“Turning the World Upside Down: A New Kind of Church”
 Sermon Series on the Book of Acts
(Acts 16:11-40)
October 2, 2005
Dr. Peter Barnes
First Presbyterian Church

Introduction
      Sesame Street was one of my sons’ favorite television shows when they were growing up. All three of them liked following the tales of Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and Oscar the Grouch. As parents, Lorie and I appreciated the way in which the show made learning fun, and each episode helped our children learn the letters of the alphabet, how to count to 10, and the importance of sharing.
      One of the lessons of child development the show also sought to convey is that of differentiation. On occasion a segment would present three items that were similar to each other and one that was different from the rest – such as an apple, a banana, and a pear, along with a piece of chocolate cake. A cute little jingle was sung, and the viewer was encouraged to figure out which of the items were similar and which was different. I recall our boys saying out loud with delight which was the item that didn’t belong with the others and smiling at their own ability to differentiate.  
      The ability to differentiate is an important step in child development and cognitive learning. However, when it comes to the body of Christ, differentiation can also keep a church from being all God wants it to be. It has been rightly said that 11:00 o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week in America, and that is because most churches haven’t learned how to transcend racial and socio-economic barriers very well. Just look around you today. Does the composition of our congregation reflect the demographics of the Boulder Valley? Yes, to some extent, but there is more we could and should be doing.
      The early church was a diverse collection of people who came from every walk of life. We see it here in our passage this morning. When God planted a church in the city of Philippi, He pulled together an interesting group of people. Luke profiles three converts in particular: a wealthy business woman; an exploited slave girl; and a Roman civil servant. Let’s consider each of these respectively.

I. A Wealthy Business Woman
      You will recall from our study last week that after guiding Paul and his companions to the city of Troas, God gave the apostle a vision of the man from Macedonia saying, “Come over and help us.” We are told that from Troas they sailed straight for Samothrace and the next day on to Neapolis. From there they traveled on land to Philippi, a Roman colony which was the leading city of that district of Macedonia. Today this area is modern-day Greece. I have been to the ruins of the city of Philippi. It is an amazing place, and I can visualize Paul’s ministry having been there. On the screen you can see some photographs of the city of Philippi today.
      Philippi was a city in eastern Macedonia named after Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great. Since it was a Roman colony, it was independent of provincial administration and had a governmental organization modeled after that of Rome itself. Many retired legionnaires from the Roman army settled there, like the Philippian jailer. However, very few Jews lived in the city. 
      You will note that the passage tells us that on the Jewish Sabbath – Saturday, Paul and his companions went outside the city gate to the river, where they expected to find a place of prayer. The reason for this is that there was no synagogue in Philippi. In order for a synagogue to be established in a community there had to be a minimum of 10 married men. Apparently, 10 could not be found.  So in the absence of a synagogue, a place of prayer, usually beside a river or a stream, was established. This is what was done in the city of Philippi. It may have been an enclosure of some kind, or just an open air site. We really don’t know. On the screen you will see a photograph of the traditional site of this meeting place and the church that has been erected there. 
      Paul and his companions sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there for prayer, and they shared the gospel with them. One woman in particular named Lydia responded to the message of salvation. The passage tells us that the Lord opened her heart, and she put her trust in Christ. After she and her household were baptized, she persuaded Paul and the others to come and stay at her home, and presumably the first house church in Philippi was founded there.
      Who was Lydia? The text tells us that she was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira. Thyatira was situated on the other side of the Aegean Sea within provincial Asia, and it was famous for centuries for it dyes. Purple cloth was very expensive, and only the wealthy could afford to buy it. It would be like Cashmere wool or a very expensive silk today. Lydia was apparently the Macedonian agent of a cloth manufacturer of Thyatira.
      We are also told that she was a worshipper of God. This meant that while she was not born a Jew and had not fully converted to Judaism, she had warm sympathies toward the faith and believed and lived very much as a Jewish person. The passage also says the Lord opened her heart to receive the gospel. Here we are given an insight into the divine process of salvation. By His Holy Spirit, God brings conviction to the mind which in turn stirs the will, and the Lord opened the inner eyes of Lydia’s heart to believe the message about Jesus that Paul proclaimed. God turned the lights on, as it were, and she wanted Christ for herself. 
      Finally, we see that Lydia was a person with a big heart and a passion for hospitality. The text tells us that she persuaded Paul and his companions to come and stay at her home for some time. This wealthy and gracious business woman was the first convert to Christianity on the European continent.

