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Becoming The Low Pool

John 14:25-29, Acts 16:9-15
May 13, 2007

Acts 16:9-15

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. We 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.

John 14:25-29

”I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy
Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you
of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not
give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them
be afraid.
You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me,
you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.
And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may
believe.

A couple of weeks ago—actually, in mid-March, I think it was—ABC’s program Nightline
ran a story on a recent movement within evangelical circles that has caught their
particular newsgathering eye. Very small groups of men throughout the country have
been searching for a more virile, almost masculine Jesus, one that wasn’t so seemingly
weak and wimpy, an image of Jesus that they believe they’ve been sold by the larger
church culture, a church culture they saw as being dominated by woman. The reporter
went with these men to a weekend retreat, I think it was, and they had a conservative
comedian, both politically and religiously, rile up the crowd, and then the organizers
showed the crowd of men lots of sports highlights, ones where football players get
especially good licks on a opposing player. Now, most of you know how much I love
football, especially Alabama football, but I had to admit that I was a little non-plused at
the idea that laying out the opposing quarterback on the gridiron was somehow
connected to the Christian faith. And this search by these men for a more masculine
Christ tended to emphasized one of the few times we know of that Jesus was a little
violent, which is that moment when he turns over the money changer’s tables in the
temple. All of it was just confounding to me, to be honest, for a lot of reasons. I’ll share
some of those reasons in a second, but I also was reminded of a long tradition of
complaints regarding the fact that, historically, since the very beginning of the church,
the reality is that women have filled the majority of the church’s pews.

These men, in their search for a more masculine faith, a more masculine Jesus, a
supposedly more virile, less wimpy, less passive Jesus—have been on a search that
some men have been on in the historical church since almost the second century. I
always like to remind people that one of the first derisive, dismissive things that the
early enemies of the church hurled at this new religion in their midst, this Christianity,
was that it was a woman’s religion, because, well, women, even then, were the ones
that seemed most attracted to the figure of Jesus, to the stories, to the witness the
church was giving about this Savior.   And for that matter, when the Christian church for
the first three centuries of its history forbid Christian men to serve in the Roman military
or any military, for that matter, one can see how that didn’t help the image of Christian
men in the last days of the Roman Empire, especially in a culture that valued power
and control, and to some degree of violence—think of the death matches in the
Coliseum of Rome. Throughout the centuries there has been an attempt to refute this
charge, this idea that the Christian faith was more suited to women than to men. Even
as recent as the last few centuries ago, you can still find writings by men of that time
concerned about the increasing and obvious presence of more women than men in the
pews, and lately, one has to wonder whether or not the Promise Keepers, that
movement of the last few decades that filled those huge stadium rallies full of men re-
claiming “biblical manhood,” is simply part of a long thread of anxiety about masculinity
and gender that has run through the history of the church.

We live in anxious times, of course, and some have said that when a culture becomes
especially anxious, one of the first things it does is to clarify what it means to be a man
or woman, it attempts to clarify the issue of gender—one can see that in the recent rise
of Muslim men demanding that women again wear head coverings and traditional garb,
or you can see the way we’re fighting about sexual orientation in our culture—what
does it mean to be a man, and the often unspoken question of why is male
homosexuality is so much more despised than female homosexuality. We are anxious
as a people, as a church, as a world, struggling with technology, with knowledge, with
all these different experiences being expressed in the world, and so we seek clarity, we
seek black and white answers when all we get offered by so many is grey answers, full
of the ambiguity that, if we were truthful with each other, is what we sometimes find in
our own hearts.

The church that gives us today’s sacred text is going through that same time of anxiety,
I think, as these texts are being written sometime in the first century. As we heard last
week, the church had been told that its mission was to all the world, Jews, and now
Greeks, or non-Jews, Gentiles, and this is a pretty amazing moment. And yet, the good
news is that the apostles did not fall completely into the trap of thinking that the solution
to this anxiety is to do what has always been done, to go backward, to actually close in
the circle, which is something we tend to do when we are scared. In the Acts texts
today, we have that famous Macedonian call, that vision of Paul’s that calls him from
Asia Minor into what is now Europe—and the first person to embrace the faith on Paul’s
journey is a woman, a woman named Lydia, a businesswoman, who has gathered with
other women outside the gate by the river. These weren’t Christian women,
necessarily, but women committed to some sort of spirituality, it seems, and even more
amazing, Paul and the narrator approach them—something that would have been
unheard of in their own Jewish tradition—as men, you would have never approached a
woman not escorted by a male relative.

But God did something amazing with Lydia—her heart was opened to this message of
Paul’s, this message that included her in the great work God was doing and is doing
through Jesus the Christ. She and the people in her household—men included?—were
baptized into the faith. And she got the disciples to stay in her home while they were
there, despite the apostle’s own hesitation. This is a woman who got this message, this
powerful, life-giving message of salvation, and her response was tremendous—her
heart and her doors flew open, and strangers, strangers were now welcomed into her
home. This is an amazing moment, really, something we tend to skim over, but
something amazing has happened—the Gospel in Europe, the good news that we are
loved by God through Christ, comes first to a woman, and, if you think about, why are
we surprised, really? The Spirit, God’s presence with us and in this world, will go to and
be in the places where it is most welcome, where a heart is readied to be open, where
the Good News really is received as good news. And over the centuries, for whatever
reason, the Gospel has been most welcome in the hearts of women, more often than it
has been in the hearts of men.

