection between us and death has at last been ripped away. Having good and decent parents gives us, even years later, a sense of security, partly based on the fact that they have pledged to always be there to take care of us, literally no matter what, even if we massively mess things up. Moms and Dads provide a seemingly permanent home for our hearts. As Robert Frost famously said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Lydia did not have to “take in” the wandering preachers Paul, Silas, and Timothy into her life, into her heart, and, eventually into her home, but she did. Her invitation came at the right time. Paul and his brothers in Christ were in a strange new world. A dream, sent by God, had told them to cross over into a new town, Philippi, a new country, Macedonia, and new continent, Europe. Usually Paul spoke in the synagogue of the new town he was in on the Sabbath, but it seems that Philippi, a Roman colony, had no synagogue. Instead, Paul & Co. went to the local riverside, and there, as he hoped, were a few Jews, there to pray. Appropriately enough for this Mother’s Day, there were several women praying there, including Lydia. She had moved from Thyatira, in present day Turkey, where she had learned the difficult method of making purple dye to create beautiful, but of course very expensive, purplish cloth – cloth for rich people and especially royalty.
Now Luke writes in the book of Acts that “the Lord opened” Lydia’s “heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. Notice how, in a kind of secret, backdoor way, our Lord God aids Paul – and will aid us – as we speak the Word of Christ to others. I might even call our Creator his own best secret agent – or should I say “sacred” agent?
Mothers are some of God’s best secret – or “sacred” – agents. As the song says – or as they song SHOULD say:
She’s found with a stroller or a manger;
She’s a mom, so she’s a real life-changer!
Oh, with every move she makes
And with every word she speaks
God, through her, is giving you tomorrow!
Secret Agent Mom, Secret Agent Mom!
God’s given you a mother, and she’s a real great dame!
It was perhaps a similar realization that hit Paul and his male companions as they began their new missionary journey that led them to Philippi and Lydia. They realized that it was women that God often placed in their path, to renew and refresh their mission. Luke himself noticed this. That’s why he’s the only gospel writer to tell us that it was not just twelve men who followed Jesus around Galilee, but also women like Mary Magdalene, Susanna, many other women, and even Joanna, the wife of Herod’s chief steward! And what did these women do? Luke writes that these women “provided out of their resources.” (Lk. 8:3)
So when Paul & Co. leave again on this, their 2nd great mission, the first thing they do, just days before they meet Lydia, is to convert the future church leader Timothy to Christ – and through the faith of his mother and grandmother, Eunice and Lois (Acts 16:1). Paul later wrote Timothy and said, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” (2 Timothy 1:5) What a testament to the power of parental faith! And that faith wasn’t transferred by osmosis, but by specific actions. Paul later reminds Timothy: “as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood” – from childhood! – you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (2 Tim. 3:14-15) Mother Eunice (with help from Grandmother Lois) read the Scriptures with young Timothy on a regular basis; that is an example of what I mean by a specific actions, a continual preparing of the soil in their child and grandchild’s heart, to receive the faith. They endured in this teaching though Timothy’s father did not believe – an endurance which is testified, over and over again, as a gift of the Spirit, a product of faith.
How joyous, then must new convert Timothy must have been when he saw his mentor Paul convert not only Lydia but also her family, baptizing them in that same river where they first met. Perhaps Lydia had a little son who reminded Timothy of himself, and now this boy would live his life in the joy of the abundant life in Christ!
Lydia no doubt helped to found the congregation, that Body of Christ, that started that day in Philippi, a church that later had many women among its leaders. In our Philippians lesson, Paul talks of Euodia and Syntyche and he urges others to “help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel.” (Philippians 4:2-3) And what kind of church sprouted from the soil that started with Lydia and her family? Well, perhaps the Apostle Paul’s favorite church was favorite because of how generous the people in it were to others around them.
Later, Paul wrote to them to thank them for sending him money and other gifts while he was in prison; in the years just after the start of the church, Philippi was the main donor and sponsor of his ministry efforts. He once wrote them, “You Phillipians know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except you alone….you sent me help for my needs more than once.” (Phil. 4:15) And later he brags to another congregation that Philippi was one of the churches that “the grace of God” had been granted them. Why? Because they gave to Paul’s great fundraising efforts on behalf of the church in Jerusalem, even though they had not much money themselves. Isn’t that amazing? Paul puts it this way: “for during a severe ordeal of affliction” (maybe like the bad economic times we are going through now) “their abundant joy and their extreme poverty has overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.” (2nd Corinthians 8:1-2)
How could they do this? Were Lydia’s Philippian Christian brothers and sisters stupid? Did they not save for a rainy day? Paul gives us the answer, how these “sacred agents” could be so motherly in their love, so “over the top” in their giving: “For, I can testify,” he says, “they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry of the saints.” (2nd Corinthians 8:3-4) Isn’t that amazing? What light beamed from them as their generosity inspired the hearts of those they helped? What a comfort and encouragement to Paul in his ministry!