II.  An Exploited Slave Girl
      The next person we meet in this passage is a slave girl. Luke tells us two things about her. First, she had a spirit by which she predicted the future, and second, she made a lot of money for her owners. Literally, the text says she had a “spirit of a python.” The reference is to the snake in classical mythology that guarded the temple of Apollo and the oracle of Delphi at Mount Parnassus. Apollo was thought to be embodied in the snake and to inspire “pythonesses,” his female devotees, with clairvoyance. Luke does not affirm these superstitions, but he does say that the girl was possessed by a demonic spirit associated with that cult. 
      We are given another clue as to how this worked by the word “fortune telling.” The Greek word is based on the word “manic,” which indicates an unnatural, frenetic behavior that frequently appeared when one was in a trance or under a spirit’s influence. Apparently, that is the way she got her messages. She would go into a trance, behave in an erratic fashion, and the demon would speak through her. I should also add that it was not uncommon for opium to be involved with this cult of clairvoyance. It is quite possible the girl was a drug addict, a condition that her owners would have used to keep her under their control.
       As Luke relates the story, it appears the girl would follow Paul and his companions around the city screaming, “These men are servants of the Most High God who are telling you the way to be saved” (16:17). She did this for many days. Finally, Paul became so annoyed with the distraction that he said, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” (16:18). At that very moment, the demon left the girl, and suddenly she was in her right mind. Presumably, Paul shared the gospel with her, and she put her trust in Jesus and became a part of the fellowship of believers in Philippi that day.   

III.  A Roman Civil Servant
      When the owners of the slave girl realized what had happened, they were angry that the source of their income was now gone. They dragged Paul and Silas to the market-place (the agora) to face the authorities, and they played the race card of anti-Semitism to get them arrested. They said, “These men are Jews, and they are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs that are unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice” (16:20,21). There was no truth to the charge, but that didn’t matter. The magistrates had Paul and Silas flogged and thrown into prison. The jailer put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. 
      You know the rest of the story. At midnight, the two men were praying and singing hymns when suddenly there was a violent earthquake that shook the foundations of the prison. The prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. When the jailer woke up and found the cell doors open, he drew his sword to kill himself, but Paul called out to him. Somehow the apostle had persuaded all the prisoners to stay in their cells. The former Roman soldier fell at Paul’s feet and asked the most important question any person can ever ask and the most important question that appears in the Bible, “Sir, what must I do to be saved?” (16:30). Paul urged the jailer to put his trust in Jesus Christ, and the man placed his faith in the Lord. Then he took them to his home, washed their wounds, and he and his whole household were baptized.   
      There are many things I could highlight from our passage this morning, but the one thing I want you to notice more than any other is the unifying power of the gospel. It would be hard to imagine a more disparate group of people than this wealthy business woman, this exploited slave girl, and this Roman civil servant. Yet, all three were changed by the same gospel and welcomed into the same church. Lydia was from Turkey, the slave girl was probably Greek, and the jailer was a Roman. Lydia was wealthy, the slave girl owned nothing, not even herself, and the jailer was somewhere in between. Yet here they were embracing the same message of salvation and finding themselves embraced by the Lord and by His family of faith. Why is it that we have such a hard time replicating this kind of diversity in the body of Christ today?
      I have wondered this past week, what would happen if these three people wandered into our worship service this morning? In all likelihood, Lydia would feel at home in our midst; she would probably fit in. However, would the slave girl and the jailer? Are we a welcoming congregation to people who are very different from us, who come from different walks of life or different socio-economic and racial backgrounds? What is the true “welcome factor” of First Pres? Do we cultivate a culture of invitation in our church? Have we developed an eye that keeps a lookout for the newcomer in our midst? Do we think that’s simply the job of the Greeters on Sunday morning, or have each of us assumed some responsibility for doing this job as well?
      Every time I have traveled overseas on mission trips, wherever I have worshipped there I have been overwhelmed by the welcome I have been given. Whether it was in India, the Dominican Republic, or Ecuador, the Christians there went out of their way to welcome us and make us feel at home. When members of our church were in Tanzania two years ago, on Sunday morning our group was escorted to the front of the church where we sat on the first two rows. We were the guests of honor. After the service, they served us a meal that represented the best they had to offer – stringy chicken, overcooked potatoes and fried bananas. We followed the missionaries’ motto: “Where you lead me, I will follow. What you feed me, I will swallow!” They went all out and made a great sacrifice to extend such hospitality to us, and we were blown away. These people had so little, yet they gave us so much.
      On this worldwide Communion Sunday, we should do no less for the newcomer in our midst. Instead of being concerned about my church, my pew, my friends, and my needs, worship should lead me to look up and look around – to look to Jesus and to seek out the stranger next to me.   

