{For the next two weeks, we will be focusing our worship on ‘Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations’ by Robert Schnase[1].  This is week 4 of the series. The focus is Risk-taking Mission and Service}

This is Mother’s Day – the day when in the United States we take extra time to honor our mothers and all those who have showered us with motherly affection.  By God’s grace, it comes on a day when the lectionary itself relates the story of a remarkable woman.

This morning’s scripture portion finds Paul on the road again as he sets out on his second missionary journey. Starting at Caesarea Philippi, he has traveled north to Antioch, then northwest through Asia Minor. He, Silas and Timothy have now arrived at ‘Troas’, a seaport where Paul has a dream – a vision – in which he sees a man asking him to come over to Macedonia, the Roman province in northern Greece.  Before this, ‘invitation of the Holy Spirit’, they had attempted to go to other regions, but had been prevented.  Now there is a clear call to a particular location.  If the province of Macedonia sounds familiar to you, it was the home province of Philip of Macedon – the father of Alexander the Great.  The gospel will now begin to conquer the hometown of the greatest conqueror the world had even known.

Paul enters Europe for the first time, to proclaim the good news there.  He preaches first in Philippi, which was then a Roman colony where veterans from a battle in 42 BC had been granted land.  Paul has the habit of first visiting Jewish synagogues with the Good News when he enters a city, but there does not seem to be one in Philippi and so he exits the city and goes to a place of prayer on the bank of a river where he finds a number of women gathered.

Gentile women throughout the Roman Empire had been attracted to Judaism by its ethical standards. One of them is the woman we know as Lydia.  Although she is probably not Jewish, she already worships God and even before Paul had arrived, the Holy Spirit had already spoken to her heart and made her receptive to Paul’s message. 

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The woman Lydia is a rarity in the 1^st century Roman Empire.  We know a lot about her and yet we know very little.

We know she was likely a gentile but not a Roman.  We know she loved God and that the Holy Spirit was already working in her life when Paul entered Philippi and we know that she was a successful business woman, selling luxury fabrics (purple cloth). 

The dye used to make purple garments was expensive and making it was a business that required lots of work and lots of infrastructure.  Thus we know that she was well off and apparently quite successful in her business ventures.

We have the witness of scripture that she was the head of her own household and that her home was large enough for her to offer hospitality to the apostles while they are in the city.

We know all this and yet we are told nothing about her marital status, or her family.  Is she married, widowed, divorced?  Does she have children, grand children?  Nieces, nephews?  Brothers or sisters?

There are many commentary writers who say that it is likely we don’t even know her name.  Lydia, they say is the name of an ancient city famous for its purple fabrics.  A modern parallel would be calling someone ‘Tex’ or ‘Montana’, or ‘Kansas City Joe’.

But if Paul had not undertaken a ‘risk-taking mission’ we would know nothing about her at all.

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Paul understood that risk-taking mission and service is a lot like fishing for people – and Jesus himself used this same metaphor.  Just as the proclamation of the gospel took Paul far from home to encounter those who needed to hear the god news of God’s grace, so it will sometimes take us out of our own comfort zones to places that might be unfamiliar to us.  Each of Paul’s missionary journeys took him a couple of years.  Serving God will sometimes cost us some time as well.  It may cost us some resources.  But if God calls us to mission and service – and we know God does – we too need to drop everything to follow and to serve.

Schnase writes: Risk-Taking Mission and Service is one of the fundamental activities of church life that is so critical that failure to practice it in some form results in a deterioration of the church's vitality and ability to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  When churches turn inward, using all resources for their own survival and caring only for their own people, then spiritual vitality wanes.

            Turning inward, failing to take risks in reaching out, will deteriorate the church and diminish the spirituality of a church, a congregation, a Christian.

            The same thing can be said for Paul.  Paul could have chosen to stay at home – taking care of himself and his family.  Keeping safely at home and doing all the right things.  Instead he, being filled with the Holy Spirit, listened to the Spirit and went out into the world to teach and preach the good news: to share the good news of redemption and salvation wherever the Spirit led him.

            Of course, we can dismiss such self-giving risk-taking from Paul because we think of him only as a great disciple and we forget that he was as human as each of us.  He had a home and a family and property to leave behind – and to put at risk by his leaving.

            His call was as special as he was.  Likewise our call is special and individual to who we are.  John Jewell writes:

The carpenter's invitation reads, "Follow me and I will make you build people."  The accountant will hear it as, "Follow me and I will make you help people know they count."  The waitress will hear, "Follow me and I will make you serve the spiritual hunger of people."  The physician will hear, "Follow me and I will make you a healer of people's souls." A beleaguered mom's call is, "Follow me and I will make you a builder of children."[2]

Practicing Radical Hospitality will make others comfortable and welcome in our company.  Passionate worship will help each of us grow closer to the One whom we worship.  Intentional Faith Development will give us intellectual certainty to strengthen our faith experience.  Risk-taking mission and service will grow others in faith as it grows us.

There is a place in the mission of God for every one of us.  There is a person in need of Christ’s love who can hear it best from voices like ours, who can see it best from lives like ours, can experience it best from faith such as ours.

But to do it, we will have to step out in faith, take risks, follow Christ into places unknown and unseen.  We will not be there alone and it will be worth it.

The good news for us this day is that when God calls us to a task the Spirit will go there with us and will have already prepared the way – and the hearts of the people who will hear our message.  The challenge for us this say is; will we go?  Will we serve?  Will we risk something for the one who gave everything?  Amen.

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