Friends, I’ve been pastoring here for 11 years, and even on my best days I’m still not entirely sure how I got here. It was certainly never part of my plan. If you’d told me thirty two years ago that I would one day be the pastor of the gigantic downtown church I could just see from my dorm room window up on Bedford Terrace, I would have told you that you were crazy because

A. women can’t be ministers.

                      &

B. that’s not even a real church.

And if you’d said, “what do you mean it’s not a real church?!?” I would have said, “They ordain women there, don’t they? Then they are not Biblical. Ergo, not a real church!”

Yeah, I know. I was wrong - like, so wrong - on all counts. And yet, here I stand: the woman pastor of one of the most Biblical churches I know, thanks to the gentle but persistent promptings of the Holy Spirit.

You may notice from the time line that there was a 21 year gap between my insistence that there was no way I could ever even be a pastor to my becoming a pastor here. And I have to tell you that even after I received my call from on high, went to Divinity School, got ordained, and had served in 3 churches, I was still unconvinced that I could ever serve here.

In truth, when I was pastoring in Hadley and word went out that the Rev. Peter Ives was going to retire, a few people asked me if I would consider applying here and I said, “No way. Absolutely not!” I’d preached here once at Peter’s gracious invitation and I was in awe of him and of this church. His shoes and this sanctuary felt like way more than I could ever hope to fill. I simply didn’t think I was good enough. And besides, I loved my church across the river and believed with all my heart that I would never leave them. I even said as much, repeatedly.

But then things imploded at Hadley and God laid a call on my heart to start a dinner church. Suddenly, our family was free to worship anywhere we wanted on Sundays while I plotted out my next steps.

So of course we went to Haydenville, where my dear friend Andrea was pastoring at the time. Some of you may remember that back then the church up there was booming and there were over 50 kids involved in their children’s ministry. Worshipping with them was a great experience for our whole family.

But I had another clergy friend, Todd, who also hoped I’d visit. And so the next Sunday we came here to First Churches. It was the Sunday you were voting on whether or not to sell the Tiffany window over there in order to pay off the mortgage, so everyone with any stake in the future of First Churches was in attendance.

Everyone… and it still felt pretty small.

And given the vote you were about to take, honestly, it also felt a little sad. There were not a lot of kids, the atmosphere was tense, and I was relieved to dash out after worship before the meeting began.

We went out the Center Street door and I looked down at my kids who were quite small back then, and said: “Well, that was interesting. Not as much fun as Haydenville. But hey, we can go back there next Sunday, if you want.” And George looked up at me very seriously and said, “No, Mom. This church needs us.”

Those words made no sense coming out of his seven year old mouth.

Those words made no sense at all because you weren’t even looking for a pastor.

But George was right: you needed us. And the truth is, we needed you too.

I didn’t see it coming. For all my planning, I never could have foreseen it working out the way it has. But the call to do church in a new way that we took a chance on together, the challenges we have weathered from the mortgage to covid, and this ministry we have built over the last 11 years has all been because we trusted in the gentle but persistent promptings of the Holy Spirit whether it made sense to or not.

In fact, the surprise factor is the surest way I know to discern that it is actually the Spirit at work. I think it’s often in the turns you didn’t expect, the people you couldn’t have anticipated, the opportunities you never would have dreamed of, where the hand of God can be seen most clearly.

It’s in the chance encounters and pivotal moments that force you to re-evaluate, re-calibrate, sometimes even repent, where you know in your heart that the Spirit is up to something… something bold, something new… and you would do well to pay attention.

Look at our story for today. We’re deep in the book of Acts and Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke are trying to figure out where to go next in their quest to reach all of the Ancient Near East with the gospel of Jesus (Where did Luke come from? Luke is not named, but he is the author of the book and scholars note that it is at this point in the narrative that the pronouns shift from “they” to “we.”  Although the exact members of the group are not named, N.T. Wright thinks that the simplest explanation for the shift is the best one. It is at this point in the journey that Luke joined them in their travels. “Acts for Everyone” p 60).

Given their trajectory, it would have made sense to continue westward.

But the Holy Spirit intercedes and says “no Asia for you!” So they re-route and head North. But somehow the spirit of Jesus steps in and sends them back down from whence they came.

And friends, just so we’re clear, these guys are on foot. They are not just walking, now they are back tracking, hundreds and hundreds of miles. They are not getting anywhere and they are not sharing their message with anyone. I’d have been frustrated out of my mind and ready to quit, and maybe they were too.

But then, out of the blue, Paul has a vision of a man from Macedonia of all places pleading for their help. Paul is so convinced that this is the next right thing for them to do that they change course again, head for the coast, charter a boat, and sail across the Mediterranean Sea.

     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 …(well… that’s when things got weird.)

You need to know that whenever Paul and his friends would arrive in a new city they would always head straight for the local synagogue. Paul was Jewish, after all, a Pharisee no less, and he would always seek out his own people because he believed he carried the good news that their Messiah had come.

