Open Heart Scripture

Easter 6C  05/09/10

Acts 16:9-15, John 5:1-9

Grace and peace be to you from God the Father, and from the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Mothers. Ya gotta love em. Especially today—on this one FTD and Hallmark sanctioned day a year. Mothers’ Day. You gotta love Mom on Mothers’ Day. All the rest of the year you can be annoyed with her. What—your mother never annoyed you?

For instance, did your mother ever do this? “Sit up straight! Keep your feet on the floor!” Or this: [Lick hand and then go to straighten hair.] Or how bout this one? You need to clean your plate. Children are starving in Africa!” At least that one had a built in snappy comeback. And what is it? “I’ll send it to them!” Built in. Not like with the “didjas.” Didjas have no comeback at all. That’s what makes them so annoying. You know didjas, right? Didja clean your room like I told you? Didja take out the trash? Didja do you math homework? Awww Maaa! I hated the didjas!

But my personal favorite amongst the many annoying things that mothers do? They always ask if you’re wearing clean underwear—because…?/ You might get into an accident. (As if dirty under drawers would be my main problem in that scenario.)

Still, we owe a lot to our moms. So much. You want to get her something nice. Me—I’m terrible about getting an appropriate gift. To thank her, you know. But I’m not as bad as these three brothers…

They decided to give their elderly mother special, thoughtful, expensive gifts one year. One gave her a big house. The second gave her an expensive car with a chauffer. The third son said, “Listen, you know, she can’t see very well. I met this Lutheran pastor who told me about a parrot that can recite the entire Bible. It took 20 Sunday School teachers 12 yrs. to teach him. I had to pledge to contribute $100,000. a year for 20 years to the church to get him. But let me tell you, it will be worth it! All Mama has to do is name a chapter and verse and the parrot will recite it.”

Well it wasn’t long before Mama sent them each a Thank You note: (That’s another annoying thing mothers make you do. But I digress.)  The first said “Dear Milton: The house you had built for me is huge. I live only in one room but I have to clean the whole house. Thanks anyway. Mama.”  The second said “Dear Marvin: I am too old to travel and I have my groceries delivered. Plus the driver you hired is a Democrat. Thanks anyway. Mama”

The third son smugly opened his note. It said, “Dearest Melvin: You were the only son to give a little thought to your gift. That colorful little chicken was delicious! Thank You.” MAMA

Ya gotta love em. Even when they’re annoying. One annoying thing moms do best is to bring you to church. Sunday School and worship. Whether you want to, or not! I’ve heard tales of epic battles being fought between mother and child over going to church. Tears and whining and fake illnesses are the weapons of recalcitrant would-be stay-at-homes. But they’re no match for the cajoling, the insisting, the bribing that mothers employ in the all out effort to pass down the faith to their progeny.

Of course, Dads play a role too—but hey, your day isn’t till next month.  And, truth be told, the dads’ role is less significant than the moms’ because, quite simply, men have allowed themselves to become outnumbered at church. It may not be totally reflected here at Messiah, but on the average two-thirds of the people in church are women. Many of which are mothers, grandmothers, aunts. So there you have it—the whole process of passing along the faith to the next generation rests in the hands of Mom. The hand that rocks the cradle.

In today’s first reading from Acts, we see what I interpret as a Mom passing along the faith. Paul and company go down to the river, expecting that there to be a “place of prayer.” A synagogue. They encounter a group of women and they decide to teach them. I suppose that first century synagogues had a healthy number of female members as well. No doubt most of those women were mothers. So, I wonder if Paul, the astute evangelist that he was, understood the power of mom in the transmission of the good news.. I wonder if he intentionally spoke to the women first, knowing that if he could win over their hearts for the Lord, they would go home and convince their families to listen.

And that’s exactly what happens with Lydia, who’s highlighted here most likely for her success in a business world predominately populated by men. She listened to Paul’s witness and the Lord opened her heart to it. And the next thing we hear Lydia and her whole “household,” kids, relatives, even the servants—are baptized. That’s one impressive mom!

I’d sure like to know how she did that—maybe you do too. Maybe you’re struggling with a teenager who knows all the buttons to push about church. It’s boring. None of my friends are there. The music isn’t what I like. Dad isn’t going this week—why do I have to? All people ever say to me there is, “How’s school going?” The pastor’s jokes stink (ouch). I can’t find my place in the hymn book. The kids there are nerds. The service is too long. The sermon is too long. The choir anthem is too long. And by the way, do you really buy all that stuff about Jesus—all those “miracles,” the earthquake and solar eclipse when he died on the cross, and especially that stuff about being resurrected. I don’t. I don’t think I even believe in God!

