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.
Acts 16:9-15
We therefore 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.
My sermon from the Sixth Sunday of Easter (May 25, 2025) on Acts 16:9-15.
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Pastor Marc’s sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter on Acts 16:9-15
So I know Star Wars day was earlier this month but something I recently heard relates a little bit to our reading today from the book of Acts. Now I first experienced the original trilogy on VHS and I remember as a young kid being completely lost in a universe filled with all kinds of creatures and starships. The special effects and expansive views of desert planets and forested moons were amazing. But all the computers, software, and green screen processes we use to create summer blockbuster movies today didn’t exist in 1977. The original movies needed to use a lot of models, stop motion, and physical camera tricks to bring George Lucas’ story to life. But not every detail of the story could be fully displayed. So instead of watching X wings close up as they took off from the rebel base on Yavin 4 to destroy the first death star, what we saw instead were small specks of light flying in the distance. This wasn’t, however, necessarily a bad thing since our imagination could fill in all those details instead. What made Star Wars work so well was the way it invited us to co-participate in its own creation. And when Paul went on one of his early missionary journeys, God pushed the limits of his own imagination to discover just how expansive the good news of Jesus Christ always is.
Now Paul, at this point in the book of Acts, had begun his regular habit of traveling all around the Mediterranean Sea. He had just completed his first short journey from Antioch, a Roman city located near the border of modern day Turkey and Syria, to visit Cyprus and other nearby towns. He spent his time visiting small Christian congregations, preaching in the local synagogue, and talking to all kinds of people while occasionally earning money as a leatherworker. Paul had no issue engaging in conversation with those who shared his Jewish identity or who believed in God but hadn’t fully converted or those who were comfortable with their own religious and cultural beliefs. And I wonder if all those experiences strengthened his sense that Gentiles – those who were not-Jewish – might have a place in God’s community too. In the chapter immediately before the one we just heard, Paul pushed the rest of the apostles to expand their definition of the church to include those whose ethnicity, background, and identity differed from the very first followers of Jesus. With that conversation now behind him, Paul went on a second journey up the coast of modern-day Turkey and into Europe itself. Without his prior experience of participating in a church whose diversity was beginning to grow, I’m not sure Paul would have been completely open to the vision he received from God. Paul’s imagination, though, had begun to expand – and so he, along with his companions, crossed the Turkish straits and ended up at the city of Philippi in what is now northwestern Greece.
Philippi, at the time, was an important city within the Roman Empire due to the large gold mines located nearby. Philippi’s unique economic status meant that the emperor cared a lot about what happened in the city and so he installed military officers to be its leaders. Philippi’s compact size as well as its strategic location along a major trade route meant it was very prosperous and packed full of all kinds of soldiers, merchants, traders, and even slaves. A woman who made a living trading in purple cloth – an expensive material that only the very wealthy or those who ruled were allowed to wear – could easily make a city like Philippi their home. Now even though the town was under the tight control of Rome, it was also a place where people could live their life in unexpected ways. A woman from somewhere else running her own business in a world that’s even more patriarchal than our own wasn’t a strange sight in Philippi’s marketplace. Lydia was very familiar with what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange place and she probably had lots of people regularly questioning her way of life entirely based on her gender. The wider culture’s imagination was sometimes too rigid to see the fullness of what the people could be. Yet the person she met along that river just outside the city walls was someone whose imagination had already begun to grow. I’ll admit that I wish Acts gave us more details about the conversation Paul and Lydia had so we might learn what we could say to let others know the love God already has for them. But what we get instead is a little tidbit that Lydia’s open heart allowed her to extend hospitality to a stranger who was visiting the city for the very first time. The relationship they formed together along the riverbank and that was strengthened while Paul and his companions found refuge within the household Lydia had created was the environment where the fullness of who Jesus is could easily be shared with one another. Acts doesn’t provide all the details behind what Paul was able to say. Instead, we’re invited to notice how the openness at the heart of Paul and Lydia’s imagination changed them into something more.
When Star Wars first came out, the limits of technology forced the story to rely on our imagination to discover just how deep it could be. But as time went on, the remastered versions of the films – as well as the prequels, sequels, and tv shows – became incredibly full. The screens in the theater or the ones we hold in our hands are now filled with cities, starships, battles, explosions, and armies that leave very little to our imaginations. When George Lucas and others finally had the opportunity to flesh out how big the Star Wars universe was, they chose to keep adding details to show how real their story was meant to be. I wonder, though, if the story lost something when it no longer invited us to fully use our imagination as co-participant in what Star War might truly be about. Rather than spending all our energy on the rigid details of what should be, staying open to what can be is how our faith and our life grows and thrives. When we notice ourselves trying way too hard at defining what the limits of our world can be, we should wonder if we’re getting in the way of our own imagination. It’s possible our fears, biases, worries, and the other voices we choose to give authority over us – might get in the way of us noticing what God is up to. Staying connected to this kind of sacred imagination truly matters because it’s God’s imagination that we, in faith, through baptism, and because of the Cross, have been brought into God’s holy family. And if God’s imagination is big enough for people like us – people from all kinds of places, with all kinds of identities, and full all kinds of hopes and dreams – to be part of what God is up to, then we can use our imaginations to co-participate in the expansive kingdom God is already bringing about.
Amen.