But Paul and his friends are now so far off the map, that they’ve reached a place where there is no synagogue. So they look for the next best thing, a place outside the city gates where any Jews who might’ve lived in Philippi would most likely gather for prayer.

And when I say Jews, I mean men. They were looking for Jewish men with whom they could pray, because in Judaism back then, as in much of Judaism right now, the men and women would have prayed separately.

And remember, it was a man from Macedonia that had appeared to Paul in a vision, not a woman.

So Paul and his friends are looking for Jewish men in Macedonia with whom they can relate, pray, and communicate when they head down to the river. But the only people praying outside the city gate are women. And to his everlasting credit, Paul doesn’t walk away. Seeing only women he could easily have concluded that there was no one there with whom to worship, but something in Paul was open to the unexpected prompting of the Spirit.

Undaunted, he shares the gospel with the Jewish women of Philippi whom God has put in his path.  They all listen. But the plot is not done twisting.

Notice that the only one who actually receives the gospel is a gentile from another part of the world:

“[W]e sat down,” writes Luke, “ and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, (meaning that she was drawn to the God of Judaism but had not yet converted) was listening to us; she was(n’t even from Macedonia but) 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.  

You know how when something remarkable happens we often say, “you can’t make this stuff up?”

You know how we often say that truth is stranger then fiction?

So it is with the movements of the Holy Spirit.

Paul came to help a mysterious man from Macedonia, but instead, thanks to his openness to the Spirit, he finds himself face to face with a woman… a woman who is so self-sufficient that she will be the one to help him.

He is in a place he never meant to go, talking to a person he wasn’t looking for, a gentile woman he probably shouldn’t have even been talking with at all, who isn’t from that place anymore than he is.  And what does he find, but a woman with the faith, the leadership skills, and the resources to become his partner in spreading the gospel in that region for years to come.

Luke tells us that

 When (Lydia) 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.

Lydia responds to the gospel with a spirit of radical hospitality and opens her home to Paul and his mission. For this reason Lydia is recognized as a saint, the first Christian convert in Europe. And, given her gracious hospitality and Paul’s willingness to take her up on it, her household became ground zero for the church in Philippi; a church that was founded, financed, and led primarily by women (See https://www.regent.edu/journal/journal-of-biblical-perspectives-in-leadership/lydia-in-the-bible/#:~:text=In all probability, Lydia was,to stay in her home. Also, when Paul writes to the church later he addresses only one other man and seems primarily concerned with reconciling Euodia and Syntyche.).

Someone get a memo to my younger self and let her know that not only can women lead churches, they have always led churches. In fact it was a woman who found the church in Europe. It says so, right here, in the Bible! Who knew?

Friends, discernment is a complicated business, because God’s ways are not our ways. Knowing what it is God wants you to do can be hard to figure out. But when things get weird, like really weird, that’s when you may want to consider whether the Holy Spirit is at work.

I’m talking about those times when you didn’t plan for it to work out this way, you never intended for it to work out this way, in fact you never even imagined it could work out this way, and yet here you are with a choice to go right or left, join in or walk away, receive or reject what is right in front of you.

Paul had an opportunity before him in the person of Lydia: an open heart hungry for truth, a woman, but a woman ready for someone to see her gifts and let her use them, a gentile, but a gentile  who was ready and willing and just waiting to be part of something more, nothing new.

It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t part of the plan. But it was the right thing to do.

Jenny Fleming-Ives had a friend you used to say, in situations like these: “If you think that’s a coincidence, you live a very boring life.” Well let me tell you this, ministry here at First Churches is never boring because God is always up to something here. And I believe the Spirit is moving again, calling us to create a position so new, we’re not even sure what to call it.

I brought this idea to the church council and then to the whole congregation at our meeting in early May. With your blessing, I am hoping we can bring someone on staff with the skills to help us form deeper relationships with God, one another, and the wider community.

We’re about to start searching for someone who can organize opportunities for us to strengthen ties and deepen our faith by helping us all find ways we can connect, contribute, and grow together. I may not know what to call it, but I hope you’ll still join me in praying about it.

Pray for me and pray for us as a church, for the personnel team and the search team and any candidates who are out there, as we keep our hearts and minds open to where God is leading. I don’t want to expend tons of energy going in the wrong direction. I have some strong ideas about how this should go. But I hope we can all approach this process with a willingness to be surprised by God.

You know, someone once said that, “we plan and God laughs,” and I think that might well be true. But if God laughs, it’s not in a cruel way. I don’t believe in a God who looks down on us or dismisses us as too small or too petty to understand what They are up to.

I think, at least when it comes to the ministry of the church, that God laughs because God knows we tend to dream too small. I think God laughs because all too often we are afraid to ask for what we really need. God laughs because God always has something better and more powerful in store for us then we ever would have dreamed up for ourselves. And so I believe we can trust God to guide us in this process every unexpected step of the way.

For God brought Paul to Lydia and Lydia to Paul and they were both blessed in ways they never could have imagined.  I can’t wait to see who God brings to us and where we all end up together. Amen.