I wonder what Lydia told her teenaged son (if she had one) about Paul and his message. Must have been compelling, Although we know that it was common in the first century church for entire households to be baptized, possibly because the patriarch of the family was converted and insisted. It was kind of like the adage from reformation times, when the reformers and holy roman empire made a pact—as goes the ruler, so goes the land. So if the prince chose Lutheranism, his principality was Lutheran too. Same thing in the early church. If the boss of the household (which was really a hybrid family/economic unit) if he was baptized, everybody else got dunked too.

But I don’t feel that this was the case with Lydia. Why? Because she was not a he. That she had forged a business of her own selling purple cloth (which was tres expensive), possibly taking it over from a husband who died and left her a widow—the lowest position on the social scale for a woman—who wasn’t very far up there at best of times. That Lydia fought tooth and nail and persevered in a good old boys economy says loads about her character. She was a strong willed woman, she had to have been. But she was still a woman in first century Palestine. Her son would always owe her a debt for bearing him into the world—but he didn’t have to do as she said. Because he would have been higher up on the social ladder than she!

So Lydia must have been convincing. To lead all her family and workers into the waters of baptism, she had to have won them each over with the same good news that won her over. The good news of freedom in Christ Jesus. “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor master, man nor woman—all are one in Christ Jesus.” From Paul she learned that God’s love was for everyone in equal proportions.

But even Paul, the greatest evangelist ever known, even Paul could not have changed Lydia’s life so entirely with oratory alone. No, some other power is behind any conversion experience—whether it transpires in a flash, or over the course of many years. Some other power—the power of the Holy Spirit. Acts tells us that Lydia’s heart was opened by the Lord (who works through the Spirit), and then Paul’s message was eagerly received. Instead of open heart surgery in our day and age, this was the Spirit using Paul’s witness to perform open heart scripture. During which the Spirit calls, gathers, and enlightens (according to the catechism) by the scripture. It is the Spirit that convicted and convinced Lydia of God’s love and forgiveness, and her great need for them. It was the Spirit working through Lydia to convince her household to listen to the proclamation of Christ and to be baptized.

Today’s gospel can be viewed allegorically in the same light. The man who lay by the portico, dragging himself down to the pool when it was stirred up and effective—only to be blocked from entering—he is Lydia, he is you and me, he is all of us. We are wounded, we are sin-sick, and we just can’t seem to get to the waters of healing alone. We even whine about it. It’ so hard…the service is too early…somebody ate the last chocolate chip muffin at the snack table…there’s a visitor in my seat! And we get stuck there. And nobody—nobody—is going to follow you anywhere in that condition.

We need that encounter with Christ, that visit from the holy spirit, that open heart surgery in which the gospel of God’s radical, radical grace and love are implanted in your very being, and you know—you know that this stuff is real. And you’re off! Stand up, take your doubts and concerns and fear and your inability to love as he loves us, and walk!

Thank God for Jesus Christ. Thank God for the holy Spirit who intervenes in our lives and brings us into the presence of God! Because with hearts open and full of the gospel, we are transformed—like the man at the pool, like Lydia by the river. And things change. We put God first in our lives. We care for one another. We give, we serve, we sacrifice, we lift up those in need, we advocate for those who have no voice. We tell others so they hear it as we heard it.

Now, I kinda left you hanging with the mom and teen fighting about church. Maybe it’s a mom and an adult child, maybe it’s a sister and brother, whatever. What is the key to getting these people to church?

The Holy Spirit and scripture. Moms (and dads) who read scripture to their young ones using a story bible like this one (SPARK) open their minds to know the ground of our faith. Those who tell their children of their beliefs and their struggles to believe infuse in them a basis for their own belief and the permission to explore what they doubt. Parents whose everyday vocabulary includes references to faith and the experience of God in Christ, show their teens and adult children that this is a part of their lives and they’re not ashamed of the gospel. Going to church and leaving Sunday morning company with the papers and a poptart demonstrates that hearing and eating and drinking the word is important to you (they could come along).

I know. It sounds too hard. Too trite. Too…no way. Yah-way! We just need the Holy Spirit, and the way to get the Spirit is to ask for it to come.

What I want you to do now is think of one person, one child, teen, coworker, relative, whoever. One person you would want to be here with you today. Close your eyes and pray for them now. Pray that they would be healed. Pray that they might experience God as you have. Pray that they might be called, gathered and enlightened. Pray their name over and over. And now, keeping your eyes closed, we are going to pray—in song—for the Holy Spirit to come to them.        We will sing in Latin

VENE SANCTUS SPIRITUS (come holy spirit)

You’ll hear someone sing another part. Don’t stop.

AMEN