And the secret to such sacred agency was this, says Paul: the Christians of Philippi “this they did, not merely as we expected; they gave themselves first to the Lord, and, by the will of God, to us.” (2 Cor. 8:5) They gave themselves to the Lord! They went deeper in their faith! They surrendered it all to God! They knew He would take care of them, not simply as a really good mother or father would, but as the perfect mother or father, as someone who cares even more than any mother or father…as someone who doesn’t die as any mother or father does, eventually, die. Jesus is Risen; He has conquered death; He is the Good Shepherd; He will always take care of you and me, His sheep.
We can see in Paul’s letter to the Philippians how he was preaching to the choir, as he described the generous Christian life. He told them to “rejoice always” – they did rejoice always. He told them to “not worry about anything” – they didn’t worry about anything. He told them to “let peace rule in their hearts” – and peace DID rule in their hearts. He told them to think of ALL – not just some, but ALL – ALL the wonderful ways in which God was blessing and supporting their lives, even ways the world would ignore. He told them to think about all the “true…honorable…just …pure…pleasing…commendable…excellent…praiseworthy things that have happened ever since they devote themselves completely to the Lord Jesus. And, by their actions, they must have thought all those good and very inspiring thoughts. They took joy in being used – and used up – by God, in service to His mission. Paul told the Christians in Corinth that the Christians in Philippi had “abundant joy.” They might frown on the outside, on occasion; but they are always smiling on the inside, for they know that God’s given them A LOT to give!
In our Gospel lesson (John 14:23-29), Jesus tells us not to be troubled, not to be afraid. Why? Well, a couple minutes before this, in that upper room on the night of his betrayal, Jesus had just told them, “I go to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2) He goes to prepare a place for us in heaven. Well, when we truly surrender to God in faith, we know that we already have heaven as our home; we don’t have to spend and save in such a way that we’re only thinking of THIS world; God has given us resources – time, talent, and finances – that we can now use in other ways – taking time to give to others, ministering first-hand to others, and using resources, like those women did for Jesus, to support His ministry.
Jesus says to you and me today that He is going to the Father and coming back to you and me. And He DID do that! He died and rose again. He also had just told them, “because I live, you also will live.” (Jn. 14:18) He has made a home for us. Let us be those people that Jesus describes today, those who love Him, Jesus says, and who will keep His word; if that happens, He then promises that both the Father and the Son will come to make their home with us, both now and forever. (John 14:23) You see, Heaven is already ours! We now look at what we have on earth differently: it’s like we’re playing with house money! Let’s let Christ within us silence that sinful voice inside that says, “Close your hand; protect yourself; look out for Number One,” and open our hands – open our God-given resources – to others. We can give and give and give – give so much more than the sin within us believes we can give! What joy! Knowing you have abundant resources comes from having abundant joy! And having abundant joy comes from believing in that Lord and Savior who has always been “abundantly” there for you. How about this: let’s be like our Philippian brothers and sisters who lived twenty centuries ago, and, through the prayer vigil and through prayer on your own time over the next few weeks, give ourselves, in a NEW way, to the Lord, and then, refreshed, to the tasks at hand, the challenges ahead!
One time a little girl was reciting Bible verses in church. In front of such a crowd her mind went blank. In the front row, her mother tried to help her little girl. The mother gestured, mouthing the words with her lips, but it did no good. Finally the mother, in desperation, whispered the opening phrase, “I am the light of the world.” (John 8:12) Immediately the child’s face lit up and she said with confidence, “My mother is the light of the world.” Our mothers often ARE the light of our world – the first avenue by which we receive God’s love. But we are ALL called to show that kind of love, God’s motherly, hen-and-her-chicks kind of love, for Jesus says to us all, “You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works, and glorify Your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)
Beware of veering from her loving way
She placed you with the Lord, and there you’ll stay!
So love as she would love, and the blessing from above
Signify that you will live forever
Sacred Agent One, Sacred Agent One!
God’s given you a mission, so love in His great Name!
Amen!