That is why the churches, even this church, has more women than men as members, I
think, because the Holy Spirit will work in any willing soul, and for whatever reason,
women over the centuries, have been like Lydia, outside the gate, maybe, but still in
prayer, still waiting for God to speak and reveal God own self to them. I don’t know why
that is the case, why we men struggle to respond as woman have done over the
centuries, even when it was men completely running the church, making the decisions,
always being the leaders. Maybe those men in the recent manifestation of the men’s
movement are right—that the Jesus we preach and teach is not that attractive to most
men, or many men anyway. But I have some doubt about that, really, because, to be
frank, I’m a man, and I find this Christ, this powerful, and yet gentle figure to be the
most powerful expression of God I’ve ever encountered! I don’t know why there aren’t
more men in the church, except maybe we men are more stubborn to the Spirit’s
working in our lives, in general, anyway!

Now, I know its Mother’s Day, and that is why I am bringing some of this up, but I also
don’t want to be male bashing—because, well, I’m a male, and I think maleness and
femaleness are both wonderful expressions of God’s character. But there does seem
to be something we need to learn from Lydia, about listening, about responding, to God’
s presence, to God’s spirit, in our lives. She is willing to respond to that Spirit that
Jesus speaks of in our passage today. This is part of the farewell passage in John’s
Gospel, where Jesus leaves his disciples some final wisdom and commands, including
words about how the Spirit will be left behind for them—this Spirit who is an Advocate,
who will stand beside us human beings and within us human beings, and plead our
cause before God. And this Spirit will teach those willing to listen, to receive, new
things from the Father, from God. And the great thing of this final gift from Christ is
that, if we embrace it, if we will welcome it, as Lydia did, it will return the embrace, the
gift of grace will return the embrace, and we will have the peace Christ left behind for
us, that he promised in this passage. As I have often said here, Christ leaves behind
peace, not happiness, not even contentment, nothing is promised but that peace within
that comes from listening to the Spirit of God in our lives.

But that is the hard part, isn’t it? Doing the listening to God that is so hard to do in our
lives. Women, women like Lydia, for whatever reason, have been the better listeners
than most men, though not all, of course. I think of Peter, my favorite target of late, I
think of Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, ready to fight the Romans, to be the virile,
supposedly masculine presence some of the men in that Nightline report would have
appreciated. I think of his rage at the betrayal of Judas, of that kiss of betrayal that
Judas gives Jesus, and I see his anger boiling over, and his hand reaching for the
sword, and unsheathing it and wielding it, and he accidentally cuts off the ear of one of
the high priest’s slave (Luke 22:47-53). The mess it must have been, the blood all over
the place, the screaming of the servant, and Jesus’ quick hand cupping the slave’s ear,
and healing it, making it whole again. And then come Jesus’ own words about why the
guards would come after him with swords and clubs, as if he had ever been a man of
violence, as if it was necessary to come after him like was some vicious criminal. Still, I
don’t think it was a surprise that it was Peter, stubborn, violent, and yet passionate
Peter, who did this thing, and I don’t think it was too much of a coincidence that it was
the ear, the ear, of the servant that gets cut off, the human instrument of listening, the
same instrument used by Lydia in listening to Paul and others as they were told of the
good news, in that place outside the city gates, where the woman of her town had
gathered for prayer.

Not listening to God, and not listening to how God is moving in this world, and moving in
our lives, my life, your life, has always been a challenge for humans, male and female,
but sometimes maybe more so for us males, so quick with our fists, so ready to settle
our differences with swords. The Spirit of God will work in any place where it is
welcomed, and a few places where it is not, and the wisdom of Lydia is that she used
her ears to listen to the still speaking God, to the one who was saying yet a new thing
to her. Peter, on the other hand, used his sword to cut off the ears of others, a sad
metaphor for how the church has struggled to hear God over the centuries.    Women
in the early church were told to be silent in worship, to be silent in the life of the church,
by the same persons who had first told them the good news…the Christian faith had
empowered them, and they listened and they heard God giving them a voice to speak
with for the first time in their lives, and then men, well-meaning men like Paul, thought
that these out-spoken and empowered women had gotten the wrong message from the
Spirit. And yet we know now that Paul had it wrong sometimes, that even the great
Apostle can get it wrong, as he did with human slavery, and other things as well. If
even Paul can struggle with listening to the Spirit, the Spirit that leaves peace in its
wake, then surely we’ll continue to struggle with it.

Maybe our work is to do the work of Lydia, the work of our mothers, especially in this
day and age, the work of listening to God. What is God saying now, in these days, and
in this hour? What is God saying to me, to you, to this church, to us this moment? We
are promised the Spirit, we are promised the ears to hear, but we must become a low
place, a place where the spirit, like water, will find a place to pool, to reside, to find rest
in. I think of the low space right before you enter into our parking lot, the place that
was just repaired, but that once pooled water for days after it rained around here.
Becoming that space where the Spirit flows to is no easy thing, I think, or at least it has
not been in my experience. To put ourselves in the hands of God, to say, “this is God’s
work,” to say that with our lives, with our work, with our relationships, with our church,
with our hopes and dreams. Certainly, we have our piece to do in each of these parts
of our lives, but so much of that work has to do with listening, listening to the Spirit,
listening to the Spirit who brings us peace in the midst of the storms of our lives. The
church has often listened poorly to God’s voice, but that doesn’t mean we have to, you
and I, in this day and in this age. So, become that low place, that space that makes
room for what comes, become that place where the Spirit naturally runs to, like water
into a puddle. Listen, listen, to how God is speaking to you, to us, and like Lydia,
wonderful Lydia, the peaceful voice we will come to hear will carry us, that peaceful
voice that pools within us, it will hold us, it will not let us go, not until we are home, finally
home…Amen.