Conclusion
      The first convert in Europe was not exactly the man of Macedonia who Paul saw in his vision. Rather, the first converts were a wealthy business woman, an exploited slave girl, and a Roman civil servant. Eventually, it all came together, because this church in Philippi grew and grew until it became the dearest of all the churches in Paul’s heart. If he had a favorite, it may have been the church in Philippi. They were the ones who had supported him financially as he did ministry all around the world, and they were the ones who were faithful in prayer for the apostle, especially during his imprisonment later in his life. The church in Philippi may have started out like an odd collection of souls, but it grew into a congregation that was mighty in its faith and sacrificial in its support.
      In just a moment, we will celebrate communion together, and we join with millions of Christians around the world who are also celebrating the sacrament on this Worldwide Communion Sunday. Philip Yancey once reflected upon the lives of people who came forward to receive communion when he had the privilege of assisting in serving the sacrament one Sunday in his inner-church in Chicago. He said, "I knew the stories of some of the people standing before me. I knew that Mabel, the woman with strawy hair and bent posture who came to the senior's citizen's center, had been a prostitute. My wife worked with her for seven years before Mabel confessed the dark secret buried deep within. Fifty years ago she had sold her only child, a daughter. Her family had rejected her long before, the pregnancy had eliminated her source of income, and she knew she would make a terrible mother, and so she sold the baby to a couple in Michigan. She could never forgive herself, she said. Now she was standing at the communion rail, spots of rouge like paper discs pasted on her cheeks, her hands outstretched, waiting to receive the gift of grace. 'The body of Christ broken for you, Mabel.’"
      Beside Mabel were Gus and Mildred. They were the star players in the only wedding ceremony ever performed among the church’s senior citizens. They lost $150 a month in Social Security benefits by marrying rather than living together, but Gus insisted.  He said Mildred was the light of his life, and he didn’t care if he lived in poverty as long as he lived it with her at his side. “The blood of Christ shed for you, Gus, and you, Mildred.”
      Next came Adolphus, an angry young black man whose worst fears about the human race had been confirmed in Vietnam. The church put up with Adolphus because they knew he came not merely out of anger but out of hunger. If he missed the bus and no one had offered him a ride, sometimes he walked five miles to get to church. “And the body of Christ for you, Adolphus.”[1]
      I look out over this congregation, and I see your faces. As a pastor, I have had the privilege of hearing many of your stories – your joys, sorrows, pain, fear, brokenness, victories, and defeats. And it is my privilege to say to you this morning as your pastor - this is the body of Christ broken for you; this is the blood of Christ shed for you. Eat and be thankful. This is a table at which all of us are welcome and fit in, because we all come as sinners saved by grace.
      As you and I come to this meal, let us be aware of all God has done for us in Christ, and let us be aware of our neighbors around us. May we realize afresh our spiritual connection with each other. We’re an interesting collection of souls, but we better get used to being together, because we’re going to spend eternity with each other! Who knows? Perhaps God wants to knit us together to become a church like the one in Philippi. Amen.